Rowling Says Last Book May Say Farewell to Harry

On England’s "Richard and Judy" television show this week, author J.K. Rowling told viewers that in the last installment of her series of books about boy wizard Harry Potter, there will be at least two characters killed. She also hinted slyly that one of those unfortunate characters may even be Harry. "I have never been tempted to kill him off before the final because I’ve always planned seven books, and I want to finish on seven books," Rowling said.

Rowling told viewers that the last book isn’t finished yet, but she’s well into writing it. She wrote the final chapter in 1990, so she’s known all along how the series would end. "The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly. One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die," she said. "A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do." Her reason for completely ending the saga is clear, because she can understand the mentality of an author who decides to kill off popular characters so there can be no non-author written sequels. As Rowling said, "So it will end with me, and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character."

Rowling said that she has always planned for there to be seven books in the series, before she even began writing the first one. In fact, she had written the end of the final book before she even had a publisher lined up to produce the first volume in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She wrote that first book on a manual typewriter in her spare time, while unemployed and living on state benefits. After being turned down by 12 publishing houses, the small press Bloomsbury picked it up and the rest is history.

The Harry Potter books have brought J.K. Rowling fame and tremendous fortune, and she now owns two multi-million dollar mansions in England and Scotland. She has married a second time and had two children, had an asteroid named after her, and the newly-discovered Pachycephalosaurid dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, currently at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, was named in honor of Harry Potter’s fictional world in May 2006. Rowling is the richest woman in England, richer even than the Queen, with a fortune estimated at more than $1 billion.

When asked about her future plans after the Potter series ends, Rowling is decidedly non-committal. But whatever she writes, she is certain that it will not be as successful as Harry Potter. "I don’t think I’m ever going to have anything like Harry again," she said. "You just get one like Harry."