‘Muggles’ delight as latest Harry Potter adventure due

PINTS of butter beer all round, Harry Potter number five is finally on the way.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth among fans at delays to the sequel to the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling is preparing to cast her next spell.

It’s called the Order of the Phoenix and before you can say Avada Kedavra ok it should be in the shops. Well almost. By Christmas we are told, or early 2003 at any rate.

Amid the “indescribable mess” on the desk of her Edinburgh office is a manuscript, “nice, neat, pristine and big,” she said in an interview with the London Times.

As big even as the Goblet of Fire and already readable, needing, she said, only tweaking.

A sign of relief then from Pottermaniacs who feared a nasty court case and the early pangs of pregnancy had stifled her magic muse.

Only this week, a judge in the US threw out the claims of Nancy Stouffer, who said she had first invented the term ‘muggles’ - the name for humans who have no magical powers in the Potter books.

Rowling described herself as ‘relieved - I’m a happy woman.’

Asked if the case had affected her progress, she said: “It has affected it, obviously. Anyone who’s been involved in a court case will know that it’s time consuming, it plays on your mind.

Thankfully, the bad spell ends with the three-year lawsuit. And there’s more good news, albeit on a personal level.

Rowling and her second husband are expecting her second child, due early next year.

Rowling says a lot of the fifth book is written but couldn’t say when it would be ready for publication. A new sorting hat may be on the way and main characters meeting untimely ends have not been ruled out.

“I will say that I have a beginning, a middle and an end - you could read it all the way through and I know a lot of Harry Potter fans will say just to give it to us,” Rowling said.