In the third part of the Potter roman-fleuve, Peter Pettigrew pretends that Sirius Black has killed him, cutting off one of his own fingers to make it seem that the rest of him has been blasted to atoms. For 12 years he adopts the guise of Ron Weasley’s pet rat, Scabbers. But the severed digit gives him away.

Did you get to read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" before it came out? Was it hard not being able to talk about Harry Potter secrets with friends and family?

I was one of the few people that was allowed to read the book before it came out, because I was working closely with Mary GrandPre and Arthur Levine on concepts for the cover and chapter opening illustrations, so I had to read the book. It was hard not being able to talk about it, but I was really glad I could share thoughts with Arthur and Mary. It was like a little club. One thing I did learn from my years of working on Harry is that I'm great at keeping secrets!

Each book has a different dominant color. How did you decide which color would be good for each book

For most of the books I had a color scheme in mind, based on something that came through in the story. For example, on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there were specific scenes in the book that dictated the color palette that Mary and I wanted to use. Because J. K. Rowling's descriptions are so clear and easily imagined, it wasn't hard to come up with a color scheme. And from the beginning, the palette of the books was based on the “jewel tones” of Mary's artwork: ruby reds, deep amethyst purple, dark sapphires and emeralds.

JKR: In many ways it would have been a neater ending to kill him. For sure, I knew that all along. felt that the books' overriding message was that love is the most powerful force in this world. My model with Harry really was war veterans, who have seen horrors and are asked to go home and rebuild, and go back to ordinary life and care for a family, be a father - particularly be a father - [it is] a difficult job, in troubled times. I felt it would be a betrayal of my character if I did anything other than show him doing that. And I think it's an absolutely heroic thing to do, to go home after that, not to become a mercenary, not to live forever frozen in a time of excitement and danger, but to be mentally strong enough, to an extent physically strong enough, to return from war and to raise a new generation with values that you hope will not lead to another war. That's massive.

Of course you can say, yes, to an extent, as ever in life, that's the eternal paradox. What's is most worthwhile may well be seen as slightly dull, but God knows without those people who were prepared to come home and raise the family and rebuild, help rebuild... rebuilding is much more difficult than destroying. So, I felt it was almost a cop-out, morally, to kill him. I wanted to show a man who, yeah, he went back and got his hands dirty and tried to rebuild. I liked that. And again, it made a lot of people were livid, but God knows by that time I was used to that by then!

Once a single mother on welfare, Rowling can now claim best-selling billionaire status thanks to her Harry Potter franchise. The adventures of the teen magician and his Hogwarts classmates took the publishing world by storm in 1998, when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone became a bona fide hit. In the decade since, it and the six subsequent books in the series have sold 375 million-plus copies worldwide. Over on the big screen, her Potter franchise has already generated $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office--and she still has three more flicks to come.

"They analyze each book, looking at themes and metaphors, reading up on scholarly perspectives, going over Jungian archetypes. For a discussion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, they were guided by a critical essay by Veronica Schanoes, called "Cruel Heroes and Treacherous Texts," to explore the ambiguities in the constructions of good and evil and the unreliable narratives of Harry's world. It made students understand that even Harry himself can be an unreliable narrator."

"Haven't we been led to believe that the difference between Death Eaters and those who are not is the use of the Unforgivable Curses?" Finberg asked the class when the discussion turned to Harry's usage of the torturing Cruciatus curse."He uses it on Bellatrix; he uses it on Carrow," Hannah Edelman observed. "He also uses the [controlling] Imperius curse." "He is just really upset when he uses that curse on Bellatrix," Matlock said. "I don't think that means he's a bad person. It just means he's more human.""Do you think J.K. Rowling is playing with us?" Matt Bowers asked. "Do you think she's telling us, 'Look, you thought Harry was a good guy, but what if this were from the point of view of Draco?' "But Harry would never use [the killing curse] Avada Kedavra," Soares argued. "This is really dorky, but a hero, like Superman would never kill Lex Luther." The class laughed."

"The Labor government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and is one of the leading EU countries in combating child poverty," said the nation's richest author, whose fortune was recently estimated at 560 million pounds.

"David Cameron's promise of tax perks for the married, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent."

"It sends the message that the Conservatives still believe a childless, dual-income, but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat in difficult times."