Fans Ward Off Spoiler Talk, Finally Get Their Hands On The Final Harry Potter Book

NEW YORK (AP) _ You're safe now, Potter people. Open your eyes, unplug your ears. The spoilers can't hurt you. You have the book. The answers are in your hands. <br/><br/>And if you can't bear

Saturday, July 21st 2007, 2:39 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ You're safe now, Potter people. Open your eyes, unplug your ears. The spoilers can't hurt you. You have the book. The answers are in your hands.

And if you can't bear to finish, to say farewell to Harry, you can always read him again.

The world welcomed one last visit from Planet Potter as ``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' the seventh and last of J.K. Rowling's supernatural series, touched down at midnight Friday and wrapped up the most extraordinary literary story of modern times, some 4,000 pages about a wizard and his friends that broke the rules and started new ones.

Bookstores across the United States and Britain, as far away as Singapore and Sydney, welcomed eager readers, young and old, in glasses and capes, some shivering, some sweaty, all joined by the thick hardback book with the opening words: ``The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane.''

In Hudson, Ohio, 17-year-old Kelly Kubik was on Chapter 2 just half an hour after getting the book. But other fans, warned by Rowling that two major characters would die, one of them maybe Harry, couldn't bear to start at the beginning. After receiving her copy at a Singapore bookstore, Adela Lim, 16, flipped right to the end of the book, scanned the text furiously and exclaimed to her friends, ``Oh my god! Oh my god!''

``I am aghast at the ending,'' she said. ``I've waited since the first book all the way until now, so I can't wait anymore, I just want to find out the ending.''

Rowling, an unknown a decade ago when she introduced her magical character in ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'' gave a midnight reading to 500 competition-winning children in the grand Victorian surroundings of London's Natural History Museum. Now richer than the queen, she sat in a large wing-backed chair and read the opening pages _ description of a mysterious assignation, a clandestine meeting and important news for Voldemort.

For many of the hardcore Potter-maniacs, the place to be was Waterstone's bookstore on Piccadilly in central London. More than 5,000 people lined up for hours before the midnight opening, in a festive, colorful line stretching around the block. Among the fans from as far away as Finland and Mexico were dozens of witches and wizards, a couple of house elves, a pair of owls and a woman dressed as Hogwarts castle.

About 100 devoted readers donned witches' hats, wizards' robes and other costumes at a party early Saturday in the courtyard of Berlin's oldest castle, the Zitadelle. As the book was finally released, a golden shower of sparks lit up the castle's stone walls and a man dressed as Hagrid pulled a copy of ``Dark Hallows'' from a golden kettle.

At the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square, Anna Todd and Kelsey Barry, both 20, jumped up and down, screaming and hugging as they touched their Harry Potter books and smelled them as if handling a newborn baby.

``It smells like fresh parchment,'' said Barry. ``It smells like magic.''

Barry waited hours; others waited days. One man even risked his life for Potter. In Canberra, Australia, a 21-year-old man jumped into the frigid waters of Lake Burley Griffin on Friday afternoon to retrieve a pre-order voucher he had dropped. Paramedics found the man shivering and distressed _ and without the voucher, Emergency Services spokesman Darren Cutrupi said. He was given another voucher by the bookstore.

Competition to sell Potter led to prices wars everywhere and a shutdown in Malaysia, as major stores pulled the final volume in protest of supermarkets offering the book for $11.49, barely a third of its suggested price. Booksellers have acknowledged in the United States and elsewhere that they don't expect to make a profit.

Rowling's books about the bespectacled orphan with the lightning-bolt scar have sold 325 million copies in 64 languages, and the launch of each new volume has become a Hollywood-scale extravaganza.

``Deathly Hallows'' has a print run of 12 million in the United States alone, and Internet retailer Amazon says it has taken 2.2 million orders for the book. Britain's Royal Mail says it will deliver 600,000 copies on Saturday; the U.S. Postal Service says it will ship 1.8 million.

Security for the launch was fist-tight, with books shipped in sealed pallets and legal contracts binding stores not to sell the book before the midnight release time.

But despite pleas from Rowling and leading fan sites, spoilers sprouted on the Internet in the days before the release, including photographed images of what turned out to be all 700-plus pages of the book's U.S. edition. A blogger identified as ``Gabriel,'' who started the spoiler wave in June by posting alleged plot points, has been discredited.

In France, the daily Le Parisien revealed how the final installment ends, in a small article which it printed upside down. The book's French publishing house, Gallimard Jeunesse, condemned the newspaper's revelation, saying it showed ``a total lack of respect for J.K. Rowling'' and ``disdain for readers.''

As many as 1,200 copies were shipped early in the United States by an online retailer, and two U.S. newspapers published reviews Wednesday, more than two days ahead of the official release.

Rowling said she was ``staggered'' by the embargo-busting reviews, but few authors have been better treated by critics. ``Deathly Hallows'' is receiving near-universal raves, with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press among those praising it as a worthy conclusion to a classic series.

True believers, of course, don't look to experts. At a Borders bookstore in Coral Springs, Fla., Lori Mauer yelled ``It's mine! It's mine!'' upon grabbing one of the first copies sold. As Mauer rushed out of the store with her 10-year-old daughter, Melissa, and 13-year-old son, Billy, she opened the first page.

``The first word is ..., `` Mauer said to her children in her storytelling voice, ``THE.''