John Irving and Stephen King want Harry Potter to live!

By: Karl Schneider
Date: Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Source: Various Sources

JK Rowling, Stephen King, and John Irving were at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for a charity reading. While answering questions, it became clear that Irving and King wanted Harry Potter to survive the final book of the HARRY POTTER series. Rowling, however, was not willing to make any promises.

"My fingers are crossed for Harry," Irving said at the joint news conference.

King added, "I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls," a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's efforts to kill off the character of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. [Sci Fi Wire]

Rowling refused to give any assurances, and would not comment on who would die in the upcoming book aside from the fact that two characters would.

"I feel quite liberated," Rowling said. "I can resolve the story now, and it's fun in a way it wasn't before, because finally I've reached my resolution, and I think some people will loathe it, and some people will love it, but that's how it should be. We're working toward the end I always planned, but a couple of characters I expected to survive have died, and one character got a reprieve."

Asked about how she felt now that the series was drawing to an end, Rowling replied, "On the one hand, I am going to feel sad. Harry's been an enormous part of my life and it's been a turbulent phase of my life and he was always the constant. So there will be a sense of bereavement, but there will also be a sense of liberation because there are pressures involved in writing something as popular. Wonderful though it's been, I think that there will also be a certain freedom in escaping that particular part of writing Harry Potter."