Final Harry Potter book goes on sale (II)

Meg Rosoff
Children's author

After so many years of battle with the Forces of Evil, Harry has a nervous breakdown and is admitted to the Priory. He undergoes extensive psychoanalysis by Dr Weltschmerz, but his post-traumatic stress proves intractable.

Hermione, pregnant with Ron's baby, gives birth to twins Nigel and Aramintha, and Harry is asked to be godfather. The christening is presided over by the kindly local vicar, Artemis McBurney-Weatherbottom, who turns out to be Lord Voldemort in disguise. Harry, sedated on Mogadon and Prozac, borrows a broomstick from a Priory cleaner, and chugs towards the church for the christening. Despite the urgency of his mission, he stops at the Dog & Duck, using the sacred A Few Years Older spell to order a pint. Through his drug-and-London-Pride-induced haze, Harry notices Voldemort's Dark Mark hanging over the church. A hellish wailing from within convinces Harry that he has, at long last, come to the final showdown with his nemesis. The noise, however, turns out to be the cute twins, whom Harry slays by mistake. Or was it?

Voldemort swears that he's tired of being an Icon of Evil and, to prove it, sends all the Death Eaters to work at Little Chef and takes a job at the local council overseeing roadworks and parking permits. Harry returns to the Priory full of remorse and meets Kate Moss. With the help of aromatherapy, pilates and class A drugs, they live happily ever after.

Ron and Hermione discover that the babies Harry slew by mistake were not real babies, but embodiments of purest evil, and the friends reconcile. Badness is banished from the world, except for a tiny leftover bit in Luton, in case of a sequel. Hogwarts is converted into luxury condominiums, despite being in the green belt. Dumbledore isn't dead after all and gets a spin-off prequel.

Ivan Self
Age 9

I think that Harry will go to his home and see his parents' graves. He may also have a duel with Voldemort. No one knows who will win, but normally the hero does. Snape and Malfoy will be out to get Harry, so watch out Harry! I think he's going to survive because the hero always wins. He will become an Auror.

Ron will have to go home because his brother Charlie is getting married. I think Ron will go with Harry to help fight Voldemort. Ron is Harry's best friend, so he will be the ideal person to put the imperious curse on, because Harry trusts him: in other words, I think Voldemort will try and control Ron. After that, Ron will definitely become an Auror and try to rise to great heights, maybe even become a professional Quidditch player.

Hermione will be angry that they are leaving Hogwarts because she loves work, but she will go with Harry to help him and be their "brains". She will also find some useful spells along the way. She will help Harry prepare to fight Voldemort, she will make a few of her own calculations.

Harry and Hermione will not end up as boyfriend and girlfriend because there is not that kind of love between them. Also Hermione is already in love with Victor Crumb and Harry is already in love with Ron's sister Ginny.

I think they will all become Aurors to hunt down the last Death Eaters, and stop them bringing back Voldemort again.

Sue Townsend
Novelist

Harry said, "So it was a psychotic episode brought on by my excessive and protracted skunk habit?"

"Mostly," said the psychiatrist, "though you also had issues relating to parental dysfunction."

"So I have parents?" checked Harry.

"Yes, Daphne and Derek Potter. Lovely people, they came to see you every Sunday afternoon."

Harry looked out of the office window at the real world beyond the secure unit. It looked grey and dreary, and the apparently sane people on the pavements had the dislocated look of robots. If that's the real world, they can stick it up their arses, thought Harry. Then he shook the psychiatrist's hand, trousered his discharge papers and hurried away.

He managed to evade his parents, who were waiting for him in the blue Mondeo in the car park, and headed for the town in search of excitement and a couple of ounces of serious skunk.

Sue Upton
Senior editor, The Leaky Cauldron.org (leakynews.com)

"Mystery, Mayhem and Magical Mischief all due in an exciting memoir this fall!" Hermione sighed as she put down her copy of the Daily Prophet, which had yet another special issue on the events at Godric's Hollow (Boy Who Lived Relives His Triumph over You Know Who: Special Ten Year Commemorative Edition!) She turned to check on her husband Ron, who was snoring gently in a chair, holding a sleeping baby Luna. The others were playing a game of Quidditch at the Burrow. Dean and Seamus went swooping by on their brooms, followed by peals of laughter from Fleur and Ginny who were poring over a Muggle bridal magazine, as Ginny was furiously taking notes. Over in the garden, Neville was deep in concentration studying a curious snapping plant as he prepared his herbology lectures for the upcoming session at Hogwarts. As Hermione picked up her quill to resume writing, she winced as yet another bludger went hurling through the upstairs window, which was promptly met with howls of "Fred, George come here this instant!" from Molly Weasley. Chuckling to herself as some things never change, her smile faded as she unrolled the parchment before her and began the most difficult task of her revision of Hogwarts, a History: the chapter on the death of Lord Voldemort at the hands of her friend Harry Potter.

