The End of Harry Potter? It’s Hardly Begun

Her readership wants to know what happens next to the group of characters to which they have developed a romantic attachment.

And I am sure those characters will be ever-present in her head; always popping up to suggest a situation to her, which, I expect, she’ll be jotting down. And the way she has left the story at the moment is perfectly set up for future episodes: two unaccounted for decades, a bunch of assumptions about the characters that she can play with, and a new generation. Irresistible.

The question for me is not will she write more Potter, but how she takes the story forward (or backwards).

So far Harry has aged with each book, closely mirroring the development from child to teenager of many of the readers. If she continues that self-imposed orthodoxy it will mean future books will have to be written with adults as well as children in mind.

That won’t be easy. JK Rowling is a proven writer of children’s books, but not of adult fiction.

Alternatively she could keep Harry and his mates at their present age, after all Bond never aged.

Or she could start all over again with their children. That might risk falling into the trap that Steven Spielberg said he had avoided by not taking on the directing duties for the Potter movies, saying “I purposely didn’t do the Harry Potter movie because for me, that was shooting ducks in a barrel…it’s just a slam dunk.

“It’s just like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank account. There’s no challenge.”

The challenge for JK Rowling is who does she write for: Potter’s kids or his contemporaries. She could do both.

Or even take the life of one of the other characters and develop it in a new direction, as was the case when the sitcom Frasier was rolled-out of Cheers. Mind you that is not necessarily a formula for success as Friends spin-off Joey proved.

Whatever happens, she is unquestionably talented. I mean, 400,000,000 readers can’t be wrong can they?