After years of squabbling, Harry Potter’s best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Grainger finally became an item — but now their creator, J.K. Rowling, has admitted she made a mistake by marrying them off.
Hermione — whose quick wits get the teen wizards out of many a scrape in Rowling’s hit novels — would have been better off with hero Harry, the British author said in comments published by the Sunday Times newspaper.
COUNSELING
In fact, Ron and Hermione would likely have ended up in marriage counseling, Rowling said.
“For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron,” Rowling says in an interview with Wonderland magazine, previewed by the Sunday Times and due out on Friday.
“I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that,” Rowling said.
“It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility,” she said.
“Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not,” she added.
Rowling’s interviewer in Wonderland was none other than British actress Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the blockbuster movie series based on the Potter books.
HAPPY ENDING?
The actress agreed with Rowling, saying: “I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.”
Rowling has sold more than 450 million copies of the Harry Potter books, which were made into eight films starring Daniel Radcliffe, Watson and Rupert Grint as Ron.
The franchise has made Rowling an estimated fortune of ￡L560 million (US$920 million), according to the Sunday Times’ Rich List 2013.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS