The Case For The Return of Harry Potter

Added on 13 October 2008

These are grim times, with the financial world on the verge of collapse. Two years ago, when banks were handing out mortgages to anyone who asked, when credit card companies were upping limits on a whim and people were running up enormous personal debt, when house prices were skyrocketing to absurdly over-priced levels and financial companies all over the globe were trading wildly in loans and debt, who could possibly have foreseen that it was all going to come crashing to a disastrous halt?

Apart from EVERYBODY ON PLANET EARTH.

There is a solution however, and it doesn’t require huge investment in the banking world, and it doesn’t require Gordon Brown to swan around the planet, using anti-terror laws against other governments, as if he wasn’t one of the ones to blame for it all in the first place. The solution rests in the hands of one person, and one person alone.

What the world needs now is the return of Harry Potter. It needs the alternative wizarding world into which it can escape; it needs the boost to the markets and economy that would come from the knowledge that the highest grossing literary series of all time was coming back; in short, the world needs to know that there is a future.

Ask yourself this question: When did you first hear the term credit crunch? The answer: July 2007. Now, ask yourself another question. When did the Harry Potter series come to an end? Do you feel the hairs standing on the back of your neck? Yep, July 2007. The parallels are almost supernatural.

This isn’t asking some tired old group of rock stars to reform; it’s not forcing people who used to work together but who now hate each other to get back into the same room; it isn’t trying to revive some failed literary maestro who did his best work between the wars. This is asking a woman at the very peak of her creative genius to continue the work which has enthralled the planet.

The country, and the world, needs JK Rowling. What is required is for a group of men in suits from the government to rock up at JK’s Perthshire two up, two down and put the following case to her. (Well, when I say men in suits, it would probably be better if we had a group of Dumbledores rather than a collective of Cornelius Fudges.)

·  In these dark days, people need the boost that would come from the news that Harry would be back.
·  Even though it would be a couple of years before that first book of the next seven would appear, the knowledge that it was coming would have a remarkably positive effect on the psyche of the planet. It is fundamental to human nature to need something to look forward to.
·  Markets would rise, consumer and business confidence would suddenly start to recover.
·  With another series of seven books, output of original HP novels and motion picture events would be guaranteed until almost 2020. The financial markets could look forward with confidence.
·  We all know that JK did not leave that Resurrection Stone lying lost in the forest for nothing. She left the possibility that the whole thing could one day be revived. She may have thought that it would be something for the future, a project for fifteen or twenty years time. But no, she must be persuaded. The time is now.
·  The entire future of mankind depends on JK Rowling writing more Harry Potter books.
·  No pressure.
·  If she refuses, the government might like to introduce an act of Parliament - they could call it The Return Of Harry Potter Act (2008) - forcing her to write another seven books. (If the Act doesn’t work with JK, the government could tag on an anti-terrorism clause and use it to imprison small children who hadn’t brought back their library books.)

The world stands on the brink of cataclysm. One woman has the power in her hands to save civilisation from bankruptcy and moral ruin.