Midnight about to toll for 'Harry Potter'

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By Todd Leopold

CNN

(CNN) -- The ending has come for Harry Potter.

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling thought of the idea on a train trip in 1990.

Will it be a happy one in which he vanquishes the evil Lord Voldemort (aka You-Know-Who) and finishes his years at Hogwarts in the embrace of his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger? Or will it be tragic, a finale in which Harry -- the Boy Who Lived, to his fellow wizards -- dies in his prime (though not, presumably, without dispatching You-Know-Who)?

Only author J.K. Rowling -- and, likely, a few publishing executives, book reviewers, printing plant employees and people who have flukishly received the book early -- know for sure.

But regardless of Harry's fate, the famed seven-book series will conclude at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is officially released.

The "Harry Potter" series -- which has sold 325 million copies worldwide -- has been nothing booksellers have ever seen before, and as with the previous "Potter" titles, retailers are pulling out all the stops. There will be magic shows, costume contests, musical performances, readings and -- last but not least --book sales.

Not only is American publisher Scholastic Inc. doing a first printing in excess of 12 million copies -- another record for a series that has smashed so many publishing marks -- a number of other merchandisers have jumped into the Potter game, with T-shirts, calendars, candy, outfits and games.

"There is much more product available this time because of the timing of the movie and book releases," Diane Mangan, director of children's merchandise for Borders, told The Associated Press.

Indeed, the movie version of the fifth Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," came out July 11; like the books, the movie series has been a series of blockbusters, with each entry easily topping $200 million in domestic box office. "Order of the Phoenix" has earned more than $150 million in fewer than 10 days. (The movies are produced by Warner Bros., which -- like CNN -- is a division of Time Warner.)

Not bad for a story about what Rowling called a "scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy" which, according to the author, came almost fully formed on a 1990 train ride from Manchester to London. She spent four hours musing on the character and started writing "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (later retitled "Sorcerer's Stone" in the United States) that night.

Late that year, Rowling's mother died and, Rowling writes on her Web site, aspects of the manuscript "[became] much deeper." Finally, in 1994, she finished the book, often writing in coffee shops in her adopted hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland.

It took two years for "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" to find a publisher and another year for it to be released in Britain, but once it hit, it hit hard. Scholastic released "Stone" in the United States in 1998; by 2000, Harry Potter fever was rampant, with the now familiar stories of record print runs, top-level secrecy and midnight bookstore debuts.

By now, Harry Potter is part of the culture. Rowling is Britain's richest woman -- the first billionaire author, according to Forbes. The Potter movies have made stars of its young actors and given regular, colorful work to a generation of Britain's finest performers. And Potter is now a regular feature of the academy, taught alongside Shakespeare, Dickens and Faulkner.

Gary Richardson, an English professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, has taught Potter in a course, "Harry Potter and Twentieth-Century Fantasy," since 2001. The course includes Rowling's first four books as well as works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. LeGuin and C.S. Lewis.

Richardson, who started the class for a variety of reasons -- including sizing up young-adult literature while reading the Potter books with his children -- has watched the books' impact grow. Initially, he says in an e-mail interview, "the more immediate appeal [of the class] were works by Tolkien and Lewis, as many students had not read any of Rowling's work."

But as students who read Potter as children have entered college, Richardson's class has changed -- even if his focus hasn't.

"Now my classes are dominated by students who grew up reading the books," Richardson says. "My burden is to get them beyond adoration and enthusiastic appreciation to critical investigation and understanding. ... By and large, students leave the course with a much deeper appreciation for the literary art of Rowling and the uniqueness of her contribution to fantasy."

Potter has even spawned a tourist industry. In May, the Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando, Florida, announced the construction of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a 20-acre theme park scheduled to open in 2009.

While fans are waiting to get into the Wizarding World, they can attend any number of festivals. Wilmington, Ohio; Baraboo, Wisconsin; Poulsbo, Washington; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; and Oak Park, Illinois -- among others -- hold Potter celebrations that have drawn in excess of 10,000 people each, sometimes more than the towns themselves.

Potter also will make an appearance at the Iowa State Fair in August, rendered in butter.

"The marketing department at the fair and I were looking for something that would be a timely pop-culture thing to do, and with the new movie and new book coming out, it seemed appropriate," Sarah Pratt, the butter carver, told the AP.

The latest "Potter" release hasn't been without its glitches. One online retailer apparently sent out a number of books early, leading to at least one copy for sale on eBay. Some Israeli lawmakers are unhappy with the book's release on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and have threatened offending booksellers with fines.

And at least one person got ahold of "Deathly Hallows" long enough to photograph every one of its 784 pages and put the files on the Internet. Scholastic has taken legal action in some cases.

Regardless, it all leads back to Saturday morning, when readers around the world will queue up at bookstores or await the arrival of their local package-delivery truck, ready to spend the next few hours or days immersed in the concluding story of their favorite wizard.

Richardson, the Mercer professor, says he has no doubt that the books will live well beyond Harry's final bow.

"[Rowling] is an excellent writer and one more attuned to her audience than almost any other writer I can name, even the fantasists against whom I read her in my course," he observes.

"[And] ... more adeptly than any other popular fantasist she has shown herself adept at using fantasy to address social issues that frame her readers' experience and doing so in ways that are well suited to her core readership. Her books imaginatively raise issues of gender equality, social class, race, media culture, the self-serving nature of many politicians, the potential flaws of justice systems and a host of other satiric targets."

As for Rowling, who wrote the final chapter of "Deathly Hallows" years ago, she's relieved, if a little dejected, that the story has come to an end. Though she's left the door open (a tiny crack) for future adventures, she said it was time, according to the AP.

"Finishing it was very, very emotional. It was a combination of relief and sadness really," she told the AP.

No doubt "Potter" readers will feel the same way when they turn that final page.

Source: CNN ENTERTAINMENT