Harry Potter and the fear of the deathly plot spoilers

BALTIMORE - Lisa Miller arrived later than she should have for the midnight release of

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

on July 16, 2005 - a slip-up she rues to this day.

It took about 20 minutes for Miller, 26, to get inside the London bookstore where she bought the sixth book in J.K. Rowling's juggernaut fantasy series. But before she had the novel in hand, a crucial plot point was ruined for her.

"Some 'lovely' person drove past where we were queuing and shouted the spoiler of who died in 'HBP,' " Miller wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press. "It was so horrible to think of it being true that even when I read the book, I still held out hope that they were making it up!"

Pranksters pulled similar stunts worldwide. In Dallas, a drive-by spoilsport yelled, "Snape kills Dumbledore!" to fans gathered outside a Barnes & Noble. A blurry, shaky video of the verbal assault can be found on YouTube.

Now, as the July 21 release of the seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, approaches, fans who have waited the better part of a decade to find out the ultimate fate of Harry and his friends and nemeses are taking no chances. [Weekend will feature the Harry Potter book on July 20.]

But how far do they have to go? Must they close their eyes, cover their ears, and scream "LALALALALALALA"?

Pretty much.

In fact, if you want to get in touch with a rabid Harry Potter fan on the weekend of July 21-22, you might be out of luck. Readers are planning media blackouts - no computers, no cell phones, no TV, no radio. And if that's not enough, they're threatening to get physical.

"I'll beat the crap out of the person who spoils it for me," Pritthish Chakraborty wrote in an e-mail. Chakraborty, 17, who runs a fan Web site, Harry Potter Beyond, in his native Bangladesh, was spoiled two years ago when a "friend" sent a picture message to his cell phone of the page describing Dumbledore's death.

Many fans don't want to give up the excitement and camaraderie of a midnight release party, but they know they're putting themselves at risk.

"We advise people - I know this is terrible - to bring headphones to the book release and put them on as they leave the store so they're not subject to the idiot across the street screaming the end to them," said Melissa Anelli, Webmaster of the Leaky Cauldron, a prominent Harry Potter fan site.

Miller learned her lesson. She's forgoing the conspicuous bookstore gathering in favor of home delivery and instant seclusion.

"I'm not going to go to a midnight store opening, entirely due to spoilers," Miller wrote. "I'm going to have my book delivered first thing on the 21st, head round to my fellow Potter nutter friend's flat, and we're going to avoid all media until we've finished reading it!"

Anelli posted a manifesto outlining the Leaky Cauldron's strict no-spoilers policy that drew the praise of Rowling herself. Addressing those who might want to give away the ending, Anelli wrote: "We own pitchforks, hot wax and feathers. And we're not afraid to use them."

The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet, another high-profile fan site, will regulate everything that gets posted in the days leading to and immediately following the release.

When Mugglenet does start allowing discussion of the ending on its forums, readers will have to navigate through several warnings. The Leaky Cauldron might ban talk about the final chapters for six months.

But there are many ways spoilers can strike. The Harry Potter Automated News Aggregator was besieged two years ago by new members, many of whom picked "Snape kills Dumbledore" as their user name, said Jeff Guillaume, the site's editor in chief.

"They were just determined to spoil it for everybody else. We call them the worst kind of Muggles [non-magic folk]. Most of them are not even Harry Potter fans," Guillaume said. "People do it for this perverted pleasure, I guess."

Scholastic Inc., the book's American publisher, has taken unprecedented security measures to make sure none of the 12 million copies from the initial printing leak out before the publication date.

Clearly, the pressure to remain unspoiled has never been greater.

"It's really the big question about whether Harry will die," Guillaume said. "I really would prefer not to know that."