Opinion Time’s up

Here we are again, on Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station. Stores are celebrating early-morning book sales and the fandom is in raptures, nine years after J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Sure, the train takes you to the Hogwarts School of Wizardry, but the cynics might well point out that all that is magical here are the coffers of Potter Inc turning into gold.

For one, Harry Potter and The Cursed Child is not an immersive novel, as the seven others were, written in prose that conjures up the textures and moral codes of an entire universe. It is a play, running in London right now, which may or may not travel to other corners of the Potter fan-verse. It is not easy being held in thrall by stage directions and a plot. After The Deathly Hallows, Rowling’s career as a writer has indeed taken off in a new direction, taking her to the inner city of London and its grime and gore. It is not surprising, therefore, that three authors collaborated on The Cursed Child, though Rowling’s name gets top billing. The author has also announced that this is it: She will no longer write about Hogwarts.

Advertisement

Rowling might chant Evanesco!, but Harry Potter, both the phenomenon and the franchise, are not going to vanish. The latter is a massive machine that feeds on itself. The eight movies made on the series have made billions: And surely there is one more in the offing. Fans who do not wish to check out of the magical world are known to flock to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a chain of theme parks based on Rowling’s books. Then there is the fan-fiction itself, stories upon stories spun from the original, a corner of the interwebz where the author cedes all control to the acolytes. All of this is proof of the spectacular durability of Rowling’s characters and how her complex parables of good and evil speak to the contemporary world. Still, all good things must come to an end. Only for them to go on forever.