Harry Bother and a Goblet of Beer...

Herwhiney Granger
The real thing...
(Image from Wikipedia)

The other night, I was putting eight-year-old En-Uk to bed, and rather than tell stories to each other -- which we usually do -- we made up new names for a few of the Harry Potter characters.

I started off with "Harry Butter" -- which, I admit, is rather lame, but if you dwell on it long enough, it becomes disgusting, which always proves terribly entertaining for little boys.

We decided, however, on "Harry Bother" instead.

Next came "Herwhiney Granger." Then "Runt Queasily." After that, "Allbutt Bumbledork" (a favorite of mine).

And En-Uk's brilliant contribution: "Draco Mouthboy!"

To which, I retorted, "Lord Oldwart." I also suggested "Lord Worrywort," but En-Uk panned that one. I don't know why...

And let's not forget the minor character "Prissy Weasley." I suppose that this one should actually be "Prissy Queasily."

Please add more, to be judged accordingly ... but keep them G-Rated so that I can entertain En-Uk with your contributions.

And while we wait for those entries ... let's have a beer, courtesy of John Dubya von EBeerSnob.Com, who has responded both to my recent promotion of his website on my blog and to my email notifying him about my generous plugging of his worthy endeavor (along with my 'services rendered' bill for the unsolicited advertisement) by posting the following remarks in this week's email, The Official Size & Weight EBeer ENews Email, Number 16, under a subheading sporting an entirely anomalous question mark, "International Recognition?":

Sixteen weeks into our project, and we’ve made it around to the other side of the planet. This week I received an email from South Korea. Professor Jeff has a blog, and in the same, featured my adventures at St. Andrews in NY. Check this out. In his email he writes:

I'm a childhood friend of Bruce Cochran, who clued me in to your email service promoting good beers.

I live in a part of the world -- let's call it " South Korea " -- where one doesn't come by good beers cheaply, but I do enjoy the virtual beers that you have on tap. Your descriptions are so precise and compelling that I can virtually quench my thirst, a thirst that the precisely described beers themselves tend to stimulate.

Your St. Andrews visits inspired me to post a blog entry, and I block quote rather extensively from your email (and hope that you don't mind):

Another good thing from Arkansas...

Anyway, I raise, in your honor, a glass ... but just a Budweiser, unfortunately -- the American one, I mean -- because I can't get the good beers in the local supermarkets, and the Korean beers are even more dismal ... sigh.

But I can dream, and your weekly emails provide the sustenance of my dreams...

I also note that Professor Jeff uncovered one of the hidden mysteries of our project. I do hope he got a big laugh out of it. Hang in there Dr. Jeff, may there be good beers on the horizon.

That horizen is so very far away ... but I can hope! Meanwhile, I'll reach for another Bud. You should too. After all, it makes you smart. You doubt? Oh, ye skeptic of little faith and even less spirit! That eponymous beer made Bud Wiser! Keep drinking the vile but potent stuff, and you will find yourself intellectually empowered to puzzle out "one of the hidden mysteries" of the sacred EBeer project...

Oops, nearly forgot. John Dubya, please send your check for 'services rendered' to my university address. And no whining, or you'll end up like Hermione...

Okay, here's the secret...

Ernest Tubb

Better songwriter than Rowling?

(Image from Country Music Hall of Fame)

...to selling as many books as Rowling has and becoming the next big thing.

Write the first several pages of your own 'chosen one' story and try it out on Digg.

What's Digg? On this one, we can trust Wikipedia:

Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.

News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.

But if you don't trust Wikipedia -- and why should you since even you can edit it! -- then go look at the Digg site itself, which will tell you:

Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the Digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!

Dig it? Everything is submitted and voted on. Hmmm ... everything? Even this description of what Digg does?

Leaving that meta-recursive question aside, one can instantly see the applicability of Digg for testing the popularity of one's stories. This is a bit like market research, I suppose, but more empirical.

Brent Stinski, formerly a doctoral student at Cambridge University working on a doctoral thesis about the psychology of art and entertainment, has had the same idea and has set up Media Predict, a website that tests the popularity of creative works in various media (among the other things that it tests), so you could also try posting your stories there, I reckon.

If only this had been available to Ernest Tubb, who had to labor in vain for six long years and seven failed records before hitting paydirt in 1941 with the country single "Walking the Floor Over You." Why, he could have waltzed across Texas several times in the years that passed before he became successful! But if he'd had access to Digg or to Media Predict, then he could have just waltzed right out the door and laughed all his wealthy way to the bank with popularity as immediate as that of Rowling.

