What Rowling knew at the end of The Prisoner

Anyone who has read the entries in this blog to date will know that one of my many obsessions in relation to Harry Potter is to work out, from evidence in the books themselves, how advanced J.K. Rowling's planning was as she wrote each of the early books.


We all know that Jo has said she had created a very strong outline of the seven-novel series even before (or at least while) she wrote The Philosopher's Stone and we have no reason to doubt that. But the question that intrigues me is: just how detailed was that plan?


Having just completed a reading of The Prisoner of Azkaban (in French, mind you), I am very comfortable in saying that, by the end of the third book at least, Rowling must have progressed to a pretty impressive level of detail in her planning for the rest of the series. I say this even though I also feel quite strongly that her outline was not very detailed before that point in the writing.


Here's what I think happened:

• Rowling wrote The Philosopher's Stone with a general outline in her mind of what might play out for her characters in the future but without a great deal of detail in that outline. Sure, she might have already developed a pretty fair history for each of her main characters but I don't think she had yet developed the overarching plot of the seven-novel series yet. For example, I think it's indisputable that Jo knew Harry and Voldemort would one day face each other in a battle to the death (she introduces their enmity right at the beginning but does not resolve it at the end of the first book so she must have been planning more and she made it clear that students attended Hogwarts for seven years) but I doubt she had worked out the relationships between James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, Peter and Severus at that point and I simply cannot believe that she had planned the whole Deathly Hallows subplot;
• Rowling wrote The Chamber of Secrets grateful for the success of the first and more confident that she would be permitted to write the entire series;
• By the time she was writing The Prisoner, she knew that the world-wide success of the first two books would give her license to do what she wanted with the series and, as she wrote that third book, she began to plant much stronger, more clear seeds of what was to come in the future books.

As you no doubt are aware, Alan Rickman, the actor who portrayed Snape so memorably in the Harry Potter films, recently passed away and, after this death, it came out that he only accepted the role because, apparently, there were only three books completed at that time (so he didn't know he was enrolling himself in an eight-film commitment) and because Rowling herself told him that there would be more to the character of Snape than was being displayed in those first three novels. In fact, I believe that Rowling herself confirmed that she told Rickman, at that time, what Snape would mean when he told Dumbledore that his patronus would "always" be a doe like Lily's.


Again, I think sometimes Rowling grants herself some license to rewrite history in her recent interviews on Harry Potter but I think, from this particular situation, we can assume that she had worked out, after completing the third novel, much of the Snape-Lily relationship and the sacrifice that went with it.


Further, the end of The Prisoner contains some of the most important seeds that would later grow into key factors in the future of the series.


First, we meet Sirius Black, a character who would play a foundational role in later books. Even more than that, his family is central (in fact, ubiquitous) in the entire Voldemort/Potter story. We learn that, though he is universally believed to be evil, he is in fact good (hmm, sounds familiar, doesn't it Snape lovers?). We also see him forced to flee and put himself into hiding.


Second, we meet Buckbeak, the Hypogriff. Once again, a character who is assumed to be evil but we know to be innocent. Buckbeak too is on the run and he too will play an important role in a later book.


Third, we meet Peter Pettigrew and see Harry spare his life. In a moment of almost (and I mean almost) over-the-top foreshadowing, Dumbledore tells Harry that 1) Voldemort would not like to find out that one of his main servants owes a debt to our young hero and 2) that Pettigrew's debt to Harry will one day be a very important factor in how things play out.


Fourth, we hear the second real prophecy ever delivered by Professor Trelawney, who tells Harry that Pettigrew will escape, join the Dark Lord and help him return to power.


So I think it's pretty clear that, by the time she completed The Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling had a clear roadmap in her mind for the later books. It still begs the question: at what point prior to the third novel's completion did she start to fill in the details?