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...
I told Alan what lies behind the word 'always'. https://t.co/NHTJ5J6kxb
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 18, 2016
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."
