Age: 11
Occupation: Schoolboy wizard.
Favourite activities: Learning spells and playing Quidditch (hockey on airborne broomsticks, since you asked) at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Sounds harmless to me. How wrong you are. The terrible truth behind those cute round glasses and bestselling adventures is that Harry turns out to be the living, breathing spawn of the Antichrist, the archlord of evil, Lucifer himself!
This isn't another dodgy Bloomsbury publicity stunt, is it? Far from it. A particularly perceptive group of South Carolinan parents have noticed that what appears to be a gripping, well-written series of childrens' books actually possesses "a serious tone of death, hate, lack of respect and sheer evil", in the words of one mum, Elizabeth Mounce.
What does the young wizard himself make of all this? We'll have to wait for the next book, Harry Potter and the Paranoid Reactionaries, to find out. In the meantime, creator JK Rowling, currently on a US book tour, points out: "I have yet to meet a single child who's told me that they want to be a satanist, or is particularly interested in the occult because of the book."
Sounds fair enough. Poor innocent fool! Satan's messengers are hardly going to admit to their role, are they? Remember all those witches in Salem, Massachusetts?
But I thought the whole point of that incident was that... Yes, yes, never mind. Back to the subject. The South Carolina Board of Education has announced it will be reviewing the use of the books in the state's schools.
Evidence for the prosecution: Harry is haunted by the evil Lord Voldemort, aka "He Who Must Not be Named", and Rowling says her books are going to get grimmer. "There will be deaths," she muttered darkly last week.
Evidence for the defence: It was revealed last July that the character of Harry is based on Ian Potter, a 32-year-old damp-proofing contractor from outside Bristol with no recorded satanic affiliations.
Not to be confused with: Aleister Crowley, the Blair Witch.
