Flowers for Potter

Following the Potter-related news from a few days ago, here’s another charming report on the future of the Harry Potter book series in which it seems the hero might just…die.

Two best-selling authors have asked the best-selling author of all not to kill off the central character of her stories. John Irving (The World According to Garp) and Stephen King (Carrie) told a news conference in New York Tuesday that they had written to J.K. Rowling asking her not to kill Harry Potter in the final book of her series about the boy wizard. (Each of her Harry Potter tales has been or will be made into a motion picture. She has indicated that several key characters will die in her final Potter book, which she is currently writing.) Referring to a scene in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Final Problem, in which Doyle killed off his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, King told reporters, "I don't want [Harry] to go over the Reichenbach Falls." Irving commented, "My fingers are crossed for Harry." (If history is any indication, there may still be hope for Harry even if Rowling does kill him off. The public was so outraged after Doyle sent Holmes to his death that it mounted a letter-writing campaign that resulted in the author's resurrection of Holmes.)

Has J. K. Rowling actually said anything to the effect of killing off Harry? Or is this just a rumor? Was that an earthquake that just hit me? Wow, that was weird.