Rowling reveals title to final Harry Potter

Spoiler alert: J.K. Rowling announced the title of the final Harry Potter book on her Web site Thursday in the form of a puzzle. Anyone wanting to take a crack at figuring it out should stop reading now and go to www.jkrowling.com.

For everyone else, the name of the book is at the end of this story. And while the publishing date hasn’t yet been announced, Spokane fans are giving their approval of the title.

“That sounds kind of cool,” Alora Witcher, 10, said.

Sam Schuh, 18, has been a fan since the first book was published in the United States in 1998, when Potter learned of his magic abilities on his 11th birthday. Schuh was about the same age at the time, so she’s grown up with Harry and his Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry friends, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Potter must grow up for what will likely be the final standoff with the evil Lord Voldemort.

“Harry’s gonna have to do it all on his own,” Schuh said.

Schuh and a friend made a pact to avoid the movies until they finish the series. After the last one is done, she said, they’ll have a movie marathon. She and her friend have also been speculating on rumors that two central characters will meet an untimely end in the last book.

No one knows which characters are doomed, but Schuh thinks that the title character is safe. Killing off Potter, she said, would be a bad move.

“It’ll just be a very bad ending to the whole series,” she said.

In fact, the death of Potter does not get a warm reception from fans of any age.

While Rowling hasn’t been afraid to kill off characters, said Auntie’s Bookstore manager Jill Malone, she doesn’t believe Potter will meet his end.

“I guess in the end it depends on whether or not she’s an optimist,” Malone said. “And I think she is.”

Chandler Hansen, 11, said he’s only read the first four books, but he wouldn’t mind a violent end.

“I’m thinking Voldemort will kill Harry Potter and then Dumbledore will kill Voldemort,” he said.

Once Hansen reads further in the series, though, he’ll know why that’s unlikely.

Susan Peterson, owner of the Children’s Corner Bookshop, has a display with all six previous titles. She’s only read one of them but is happy they’re getting into the hands of children.

“Anything that gets children reading is a good thing,” she said.

The question of who will make it to the end isn’t the only source of speculation as the final book nears.

Witcher said she thinks Potter will be rescued by Severus Snape, a morally questionable Hogwarts professor who committed an atrocity in Rowling’s last book and whom Potter considers an enemy.

But Carly Winz, 16, said she doesn’t hold out hope for Snape’s redemption.

“He’s really a traitor, almost like a Benedict Arnold,” she said.

Malone said she hasn’t seen anything quite like the excitement of Potter fans awaiting the last magic adventure. There are other fantasy books that have sold well at Auntie’s, “but you don’t have that kind of mad anxiety,” she said.

And the name of that last book: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”