Lost in a Good Book

After all this time you wouldn’t have thought that there was any closer we could look at the series, but the vast amount of information out there says otherwise. There’s plenty of information about each about the books and films on their own, but what about the series as a whole? What are the facts and figures that give Harry Potter the marvellouss depth and detail? What are the key pieces of information that make you realise just how much work Rowling invested in creating her world? What are random bits of information about the actors that you never thought you needed to know? All that and more are answered below.

The Stats

• The total word count across the entire series is 1 084 170.
              Philosopher’s Stone: 76,944 words
              Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 words
              Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253 words
              Goblet of Fire: 190,637 words
              Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 words
              Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 words
              Deathly Hallows: 198,227 words
• The series is made up of 4095 pages
• Translated into 73 languages
• Sold more than 500 million copies (as of May 2013)
• In 2012 all 7 books were in the top 10 best selling books of all time
• As of 2015, the Harry Potter series is the second-highest grossing film franchise of all time having grossed more than $7.7 billion worldwide.

Series Fun Facts

• Hagrid is 8 feet, 6 inches tall.
• Ron Weasley originally swore a lot, but Rowling’s publisher wouldn’t let her use that sort of language because it would’ve been inappropriate for young readers.
• Throughout the eight-movies five actresses played Pansy Parkinson
• Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) got a mini-fan and a fruit bat stuck in his shaggy beard.
• To keep Deathly Hallows from leaking early, Bloomsbury gave it codenames such as Edinburgh Potmakers or The Life and Times of Clara Rose Lovett: An Epic Novel Covering Many Generations. 
• The brooms used in the series aren’t regular brooms, they were made by modeller Pierre Bohanna using aircraft-grade titanium to support the weight of the actors.
• Animatronics were made for the actors to interact with on set, including baby mandrakes, Hedwig, the Monster Book of Monsters, and Buckbeak.
• Harry’s scar was applied 5800 times in the making of the films. 2000 times on Radcliffe and the rest on film and stunt doubles.
• Harry went through 160 glasses.
• Some original names of the characters were Hermione Puckle, Neville Puff, Draco Spinks, Lily Moon, Madhari Patil, and Mati Patil.
• While filming Prisoner of Azkaban, Tom Felton’s robes had their pockets sewn shut because he kept trying to sneak food onto the set.
• Forty versions of Salazar Slytherin’s locket had to be created to accommodate Harry and Ron’s failed attempts to destroy.
• Voldemort awkwardly hugging Draco was not scripted, but improvised by Fiennes. Felton’s shocked response was authentic.
• Voldemort’s wand is made of yew.
• Rowling said she would have fought the decision to make it Sorcerer’s Stone if she had been in a better position.

Words, Names and Their Meanings

• Each of Dumbledore’s names has a meaning – Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore
              Albus is white in Latin
              Wulfric was a name of a saint who became a holy man after seeing a
              homeless man
              Percival was a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table
              Brian is Celtic for strong
              Dumbledore is Old English for bumblebee.
• The Hogwarts motto,”Draco dormeins nunquam titillandus” means “Never tickle a sleeping dragon”
• Muggle existed in the early to mid-1900s, as a jazz-word that was used for pot smokers.
• Hogwarts is the name of a plant
• Voldemort comes from the French words meaning “flight of death” (the T is silent)
• The wizarding world’s plants come from a real book called Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. The book was penned in the 17th century by English botanist and herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. You can actually read it here.
• Accio – Originally, the word meant “send (for)”, “summon (forth),” or “fetch”, among other things
• Evanesco – literally means to vanish
• Incendio – Latin for fire-raising
• Expelliarmus – incantation loosely combines expellere (drive out or expel) and arma (weapon)
• Nox – Latin word for night
• Expecto Patronum – means ‘I await a patron’
• Crucio – Cruciare means torment/torture
• Avada Kedavra – derives from the Aramaic phrase Abhadda kedhabhra, which means to ‘disappear like this word’. (Also probable origin of abracadabra)
• Severus – means severe or serious
• Draco Malfoy – Draco translates to dragon, while Malfoy can be traced back to malus, which means bad, evil, or wicked
• Remus Lupin – In mythology, Remus was raised by wolves, and Lupin is a form of Lupus which means wolf.
  Side note: Lupin’s father was called Lyall which also means wolf, his mother’s maiden name was Howell
• Quidditch – also known as Ikarosfairke or “Ikarus ball,” which refers to the Greek myth of Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

Fun Facts

More Fun Facts

Even More Fun Facts

Movie Fun Facts

I was all prepared to do a bunch of research to find out fun facts about JK Rolling, but upon investigation I realised her own website has a detailed list already. So a lot of these I’ve borrowed from there but not all.

1. Joanne Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 and grew up in Gloucestershire in England and in Chepstow, Gwent, in south-east Wales. She shares her birthday with Harry Potter.

2. Full name is Joanne Rowling (pronounced rolling), she has no middle name. Using the initials ‘JK’ was a publishing suggestion to make her identity anonymous, for fear that a wizarding story penned by a woman might be unpopular. As a result, a girl called Francesca Gray wrote Rowling her first fan letter addressing her as: ‘Dear Sir…’

3. Father was a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer and her mother was a science technician.

4. Was Head Girl at Wyedean School and College, and graduated from the University of Exeter with a BA in French and Classics.

5. Wanted to be a writer from an early age. She wrote her first book at the age of six – a story about a rabbit, called ‘Rabbit’. At just eleven, she wrote her first novel – about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them. (I really want to read this book.)

6. Worked as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.

“There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.”

7. On a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990, Rowling wrote her initial Potter ideas on a napkin. She typed Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on a typewriter, often choosing to write in Edinburgh cafés. One in particular was The Elephant’s House in Edinburgh which I absolutely visited when I was in Edinburgh. It was awesome.

8. Went from being unemployed and living on state benefits to becoming a multi-millionaire in five years.

9. In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. The fund also gives to organisations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research.

10. Her mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when Rowling was a teenager. Rowling regrets not being able to tell her about Harry Potter before she died.

11. Was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2000. Since then she’s received an incredible amount of awards. The full list can be found here. She has also received honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Exeter, the University of Aberdeen and Harvard University.

12. In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books.

13. In 2008 she spoke at the Harvard commencement ceremony. This speech was made into an illustrated book in 2015 called Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination (Sphere), and sold in aid of Lumos and university-wide financial aid at Harvard.

14. Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression which she claims gave her inspiration to create the Dementors in the Potter series. She also suffers from insomnia which she puts down to working too late and reading things on which she has a strong opinion.

15. Her first marriage was to television journalist Jorge Arantes to which she had one daughter, Jessica. Her second marriage was to anaesthetist Neil Murray, to which she has another son and daughter. Rowling admits to buying her wedding dress for her second marriage in disguise, to avoid being recognised.

16. Her first novel for adults was The Casual Vacancy  which has now been translated into 44 languages and was adapted for TV by the BBC in 2015. She also writes crime novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith about private detective Cormoran Strike. The first being The Cuckoo’s Calling, then The Silkworm, then Career of Evil. The series is being adapted for a television series for BBC One, produced by Brontë Film and Television.

17. Made her screenwriting debut on the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. She is also a producer, and is writing the sequel.

So there’s some of my fun facts about JK Rowling. I kept it relatively short otherwise it would go on forever. If you want to know more about Rowling and the Potterverse, I can highly suggest searching out all of her interviews. All of them highly fascinating, especially the ones from the early years when the phenomena started, but also the later, intimate ones because you discover a whole bunch of exciting things about the Potterverse and more about Rowling herself. You can also explore her own website and her Wikipedia page for further fun facts and information.