You have all seen the click-bait posts everywhere online about ‘J. K. Rowling’s Favorite Authors’ or Twenty Harry Potter Movie Events You Missed!’ or ‘Ten Things You Never Knew About J. K. Rowling!’

Today I’d like to turn that last subject on its head — what are the biggest mysteries or holes in The Presence’s biography that researchers have not yet explained, she and her very loyal group of old friends are never going to tell us, and are probably none of our business?

Join me after the jump for my ‘Top Seven Rowling Biographical Mysteries’! [Read more…]

The video above is trending on YouTube and, as you might expect, to Old School Potter Pundits the tagline “I Hate Harry’s” sounded an awful lot like the nightmare days of the Potter Panic when demonstrating disdain for the adventures of The Boy Who Lived was something of a touchstone of faith in many Christian communities.

The good news? Harry Potter is not the ‘Harry’ being hated here. This ‘Harry’ is a shaving kit subscription service company that pulled their advertising from The Daily Wire, a news compendium and film making operation of a conservative bent. They pulled their $80,000 account because writers at the site think transgenderism is nothing more than a mental illness on the personal level and a mass delusion in postmodern culture. Harry’s says they draw the line at “hate” with respect to whom they will and will not advertise.

The Daily Wire’s response in a nutshell? “The only thing we hate is Harry’s.” [Read more…]

Rowling first revealed her friendship with Sean Harris by dedicating Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to him in 1997. “For Sean P. F. Harris, Getaway Driver and Foul-Weather Friend.” She has since dedicated Career of Evil  to Sean and his brother, Matthew, and acknowledged Sean under the code-name ‘SOBE’ for his help with military details at the back of both Silkworm and Career.  Harris and Rowling have each received Order of the British Empire or OBE honors from the Queen, which titles they have playfully changed, it seems to reflect their real standing, emphasis on the ‘SOB.’

Rowling explained her friendship debt to Sean Harris on her first web site’s biography page, one our friends at The Rowling Library have preserved and reposted.

My secondary school, Wyedean, where I went when I was eleven, was the place I met Sean Harris, to whom Chamber of Secrets is dedicated and who owned the original Ford Anglia. He was the first of my friends to learn to drive and that turquoise and white car meant FREEDOM and no more having to ask my father to give me lifts, which is the worst thing about living in the countryside when you are a teenager. Some of the happiest memories of my teenage years involve zooming off into the darkness in Sean’s car. He was the first person with whom I really discussed my serious ambition to be a writer and he was also the only person who thought I was bound to be a success at it, which meant much more to me than I ever told him at the time.

We all owe a debt, then, to Sean Harris. Rowling called him a “Foul-Weather Friend” in her Chamber dedication, though, because her debt at one time, the nadir of her personal and professional life on her return to the UK as single mom, was actually financial; Harris floated her an emergency loan that helped get her through the worst. Loyal as he is, he has also never participated in an interview about Rowling except in her presence. One such occasion was the BBC 2001 show ‘Harry Potter and Me’ in which the two friends appeared and Rowling revealed that Ron Weasley is in essence Sean Harris: [Read more…]