8 Harry Potter Edits JK Rowling Made From Earlier Book Drafts
1. There Was Going To Be A Vampire Professor (No, Not Snape) Snape secretly being a vampire is the subject of many an extensive, somewhat exhausting Harry Potter fan-theory. Many fans point to Snape's physical appearance tall and pale with black hair as proof, alongside his shuffling movement, deep, intimating voice and fondness for black cloaks. But this is something that Rowling has denied time and time again. It turns out, however, that there was a vampire planned for the Harry Potter series, and he was supposed to work at Hogwarts. Looking back through my earliest notebooks, I found that on my very earliest list of staff, there was a subjectless vampire teacher I had forgotten, called Trocar. A Trocar is a sharply pointed shaft inserted into arteries or cavities to extract bodily fluids, so I think it's a rather good name for a vampire. Evidently I did not think much of him as a character, though, because he disappears fairly early on in my notes. Though it's fascinating to consider how Harry, Ron and Hermione might have interacted with such a figure, Rowling was quick to clarify that Trocar has no relationship to Snape: While it is true that he has an unhealthy pallor, and is sometimes described as looking like a large bat in his long black cloak, he never actually turns into a bat, we meet him outside the castle by daylight, and no corpses with puncture marks in their necks ever turn up at Hogwarts. In short, Snape is not a re-vamped Trocar.