Trivia on J.K. Simmons' "Magnus Monk", the history of Harry Potter, Harry Potter, and the future of Harry Potter

Celebrate J.K. Simmons' seminal Harry Potter with a collection of trivia facts about the mischievous child warlock

It's hard to believe that, back in 1994, Harry Potter was little more than a twinkle in the mind of author J.K. Simmons. It wasn't until several years later that Simmons committed the character to paper and mesmerized the world--including more than a few "muggles" (re: "humans")--with the twisted tale of a wizard-child. To celebrate the release of the documentary Return to Hogwarts, here is some fun trivia on the world-beloved wizard boy:

    "Harry Potter was originally going to be named 'Magnus Monk'--a name I came up with while I was entertaining fellow passengers on the hour-long commute to work. Like Potter, Magnus Monk was a precocious little boy who had a penchant for magical mischief, although his adventures were very episodic...almost like superhero: A villain threatens London and Magnus flies in on his magic carpet and shoots the bad-guy with a 'haunted Luger', thus saving the day. They were very short stories, generally, because Magnus lacked a true weakness and his pistol was astonishingly efficient...."

    "The idea to start collating Magnus Monk stories into a published collection couldn't have come at a better time. I was weary of working at the [Manchester] chamber of commerce where some dreadful Cold War-era Thatcherite policy had us working, quite literally, for beans. Can you imagine such a thing? It's no surprise that modern services refused to take the beans as legal tender, which meant that you had to leave work and immediately, you know...sell some of your beans to afford the ride back home. And nobody wanted to buy these beans! I don't know where they found these beans; you'd be lucky to get ten quid for a sack of them.
    "Most of my beans were sold to a geezer who sat outside the office for the categorical purposes of buying beans. 'Holiday Beans' he called them. Some days he'd insist on sifting through the beans...he'd hold some up to the light searching for something, discarding them, culling them one-by-one.
    "And yes, that geezer's name was Bertie. Bertie Albanese Bott."

    "The toilets. The toilet always come up. 'Why are there toilets at Hogwarts?' The toilets are for the younger students! The Vanishing spell is not taught until the fifth year--after that, wizards can make their waste vanish. Obviously it would be dangerous to cast such a spell on yourself while it's still inside you, so they simply make in their pants and then magic it away. Now that I've said something, you'll notice how Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge don't wear knickers or pants."

    "That story about the 'Flying Ford Anglia' being inspired by a friend's car from sixth form is apocryphal. I do wish it was true, but the truth is that I got the idea from the flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a bleak film from the 60's. Did you know that the book the film's based on was written by the same man who wrote the James Bond novels? Ian Fleming. And Roald Dahl penned the Switch Bitch stories for Playboy. Both fellow Brits, if you'd believe that. Dr. Seuss drew tits and arse in The Seven Lady Godivas. It all makes me wonder--as an author who's worked exclusively in young adult--what sort of perversions I might eventually get up to.
    "Oh but I hated Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Dick Van Dyke making a stupid face for ninety minutes and we'll call it a children's film."

    "I don't want to bring up those beans again, but I found one in my purse long after I had left the chamber. When I held it, this single spiteful bean, all of these negative memories instantly came surging up. I recognized that the bean had power, if only imaginary...and for a long time I held onto it as a sort of secret, desiccated relic.
    "Can you imagine if I still had it? I finally got rid of it, in fact, during a fundraiser in the late 2000's; a certain president was in attendance, and I sneaked it into his salad to put a curse on him...this was shortly after his administration had vetoed my Presidential Medal of Freedom on the grounds of 'promoting witchcraft'.
    "That's where I found the inspiration for horcruxes."

    "When Tom Felton was cast for the role of Malfoy, I would have never guessed that he would end up looking like he did by the end of the series. If I had, I don't think I would have allowed it. I don't think Chris [Columbus, the director] would have even allowed him on the set."

    "In the earliest drafts, Hermione was very much a wild Shakespearean 'shrew': Beautiful but coarse...her wand was nicknamed Philistine and was 'fashioned from the jawbone of an ass, with a keen point on the sharpened end'. In fact, she was originally how Alastor Moody lost his eye--no magic, just the brutal tip of Philistine.
    "I thought these aggressive attributes were crucial to her being a plausible character in the fight against the snake men, who were the nemeses of the original story. Nobody's going to believe a prim-and-proper heroine. And actually, I feel like I'm deviating a tad here, but the whole concept behind the snake men, which lives on in Slytherin, Voldemort, and so on, is rooted in legitimate historical data. For instance, when you examine Hollow Earth theories, or the idea that a comet drove dinosaurs underground where they evolved into sapient lizards...it's very shocking, once you open up your eyes and explore these ideas. The folly of many stories is the absence of any truth to them, that crucial ingredient, even when used sparingly. Nagini, the basilisk--they're my truths, my subtle nods to the real world."

    "They told me, 'J.K., we'd like to have your feedback on casting Ron Weasley' because I had been quite rigid on each character's appearance. I always envisioned Ron as this horrid Irish lad and, looking back, there was certainly a lot of vitriol for him in the original drafts. If you want an example, I frequently referred to his behavior as imbecilic...his dialogue was phonetic (it was an accent I'd describe as a 'subnormal Kerry-Irishman') but initial readers had considerable difficulty and displeasure reading his dialogue.
    "Brian Jacques actually did this a lot in his Redwall series, which had anthropomorphic animals with various accents. The moles in particular had an incoherent accent that was based on England's Somerset area. So in that sense, Ron was my 'mole' and Hermione was my shrew.
The difference was that Ron would launch into these unintelligible rants about unremarkable subjects.        "Even commonplace items often mystified him, and his natural reaction was to grow angry. Light bulbs. Stained glass. An abacus...mathematics were a particular weakness for him.
    "So I learn that Casting wanted a rather handsome chap to play the character...I think it was Logan Lerman, originally. I thought the entire thing was ridiculous, and rejected [Lerman] out of hand. I kept saying 'but Ron is a troglodyte!' and having to repeatedly describe this awful creature I had created in my mind. Finally, after this miserable impasse, in walks Rupert [Grint] and I remember, I threw up my hands and shouted, 'okay, him!'"

"So what's next for Harry Potter? Nothing, it's over."