Vault 27

[ARoseLight]

As you may know, there is a new book coming out Nov.4 by Melissa Anelli of the Leaky Cauldron called Harry: A History. We have a thread started by TonksAsKid here at Haven about it.

I just read that Melissa is updating regularly at Leaky and on her blog canon answers from JKR that will not make it into the book. So I thought I'd start this thread and update it regularly with any new canon tidbits.

This first post will index the updates!
Please comment!

Melissa's intro:
Vault 27 is my special trove of information that I couldn't shoehorn into the book. I'll be putting extra stories, extra excerpts of interviews (most often the Jo Rowling one, of which there is too much extra not to share with fans - it's burning a hole in my computer, just sitting there unpublished), extra tidbits, etc. The entries will first appear on the front page but will then move off of it to have a home here. The idea for this section's name came from the lovely Sue Upton; the 27 is after my birthdate.


Entry 1: Hedwig, Owl of a Different Fate?
The first entry in the vault is of J.K. Rowling talking about Hedwig the owl, and the different fate she might have had. We spoke of this edit in the context of what kind of things were changed during her first-ever book edit. Her editor asked for the Hedwig-change but I got the distinct impression that later, Jo was grateful for it, as the circumstances of the snitch's opening at the end of seven were chilling, intimate and ultimately seamless.


Entry #2: More About that Veil
Jo talks about why each character heard what they did when they approached the Veil, and more about what the Veil meant in general.  

[ARoseLight]

Hedwig: Owl of a Different Fate?
By Melissa Anelli on August 20, 2008 2:13 PM

So, I'll be short about this one thing: The Terminus reading was amazing, and I moved my thoughts on it to my personal site, because I think they fit better there. The reading is on YouTube if you're interested.




This post is about my first-ever post in Vault 27. (I make it now not only because I can't wait any longer, but because it seems certain Facebook people are getting a tad restless. razz ) As I've mentioned before, this area of the site is for all the extra bits that I couldn't shoehorn into the book, some of which are just fun stories and tidbits, and some of which consists of extra pieces of canon from Jo. Each bit will originally be posted here, and then moved to the "vault" as they drop off the front page. 

This is a fun one, and one of my favorite bits from the interview: Jo talking about Hedwig's original purpose in the seven-book series. It also speaks to why she had to die when she did, and why she was originally supposed to last so long. 

We were talking about which bits of the book she had planned from the beginning - what pieces of canon she knew about as soon as she thought of Harry (and the answer to that question is, mostly, in the book; after publication I'll post the rest of this comment to fill out the answer). As it turns out, Hedwig, in the original incarnation of book one, had a very pivotal role that would demand her living through to the end of book seven: 

Jo said (also beware book seven spoilers...but you've read it by now, surely):
"I had to work quite hard in finding a very particular way for that snitch to be caught because I knew I was going to do that later; initially, as my British editor can confirm, I had Hedwig catch that snitch. She wanted that changed, and I thought, 'Oh, God, back to the drawing board.'

Actually that's what sealed Hedwig's fate, because the plan was for Hedwig to open the snitch, because she'd touched it first, but, by making it Harry, then it was time to kill her earlier. I think she was going to die anyway, eventually."


Do you think it would have worked better had Hedwig flown in and landed on his shoulder as Harry was about to enter the forest? Personally I like the image of Harry kissing the snitch better; it's an embrace of his fate and total surrender to the very power so many others were trying to master.

However, it might have saved Hedwig. Maybe she would have been killed anyway, in the same blow as Voldemort's AK? Or would she have flown off, and then perhaps died in the battle? I think she probably would have stuck close to Harry, perhaps with her talons digging deep enough into his shoulders as he faced Voldemort that she got the same blow. Ah, it's morbidly pacifying to imagine a more noble end for our fair bird...  

[ARoseLight]

More About that Veil
By Melissa Anelli on September 24, 2008 9:59 AM


This is a different Vault 27 entry than I intended, because I thought the absence deserved to be made up for by some more Jo and a 'canon thump,' as my earliest fandom friends called it. Since the book is very much about the non-canon world of Harry Potter, I figure we could do canon bits here.
I tried pretty hard for an excuse to shoehorn this into the book. When I realized how hard I was trying, I stopped, and cut that part out. But you must hear this on-record discussion on the veil, which is Vault 27 entry number two - it falls under the category of confirmation of widely agreed-upon fan-theory:
JKR: Everyone wanted to go beyond the veil.
MA: This is very canon-based, but there are some things that as a fan, there are things I just gotta know. A lot of fans see the veil as that separation -
JKR: It's the divide between life and death. I tried to do a nod to that in the Tale of Three Brothers - she was separate from them as though through a veil. You can't go back if you pass through that veil, you cannot come back. Or you can't come back in any form that will make either person happy anyway.
But when they surround that veil [in Order of the Phoenix], I was trying to show that depending on their degree of skepticism or belief about what lay beyond - because Luna, of course, is a very spiritual character. Luna believes firmly in an afterlife. She's very clear on that. And she feels them speaking or hears them speaking much more clearly than Harry does. This is the idea of faith.

