Apparently there’s this kids book coming out very soon that’s become quite popular with older readers who have reading disabilities. I think it’s called Harry Potter — wait! — I kid, I kid. Please don’t set my computer on fire. I’ve just never managed to become involved in the whole phenomenon.

I do however have an opinion on young Mr. Potter’s coming death, or non death. It’s too late for pleading, I know, but Mrs. Rowling, I really hope you haven’t tried to finish off Harry by making him the eight-millionth lame Christ figure in popular entertainment of recent memory. I just — I’m bored of it, all right? It always seems forced and it just doesn’t rate. If I hear that Harry Potter so much as gets a sniffle that miraculously disappears when all hope is lost, I’ll be very disappointed.

You seem like a fairly smart lady, you should know that a magic trick isn’t a mystery and the connections it makes to real mystery — when a surface gloss of motion, the form-filling Christ-making of recent popular heroes (unusual initiation, check, finds strange new friends, check, one of them is suspicious, check, appears to die, check) — are only paper chains.

I hope Harry doesn’t turn out to be deathly hollow.

That said, remember when Keanu Reeves came back to life at the end of that Matrix movie? That was like, so cool.

More: Here’s a link to a short AP article that relates Harry’s impending doom (or not) to other traditions.