J.K. Rowling PotterCast Interview

The J.K. Rowling PotterCast Interview is an interview with the creator of the Harry Potter series on the official podcast from The Leaky Cauldron website. Split over two episodes, PotterCast 130 and PotterCast 131, the show is hosted by Melissa Anelli (Webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron), John Noe (Creative director for The Leaky Cauldron websites), and Sue Upton (Senior news editor for The Leaky Cauldron). Like many other interviews with Rowling, she reveals several new pieces of Canon information.

PotterCast 130

 * Helga Hufflepuff brought the house-elves to work in the Hogwarts kitchens as a way of ensuring they could work and not be abused.
 * Herpo the Foul created the first Horcrux
 * The process to create a Horcrux is horrible, includes a spell, but was not fully revealed.
 * The process Peter Pettigrew used to give Lord Voldemort a rudimentary body was horrible, but not fully revealed.
 * That J.K. Rowling intends to write a Harry Potter Encyclopedia, but is not in a hurry to write it. She refers to it as "The Scottish Book".
 * Confirmation that Dawlish's first name is indeed John.
 * The nature of Harry Potter not really being a "true" Horcrux since Voldemort did not create it in the same way as the others.
 * The pain from Harry's scar is the piece of Voldemort's soul trying to leave his body through the wound it entered to rejoin the master soul.
 * Although he suspected that Voldemort had created Horcruxes, Albus Dumbledore didn't have it confirmed until he saw Tom Riddle's Diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
 * That Dumbledore was aware of events at Godric's Hollow on the night the Potters died because he had cast a spell on the home to warn him of such an event.
 * Hannah Abbott is a half-blood.
 * Hermione Granger returned to Hogwarts and graduated, but Harry Potter and Ron Weasley did not.
 * Kingsley Shacklebolt wanted anyone of age who fought on the right side of the Battle of Hogwarts to join him at the Ministry of Magic to help clean up the mess left by Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley both become Aurors.

PotterCast 131

 * Draco Malfoy married Astoria Greengrass (also revealed in the TIME magazine interview).
 * Astoria Greengrass is two years younger than Draco and her sister, Daphne.
 * The Love Room in the Department of Mysteries contains a well or fountain full of Amortentia that Ministry wizards use to study the effects of love.
 * Bellatrix Lestrange had an obsessive love and sexual attraction to Lord Voldemort.
 * Not all Slytherins were bad, but had a higher sense of self-preservation. Some Slytherin students were with Horace Slughorn's reinforcements during the Battle of Hogwarts.
 * Florean Fortescue was killed, although Rowling did not reveal why and how, just that it was linked to the Elder Wand, and would be in the Encyclopedia.
 * Wands are quasi-sentient.
 * The Elder Wand was dispassionate and ruthless, and was loyal only to strength.