Marina Warner
Cultural critic

It was Speech Day, the last day of term, and the Great Hall was packed to the rafters, the temperature and excitement mounting furiously. The choir had sung a medley, and some young Slytherins had staged "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (Lupin Minor amazingly convincing in the title role). It was Hermione's turn to do her best for Gryffindor. She'd always been a dab hand at dead ringers; her rendering of Dame Helen Mirren as the Queen was pitch-perfect. Everyone was in stitches when suddenly, before the applause for Hermione's act had died away, Harry was there. The promised moment had come: Harry was to speak!

He was clutching one of the cups he had won in one hand and his Quidditch broom in the other, and from his shoulders hung a strange cloak of many colours. But otherwise he looked different - or at least everyone said so afterwards, when it all turned out as it did.

Without even half a smile to acknowledge the vast and rapt assembly, Harry began, in his best old luvvy quaver:

"Old chums of Hogwarts playing fields and spires,

You tripping Quidditch gamesters of the skies,

Who chased the speeding snitch on flying brooms,

Battled with Dementors, Muggles, Hallows, and ghouls,

And got all tangled up in Voldemort's sticky webs,

I have voyaged to the edge of the abyss and felt his venom

Leak inside my brain.

[here his voice grew stronger, sterner]

All this strong magic

I here abjure; but for my last enchantment,

I've tweaked my DNA, had my eyes lasered,

and worked a charm of surgeon's craft on my scar.

So I now set you free, my loyal Owl,

bag up my gear, toss cups, badges, certificates, and prizes all,

For Oxfam to collect. I'll break my trusty stick

[here he broke his broom, snap, across his knee]

Cast off my cloak, and throw away my specs

[here he flung them both to the stage]

And declare like the wise Achilles who when asked

What life he most desired if given a second chance,

Replied, 'Oh! To be an ordinary man!'

So now I quit the stage to hide among you all."

Everyone was laughing at first, though when he broke the broom, many groaned, the illusion was so perfect. Some were even admiring his new look - contacts suited him, they thought. But how wrong they were, and the laughter soon faded, because they realised the solemn truth that Harry, Harry Potter, the Harry everyone knew, had melted among them and was no longer anywhere to be found.

After Harry ...

For wizard fantasy

Ursula K Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea series. For Harry take Ged, arrogant, gifted and ignorant of the huge responsibilities he carries; and instead of Hogwarts, there's the whole of Earthsea with its rational magic to inhabit.

For Gothic lovers

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast puts Hogwarts in the shade with its labyrinthine edifice, and the characters are every bit as scary. It's as wordy, too.

For science fiction/fantasy

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet offers fantastic techno-created adventure in cities that roll along the bottom of the dried-up seabed devouring each other.

For historical fantasy

Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase launches a long sequence of novels set in a Victorianesque but non-industrial Britain already linked to Europe by a Channel tunnel through which wolves roam freely.

For boarding-school fiction

Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings Goes to School introduces Jennings and Darbishire, who stay the same age, in the same form and at the same school through over 25 titles.

For those ready to take the next step

Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor launches a powerful series of stories that take its characters through love, war, jealousy and fate among the hidden tribes and warrior classes of Japan.

For adventure addicts

James Bond began his derring-do at Eton in Charlie Higson's SilverFin and sequels. A school with as many arcane rituals as Hogwarts, it is a springboard for recognisable but sexed-down 007 adventures.

For the next big thing

Pirates, football and dying teenagers are all vying to replace fantasy. Justin Somper's Vampirates books do the first gruesomely, Mal Peet's Keeper adds magical realism to the familiar motives of the glorious game, and a dying teenager provides the pivot for Sharon Dogar's Waves, a story of love and loss.

For something short and sweet for a change

Frank Cottrell Boyce's Millions is charming, original and all about saints.

For something completely different

Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now gives a vision of an arcadia and dystopia in one dramatic story.

· Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for £15.99 with free UK p&p, call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop