Harry Potter makes final bow amid revelry and spl event

Chennai, July 21 (UNI) At last the long wait ended, bringing curtains down on all kinds of speculations about the fate of the boy wizard and his evil rival: the launch of the ''seventh wonder'' of the literary world ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'', witnessed a huge rush of readers cutting across age limits.

The arrangements made to welcome 'one of the greatest works of fiction' were lot more exciting. The Landmark Book shop at the Spencer Plaza shopping mall on the arterial Anna Salai, where the world's richest author J K Rowling's farewell edition was released, organised a special breakfast party for Potter fans early morning with burgers and juices. The excited lot who formed a long queue outside the shop even before 0300 hrs in the morning celebrated the release by cutting a Harry cake.

That's not all: Potter fans could have a selected Harry design painted on their arm or face. The store had also arranged a special product display exclusively for the boy wizard comprising all seven books and CDs of the Potter series.

The shop also had Hogwarts, the school of wizardry model castle where one could click his own photograph along with Harry's portraits. Two fans of Potter, Suriya and Lavanya said they did not want any tragedy to ascend on their favourite hero but they were all smiles in front of the flashing cameras, proudly holding their new Harry Potter book inside the 'Hogwarts'.

''I am very eager to start reading my new Harry book and I am a bit tensed about the end because I never want Harry to die'' says Naveen an 11th standard student who has a collection of all the editions.

But Harry Potter was not merely a children's book. More than children it was the adolescents who had grown up with Harry and his pals going ga-ga over the new release.

''I hope Rowling would go on writing and the Harry Potter stories would never end.'' Hoped Vinaya, a working woman.

''I've subcribed to all the books and I've identified with its spirit'' said Kalpana a 48-year-old housewife.

The land mark book shop was to conduct a magic show for the young wizard's fans later in the day.

Speculations were so high that mugglenet.com released a book named ''What will happen in Harry Potter 7'' by a number of authors.

The book was a compilation of unauthorised Deadly Hallows predictions.

It predicts who lives, who dies and how will the adventure end.

The book has literally been creating ripples across the world and Chennai proved to be at the forefront in welcoming the book release.

UNI