10 Harry Potter Mysteries JK Rowling Has Actually Answered

If you're lucky enough to succeed in creating an expansive, in-depth world of your own that exists in secret behind the real one, pretty quickly, you're bound to get asked questions about it. As popularity grows, fans will inevitably want to dig deeper, and critics are going to love finding holes that haven't been plugged or stones that haven't been looked under.

Sites all across the Internet contain lists of questions that fans are determined to have answered. Heroes are formed when fans think they've come up with a truly original query or possible criticism. Videos are made listing all of the inconsistencies or ideas that simply don't add up or quite make sense. It's part and parcel of world building.

In most cases, those questions either go unanswered or merely speculated at by other fans, which offers compelling insight, but is never quite as satisfying as something more definitive. But luckily, in the Wizarding World, the voice of the creator is loud and generous, as JK Rowling has revealed a lot about her most famous creations well after publication.

And even when she's sick of the questions, she's still answered them...

In an interview with Time Magazine, JK Rowling explained that she wrote this scene very carefully so that it could be interpreted in more than one way. The key point is that Harry entered a limbo between life and death, and faced a choice about which way to go.

She explained on her original website that this confrontation involved some complex magic, which Voldemort himself did not understand.

"Having taken Harry's blood into himself, Voldemort is keeping alive Lily's protective power over Harry - except that the power of Lily's sacrifice is a positive force that not only continues to tether Harry to life, but gives Voldemort himself one last chance ... Voldemort has unwittingly put a few drops of goodness back inside himself; if he had repented, he could have been healed more deeply than anyone would have supposed. But of course, he refused to feel remorse."

In addition, Voldemort is using the Elder wand, which actually belongs to Harry. As a result, neither the Cruciatus or the Killing Curse work properly. "The Avada Kedavra curse, however, is so powerful that it does hurt Harry, and also succeeds in killing the part of him that is not truly him, in other words, the fragment of Voldemort's own soul that is still clinging to his. The curse also disables Harry severely enough that he could have succumbed to death if he had chosen that path."

So, did he die? No, but he certainly could have done.