Which minor characters in the series do you want to know more about?

[MinervasCat]

I think it would be great to have JKR write "Hogwarts: A History." She is the only one who knows all of the background stories on all four of the founders (as well as a history of the school, overall). I think that would be a fantastic book.

I would have also liked to have known more of the story of the Bloody Baron and Helena Ravenclaw. Were they both Hogwarts students at one time or did they meet later? What was his relationship to Rowena that he was willing to kill Helena to recover the diadem?

[Alicia6166]

I know she's not really minor, but I'd like to know more about McGonagall. She's pretty old, so she must have a lot of history. I also imagine that she's someone with a very interesting past. It's a shame that we don't get to see her as anything other than Professor.

This is more of a storyline than anything else, but I'd love to find out from JKR how Lily went from thinking James was an "arrogant toe-rag" to marrying him. Fanfiction doesn't quite cut it for me. They all seem to go from, "He's a creepy, arrogant stalker, and I hate his guts" to "Gasp! I'm falling for Potter!" Was James really that extreme? I mean, seriously?

We also don't see the Marauders together that much. Peter Pettigrew's relationship with the other three in particular interests me. Why did they like him? Plus his actual character. Why was he sorted into Gryffindor? Why did he betray James and Lily?

[FurryDice]

Originally Posted by Alicia6166

This is more of a storyline than anything else, but I'd love to find out from JKR how Lily went from thinking James was an "arrogant toe-rag" to marrying him. Fanfiction doesn't quite cut it for me. They all seem to go from, "He's a creepy, arrogant stalker, and I hate his guts" to "Gasp! I'm falling for Potter!" Was James really that extreme? I mean, seriously?

I agree about these unrealistic extremes. I don't see how Lily could have considered James a stalker, from what we see. She considered him a bully, but I don't think there was any reason for her to consider him a stalker, and that's why fanfiction about them is generally far-fetched and disappointing. Have you seen the thread about Lily and James, if you're interested in speculating on their relationship?
Here's a link:
http://www.cosforums.com/showthread....108625&page=62

I agree that there's so much we don't know about them. I'm hoping for more on Pottermore about how they got together and what they did for the Order.

[jbwarner86]

I really wish we'd gotten to see more of Tonks in the books. I guess she's not supposed to be a minor character, but she's only around for the last three books, and even then she doesn't get much to do - she's depressed throughout HBP and spends most of DH offscreen. I'd like to know what she did at Hogwarts (she mentioned she didn't become a prefect because she couldn't behave herself, and I can't help but wonder what sort of antics she got up to, being a Metamorphomagus) and what her Auror training consisted of. Tonks is the kind of perky, fun-loving character who could probably carry her own little side-story.

[JustTonks]

I would really like to know more about Hannah Abbott (hope I spelled her name right!). I wonder if JK Rowling ever created a backstory for her.

[Ginny_Spinner]

Originally Posted by Alwayss

I would like to know more about McGonagall, she's my favourite professor. I think she has a very interesting past, and I'd like to know what her days in Hogwarts were like. Also, would Luna Lovegood be considered minor? She's also one of my favourites, and I'd love to know more about her.

http://pottermorre.tumblr.com/page/9

Her backstory is down the page a little. There are also other character's backstories as well

[WillieWeasley]

Originally Posted by Ginny_Spinner

http://pottermorre.tumblr.com/page/9

Her backstory is down the page a little. There are also other character's backstories as well

Although I'm not new to HP, I am still new to the online HP community. (Go figure, I get involved online *after* the books and films are finished. ) Are these backstories from JKR, or are they fan-generated? Either way, they're interesting. I'm just wondering if they're "canon."

I suppose I should spend some quality time on JKR's website and start googling for interviews to get myself up to speed.

[lacerta_lynx]

I would love to know more about Charlie Weasley, and especially, Regulus. He was just a year younger than Sirius and there's no evidence that he existed in the Marauder's era. Not even Sirius saying how stupid his brother was, and I find that interesting, because he plays a major role in the plot, even though, like James and Lily, he's just a ghost from the past.
And perhaps this is weird, but I want to know more about Wendelin the Weird. That witch that got burned in a fire many times just for fun. She should've been a fun person.
Also, Luna's mom.

[njefros92]

I would love to know more about Wormtail.

[ravnklo]

I'd love to know more about Rodolphus Lestrange; why he married Bellatrix, what made him become who he is, what happened to him post-escape, etc.

[Animagus86]

I would like to learn more about Charlie Weasley as well. Also I would like to know a little more about Professor McGonagal, and Andromeda Tonks (How did she end up so different than her sisters?).

