It was bound to happen, and I suppose the only thing I'm wondering is that it took this long for some would-be hacker to try to get into Bloomsbury's computer systems and retrieve the manuscript of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS - if you believe, of course, that such a thing took place and the hacker wasn't trying to draw attention to himself and make shit up. I'm leaning towards that direction solely because I first heard of the story via press release and then when I followed the link to the posting in question (because I'm a spoiler kinda girl, what can I say) my skepticism increased after reading the hacker's alleged explanation: "we did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth [sic] Ratzinger. He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs [sic]of our earth to Neo Paganism faith." Perhaps more accurate, if there's any accuracy to be had, is the follow-up reason: "we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring."

But now that Reuters has gone and picked up the story, voila! Legitimacy, or at least the fanning flames of speculation. There's the obligatory "no comment" from Bloomsbury while Kyle Good, a spokesman for Scholastic, would not say whether the posting was accurate, but did warn readers to be sceptical about anything on the Web that claims to have inside information on the book's plot. "There is a whole lot of junk flying around," she said. "Consider this one more theory."