It’s that time again. No, I don’t mean time for pumpkin spice lattes, or time for every girl on Tumblr to post about their love of yoga pants and fall sweaters and I don’t even mean time for our impending federal budget crisis. No, it’s time, once again, for rumors and hints of the legendary “eighth Harry Potter book” to pop up all over the internet.
Honestly, just the idea of an eighth Harry Potter causes a terrible knot to grow in my stomach. Let me be clear: JK Rowling should not publish any more Harry Potter books.
I cannot forget how I felt reading the epilogue: my stomach still knotted from Harry’s alleged death, my excitement building, my disgust at their children’s names… and finally, I reached it. The final sentence, in the final paragraph, on the final page. This was it: My entire childhood was culminating in what would surely be the most explosive, most illuminating sentence in the whole series.
“All was well.”
I was shocked. What happened to Harry and Ginny? How did George survive? Would Malfoy actually ever date an apple?
So I did what any 21st century preteen would do, I went to the internet. I read every blog, forum and interview. In those next few months, I did more research than a PhD candidate writing their dissertation. And eventually, I came to my own conclusions.
Though I took me awhile to realize it, JK Rowling’s lack of information was a gift. The seemingly lacking epilogue allowed me to imagine my own eighth book, where everything worked out just the way I wanted it to.
The Harry Potter franchise ended at the top. No other modern series can compare. Each person in the Harry Potter fandom has already decided what happened in those next nineteen years, and beyond.
I don’t want to know what “really” happened, because I already know; I’ve already decided. I don’t want Harry Potter to join the list of TV shows, books and movies that I pretend had no epilogue, final season or even ever existed. That list is long enough. Harry Potter ended already, and it ended it the best way it could.
No, it was not perfect, and yes there were some disappointments (why exactly did Dobby have to die?) but when it came down to it, I was content. Since the first time I put down that final book, I have grown more and more satisfied with the series’ ending. Within JK Rowling’s few parameters, anything is possible.
Amid the abrupt end of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling gave us a gift, a magical gift. We were all granted to ability to finish Harry Potter the way we wanted to, to write the greatest Make-Your-Own-Adventure book there ever was. To write another book, to finish the series once more, would be for JK Rowling to take away that gift, to take away our magic, to make us muggles once more.