Rowling dreads final Potter book

JK Rowling is dreading beginning work on the final Harry Potter book later this year because she has no idea what she will do when it is completed.

The hugely successful Scottish author is sure she will feel a sense of achievement when she wraps up the seventh installment of the magical series - but she will miss creating new adventures for the young wizard.

She says: "Even though I have known it is coming for the past 15 years, I have known that the series would end, I think it will still be a shock.

"Conversely, obviously there will be a sense of achievement… I suppose there will be some benefits to not writing Harry Potter books any more. So it is about fifty-fifty really.

"I get asked a lot whether I would write another series, I don't know because the thing that interests me about Harry Potter was not the fact that it was a series, it was just the story and the subject matter, so I could do a one-off, could do a series, I don't know."

Rowling's sixth installment - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - was released at midnight on Saturday and has already beaten sales records by shifting a staggering seven million copies in America in the space of 24 hours.