I’m not going to link to the article directly, for obvious reasons, but it’s on the Inquirer if you want to find it.
Someone is claiming to have hacked into Bloomsbury and got hold of HP7. They have posted some significant details.
Now colour me cynical, but could this just be a marketting ploy? Something to remind people that the book is out next month? Consider that it’s made me post this thread.
Please can we avoid discussing the specific plot contents of the alleged leak.
First, they don’t need a marketing trick like this to get attention. HP7 is getting the biggest send off in publishing history and trying to get attention by pretending to leak information would just be silly.
I’d be very dubious about the claim but it’s not impossible. If someone did obtain a copy of the text then they have several options for feeding their ego which are better than posting on some plot points on the web. That’s easily faked; large chunks of text, seeding the whole thing to bittorrent sites, or providing the text to bootleggers who could make a fortune printing and selling copies weeks in advance would be a lot harder to reasonably fake.
What kind of lowlife would leak details of a book that people find real joy from reading and uncovering the story for themselves? If it’s real, they’ll track them down and chain them to a wall.
I suppose one way to determine the veracity would be whether betting shops still take bets on who - if anyone - dies.
I doubt it. The actual message (which I’ll refrain from linking to not to give away anything- even if it does turn out to be false) features a reference to Pope Benedict XVI’s comment (before he became Pope) that Harry Potter was harmful to young Christians, as well as a link to an article about how most Muslims don’t really know what the Koran says (of course, the same thing could be said about most Christians and the Bible, but that’s another debate entirely). If this “Gabriel” is an actual person, he is one of those people who believes that Harry Potter opens the gateway to witchcraft and Satanism. I don’t think the publishers would want people to think about that, or post a link that denounces another religion.
I remember reading an article saying that British betting houses were so sure that Harry was going to die, that they stopped taking bets on which character would die and were taking bets on who kills Harry instead. (I can tell you that “Gabriel” claims that Harry survives, so if it is true, a lot of bettors will be angry at the change.)
From here:
Copies, I can understand, especially so close to the release date, but drafts? Doesn’t J.K. Rowling need to go through the editing process before she gets to the publisher’s house?
I started another thread on this before I saw this one. Hopefully the mods will shut mine down but I’ll paste some of my OP here.
“Gabriel” appears to be – or at least is pretending to be – some kind of religious nutbag who thinks Harry Potter is evil. Here is what he gives as his motive:
So yeah, nutcase, but I think it’s strange that Scholastic won’t comment on whether the spoilers are true. I think refusing to deny them gives me more pause than I would normally have about dismissing some blowhard hacker’s claim on the internet. After reading the spoilers, though (and after reading Gabriel’s stated motives), I think the spoilers are probably bullshit.
For anyone who is interested, this is the link to Gabriel’s post at Insecure.org.
And these are the alleged spoilers:
Looking over the spoilers again, I’m even more convinced they’re bullshit. They just don’t sound anything like what Rowling would do with these characters and the denouement contains no real information.
I kind of wish Scholastic would just SAY the spoilers are bullshit but maybe they think the publicity is good. I don’t know.
Looking over the spoilers again, I’m even more convinced they’re bullshit. They just don’t sound anything like what Rowling would do with these characters and the denouement contains no real information.
I kind of wish Scholastic would just SAY the spoilers are bullshit but maybe they think the publicity is good. I don’t know.
Having read the supposed “spoilers,” I don’t believe it for a second. The plot as described would make no sense given the direction of the story across all previous installments, and be extremely unsatisfying to fans. Honestly, if Rowling turned in such a manuscript I think Scholastic would tell her to go home and come back when she had the real book written. (The first few days of sales would be great no matter what was published, yes, but Scholastic has paperback reprints, the future movies, box ssets, etc, to motivate them to make sure the last book is satisfactory.)
I imagine that given their own policies on guarding plot details of the books, they can’t confirm or deny the “spoilers.” But I wonder if their inaction is further proof of the hoax - remember when that guy found a copy of, I think, book 5 early? They came down on him like a ton of bricks. If this was legit, they’d be swarming this hacker.
I wouldn’t do that if I were Scholastic. Then other characters like Raphael or Michael or Azrael can start posting more and more “spoilers” - Harry gets killed! Voldemort becomes headmaster of Hogwarts! Luna marries Draco! and if Scholastic denies all of those eventually the plot is revealed.
If I were them, I would wait until these “spoilers” have more publicity e.g. mentioned in an article in a major newspaper like the L. A. Time before I would bother refuting them.
I’d be very surprised if JKR actually wrote what “Gabriel” alleges. It sounds more to me like this guy is just being a huge tool.
–FCOD
Ok, I just hacked Bloomsbury myself and now I can post the real ending. Don’t look if you don’t want to know.
Harry, Ron and Ginny are meeting at a diner. They’re waiting for Hermione. Harry puts “Don’t Stop Believing” on the jukebox. They order some onion rings. There’s a wizard in a Members Only robe who keeps looking at Harry. Hermione arrives but she has trouble parallel parking her broom. The onion rings arive. The wizard in the Members Only jacket gets up and goes into the bathroom. Hermione finally gets her broom parked. She enters the diner. Harry looks up
Dio, I knew what your “spoiler” was going to be even before clicking your box to confirm it. Well played.
I would have believed you, Diogenes the Cynic, if you had replaced “diner” with “Leaky Cauldron”, “onion rings” with “butter beer”, “Members only” with “Madam Malkin’s” and “Don’t Stop Believing” with “A cauldron full of hot, strong love”
You’re right. I should have made it all more “wizardy.” I suck at parody.
Please. We all know that at in HPDH I am introduced as a character and through my heroic exploits win the love and admiration of Tonks.
Hey,* I* didn’t know that. Way to spoil the ending for me. 
(Why Tonks, out of interest?)
Nymphadora. Waggles eyebrow suggestively
Shapeshifter. Need I say more?
Tonks is the only cool female character over the age of consent.
Well, and under the age of menopause. McGonagall is pretty cool, too.
Actually, for that matter, Hermione is of age now, too, by the standards of the wizarding community.
As for these alleged spoilers, for what this “Gabriel” character is trying to do, fake spoilers and lies would work just as well as real ones. If people don’t read the book, then they won’t know the spoilers were faked, and if they do, he’s failed in his quest anyway. Meanwhile, regardless of the truth or not of the spoiled plot points, or how the spoiler got them if they are true, Scholastic’s best course of action would be to completely ignore this. Anything else would let out even more information, or at least cost them unnecessary time and effort.