Harry Potter

According to a story featured on Fox News, author J.K. Rowling has announced that two characters will die in the final book of the beloved Harry Potter series.

Rowling indicated that the key characters would be targets when she said in an interview: “We are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras do they? They go for the main characters.”

Amazingly, Rowling claims to have written the final chapter of the entire series in 1990, and has kept it under wraps ever since. She also revealed that there have been a few minor modifications to what she originally wrote but, for the most part, the series will wrap the way she envisioned it 16 years ago.

Harry Potter is not exempt from the list of characters that should be watching their back. The author, whose net worth was recently estimated at more than a billion dollars, spoke about not leaving a legacy character alive because the series should end forever with book 7.

Rowling expressed concern that someday a sequel that wasn’t authorized or written by her could be penned by someone else, after her death.

It’s an interesting perspective that I’ve never heard an author admit to. She would rather kill Harry Potter for good rather than risk the tarnishing of her cherished franchise at the hands of some hack looking to make a quick million 15 years from now. And you know what? I completely understand that.

No one can create the kinds of characters with the devoted following that Rowling has without being truly in love with the project. I know all the stories about Rowling being destitute and rising from the doles of public assistance on the heels of Harry Potter mania, but she didn’t do this entirely for money. Rowling lived this series, she loved it. She crafted it with passion and the kind of imagination that is really once in a lifetime.

It’s a little refreshing to see that Rowling has some respect for the franchise and for her talent that goes beyond its ability to be a cash cow. She has created a world and several amazing characters that captured the imagination of people on a global scale. She gave millions of children the desire to read, to write and, perhaps most importantly, to imagine.

It’s so rare to see a writer with that kind of power, with a character and world so completely engrossing, that it’s not even once in a lifetime—it’s truly magical. The Harry Potter series will be around hundreds of years from now, perhaps beyond. Kids that aren’t even born yet will lose themselves in the Hogwart’s Academy and the tale of Harry Potter.

So amazingly gifted is Rowling that adults, English students, English professors and “grown-up” people everywhere have taken up these books and devoured them. It’s a skillfully crafted world that you can’t help but lose yourself in. There’s something delightfully childish in her books, and yet something sinister. In some way she manages to allow us to enter the Harry Potter universe but without feeling childish. She has made adults open up their imaginations in a way they probably haven’t since they themselves were kids. Rowling has brought out that part of childhood where innocence still exists, but it’s being rubbed away. Where adulthood is just around the corner and yet the allure of being a child still pulls at you. Rowling's universe gives adults a taste of child-like wonder again, and it gives kids a whiff of adulthood and dark troubles. The very things that fascinate each of them.

It’s good to see that the public appreciates Harry Potter, and that feeling is reciprocated by Rowling. Every adult who has enjoyed her work should realize that this is the rarest of talents. We will not see the likes of J.K. Rowling ever again in this century. Unless, of course, we have a rememberall!