When the last battle was over and the last secrets of the seven-book, 17-year journey were spilled, Jo Rowling did what grieving, grateful and emotionally exhausted people do: she ransacked the minibar.
She'd known from the start that Harry Potter would survive his ordeal; the question was how she would handle her own. This time a year ago, she was holed up on deadline in the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh to escape the bedlam at home, writing the climactic chapter in which her hero walks into the dark forest to give his life for those he loves. And while she knew that all would be well in the end, "I really was walking him to his death, because I was about to finish writing about him," she says. It's her favorite chapter in her favorite book — but when she finished, "I just burst into tears and couldn't stop crying. I opened up the minibar and drank down one of those pathetic little bottles of...
