Harry Potter is back, and he's setting sales records again. Last time around, the Boy Who Lived managed to save both the world and the publishing industry, as bookshops opened their doors at midnight and festooned their shelves with fake cobwebs for each new sequel.
And with JK Rowling's latest book, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, set to be released on Sunday Australian time, it's almost time for booksellers everywhere to dust off that fake dust again.
Since we farewelled grown-up Harry on Platform 9¾ at Kings Cross station, there hasn't been a franchise like it, which is why Warner Bros and Rowling's publishers have been begging her for more. Now, nine years after Deathly Hallows, she's delivering a deluge of Potter.
The Rowling-penned movie Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them hits our screens later this year, with Eddie Redmayne playing the author of one of Harry's textbooks, but Cursed Child is the really bold creative undertaking. Scoffing at the critics who disliked the epilogue with Harry, his pals and their kids, Rowling has chosen to push the story further forwards with a tale that could easily be called Hogwarts: The Next Generation.
The play has taken over one of London's largest theatres for a two-parter (written with Jack Thorne) that's reminiscent of Shakespeare's Henry IV, but the printed version (for that's what's on offer, not a novelisation) is likely to be the year's biggest-selling book. Clearly the bespectacled wizard remains as popular in Muggleworld as he's routinely ostracised in his own.
But while the notion of more Potter will thrill fans and accountants alike, it's made me nervous. So often a return to a much-loved series results in a mediocre effort that tarnishes the original story. George Lucas did that with the Star Wars prequels, and repeated the effort with the woeful Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, while the less said about Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy the better.
Sometimes, an author can resurrect a character by popular demand – literally, in the case of Sherlock Holmes – to great acclaim.
But more often than not, comebacks are a case of more is less.
I'd hate for that to happen to Harry Potter. Despite already being 20 when the first book was released, I eagerly devoured the last five books on the day of their release, as well as queueing up to watch the movies. (And what of it? Surely Game of Thrones has made it OK for grown-ups to love fantasy, especially if there's an escalating body count.)
Few authors have been under as much pressure as was heaped onto Rowling for Deathly Hallows, arguably the biggest sequel since the New Testament. But she delivered an almost flawless final instalment, weird afterlife Kings Cross Station notwithstanding. Can she possibly do it again, years later, with grown-up characters and without Voldemort? (Who, I very much hope, is not coming back. Once was quite enough.)
The portents have been discouraging. Rowling has a disconcerting habit of tinkering with the world she's created, from outing Professor Dumbledore (which I like in theory, but should have happened in the text, not in an audience Q&A), to expressing regret that she didn't pair up Harry and Hermione, which is the Potter equivalent of George Lucas saying that Leia should have ended up with Chewie instead of Han.
The good news is that many early reviews, including Latika Bourke's published here on Tuesday, say she's delivered again. There's a classic Rowling twist, apparently (please, nobody secretly be Voldemort) and despite the handing on of the torch to young Albus Severus and pals, the magic (sorry) still seems to be there.
But even if she's nailed this first return of adult Potter, the risk of stuffing up her own creation grows with each fresh instalment. The financial pressure to bring the crew back will only intensify after she's managed to pull it off once.
It's better to leave people wanting more than to disappoint. And while I'm now desperate to see Cursed Child, and considering some Muggle equivalent of robbing Gringotts to get to London to see it, I'm even more desperate for Rowling to leave the series on a high note.
It might be smart to let him fade gently into retirement before pumping out more stories becomes like squeezing blood from a philosopher's stone.
Dominic Knight is a broadcaster and founder of The Chaser.
