Harry Potter And ... The Final Chapter?

*From my '07 archives, widda bit of '09 updating*

Perhaps.

In an interview sometime back, Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling affirmed that there wouldn't be an eighth Harry Potter book. Yet, at the end of the interview, she coyly left open the possibility of "changing her mind".

Just like a woman, but I digress.

Let me be up front: I am not a Harry Potter junkie. I have not read one book of the series, nor seen any of the movie adaptations. Spending a youth growing up on a diet of Tom Swift, Johnny Quest and The Three Stooges, my adult mind wasn't snared by the magic and mysticism that defined Harry Potter. I mean, riding brooms might be fanciful for some -- rumored to be Hillary's mode of travel -- but it didn't tweak my thrice-concussed imagination.

Granted, having the sorcering ability to turn some muckraking, disagreeable human into a lesser life form -- ferrets, toads, rats, slugs, or Keith Olbermann -- did provide me a moment to reconsider. But just not enough to draw me into the Harry Potter orbit.

Until now, that is.

As a fellow writer -- albeit, a very untalented and unaccomplished one, compared to Rowling -- I found myself having a moment of almost compassion for her. It's got to be tough to create a multi-book series that can keep the pace of a best-selling series. Recall what happened when it was tried with Rocky, Police Academy and The Gong Show.

But Rowling pulled it off. And now, is walking away. Ya gotta wonder...is it Potter fatigue?

So, perhaps having a fresh set of eyes and unfettered mind to the project, I pondered long (about 15 minutes) what a Book 8 could look like, not only for Rowling, but for her legions of fans. To add realism and some minor degree of continuity to the project, I did a quick-study of the current books in the Harry Potter series, and used them to imagine the as-yet incomplete #7; based on that, I have drafted the denied and not yet determined to be eighth and truly final Harry Potter book, and sent it along to Rowling's agent for her comments and blessing, just in case Rowling does "change her mind".

Now I know you're dying to ask me all about it; alas, you know that I am ethically obligated to not leak aspects of this eighth and truly final chapter, in case Rowling jumps all over this marvelous and unique idea.

Then again, on the chance she royally pans it and threatens to sue the snarf outta me (which I estimate to be a 99,999 chance in 100,000), maybe I can afford to give y'all just a wee precis:

In the gripping truly final chapter, Harry and Hermione -- having watched friends and enemas turn each other into road apples and worse on their mystic journey into...well into...puberty -- have wisely opted to move onto the world of collegiate education, having come to the realization that, like Jackie Paper, "painted wings and other things, make way for other toys". And since those other toys cost moola, they are drawn to capitalist pursuits in the mainstream of capitalist society. Not as fun as turning evil cheeseballs into useless Keith Olbermanns, but much better at obtaining material items like DVDs, playstations and BMWs. Thus, they apply to the University of Colorado at Boulder, gaining immediate acceptance by using affirmative action -- listing themselves as bona fide minorities, deserving of special dispensation (aka, Wiccan offshoots with celtic-pagan proclivities and nose hairs).

Once in, Harry and Hermione can no longer deny the biological obvious, and in a spellbinding barlight scene during what they didn't realize was a football recruiting party, they wind up exploring the bounds of barley hops, Nature and a pirated Debbie Does Dallas video, dancing the horizontal mambo on a foosball table, while a pre-law intern hands out condoms and her employer's law office business cards, in anticipation of future sexual harassment opportunities (one of many plot twists that are rather non sequitur, but follow me on this).

Not wanting to give away too much of the complex, politically correct twists, turns, pelvic gyrations and leaks of grand jury testimony, let me just say that Harry goes on to beat the rap and graduates summa cum latte from the CU School of Liberal FauxJournalism; he parts ways with Hermione, whose exposure to the Women's Studies curriculum at CU, converts her into an ardent feminist and gender segregationist, seeking to forcibly relocate all non-gay American men to Mongolia, or legislatively/surgically change them into harmless gerbils through unread House bills that are longer than War and Peace and as comprehensible as a rendition of Hamlet by Ozzy Osbourne.

Meantime, Harry begins a brilliantly mundane career as a tabloid journalist for the Weakly World News, winning a prestigious PullMyFinger Award for his investigative series, The Al Qaida-Uranus Connection: A Justification For Endless UN Dialogue Leading To Another South Park Movie With Celebrity Marionettes. A series that prompts President Lynn Cheney to accidentally on purpose launch a controversial pre-emptive war on Neptune, because intelligence provided to her was no better than that of pre-war Iraq in '03, thanks to the reinstitution of the Gorelick lack-of-intelligence-sharing philosophy by the previous one-term administration of Barack Hussein Obama.

After the fallout of congressional hearings on how spells contributed nothing to sell the global warming scam, Harry is eventually released from a re-education gulag in Califorlornia, and drifts into a lurid affair with Rita Skeeter (played by what's left of Lindsay Lohan, portraying what's left of Courtney Love, portraying what's left of Peewee Herman, in the future movie version), spending his waning days pondering various and sundry questions:

-- what Hermione did with Hedwig, stuffing and mounting him after perpetual molting and unspeakable sexual acts with rodents;

-- whatever happened to Jimmy Hoffa, the Iraq WMDs, ethics in the Democratic Party, and why they bothered to make a 9th Indiana Jones movie with a wax figurine of Harrison Ford;

-- would Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger III -- a clone of the original, rumor has it, but 100% American (lab) made -- defeat President Sarah Palin Bush Reagan II (also a clone from a rival genetics lab) in the presidential primary of 2048;

-- and why Harry and friends, while at their mystic pinnacle, were never able to crack the biggest mysteries in one and a half centuries: the IRS Tax Code, and just what the hell Barney Fwank was saying about half the time. The answer to the latter lay with a linguistics study of Elmer Fudd, but I digwess.

And I'm sure you can't wait to hear the title of this sure-to-be-a-smash final chapter in the Harry Potter saga, right? Well, I really shouldn't...but what the horsefeathers: Harry Potter And The Final Straw: The Uranus Quidditch Of Byte Me.

Yeah, I know...there's really no need to thank me. Or throw things. Especially the latter.