So, that's the secret to selling as many books as J.K. Rowling. Just test them first using Digg or Media Predict. And send that $50.00 that you owe me to my Kyung Hee University address.

Some may suggest that I've not really revealed the crucial secret, namely, how to write that bestseller in the first place, that I've merely revealed a clever marketing technique. True -- and thanks for calling me clever -- I did promise to reveal that "crucial secret to writing a hero's tale that sells millions and rakes in billions," didn't I?

Well, here's the crucial, terrible secret: Nobody Knows.

So, you wanna write like Rowling...

Writing the Jane Espenson Way...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Or maybe, you just want to make that much money. Well, you're in luck, for Jane Espenson, "The Secret to Selling Sci-Fi: Fantasy Land" (The New Republic, August 7, 2007), has just revealed the secret to Rowling's success:

Write books that people want to read.

Nah, just kidding. That's not the secret, though most individuals who write books do write the sort that they seem to prefer go unread -- and not just scholars producing their academic tomes, either, but even writers of fiction, who one would ordinarily assume wish to produce bestsellers.

I blame the crit-lit theorists.

But you're still waiting for that secret. Okay, here it is, from Jane's Literary Advisory Services. Hold on, that link looks fishy. Here's the right one:

It's a very specific type of Hero's Journey, the most potent sub-case. It's told over and over again, and it works, over and over again .... [The heroes are] living a life, sometimes a fine one, often a troubled one, but certainly one governed by ordinary rules, when suddenly the curtain is pulled back and a whole new world, or a new set of rules of this world, is revealed. And what's more -- and this is the important part -- in that new world, they are something special. They are The Chosen One .... The Chosen One paradigm is the most positive, most comforting, most affirming metaphorical version of change, of growing up, that I can imagine .... [This paradigm] has obvious inherent appeal to children. They know that they're going to have to move into new worlds as they grow up, and they're scared. A story that tells them that when they arrive they're going to be recognized for the extraordinary person they hope they are, and that they're going to overcome all obstacles even if they're scared[, will push all the right buttons] .... [T]he big secret is that grown-ups are every bit as terrified of change as kids, and even more eager to imagine that the ordinary world might be replaced with somewhere in which their specialness is suddenly obvious .... So here's what I think we need to do if we want to write [a bestseller]. We need to start with an empty page of notebook paper, write "The Chosen One" across the top and start brainstorming.

Espenson is writing tongue in cheek, but her central point is correct. The Hero's Journey paradigm of The Chosen One is widely appealing, so if you want to sell a lot of books and make a lot of money like J.K. Rowling has done, then you've got to tell a hero's tale.

Simple as Rowling off a log ... almost.

What you now must learn is the even more crucial secret to writing a hero's tale that sells millions and rakes in billions, and if you're interested in knowing that, then just send me a bank check for $50.00 -- a small investment -- and I'll reveal that secret to you alone since this is obviously not the sort of knowledge that we'd want to share with everybody.

Yes, the Very Christian J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling

"I believe in God, not magic."

(Image from Wikipedia)

Anyone with some knowledge of Christianity who has read to the very end of volume seven in the Potter series cannot have missed the Christian symbolism.

In this last volume, Harry Potter becomes a pretty obvious symbol of Christ -- he doesn't become Christ, let's be clear, but acts as a symbol of Christ. This does not mean that every detail must match up, but rather that in certain crucial respects, the Harry Potter character reminds one of Christ. The most crucial point is that Potter must willingly die at the hands of the diabolical Lord Voldemort in order to defeat him and his evil. Here is the moment when Harry realizes his destiny:

Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort's remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort's path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric's Hollow would be finished: Neither would live, neither could survive. (Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, page 691)

Note that Harry must fling "himself across Voldemort's path." Would I be misreading to hear, as an echo, that Harry must be flung, 'himself a cross,' to defeat Voldemort? More Christian symbolism follows, though not in each particular:

Of course there had been a bigger plan: Harry ... realized that now .... Now he saw that his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes .... How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort. (pages 692-693)

As the one already marked for slaughter, Harry stands once again as a symbol of Christ, that "lamb led to slaughter" in Christian readings of Isaiah 53:7.

