For millions of American parents, tonight will finally bring a positive answer to the question: “It’s midnight. Do you know where your children are?”
Down at the bookstore, poring over “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”!
Yes, as everyone with the possible exception of the hopelessly obtuse Cornelius Fudge knows, tonight marks the debut of the seventh and final volume in master storyteller J.K. Rowling’s saga of the awkward orphan boy endowed with the magical power to restore the wonder of reading books to a generation of children once feared lost to television and the Internet.
That’s not to say children are the only Potter fans. Like “Huckleberry Finn,” Rowling’s books have multi-layered themes written to appeal to all ages. The sixth volume, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” sold 6.9 million copies within 24 hours in the U.S. alone when it was released in 2005, making it the fastest-selling book in history. Many bookstores are holding midnight parties tonight in hopes of smashing that record.
We won’t give away the ending, mainly because we don’t know it, but also because Hermione has reportedly cast a spell that will doom all such spoilsports to a life of following the affairs of Paris Hilton – a fate worse than the Cruciatus Curse to those gifted with the intelligence to savor Harry’s world. But we are solidly in the camp of those who hope the ending will reveal that Severus Snape was one of the good guys all along.
We also predict that good will triumph over evil in the end, though the contest will be “The nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” to quote Rowling’s fellow Brit, the Duke of Wellington, after Waterloo. That’s not inside information, that’s just the way of great literature.
