What happened to Kreacher the House Elf in Harry Potter?

Tributes were pouring in on Twitter last night when JK Rowling revealed the fate of Kreacher the house elf.

Responding to a fan’s question of what happened to him after the Harry Potter books ended, Rowling replied with the sad – and actually quite blunt – news that he had passed away.

“He died, aged 666” she wrote. Oh. We always thought the Black family’s House Elf actually looked older, anyway.

The tweet was met with a wave of “RIP” messages as well as people trying to figure out the significance of the number 666 in the Potterworld.

However, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. Anyone who has been following Rowling's Twitter feed recently knows she has had to face down some nasty trolls following her criticism of Donald Trump – including users threatening to burn her books. Seriously.

Kreacher's age of death actually appears to be a sharp response to an earlier tweet criticising her for using "the mark of the beast" in a children's novel.