Well, I could go on and on about this, but that could get tedious and miss its mark anyway, for all this Christian symbolism will do little toward rehabilitating Rowling's series in the eyes of those Christians who object to the 'occult' in the stories. That a story apparently non-Christian on the surface could carry deeper Christian significance is irrelevant to them, for the surface cannot be ignored. For such critics, using stories of witches and wizards as vehicles to carry a Christian message can be little better than using pornography to convey a deeper message on the importance of sexual purity.

Perhaps they have a point, in their own case, for they may feel a tug toward the 'occult' that they warn against, but such does not seem the case with most readers. Rowling herself tells us:

"I have met thousands of children and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, 'Ms Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.'" (Emma Yates, "Rowling promises sex and death in Potter books," The Guardian, December 28, 2001)

Of course, Rowling would say that, wouldn't she, but I happen to think that she's right...

Rowling's Bible?

King James Bible

Rowling's Bible?

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've pointed out in a recent post on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that J.K. Rowling quotes the Bible, twice, but which Bible translation is she quoting?

Let's take a look.

Concerning Rowling's first quote, I noted in my earlier post the words on the tombstone of Kendra Dumbledore and Her Daughter Ariana:

"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

I then identified the source as Matthew 6:21. More accurately, I should have said that the source could be either Matthew 6:21 or Luke 12:34. According to one Online Parallel Bible, the precise words "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" could be taken from a number of Bible translations. If Rowling was quoting Matthew 6:21, then she could have been using either of these two:

King James Version (KJV, 1611)
Webster's Bible Translation (WBS, 1833)

If Rowling was quoting Luke 12:34, then she could have been using any of these five:

King James Version (KJV, 1611)
American Standard Version (ASV, 1901)
English Revised Version (ERV, 1881)
Webster's Bible Translation (WBS, 1833)
World English Bible (WEB, currently in draft form)

This second, five-item list includes the first, two-item list, so Rowling could have been using any of five English translations (insofar as this Online Parallel Bible is exhaustive).

But we need to check Rowling's second quote, which -- as I noted in my earlier post -- we find on the tombstone of James and Lily Potter:

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

I then identified the source as 1 Corinthians 15:26. According to the Online Parallel Bible, the precise words "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" could be taken from only two Bible translations:

King James Version (KJV, 1611)
Webster's Bible Translation (WBS, 1833)

Assuming that the Online Parallel Bible is exhaustive (probably not), that Rowling uses the same Bible version for both quotes (probably), and that the very British Rowling is not likely to have been using an obscure American version (almost certainly), then I conclude (tentatively) that Rowling's Bible is the King James Version of 1611.

Not that anyone cares...

Follow-Up: The Very Christian J.K. Rowling?

"The Nervous Witch," Jack Chick

Religious Opposition to the Harry Potter Series

(Image from Wikipedia)

I only have time for the briefest of posts this morning, for I'm heading out to present my paper on "Celibacy and Salvation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," but I want to follow up yesterday's post with some citations on J.K. Rowling and Christianity that I've been collecting but putting off reading until I'd finished reading the Potter series.

Although Rowling's Potter is disliked by some Christians -- as the Chick comic above suggests -- Rowling herself claims to be Christian. In an interview with Max Wyman, "'You can lead a fool to a book but you can't make them think': Author has frank words for the religious right," The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), October 26, 2000, Rowling acknowledges that she doesn't believe in magic, prompting Wyman to ask her if she is a Christian:

"Yes, I am," she says. "Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books."

In an earlier interview with Linton Weeks, "Charmed, I'm Sure," The Washington Post, October 20, 1999, Rowling had already mentioned her church:

In Edinburgh, mother and daughter belonged to a Church of Scotland congregation. [Her daughter] Jessica was christened there.

So much for the author. What about the books? Here's a bit from a report by Mark Gudgel, "In Defense of Harry Potter," RelevantMagazine.com:

Connie Neal, John Granger and John Killinger, among numerous other Christian writers, have all authored books in favor of Harry Potter. Their insightful writings offer theories about the books and their connection to biblical stories and themes. The underlying battle between good and evil is but one of the compelling connections offered to bridge the gap between Potter and our Christian faith. The remarkable thing about the works of Granger and Neal is that both writers admittedly set out to read the Harry Potter books in order that they might explain to their children why they were not to be allowed to read them. It was through their research and diligent parenting that they came to discover that there was no harm to be found in Rowling's works, but instead, a meaningful connection to the most significant principles of Christianity.

