new info from today's JKR webcast

[Nothlit]

During today's live webcast from the Royal Albert Hall in Britain, JKR gave us a few more tidbits about OotP. Stephen Fry (who narrates the British audio books) was the "moderator" and asked questions from readers around the world. He also accidentally slipped up and spoiled the death!! If I hadn't already finished the book, I would have been quite mad at him after that! Oh well, it can be forgiven, I guess.

Anyway, JKR answered a question about why Snape is never allowed to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. JKR answered with pretty much the same thing we have speculated here on these forums...when Snape was first hired by Dumbledore 16 years ago, he wanted to teach DADA, but Dumbledore felt that might "bring out the worst in him," so he told Snape to teach Potions instead, and has never felt ready to promote him.

Another reader asked why Harry never saw the thestrals before now, since he witnessed his parents' death. JKR kind of took this question and twisted it a little bit to assume the reader was asking why Harry didn't see the thestrals at the end of GoF, after he had witnessed Cedric's death by saying that it takes time for the death to fully sink in before you can see the thestrals. She pretty much admitted it was a cop-out, but that she did it knowingly and with the good intention of not wanting to confuse readers by introducing these mysterious black horses right at the end of GoF without offering any explanation.

I'm sure there were other things mentioned during the webcast that I've forgotten. It's going to be available to watch until July 3rd, so everyone should go check it out at http://www.msn.co.uk/liveevents/harrypotter/event/ before it's gone forever!

[Nothlit]

Sorry for the double post, but I just remembered one thing I meant to ask about. After the question-and-answer session, JKR read from OotP, the part where Harry is getting career advice in McGonagall's office (pages 661-666 of the American version) and she kept saying "Minister for Magic" rather than "Minister of Magic," which is what's printed in the American versions. Was this just a slip of the tongue on her part, or is this another thing that they change between the British and American versions?

[werebane]

It is like that in the american book, and im guessing its supposed to be ministry of magic

[Colin]

Was the webcast audio only? That's what I get. Maybe the little electrons can't escape the horror that is BT and get all the way out here to California.

Well, it's a theory...

[Nothlit]

It was video when I saw it. I don't know if maybe they've converted it to just audio now to conserve bandwidth. I have the original stream saved to my hard drive, but it's something like 114 megabytes, so that's a little much to e-mail or post on my own web site.

[Nothlit]

Just for the heck of it, I transcribed the little bit where they accidentally spoiled the death for millions of readers...

JKR: I think that what I was trying to do with the death, in this book, was show how very arbitrary and sudden death is. This is a death where you didn't have a big deathbed scene. It happened almost accidentally. And that is one of the very cruel things about death. And of course they're now in a war situation where that really does happen, where one minute you're talking to your friend and the next minute he's gone. And it's so shocking and so inexplicable -- where did they go? And I found it upsetting to write because I knew what it would mean to Harry, who briefly --

Stephen Fry: Oh, absolutely. For all his darkness, Sirius is so loveable, really, isn't he?

JKR: And we've just given it away.

Stephen Fry: Excuse me! I never said anything!

Amazingly, they seemed to recover quickly enough and didn't let it ruin the rest of the event. But still, if I had been one of the thousands of kids there, or millions online, who hadn't finished the book yet...wow, I would have been upset.

[Malachim]

WOW!!

No kidding huh! I'll bet JKR was seething after that! Her being so secretive and all for something like that to just slip.

LOL [/i]

[zledm007]

yeah, i'm sure she was pretty upset, but one of my friends did me the wonderful favor of telling me who died prematurely, and i was a little mad at first (naturally), but in the end, it really wasn't that bad knowing ahead of time. i suppose the surprise would've been nice, but it wasn't so bad.