Harry thinks he can hear them; he's drawn on. But Harry's had a life that has been so imbued with death that he now has an uncharacteristically strong curiosity about the afterlife, especially for a boy of 15, as he is in Phoenix. Ron's just scared, as I think Ron would be - he just knows this is something he doesn't want to dabble with. Hermione, hyper-rational Hermione - 'can't hear anything, get away from the Veil.' So if you walk through the veil, you're dead. You're dead. What you find on the other side, well, that's the question.
Do I believe you go on? Yes, I do believe you go on. I do believe in an afterlife, although I'm absolutely doubt-ridden and always have been but there you are.
I had not anticipated, though really I should have done, how interested people would be to go beyond the veil. And lots of people, including Dan [Radcliffe], wanted to go through the veil. But then that shouldn't surprise me because teenagers are very interested.
MA: Dan sort of does get to go beyond the veil.
JKR: Yeah, he does, but not literally through the veil.
MA: Not charging through. Ginny, Ginny can hear it because she's been...
JKR: I think women are more likely to hear than men. [Ginny and Harry] really are soulmates. I think she's like Harry. She's got an intellectual curiosity and she's got something of belief. Hermione [is] totally rational. "Let's all back away from the Veil and let's pretend we heard nothing."

This idea of the Veil murmurs as physical representation of faith interests me. I always wondered whether it was a measure of how close a person had come to death; Hermione had only ever stared what she thought was death down in the form of Sirius Black at that point (plus almost-through-to-the-final-chamber in book one); Ron hadn't accompanied Harry to any of the final battles in the books either, sans the confrontation with Sirius Black and the chess game in book one. Luna, it is revealed earlier in the books, can see thestrals - has witnessed death. I thought that would make her more in-tune as well. Ginny, I suspected, could hear them because she missed death by seconds in book two, and spent most of the year having her life sucked away by Tom Riddle. Harry, well - Harry, as Jo said, has had a life that is at times all about death.
I remember a lot of the post-book-five debate being about what was beyond that Veil and why certain characters could hear it and could not. The fervor of it surprised me as well, until I reread the book and found myself longing to know what was on the other side. But like the Brain Room, like the Time Room, like all the chambers of the Department of Mysteries, they contain secrets that the books' purpose isn't to uncover. I still wonder what kind of study wizards undertake, sitting in an ampitheatre around that veil. John thinks they send sticks and stones through the veil to see what happens. But, really, there's an element of realism in that question: don't they realize fairly quickly that anything they stick in there is not going to come back? Perhaps that's a mundane answer to a mystical question. It's magic, yadda yadda.
We still all, naturally, want to know what goes on beyond that Veil. And we do get an answer, in book seven. I realized earlier this week, as I reread the end of Deathly Hallows, rediscovering its wonder and recognizing anew how deeply religious it is, that the reluctance authors often show to describe life beyond death probably aligns with their beliefs and knowledge. If we knew what was beyond death it wouldn't be a mystery, and it would fail to be interesting; similarly describing what's beyond death lessens it somehow, puts words to an otherwise whole thought and restricts it. I think this is a large part of why post-death scenes usually involve mist, amorphous surroundings, a lot of symbols, a release on the chokehold of logic, and conversations with people that are illustrative, but not entirely necessary. Dumbledore never says anything to Harry at King's Cross that Harry didn't know or couldn't have figured out. He admits to him the whole thing happened in his head. That passage is, to some, an "after-death" scene, but it is also, to others (and to me it is both) a "pre-death" scene.
Anyway, it strikes me as particularly humble when an author that has described everything else, invented a world with is own rules and laws, its own system of good and evil and essentially played the creative person's equivalent to God in a fictional world, pulls back from offering answers to what happens after death. There's a gentle probing of it in Harry Potter - a push and prod, a slight indication of what would happen. Very little fiction goes there; maybe it asks too much of an author, to describe something for which there is no earthly jump-off point. After traipsing up and down Middle Earth and waging the greatest war almost ever penned in literature, Tolkien still refrains from going with Frodo on the last leg of his journey. Even a book that seems to spend most of its time in an afterlife, The Lovely Bones, doesn't truly describe the 'Heaven' part. It's curious.
What do you think? What do these revelations about what the whispers in the Veil meant say to you? Is it as you expected? Would you rather continue to assign the meaning you came by for them, and if so what is that?
PS: Why didn't she say anything about Neville? No dastardly reason, I'm sure. I think we just momentarily forgot him. (GAH! I KNOW! No worries. Neville/Matt Lewis fans have a real treat in the book. Like anyone can ever forget him for long. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I think Neville would probably be as scared as Ron, but if he was alone with the veil and not in danger, would probably hear some things.)  

[SuzelovesJamesPotter]

Awhh interesting. I liked the whole veil part. I'd probably be just like Luna hehe. That's for sharing because I probably would've never found that biggrin !