[Palanthas]

I would also like to add another note to this. I would love to know more about Albus Dumbledore. How he became the genius he was. How he became headmaster of hogwarts, and how he managed to hold the triwizard tournament in the fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardy.

[abl385]

I would like to know more about Kingsley Shacklebolt. He is one of the most respected aurors, in terms of his honor and character, and his magical prowess. He is looked upon in such a high regard that he is able to ascend to be the minister of magic, yet we know so little about him. The only information we know that reveals something about his character is the form that his patronus takes and little else.

His back-story would be quite intriguing considering the important role he plays in the wizarding world.

[HufflePuff137]

Cho Chang actually...see her character beyond the weepy, bland boyfriend of Cedric. Why did Harry like her?

[snugglepot]

Originally Posted by HufflePuff137

Cho Chang actually...see her character beyond the weepy, bland boyfriend of Cedric. Why did Harry like her?

Harry was attracted to her based on looks alone. When he got to know her he found out that is not enough to base a relationship on.

I would love to know more about Oliver Wood. His family background, how he became so obsessed with Quiddich, his first couple of years at Hogwarts, his years at Puddlemere United. Anything on him!

[Goddess_Clio]

Originally Posted by snugglepot

I would love to know more about Oliver Wood. His family background, how he became so obsessed with Quiddich, his first couple of years at Hogwarts, his years at Puddlemere United. Anything on him!

From the way every character in the wizarding world is portrayed they are more or less born obsessed with quidditch.

I agree with abl385 that knowing more about Kingsley would be very cool and with njefros92 about Peter/Wormtail; he gets a bad rap in the fandom but a story on how and why he turned would be fascinating.

[kmhm]

I would like to know more about The Lovegoods and their oddly lovely lot. The way they think and view their life and selves intrigues me.

[warthogist]

I would love to know more about Prof. Flitwick, how he came to Hogwarts and what he did before becoming a teacher. Also I would love to know more about Olivander as well as Mundungus Fletcher and how he was admitted into the order even though he was an obvious theif.

[leckleck]

I've always loved Professor McGonnagall, especially how kickass she was in DH. Thank goodness for Pottermore, and to anyone who isn't aware of this, here you are, Minerva McGonnagall's backstory:
"Minerva McGonagall was the first child, and only daughter, of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and a Hogwarts-educated witch. She grew up in the Highlands of Scotland in the early twentieth century, and only gradually became aware that there was something strange, both about her own abilities, and her parents’ marriage.

Minerva’s father, the Reverend Robert McGonagall, had become captivated by the high-spirited Isobel Ross, who lived in the same village. Like his neighbours, Robert believed that Isobel attended a select ladies’ boarding school in England. In fact, when Isobel vanished from her home for months at a time, it was to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that she went.

Aware that her parents (a witch and wizard) would frown on a connection with the serious young Muggle, Isobel kept their burgeoning relationship a secret. By the time she was eighteen, she had fallen in love with Robert. Unfortunately, she had not found the courage to tell him what she was.

The couple eloped, to the fury of both sets of parents. Now estranged from her family, Isobel could not bring herself to mar the bliss of the honeymoon by telling her smitten new husband that she had graduated top of her class in Charms at Hogwarts, nor that she had been Captain of the school Quidditch team. Isobel and Robert moved into a manse (minister’s house) on the outskirts of Caithness, where the beautiful Isobel proved surprisingly adept at making the most of the minister’s tiny salary.

The birth of the young couple’s first child, Minerva, proved both a joy and a crisis. Missing her family, and the magical community she had given up for love, Isobel insisted on naming her newborn daughter after her own grandmother, an immensely talented witch. The outlandish name raised eyebrows in the community in which she lived, and the Reverend Robert McGonagall found it difficult to explain his wife’s choice to his parishioners. Furthermore, he was alarmed by his wife’s moodiness. Friends assured him that women were often emotional after the birth of a baby, and that Isobel would soon be herself again.

Isobel, however, became more and more withdrawn, often secluding herself with Minerva for days at a time. Isobel later told her daughter that she had displayed small, but unmistakable, signs of magic from her earliest hours. Toys that had been left on upper shelves were found in her cot. The family cat appeared to do her bidding before she could talk. Her father’s bagpipes were occasionally heard to play themselves from distant rooms, a phenomenon that made the infant Minerva chuckle.

Isobel was torn between pride and fear. She knew that she must confess the truth to Robert before he witnessed something that would alarm him. At last, in response to Robert’s patient questioning, Isobel burst into tears, retrieved her wand from the locked box under her bed and showed him what she was.

