The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words. ‘Harry... Potter...’ And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.

I took a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I had never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamberpots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon - or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder.

Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily - weak people, in other words.

Oh you is a bad elf, Dobby!

And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

There was no press involvement, there was no pressure. Life was very pure and it became more complicated.

Studying the young woman’s long thin legs, Tessa wondered how different her life would have been if she had had legs like that. She could not help but suspect that it would have been almost entirely different.