This Awful Mary Sue Character Made JK Rowling Rewrite One Of The Harry Potter Books
One annoying character had to be replaced by another annoying character, but a grown-up one.
For all its magical charm and well-written story, J. K. Rowling's universe of wizards, witches, and fantastical beasts contains a number of plot holes.
Fortunately, there are also plot holes that the author herself discovered and fixed in time.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire introduced a character named Rita Skeeter, a witch and clickbait journalist who spread rumors and misinformation in the wizarding world.
While Rita certainly seems like an integral part of the story, that character was not a part of it in the first place, as her role was meant to be fulfilled by… a little girl!
Shortly after the fourth book was published, Rowling revealed that a new character, Ron's cousin, was supported to be part of the new novel, but using her as the story's nosy and eavesdropping character would lead to a major narrative inconsistency.
'It was entirely my own fault: I should have had the sense to go through it very carefully before I started writing. So I had to do an enormous amount of unpicking and in the process I'm afraid the Weasley cousin disappeared,' Rowling said.
This cousin's name is Mafalda, and she is the daughter of Molly Weasley's second cousin mentioned in Philosopher's Stone. The idea was that, in order to gain experience and enter Hogwarts, Mafalda would be sent to live with the Weasley family. Like Skeeter, the character was meant to be nosy and incredibly annoying to both her parents and the Weasleys.
The author's plan was for Mafalda to join Slytherin and become a person who would always stick her nose in other people's business. Mafalda would leak information about Harry's life, but at the same time, she would also reveal something about the Death Eaters to the protagonists — basically to show off because she was a little girl in need of attention.
'Unfortunately, however bright I made her, there were obvious limitations to what an eleven-year-old closeted at school could discover, whereas Rita Skeeter, whom I subsequently built up to fulfill Mafalda's function, was much more flexible,' the author shared several years later.
Remarkably, little Mafalda was supposed to be even smarter than Hermione, competing with her as an equal, which of course would annoy and displease the know-it-all Granger. But for better or worse, Rowling had strong reasons for writing off Mafalda and giving her role to Skeeter, and eventually, the reporter proved to be a valuable addition to the book series.
Source: BBC Newsround, J. K.Rowling Official Site archive.