Harry Potter Books Spark Questions About Reading

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• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Once again, Harry Potter has cast a spell.

• K-K BRACKEN, Harry Potter Fan:

  I've read the whole series 198 times.

• HARRY POTTER FAN:

  I don't think a week has gone by without me calling someone up and discussing Harry Potter theories.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Around the world today, fans were lined up for the release — at 12:01 a.m. Saturday — of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final installment of author J.K. Rowling's saga. At this bookstore in central London, Potter maniacs had been gathering for two days.

• HARRY POTTER FAN:

  I've come from Sydney, Australia, because you have to come to London for Harry Potter. You can't have the last book in this amazing series come out and you not be in the place where the home of it is.

• HARRY POTTER FANS:

  We're from Norway.

• BOYFRIEND OF HARRY POTTER FAN:

  Mexico. Well, like I said, my girlfriend, she's a big Harry Potter fan, so, well, she dragged me here.

• HARRY POTTER FAN:

  We came especially for this. My best friend and I have been planning this since fourth grade.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  In the 10 years since the first installment, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," hit the shelves, some 325 million Potter books have been sold worldwide in more than 65 languages.

  MAGGIE SMITH, "Professor McGonagall": Welcome to Hogwarts.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Five movies have been released; the latest opened earlier this month. All of it chronicles the adventures of Harry Potter — who discovers his magical abilities on his 11th birthday — his schoolmates, and their various friends and enemies. The new Potter book was a bestseller long before its release, with some two million copies pre-sold on Amazon.com.

  In Britain, the Royal Mail expects to deliver a new Potter book to one in 40 households tomorrow. In this country, a recent survey found that 44 percent of households with teenagers plan to buy it. With fans eager to learn how the saga ends — Rowling herself had spoken of two main characters dying — a strict embargo was in place to build suspense and keep the book under wraps.

• LAURA PORCO, Amazon.com:

  We have them under surveillance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we're making sure that everybody within this area is absolutely approved to be here.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  But in recent days, there's been a mad scramble for information. Digital images of what some claimed was the entire text started appearing on the Internet early this week. A U.S. online retailer prematurely shipped up to 1,200 copies of the book to customers on Tuesday, and a handful of U.S. papers began publishing reviews of the book yesterday.

  Still, would-be spoilers weren't ruining things for Potter fans gathered today at this library in Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington, D.C., suburb.

• YOUNG HARRY POTTER FAN:

  I'm excited that I get to see what happens to Harry Potter.

• YOUNG HARRY POTTER FAN:

  I feel excited that I get to read another book about Harry Potter.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Though, it must be said, not every critic was enthralled.

• GABRIELLE BROWN, Harry Potter Reader:

  She overwrites just a tiny bit too much.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  In fact, Harry Potter has at times engendered a lively debate over its literary merits and its long-term impact on reading. But today, young fans who have grown up with the books were happy to expound on the joys they provide…

• K-K BRACKEN:

  I think that the characters are really what draws me in. Every character is intrinsic within itself and could have a separate book written about them.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  … while also contemplating a future without Harry Potter.

• HARRY POTTER FAN:

  I'm sure there's going to be some questions left, but all of the things we've been waiting for are over, and we're going to read — I'm going to keep reading the books. I'm not going to drop them after this. We've still got two movies coming out, but it really is the end of a part of our lives, and it's kind of sad.