Posted this in DPS (S) before. Now repost here to share with other HP's fans.
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J.K. Rowling receives thousands of letters from adoring fans, but one letter touched her more deeply than any other. In an article titled ‘The Rowling Connection,’ Brian Bethune of Maclean’s magazine told the story in the November 6, 2000, issue.
In Toronto, nine-year-old Natalie McDonald was dying. ‘She was obsessed with the Harry Potter books.’ Remembers family friend and political activist Annie Kidder. ‘They had been her respite from the hell of leukemia. And because I’m the sort of person who thinks there must be something I can do, I badgered Rowling’s publishers in London, sending them a letter and an e-mail and a fax for her.’
Passed on by the publishers, the letter arrived at Rowling’s Edinburgh home a day after the author had left for a holiday in Spain. ‘When I came back two weeks later and read it, I had a bad feeling I was too late,’ Rowling told Maclean’s. ‘I tried to phone Annie but she wasn’t in, so I e-mailed both Natalie and her mother, Valerie – because Annie hadn’t told Valerie what she had done. ‘Rowling was right in her foreboding – the e-mails were received the day after Natalie died on August 3.
‘Jo’s e-mail was beautiful,’ Kidder says. ‘She didn’t patronize Natalie, or tell her everything was Ok; she addressed her as a human being who was going through a hard time. She talked about her books and her characters and which one she liked best.’
The story might have ended there, but Valerie McDonald wrote back, in thanks. ‘That letter touched deep,’ Rowling says slowly, trying to explain the esteem in which she holds Natalie’s mother…. So a regular correspondence began, and an unexpected friendship….
But even before that, the author had quietly commemorated the reader she never met.
On page 159 of Goblet of Fire, the famous sorting hat of Hogwarts Schhol of Witchcrafts and Wizardry sends first-year student Natalie McDonald – the only real person in any of Rowling’s novels – to Harry’s own Gryffindor house.
Taken from ‘People in the News – J.K. Rowling’ by Bradley Steffens. 