Will Harry Potter kill himself?

If Potter fans’ bets in UK are any indication, that could happen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

BY A CORRESPONDENT

20 July, 2007:

London bookmaker William Hill closed bets on July 17 at 2/5 odds that Harry Potter will kill himself, indicating that most of Potter fans bet on this line of thinking for the final Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The odds were 33/1 in the early days of the month.

Harry Potter’s parents’ assassin Lord Voldemort has a 9/4 chance to kill Potter, as per the bets, while odds on Professor Severus Snape ending Harry Potter’s life is at 4/1.

William Hill accepted 100,000 dollars in bets on Harry Potter’s fate, justifying the hype surrounding the release of the new book.

This is the first time that William Hill has taken bets on a book, indicating that there could have been “genuine leaks” of the book, analysts said.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, being published by Bloomsbury Publishing, is already on top of Amazon.com’s best seller list, through advance orders. Rowling announced the title of the keenly waited book on December 21. The sale of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows begins on July 21. The book has been priced $36.90 or (17.99 pounds).

In the United States, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be sold by Scholastic Corp. It has been priced $34.99 in the US.

If William Hill betting patterns are any indication, there are many takers for the story line in which Professor Dumbledore, the head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, will remain alive in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Dumbledore was murdered by Snape in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Author Rowling had indicated that she had cried while writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Potter fans would have taken this as an indication of the boy wizard’s imminent demise, reports said.

In a chat with British Broadcasting Corporation, Rowling said two characters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will die.

Rowling is slated to launch the seventh Harry Potter book at the London's Natural History Museum.
Rowling’s Potter series books have so far more than 3 crore copies, in the process making the author richer by £545 million.

A New York Times review even before the book was releases based on a leaked copy also indicated that there is a final showdown of Harry Potter and rival Lord Voldemort.

The movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had raked in $77.4 million in United States. The fifth film of the Harry Potter series, which was released on July 11, had an estimated combined US and Canada collection of $140 million. Warner Bros expects $1 billion in ticket sales and half of that in profits from the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

More than $ 3.5 billion were collected by the first four movies of the Harry Potter series, according to industry estimates. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first book of the series, published in 1997. In US, the book was titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.