JK Rowling Says Harambe The Gorilla Is NOT A Patronus

Jk Rowling has been forced to clarify a joke she made on Twitter about Harambe the gorilla appearing as a Patronus on the Harry Potter fan site Pottermore.

Potter fans were sent into a frenzy of excitement when the website launched its ‘Patronus Quiz’ on Thursday (September 22nd) which allows users to discover their inner spirit animal. That anticipation heightened when Rowling re-tweeted an altered image from a comedy Twitter account of Harambe that made it look as if the animal would be one of the possible quiz results.

Wow @pottermore @jk_rowling too soon pic.twitter.com/zPMFM4Ch6R

— theCHIVE (@theCHIVE) September 22, 2016

Harambe, of course, is the gorilla whose death sparked public outrage after a child fell into the animal’s enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo in May this year. He has been the subject of many internet memes since, and Rowling’s re-tweet drew mixed reactions.

“Too soon,” the account tweeted back at Rowling along with the image. Many of Rowling’s followers also re-posted the image, commenting with things like “wands out for Harambe”.

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“I’ve been asked to make it clear that Harambe is not a Patronus you can actually get on @pottermore. The previous RT is a joke. As you were,” Rowling wrote to her fans soon afterwards, adding she thought the re-tweet was “very funny”.

Potter fans have been sharing the various results they’ve been getting on the quiz, and it seems as though there’s a vast galaxy of various real-life and magical animals that turn up as results – but, sadly, not Harambe.

In Harry Potter mythology, according to Pottermore, a Patronus is a spell to ward off Dementors, or “a guardian which acts as a shield between you and the Dementor.”

“It’s also a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive – but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can’t hurt it.”

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