In a pre-Christmas treat, J. K. Rowling has written more about Severus Snape and vampires. Apparently, you would be wrong to think that Snape is a vampire because of the clear evidence to the contrary – of course arguably, Rowling would be wrong to suggest that all vampires burn in sunlight or drink blood to the point of killing their victim but that is a debate for another day.
However, her reasoning is entirely in line with Potterverse vampires described in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. The main point of contention for me in this piece is why she decided to excise the vampiric ‘Trocar’ from her novels. We get a wonderful werewolf in Professor Lupin – it would have been nice to see a vampire character other than the decidedly pallid Sanguini who briefly shows up at Professor Slughorn’s party in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.