Harry's finale caught in intrigue

IF you are the type of person who absolutely cannot wait another day to find out what happens to Harry Potter, well, don't come looking here.

IF you are the type of person who absolutely cannot wait another day to find out what happens to Harry Potter, well, don't come looking here.

Go immediately to the internet. If you don't want to know, stop reading now. Photographs of what appear to be all 784 or 756 or 768 pages of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, have been widely posted on the web - or so people say.

In what may be a crushing blow to purists, several internet sites also claim to have photographs of the book's epilogue - apparently, it's called Nineteen Years Later - which includes a scene in which an adult Harry and his wife (oh come on, you can guess who it is) tenderly put their son (whose name, they say, is Albus, after Dumbledore) on a train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

As the train choofs out of the station, the adult Harry reaches up and touches his scar. It hasn't ached for years. If true, it's the sweetest ending possible: a happy one, for all. But is it true?

The US publisher of the series, Scholastic, refused yesterday to confirm whether the leaks or photographs were of actual pages of the book.

It could just as easily be a fake, put together by, well, even by the publishers to generate some heat ahead of the official launch of the final book on Saturday.

Local publishers Allen and Unwin similarly refused to confirm a leak.

The book is the seventh and final in a series by billionaire author J.K. Rowling and security is tight. In England, trucks carrying the orders are being tracked by satellite technology to ensure no unscheduled stops are made.

Pallets of books have been rigged with alarms. Workers in some US warehouses have been subjected to searches and are forbidden to take mobile telephones to work.

Rowling will read from the book via webcam from the Natural History Museum in London at the precise moment it is published: 12.01am on Saturday (9.01am AEST).

One blogger has already shown how simple it would be to create a fake book using Photoshop technology. He created a page in under six minutes.