harry potter - Was J.K. Rowling ever incorrect/misleading in her interviews/answers?

It seems that a lot of Harry Potter questions (including my last one) are answered based on tidbits of info that J.K. Rowling provided in various interviews.

I have two related questions (I'll post them separately):

Question #1 of 2. Did it ever happen that she provided information that was later proven completely wrong (either from later books or later interview)?

Answer

It definitely DID happen, at least once.

In "The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three," (The Leaky Cauldron, 16 July 2005)

ES: ... [the third question] It’s the one about Grindelwald, which I’m sure you’ve been gearing up for us to ask.

JKR: Come on then, remind me. Is he dead?
ES: Yeah, is he dead?
JKR: Yeah, he is.
ES: You don’t have to answer but can you give us some backstory on him?
JKR: I'm going to tell you as much as I told someone earlier who asked me. You know Owen who won the [UK television] competition to interview me? He asked about Grindelwald [pronounced "Grindelvald" HMM…]. He said, “Is it coincidence that he died in 1945,” and I said no. It amuses me to make allusions to things that were happening in the Muggle world, so my feeling would be that while there's a global Muggle war going on, there's also a global wizarding war going on.

Of course, as we know from Deathly Hallows, Grindelvald was definitely NOT dead in 1945, since he is held in Numengard after being defeated by Dumbledore; and will only be killed in 1998 by Voldemort.

UPDATE:

Define irony: in that same interview later, JKR said the following:

JKR: I've never, to my knowledge, lied when posed a question about the books. To my knowledge. You can imagine, I've now been asked hundreds of questions; it's perfectly possible at some point I misspoke or I gave a misleading answer unintentionally, or I may have answered truthfully at the time and then changed my mind in a subsequent book. That makes me cagey about answering some questions in too much detail because I have to have some leeway to get there and do it my way, but never on a major plot point.

Comments

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