Snape’s secret. J.K Rowling just revealed what she once told the late Alan Rickman about his Harry Potter character, Severus Snape. Following Friday’s news about Rickman’s death, the bestselling author shared with her 6.5 million Twitter followers the little tidbit on Sunday, January 17.
“Will you tell us the piece of information that you told Alan Rickman about Severus Snape? Or will that forever be a secret?” one commenter wrote.
“I told Alan what lies behind the word ‘always,'” Rowling, 50, replied, without further detail. As fans know, “always” is linked to Snape’s love for Harry Potter’s mother, Lily Potter.
Back in 2011, Rickman — who died at the age of 69 from cancer on January 14 — told HitFix that Rowling once gave him a better understanding about the broody Potions professor.
“[It] helped me think that he was more complicated and that the story was not going to be as straight down the line as everybody thought,” the Die Hard star said at the time. “If you remember when I did the first film she’d only written three or four books, so nobody knew where it was really going except her. And it was important for her that I know something, but she only gave me a tiny piece of information which helped me think it was a more ambiguous route.”
I told Alan what lies behind the word ‘always’. https://t.co/NHTJ5J6kxb
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 18, 2016
“What I knew was he was a human being and not an automaton and I knew there was some sense of protection for Harry or I worked that out,” he continued. “It was enough to know, I didn’t know he was a double agent.”
Rickman starred in all eight movies in the Harry Potter franchise. Following the news of his death, Rowling remembered the actor as a “magnificent” and “wonderful man.”
“My thoughts are with [his wife] Rima and the rest of Alan’s family,” she tweeted. “We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts.”
