The Muggles may rejoice to know that the seventh in the Harry Potter series may well be the series’ last and J.K. Rowling is all set to begin writing it. The British author’s website a well known haunt for those smitten by the Harry Potter magic had an entry in Rowling’s diary that confirmed this intent. She declared 2006 as the year when she would “write the final book in the Harry Potter series”.

Being struck by the finality of her decision and yet dreading the idea Rowling wrote, “I contemplate the task with mingled feelings‿. In the same note she sounded excited unable to “wait to get started to tell the final part‿ and more importantly “answer all the questions”. But Rowling’s dual mindset seems to be the result of the endless demand for more Harry Potter stories and the need to end a character that she begot in her mind and shared life with for so many years.

Rowling says, “And yet it will all be over at last and I can’t quite imagine life without Harry”. The author reflecting how the Harry Potter stories changed her fortune and life forever perhaps should experience a shiver to kill off the darling of the Publishing world. After all the sixth of Rowling’s tale of wizardry, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” released in July this year sold over 10 million copies in America alone. With the magic still alive and books still selling (topping 300 million copies worldwide), it would be a shame to kill the golden goose.

But yet Rowling says that she has been “fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan…during the past few weeks”. Though she has indicated that she would be setting to work on the book itself from early January she observes, “Sometimes, even at this stage, you can see trouble looming‿. With almost all of her six previous books having had Chapters of Doom, she notes that “the quintessential never to be beaten Chapter‿ was Goblet of Fire’s Chapter nine.
Rowling describes the difficulty of her task of planning the chapter as akin to “contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself‿. But it appears that Rowling’s own need to end the series also may have a bearing on the careers of the former child artistes who played the key characters. Growing up with the movies Daniel Radcliffe had indicated during the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that he may want to explore new roles. With the last movie still going strong at theatres worldwide grossing $759.4 million and the next one on the Order of the Phoenix due in June 2007, Rowling’s stories are still going to be around for a while.

Should Rowling end Harry’s life in this series it appears that the possibility of the bespectacled hero returning through another series is remote. Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Catherine Lockerbie familiar with Rowling’s manner of dropping hints says that it could never be unintentional and possibly is “to get people wondering‿. She notes about the master storyteller, “She is one of the best manipulators of narrative writing for young people today… fans look for all sorts of clues in her books”.

After, giving fans an insight in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that she could “do away‿ central characters like Dumbledore, Rowling’s diary only shows that Harry Potter’s existence may be similarly questioned in her forthcoming plot.

Though the Harry Potter finale may take until early 2007 to reach the store shelves, Rowling has on prior occasion revealed that the final chapter has already been written. That leaves fans hoping that Daniel Radcliffe and his friends do not grow up too fast or change too much for the picturization of the remaining tales so that the magic lasts longer.