Rowling Web Site Rife With 'Potter' Trivia
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}So, you think you know everything about Harry Potter (search)?
OK, then — what was Hermione Granger's original last name?
And what does the "K." in J.K. Rowling (search) stand for?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}If you can't answer these, don't worry — most people couldn't until last week, when the notoriously private Rowling, author of the Potter series, surprised fans by re-launching her personal Web site, www.jkrowling.com.
The site had been a skimpy page of links, but it's now a fun collection of Harry news and trivia, written by Rowling herself.
The new site has already gotten more than 17 million hits from fans eager for "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," which hits movie theaters next Friday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And Rowling doesn't disappoint. She packs her site with plenty of fun facts:
* In early drafts of the first book, Harry's pal was called Hermione Puckle — "but it was quickly changed for something a bit less frivolous," Rowling writes.
* Rowling doesn't actually have a middle name — she was born Joanne Rowling. But before the first book came out, her publisher suggested she add another initial because "J. Rowling" didn't sound quite right. So the author added "K" in honor of her beloved grandmother, Kathleen.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}* Rowling was asked to play the ghost of Lily Potter, Harry's murdered mother, in the first "Potter" movie. But she turned it down. "I am not cut out to be an actress, even one who just has to stand there and wave," she writes. "I would have messed it up somehow."
* The first book originally included a scene in which we see Harry's parents die and meet Hermione's family. "The Potters were living on a remote island, and Hermione's family lived on the mainland," Rowling writes. "One night, her father spotted . . . an explosion out at sea, and sailed out in a storm to find [the Potters'] bodies in the ruins of their house. I can't remember now why I thought that was a good idea."
* Uber-villain Lord Voldemort is decidedly not Harry's actual father, despite rumors on various fan Web sites. "No, no, no, no, no," Rowling says. "You lot have been watching definitely too much 'Star Wars.'"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Unfortunately for inquisitive Harry fans, Rowling has little to say about such important questions as "When will you finish Book Six?"
"Book Six is well under way," she writes, "though I am still at the stage where I have a large and complicated chart propped on the desk in front of me to remind me what happens where."
Still, there may be some clues about future Potter books in cyberspace, if you search hard enough.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"A few weeks ago, I did something I've never done before — taken a stroll into a Harry Potter chat room on mugglenet.com," Rowling writes.
"But nobody was remotely interested in my theories about what's going to happen in Book Seven.
"In the end, I gave up trying to impart any gems of wisdom and joined the discussion about 'SpongeBob SquarePants.' "