Harry Potter 7 gets a title!

As countless websites have noted by now, the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series now has a title. You can play a game of hangman at author J.K. Rowling’s website to find out what the title is, or you can simply keep reading this post.

If you want to play that game at Rowling’s website, here is how you can find it, according to Variety:

If you go to her home page, click on the eraser and you will be taken to a room — you’ll see a window, a door and a mirror.

In the mirror, you’ll see a hallway. Click on the farthest doorknob and look for the Christmas tree. Then click on the center of the door next to the mirror and a wreath appears. Then click on the top of the mirror and you’ll see a garland.

Look for a cobweb next to the door. Click on it, and it will disappear. Now, look at the chimes in the window. Click on the second chime to the right, and hold it down. The chime will turn into the key, which opens the door. Click on the wrapped gift behind the door, then click on it again and figure out the title yourself by playing a game of hangman.

Or, to learn the title, you can keep reading this post.

Are you still there?

Are you sure you don’t want to play the game?

Yeah, me neither. Life is too short.

So here it is.

The new book will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — which should keep the franchise’s Christian fans speculating.

FWIW, the word “Hallows” here seems to be a noun, yet the online dictionaries I have checked — including Merriam-Webster and American Heritage — have it listed as a verb, only.

Of course, in older forms of English, the noun “Hallows” is another word for “Saints” — hence “All Hallows Eve”, or what we now call “Halloween”, takes place the night before “All Saints Day“.

So … are there “saints” in the Harry Potter world? Does this title refer to “deathly saints” — e.g., saints who are deadly, or saints who are already dead, or some such thing? Or is this a reference to some utterly, completely new invention of Rowling’s?

John Granger had a theory that each title referred to the book’s central metaphor for Christ, or something like that, but he proposed this theory after Book 4, and I don’t know if the following books — especially Book 6 — have conformed to that theory. At any rate, I’ll be curious to see whether Book 7 fits his thesis.