Is there some vast trove of Harry Potter Background info?

In the Deathly Hallows - Seen it! thread, there were quite a few people making mention of “JKR said X about Y” type comments. For example, one of the posters mentioned that Molly Weasley’s brothers were killed by Death Eaters. :confused:

I know there have been some interviews and the like over the years, especially after the last book came out, but is there some much larger commentary that I’ve somehow missed? Where are people coming across this stuff?

As an additional aside, I wonder if years from now we’ll see her, or one of her kids, publish some kind of “History of Middle Earth” type book. I’ve no idea how much background notes she’s got on this or if she’s making it up as she goes along.

Try these links:

http://www.mugglenet.com/

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_Encyclopedia

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html

JKR didn’t say that, Hagrid and Moody did. Hagrid first mentioned them as in Sorcerer’s Stone and Moody later clarified that it took five Death Eaters to kill the pair in Order of the Phoenix.

I looked that up on HP Lexicon. Which is a “vast trove of Harry Potter Background Info”.

Thanks for this, especially the encyclopedia link.

What I meant specifically was unpublished i.e. like the Tolkien letters and the like. Or stated another way - comparing Tolkien’s methodical work and multitudes of background letters on Middle Earth to whether JKR in providing additional information is simply playing it “by ear”.

I got the impression from what I read on http://www.jkrowling.com/ (her personal site) that she did create quite elaborate back stories for even some very minor characters: Dean Thomas, for example.

www.jkrowling.com is not the vast trove of information you are looking for, but it does provide some interesting insights, if you don’t mind battling with the cutesy, flash-driven interface. It is more like a game than an ordinary web site.

Yes. She releases information in interviews and on her site. Like Dumbledore being gay: People certainly suspected it (or claimed to later - it’s easy to say “I knew it!”) but it was in an interview that she confirmed it.

I was just pointing out that your example’s info could all be found in the book.

I just want to say that I had ZERO idea on that one. I still don’t see it from the actual texts of the books.

I think that was her intent. His sexuality is completely irrelevant to the story, and he just turned out to be gay. Much like most of the other characters’ sexualities are also irrelevant, but they are assumed to be straight, as that is the ‘default’. She was presumably playing around with this assumption, which I thought was a small positive way of combating a stereotype.

And I thought it was compeltely obvious. the way she described his realtionship with Grindelwald, it seemed obvious to me that Dumbledore was in love, though I wondered whether it had been fully mutual.

Love is blind.

I remember that, but did the books ever tell us that Molly’s maiden name as Prewett, or that those were her brothers? I don’t remember getting that info from the books.

Yes. On Harry’s birthday, Molly gives him the watch that used to belong to her late brother, Fabian Prewett.

Well, to be nit-picky, she says it belongs to her late brother Fabian, and doesn’t give his last name. But that is enough info to make the connection to the story Moody told about Fabian and Gideon Prewett.

I think that in the epilog, there is a reference to Harry’s watch once belonging to Fabian Prewitt.

Yep, I just checked, and you’re correct. Thanks!