So. Scans of the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows have reached the internet. If anyone so much as HINTS that any character so much as SNEEZES in this book, I will disembowel them with a pair of gardening shears.

THIS JOURNAL IS SPOILER-FREE AND WILL REMAIN SO UNTIL THE 27th, A WEEK AFTER THE BOOK IS RELEASED. If any spoilers are posted in the comments, I will track the offender’s IP, hunt them down, and rip off their nose with my teeth and EAT IT. With OREGANO. If you wish to link to a post/article/whatever that has spoilers in the comments, please CLEARLY MARK IT so!

In the meantime, delight in the fact that fans can get a portion of the book read aloud by JK Rowling at the time its released in Britain. That’s 5+ hours in advance for us colonials! Heidi has the scoop in her LJ.

And speaking of the book, I dreamed that one of my computer science professors from Penn was heading an effort to get the entire book scanned and OCRed, and he’d gotten all but chapters 2-5 by the time I heard about it. I had to decide whether or not to start reading the book early, but I woke up before I made up my mind.

I’m not sure what I’d do if actually confronted with this situation in my waking life. I’d definitely be tempted to start reading it early, as I desperately don’t want to be spoiled, but I also want to be able to experience the excitement and the joy with all my fellow Potter fans as the hours tick away on Friday night. Of course, I realized a few days afterward that I narrowly avoided getting spoiled at the book 6 release party. One of the jackasses who cruised bookstores in his car shouting “SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE” was at the bookstore I went to! It was only because I was one of the first in line (thanks to my costume) that I missed him. Now that I’m going to be at a major New York bookstore, I feel the stakes are significantly higher…