Although Minerva was too young to remember that night, its aftermath left her with a bitter understanding of the complications of growing up with magic in a Muggle world. Although Robert McGonagall loved his wife no less upon discovering that she was a witch, he was profoundly shocked by her revelation, and by the fact that she had kept such a secret from him for so long. What was more, he, who prided himself on being an upright and honest man, was now drawn into a life of secrecy that was quite foreign to his nature. Isobel explained, through her sobs, that she (and their daughter) were bound by the International Statute of Secrecy, and that they must conceal the truth about themselves, or face the fury of the Ministry of Magic. Robert also quailed at the thought of how the locals - in the main, an austere, straight-laced and conventional breed - would feel about having a witch as their Minister’s wife.

Love endured, but trust had been broken between her parents, and Minerva, a clever and observant child, saw this with sadness. Two more children, both sons, were born to the McGonagalls, and both, in due course, revealed magical ability. Minerva helped her mother explain to Malcolm and Robert Junior that they must not flaunt their magic, and aided her mother in concealing from their father the accidents and embarrassments their magic sometimes caused.

Minerva was very close to her Muggle father, whom in temperament she resembled more than her mother. She saw with pain how much he struggled with the family’s strange situation. She sensed, too, how much of a strain it was for her mother to fit in with the all-Muggle village, and how much she missed the freedom of being with her kind, and of exercising her considerable talents. Minerva never forgot how much her mother cried, when the letter of admittance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived on Minerva’s eleventh birthday; she knew that Isobel was sobbing, not only out of pride, but also out of envy.

School Career

As is often the case where the young witch or wizard comes from a family who has struggled with its magical identity, Hogwarts was, for Minerva McGonagall, a place of joyful release and freedom.

Minerva drew unusual attention to herself on her very first evening, when she was revealed to be a Hatstall. After five and a half minutes, the Sorting Hat, which had been vacillating between the houses of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, placed Minerva in the latter. (In later years, this circumstance was a subject of gentle humour between Minerva and her colleague Filius Flitwick, over whom the Sorting Hat suffered the same confusion, but reached the opposite conclusion. The two Heads of house were amused to think that they might, but for those crucial moments in their youths, have exchanged positions).

Minerva was quickly recognised as the most outstanding student of her year, with a particular talent for Transfiguration. As she progressed through the school, she demonstrated that she had inherited both her mother’s talents and her father’s cast-iron moral sense. Minerva’s school career overlapped by two years with that of Pomona Sprout, later Head of Hufflepuff House, and the two women enjoyed an excellent relationship both then, and in later years.

By the end of her education at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall had achieved an impressive record: top grades in O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, Prefect, Head Girl, and winner of the Transfiguration Today Most Promising Newcomer award. Under the guidance of her inspirational Transfiguration teacher, Albus Dumbledore, she had managed to become an Animagus; her animal form, with its distinctive markings (tabby cat, square spectacles markings around eyes) were duly logged in the Ministry of Magic’s Animagus Registry. Minerva was also, like her mother, a gifted Quidditch player, although a nasty fall in her final year (a foul during the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game which would decide the Cup winner) left her with concussion, several broken ribs and a lifelong desire to see Slytherin crushed on the Quidditch pitch. Though she gave up Quidditch on leaving Hogwarts, the innately competitive Professor McGonagall later took a keen interest in the fortunes of her house team, and retained a keen eye for Quidditch talent.

Early Heartbreak

Upon graduation from Hogwarts, Minerva returned to the manse to enjoy one last summer with her family before setting out for London, where she had been offered a position at the Ministry of Magic (Department of Magical Law Enforcement). These months were to prove some of the most difficult of Minerva’s life, for it was then, aged only eighteen, that she proved herself truly her mother’s daughter, by falling head-over-heels in love with a Muggle boy.

It was the first and only time in Minerva McGonagall’s life that she might have been said to lose her head. Dougal McGregor was the handsome, clever and funny son of a local farmer. Though less beautiful than Isobel, Minerva was clever and witty. Dougal and Minerva shared a sense of humour, argued fiercely, and suspected mysterious depths in each other. Before either of them knew it, Dougal was on one knee in a ploughed field, proposing, and Minerva was accepting him.

She went home, intending to tell her parents of her engagement, yet found herself unable to do so. All that night she lay awake, thinking about her future. Dougal did not know what she, Minerva, truly was, any more than her father had known the truth about Isobel before they had married. Minerva had witnessed at close quarters the kind of marriage she might have if she wed Dougal. It would be the end of all her ambitions; it would mean a wand locked away, and children taught to lie, perhaps even to their own father. She did not fool herself that Dougal McGregor would accompany her to London, while she went to work every day at the Ministry. He was looking forward to inheriting his father’s farm.

Early next morning, Minerva slipped from her parents’ house and went to tell Dougal that she had changed her mind, and could not marry him. Mindful of the fact that if she broke the International Statute of Secrecy she would lose the job at the Ministry for which she was giving him up, she could give him no good reason for her change of heart. She left him devastated, and set out for London three days later.

Ministry Career

Though undoubtedly her feelings for the Ministry of Magic were coloured by the fact that she had recently suffered an emotional crisis, Minerva McGonagall did not much enjoy her new home and workplace. Some of her co-workers had an engrained anti-Muggle bias which, given her adoration of her Muggle father, and her continuing love for Dougal McGregor, she deplored. Though a most efficient and gifted employee, and fond of her much older boss, Elphinstone Urquart, Minerva was unhappy in London, and found that she missed Scotland. Finally, after two years at the Ministry, she was offered a prestigious promotion, yet found herself turning it down. She sent an owl to Hogwarts, asking whether she might be considered for a teaching post. The owl returned within hours, offering her a job in the Transfiguration department, under Head of Department, Albus Dumbledore.


Friendship with Albus Dumbledore

The school greeted Minerva McGonagall’s return with delight. Minerva threw herself into her work, proving herself a strict but inspirational teacher. If she kept letters from Dougal McGregor locked in a box under her bed, this was (she told herself firmly) better than keeping her wand locked there. Nevertheless, it was a shock to learn from the oblivious Isobel (in the middle of a chatty letter of local news) that Dougal had married the daughter of another farmer.

Albus Dumbledore discovered Minerva in tears in her classroom late that evening, and she confessed the whole story to him. Albus Dumbledore offered both comfort and wisdom, and told Minerva some of his own family history, previously unknown to her. The confidences exchanged that night between two intensely private and reserved characters were to form the basis of a lasting mutual esteem and friendship.

Marriage

Through all her early years at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall remained on terms of friendship with her old boss at the Ministry, Elphinstone Urquart. He came to visit her while on holiday to Scotland, and to her great surprise and embarrassment, proposed marriage in Madam Puddifoot’s teashop. Still in love with Dougal McGregor, Minerva turned him down.

Elphinstone, however, had never ceased to love her, nor to propose every now and then, even though she continued to refuse him. The death of Dougal McGregor, however, although traumatic, seemed to free Minerva. Shortly after Voldemort’s first defeat, Elphinstone, now white-haired, proposed again during a summertime stroll around the lake in the Hogwarts grounds. This time Minerva accepted. Elphinstone, now retired, was beside himself with joy, and purchased a small cottage in Hogsmeade for the pair of them, whence Minerva could travel easily to work every day.

Known to successive generations of students as ‘Professor McGonagall,’ Minerva - always something of a feminist - announced that she would be keeping her own name upon marriage. Traditionalists sniffed - why was Minerva refusing to accept a pure-blood name, and keeping that of her Muggle father?

The marriage (cut tragically short, though it was destined to be) was a very happy one. Though they had no children of their own, Minerva’s nieces and nephews (children of her brothers Malcolm and Robert) were frequent visitors to their home. This was a period of great fulfillment for Minerva.

The accidental death of Elphinstone from a Venomous Tentacula bite, three years into their marriage, was an enormous sorrow to all who knew the couple. Minerva could not bear to remain alone in their cottage, but packed her things after Elphinstone’s funeral and returned to her sparse stone-floored bedroom in Hogwarts Castle, accessible through a concealed door in the wall of her first-floor study. Always a very brave and private person, she poured all her energies into her work, and few people - excepting perhaps Albus Dumbledore - ever realised how much she suffered."

--So incredibly sad, isn't it? It made me think about her in a wholly different way: I always pictured her as someone who preferred solitude, and never married.

[Liez]

Originally Posted by Alicia6166

This is more of a storyline than anything else, but I'd love to find out from JKR how Lily went from thinking James was an "arrogant toe-rag" to marrying him. Fanfiction doesn't quite cut it for me. They all seem to go from, "He's a creepy, arrogant stalker, and I hate his guts" to "Gasp! I'm falling for Potter!" Was James really that extreme? I mean, seriously?

We also don't see the Marauders together that much. Peter Pettigrew's relationship with the other three in particular interests me. Why did they like him? Plus his actual character. Why was he sorted into Gryffindor? Why did he betray James and Lily?

Agree entirely. I want to see more how James improved his approaches towards Lily and the point where she finally decided she liked him, and of course what was up with Pettigrew.

I also want to know more about Snape's parents, like how they ended up together and exactly what their arguments were about as well as more about their homelife.