J.K. Rowling regrets Hermione-Ron romance

By Saba Hamedy

Feb. 3, 2014 11:03 AM PT

Everything Harry Potter fans ever knew about love is a lie.

Seven years after the beloved “Potter” books came to an end, author J.K. Rowling said she regrets pairing heroine Hermione Granger and guy pal Ron Weasley.

In a soon-to-be-published interview with Emma Watson, who played Granger, Rowling admitted that she thinks Potter and Granger would have been a better match.

“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really,” Rowling said in the interview. “For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”

The eight-picture “Potter” movie franchise sold more than $7.7 billion in tickets worldwide before coming to an end with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2” in 2011.

PHOTOS: Billion-dollar movie club

In September, Warner Bros. announced that it would release a series of films inspired by “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a fictional textbook that Rowling wrote to accompany her “Potter” novels.

The studio will also serve as the distributor of a planned BBC television adaption of Rowling’s 2012 non-Potter novel “The Casual Vacancy.”

The interview with Rowling is to be published in the Thursday issue of entertainment magazine Wonderland, which Watson is guest editing.

News of Rowling’s regret spread after snippets of the interview were published on the front page of Britain’s Sunday Times, causing uproar among fans.

On MuggleNet.com, which markets itself as the world’s No. 1 Harry Potter website, fans expressed shock and confusion.

“Harry/Hermione WHAT?” the website wrote in a Tweet, linking to the story.

The book author predicted the uproar.

PHOTOS: 25 young adult novels turned into films

“I know, I’m sorry,” she said in the interview. “I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

Here are just some of the many Twitter reactions:

She’s kidding, right? J.K. Rowling Says Hermione Should Have Ended Up With Harry Potter, Not Ron https://t.co/B7zdH26l3w (via @TIMENewsfeed)— Samit Sarkar (@SamitSarkar) February 3, 2014