Alternate Ending? “Real-Life Snape”? Is it April Fool’s Day?

It should come as no surprise that everyone who ever had contact with J.K. Rowling now thinks that he or she has some sort of inside track on the tale of Harry Potter . (For example. we’ve heard for years about the neighbors named Potter) . Oddly enough, the folks Rowling openly describes as being part of her process (her real teenage friend with the blue Anglia, for example) seldom go about yapping about their deep personal relationship with the Presence. This week, we have an investigative reporter who thinks he knows the “original” ending to Deathly Hallows and the supposed discovery of the “real” Severus Snape. Both of these stories exhibit some interesting lack of insight into Rowling’s personality, style, and statements about her own work. So put on your favorite Headless Hat or other Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes product, and get ready to snort, chuckle, or sneer after the jump.
Greg Palast, an investigate journalist and author of such riveting tomes as Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores claims on his blog that while he and Rowling both had bestselling books (though undoubtedly with different audiences) and he shared his children’s love of Potter, they struck up a correspondence in which she supposedly told him the “original” ending for Deathly Hallows. You can read the article about Palast’s claims here, but the highlights include a different fate for Voldemort and a much later epilogue. Palast states that these “revelations” came during conversations with Rowling, which he rushed home to transcribe: He says he wrote down every detail of their conversation and decided to publish it because “that’s the danger of befriending an investigative reporter.” Funnily enough, Mr. Palast doesn’t seem to realize that, of course, Rowling (who is a really smart person and had, of course, meticulously planned her series) knew he was an investigative reporter, and, of course, she knew he’d write down and later try to cash in on their conversation. This is, after all, the woman who created Rita Skeeter and her Quick Quotes Quill.

She is also the person who created Fred and George, both of whom would have appreciated her first-rate joke: she told this guy (who seems to be skeptical about everything else in the western world, but bought this cock and bull story without even getting a receipt) a version just believable enough to fool him (the statue he mentions, along with other elements, are just based enough in the actual story to hoodwink Mr. Palast), and then she probably worked on a schedule to forecast when he would publish this stuff that he has clearly swallowed hook, line, and Howler. If Mr. Palast had remembered that this is the woman who “raised” Fred and George and pulled off some of the best surprise endings since Austen, he probably just would have laughed and thanked her for having him on.

In other news, just as Hermione laments that she seems to be the only one who ever reads Hogwarts: A History, folks who publish these “revelations” really ought to read Rowling’s own website. She has stated there that she only once has created a character completely and intentionally based on a real person: Gilderoy Lockhart. Obviously, like any author, she has woven bits and pieces of real people into her characters, just as she has beautifully used the books in her “compost heap” of vast reading in her own work. But now, in a list of “Five Villains That Were Thinly Veiled Versions of Real People,” Cracked Magazine (to which Muggle publication our beloved Weasley Twins no doubt had subscriptions), posits that Severus Snape was “based on” Rowling’s secondary school chemistry teacher John Nettleship. Apparently, Nettleship, who taught in a gloomy lab and was fond of picking on students, particularly smart ones, had to be asked by reporters flat out if he “was” Snape before he saw any connection, and the folks at Cracked mention that it is nice Nettleship learned Snape really was a good guy before he himself passed away earlier this year.
Of course, what so many people seem to miss is that just because Rowling used some of a teacher’s characteristics doesn’t make that person the “real” version of the character. Who wants to bet Rowling once had a boring history teacher or a tough female teacher who was really smart and from whom she learned loads? Of course, hasn’t EVERYONE had a teacher like that? I had more than a few teachers who had been to the Severus Snape School of Educational Sarcasm, and I’m willing to say nearly everyone else has, too. Considering how much time we all spend in school, it would be surprising if our teachers didn’t creep in if we write about school. However that DOES NOT make a person the “real” character, as I know, and will tell reporters when one of my former students writes a novel featuring a batty English teacher who blogs about popular literature.
H/t to James! Thanks!