• I lurve Arthur Weasley. To hell with Sirius and Dumbledore.

“If there’s one character I couldn’t bear to part with, it’s Arthur Weasley... I think part of the reason for that is there were very few good fathers in the book,” said Rowling. “In fact, you could make a very good case for Arthur Weasley being the only good father in the whole series.”

But there is another reason she selected the two additional characters, who had survived in her original vision of the story, to die at the end of Deathly Hallows in Mr. Weasley’s place.

• Lupin and Tonks have to die. *mwa ha ha ha*

“I wanted to kill parents,” she said, quickly adding that sounded “terrible” to say. “I wanted there to be an echo of what happened to Harry just to show the absolute evil of what Voldemort’s doing.”

The theme resonates throughout the books with the deaths of Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore, Harry’s flawed father figures. And that’s why in the Battle of Hogwarts, Remus Lupin, Harry’s only remaining father figure, and Nymphadora Tonks die, in the process creating another orphan in their son Teddy.

“I think one of the most devastating things about war is the children left behind. As happened in the first war when Harry’s left behind, I wanted us to see another child left behind. And it made it very poignant that it was their newborn son.”

• Why Fred and not his brother George?

“I always knew it was going to be Fred, and I couldn’t honestly tell you why,” Rowling said. Rowling guessed most people would have expected George to die before Fred because Fred was the ringleader, George the “gentler” twin. “Fred is normally the funnier but also the crueler of the two. So they might have thought that George would be the more vulnerable one and, therefore, the one to die.”

• I kept Hagrid alive to get a better Christmas present!

“It was very significant. Hagrid brings Harry from the Dursleys. He takes him into the wizarding world ... He was sort of his guardian and his guide ... And now I wanted Hagrid to be the one to lead Harry out of the forest.”

Hagrid was the one character Rowling’s sister, Di, couldn’t stand to see die... “But it wasn’t because of her I kept him alive. I should pretend it was. I might get a better Christmas present.” (MSNBC)