Don't expecto gorilla: JK Rowling clarifies that 'Harambe is not a Patronus'

Since the launch of the Patronus quiz on Pottermore.com on 22 September, Harry Potter fans have been flooding the website to find out the identity of their very own spirit shield against Dementors. While the experience is being praised for its diversity of results, from a hippogriff and unicorn to an adder or a common rat, JK Rowling has been forced to clarify that Harambe is not one of the options.

The author of the magical series had previously retweeted an image of the gorilla which was killed at Cincinnati Zoo as a Patronus, but after getting mixed responses from fans, she immediately posted a statement clarifying: "I've been asked to make it clear that Harambe is not a Patronus you can actually get on @pottermore. The previous RT is a joke. As you were."

She added that she "thought it was very funny".

In May, Harambe, a male silverback at the Cincinnati Zoo was shot dead after a three-year-old fell into his enclosure. His death prompted widespread grief and anger and later the gorilla became the centre of a number of internet memes.

In February, a poll conducted by Bloomsbury Children's Books revealed that Potterheads' favourite spell is the Expecto Patronus charm. "The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon—hope, happiness, the desire to survive," Professor Lupin explains to Harry in the third book of the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.