Rowling adds Celestina bio to Pottermore

J K Rowling has released new information about her favourite “off-stage” character from the Harry Potter series – singer Celestina Warbeck – on fan website Pottermore.com.
 
A short biography of Celestina has been revealed on the site with information about her parents (wizard father and muggle mother), performances (she sings with a chorus of backing banshees), and charity work (raising money for St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies).
 
“Celestina is one of my favourite ‘off-stage’ characters in the whole series and has been part of the Potter world ever since its inception… Although we never lay eyes on Celestina during the whole seven volumes of the Potter books, I always imagined her to resemble Shirley Bassey in both looks and style,” said Rowling.
 
Rowling reveals that the singer is clearly very popular, as fans were involved in a nasty broom pile-up over Liverpool while trying to get to the last night of her ‘Flighty Aphrodite’ tour, but that she has in the past clashed with the Ministry of Magic over how the wizarding community celebrates Halloween.
 
The singer is a favourite of Mrs Weasley and was in Gryffindor House when at Hogwarts school. The story was posted today because 18th August is Celestina’s birthday.
 
Pottermore has also posted one of Celestina’s songs, "You Stole My Cauldron But You Can’t Have My Heart", recorded by a singer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in the US.
 
The song starts with the lines:
“You think you’re quite the wizard, got me under your spell,
Well guess what Mr Wizard you don’t know me so well,
You thought you were so clever but in truth you’re a crook.”
 
The song is the first audio recording on Pottermore and is one of four songs performed live every day at the theme park.
 
Celestina is referenced in three of the Harry Potter books; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), all published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books.
 
In the charity companion book by Rowling, Quidditch Through the Ages (Bloomsbury Publishing), Celestina is credited with recording Puddlemere United’s team anthem ‘Beat Back Those Bludgers, Boys, and Chuck That Quaffle Here’ – another of the four songs featured in the live show at Universal Orlando Resort.
 
Last month, J K Rowling wrote a piece about a 30-something Harry Potter and his friends at the final of the Quidditch World Cup 2014 for Pottermore, told from the perspective of infamous gossip columnist Rita Skeeter.