Who Did J.K. Rowling Become?

Deciphering the most beloved, most reviled children’s book author in history.

- By Molly Fischer

Edinburgh Castle, many centuries old, has been called the most besieged place in Britain. In 2005, on the night Melissa Anelli arrived, it was besieged primarily by children. The cover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was projected on its outer walls. Inside, J.K. Rowling, a longtime Edinburgh resident, was celebrating the midnight release of the sixth Harry Potter book. Anelli was then the 25-year-old webmistress of a Harry Potter fan site called The Leaky Cauldron. Rowling had personally summoned Anelli, along with Emerson Spartz (the proprietor of another fan site, MuggleNet), for an interview in her home. It would take place on the afternoon of the day the book came out. And so, after collecting their copies at the castle, Spartz and Anelli had some 12 hours to read the Potter series’ 650-page penultimate installment. “We were sleepless and dizzy and euphoric,” Anelli told me. By the time a car arrived to ferry them to Rowling’s house, Anelli had a 66-page sheaf of questions prepared.

Rowling lived in an ivy-covered Victorian stone mansion set within landscaped gardens, and, like Edinburgh Castle, it was something of a picturesque fortress. After a stalker had taken to showing up at the house, Rowling and her husband had, despite their neighbors’ objections, implemented increasingly strict security measures: first an eight-foot-high wall and an electronic gate, then CCTV security cameras. Anelli and Spartz were ushered into Rowling’s office, an outbuilding with honey-colored wood and floor-to-ceiling windows.