Not until sometime in 2002 did I finally crack, and do the thing that people assumed I did daily. I Googled Harry Potter.

I knew, of course, that there were fan sites out there. My postbag was full of mentions of them, my readers assuming that I was au fait with what was happening online. My PA, Fiddy, had had contact with a few of the webmasters. But I was still utterly unprepared what I found during that first, mammoth trawling session.

The fan sites were so professional-looking; easily up to the standard of any of my publishers' sites. And they had tens of thousands of visitors. They had forums, message boards, editorials, rolling news, fan art, fan fiction, quotes of the day from my books... and the shipping wars… my God, the shipping wars…