Finally, there's this very recent article by Dave Bruno, "Harry Potter 7 Is Matthew 6," Christianity Today (August 2, 2007). Bruno suggests that "The young wizard may not have read the Bible, but someone else certainly did." I won't quote from it due to lack of time, but follow the link (unless you haven't finished the book and and don't want any plot spoilers).

Now, I'm off to the conference...

The Very Christian J.K. Rowling?

Harry Potter

and the Deathly Hallows

(Image from Wikipedia)

Well, I've had a lot of fun with a couple of posts on Harry Potter, but all joking aside, let me say something more earnest about the latest (and last?) in the Harry Potter series.

As I noted in the humorous posts, a faction of evangelicals (and also other Christians, including some Catholics) are opposed to letting their children read Harry Potter because of the witchcraft, wizardry, and magic, which they see as anti-Christian.

Some fantasy writers are anti-Christian, of course. Philip Pullman, with the series His Dark Materials, comes to mind. Pullman, by the way, is a far better literary stylist and descriptive writer than Rowling but lacks the latter's storytelling skills ... in my opinion, of course.

Rowling has never struck me as anti-Christian. Her first book seemed simply to ignore Christianity, perhaps as irrelevant to her story, but as the books have grown darker and more serious in their exploration of evil, Christian symbols have begun to surface at key points that might indicate something more than purely 'pagan' going on underneath ... like finding Christ in Beowulf or in the reworked Celtic myths of Medieval English literature.

For instance, at a certain point in the story, Harry and Hermione visit Godric's Hollow, the place where Harry would have grown up if Voldemort hadn't murdered his parents. Harry and Hermione are on a quest to defeat Voldemort, and here are some excerpts that suggest Christian allusions:

The snow here had become impacted: It was hard and slippery where people had trodden on it all day. Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps. They heard a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little church.

"Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve!" said Hermione.

"Is it?"

He had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks.

"I'm sure it is," said Hermione, her eyes upon the church. "They . . . they'll be in there, won't they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it." (page 323)

Now, the thing to note here is something easily missed. Godric's Hollow is a town where many witches and wizards live, perhaps even outnumbering the 'Muggles' (nonmagical folk), yet a church stands in the middle of the village. Moreover, Harry's parents are buried there among other witches and wizards.

Rowling takes this a step further in some of the wording on tombstones:

[Hermione] pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw , upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way down her dates of birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation:

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (page 325)

Rowling doesn't identify this quote, but it's from Matthew 6:21, which in its original context was about laying up treasures in heaven rather than upon earth. Harry, raised by Muggles who seem not to have been religious, doesn't understand the quote:

Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face was hidden in shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He did not understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore had chosen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had died. (page 326)

Some minutes later, they find the grave of Harry's parents:

And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs.

The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.

JAMES POTTER - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LILY POTTER

BORN 27 MARCH 1960 - - - BORN 30 JANUARY 1960

DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 - - - DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.

"'The last enemy that shall be defeated is death' . . ." A horrible thought came to him, and with a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death."

But they were not living, thought Harry. They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents' moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them. (pages 327-328)

Interestingly, whereas Harry misunderstands the words about defeating death, Hermione seems to know the meaning of the quote, which is again biblical (from 1 Corinthians 15:26) and which suggests that Hermione herself might have been raised by her Muggle parents as a Christian ... though whether in a personally significant way or in a merely cultural sense remains unclear.

I'm not sure what Rowling is up to with these quotes, and she may be using them in nonbiblical ways, coded statements containing clues for Harry to draw forth and interpret, but there is also this description of a moment in Harry's quest for the means of defeating Voldemort when he finds the crucially needed instrument lying at the bottom of a forest pool, the sword of Gryffindor:

He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross...

His heart skipped into his mouth: He dropped to his knees at the pool's edge and angled the wand so as to flood the bottom of the pool with as much light as possible. A glint of deep red... It was a sword with glittering rubies in its hilt.... The sword of Gryffindor was lying at the bottom of the forest pool. (page 367)

In Medieval Romance literature, a bejeweled Christian cross is sometimes symbolized by a sword due to their shared form, and that sort of thing may be happening here. Also of significance is that Harry drops to his knees. I don't think that such an expression could be chosen by an author in this sort of context without an allusion being made to Christian prayer ... not that Harry himself realizes this, for he seems not to.

