JK Rowling reveals secret she told Alan Rickman about Snape

OK we need to watch all of the Harry Potter movies again immediately. Any excuse, really.

In the wake of Alan Rickman's passing, a fan tweeted JK Rowling the following request: "Will you tell us the piece of information that you told Alan Rickman about Severus Snape? Or will that forever be a secret?"

The writer responded...

She is of course referring to Snape's love for Lily Potter - Harry's mother.

Speaking of his role with Hitfix, and the advice Rowling gave him prior to shooting, Rickman previously said: "[It] helped me think that he was more complicated and that the story was not going to be as straight down the line as everybody thought. If you remember when I did the first film she’d only written three or four books, so nobody knew where it was really going except her. And it was important for her that I know something, but she only gave me a tiny piece of information which helped me think it was a more ambiguous route... What I knew was he was a human being and not an automaton and I knew there was some sense of protection for Harry or I worked that out. It was enough to know, I didn’t know he was a double agent."

Via Us Weekly