What does this all mean? Is J.K. Rowling, like C.S. Lewis, writing Christian 'allegory'? I don't know. I still need to finish the book and do some more thinking.

Beyond the book: page 1379 of Deathly Hallows...

The Latest Harry Potter Volume

(Image from Wikipedia)

Though still a little-known fact, the latest Potter volume contains more than 759 pages.

No, I don't mean those those seven blank pages nor the "About the Author" page, another blank page, the "About the Illustrator" page, or that last visible page, on art direction and the choice of font.

Nope, not those.

I mean the part of the book that extends into another dimension, much like Doctor Who's TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside. In those pages beyond our earthly dimensions, Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows never seems to end.

It is, indeed, a hypertext, unbounded in all directions and linked to every other text in the universe, a veritable universe of discourse.

I've reached page 1379, where Voldemort fully melds with the Antichrist, something I've been anticipating for several volumes now as Voldemort has taken on ever-more-serpentine qualities and thereby grown ever-more Satanic. Turns out, then, that the entire anti-Potter faction among evangelicals has been utterly wrong the whole time about Rowling's supposed 'anti-Christian' magic. In these hypertextual pages, the Christian imagery grows ever more obvious. Those evangelicals who had opposed the Potter phenomenon for its 'pagan' worldview will just have to learn to read it in much the way that they've learned to read C.S. Lewis, seeing the deeper magic beneath the witchery and accepting the pagan details as vehicles for a Christian message, as Elisabeth Gruner has been arguing for some time.

Deathly Hallows is simply another expression for the valley of the shadow of death, so we should fear no evil...

Big Ho's "Potter spoilers" Spoiled!

Voldemort Invictus

(Image from Wikipedia)

Don't look at the Big Ho's "Potter spoilers" . . . unless you don't want to have your reading of Rowling's latest (and last) volume spoiled.

Yes, you heard me right, even if you did have to think about it.

But if you're currently being tempted to read the Big Ho's "Potter spoilers" -- which you can access immediately to gratify that temptation -- then don't read my blog entry any further because what comes next will spoil the spoilers. Here's the Big Ho's first 'spoiler':

"1. I was shocked that Hermione was killed off in the first twenty pages. That was totally unexpected. Wow."

Liar! I've read 175 pages, and Whiney Hermione ain't dead yet. However, there remain another 584 pages, and that fact leaves plenty of collective room for hope.

So . . . I'll continue to hope the worst for Hermione and the best for me, but I'm still angry at the Big Ho because I bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows solely to see Hermione get her comeuppance.

The Big Ho has five other "Potter spoilers" -- or should I say 'Potter soilers' -- given the Big Ho's predilection for a certain genre of humor -- but I've not read them yet. I read the Hermione 'spoiler' by chance as my eye happened to pause upon that particular day's entry before I realized what I was reading. Overjoyed to hear of Hermione's death, but not wanting to spoil any other unexpected plot developments, I immediately stopped reading the Big Ho and rushed out to a bookstore to grab the latest Potter and rush out again to start reading. My headlong rush was interrupted when the store clerks grabbed me and extorted money for a book that was already in my hands! Dammit! Don't Koreans know that "Possession is nine-tenths of the law"? That's one of those proverbial bits of practical wisdom that I learned as a kid along with other wise sayings like "Finders keepers, losers weepers." I guess that Koreans don't have any proverbs in their language, or they would know these things.

Anyway, I was soon rudely disappointed to discover that Hermione doesn't die . . . not in the first 20 pages, at any rate.

The truly unsurprising thing, of course, is Harry Potter's death. I was a bit taken aback to read of it in the first 20 pages, for one would expect the book itself to end at that point -- what with Voldemort victorious and all in this darkest of the Potter series -- but the book goes on and on and on as Voldemort and his Death Eaters hunt down and exterminate one Potter friend after another. Basically, the rest of the book appears to be a mopping up operation for the victorious forces of Voldemort, and I'm surprised that Hermione has survived so far.

Everybody knew that Potter had to die (so this isn't a plot spoiler) because Rowling had already announced that this latest volume would be the last in the series, tantamount to saying that Harry Potter dies.

So, this hairy Harry phenomenon will all be over soon, thank God! I do worry, ever so slightly, that Whiney Hermione might survive to fight on in subsequent volumes.

I certainly hope not, but if that should happen to happen, then I say that the time has come to join forces with the anti-Potter faction of evangelicals and ban these books!