Petition to keep Harry Potter going

<i>Harry Potter</i> author JK Rowling. Photo / Reuters

Harry Potter fans are starting up a one million-name petition begging author J.K. Rowling not to end the schoolboy wizard's adventures.

The seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is published on July 21 and Rowling says it is her last.

She has let slip that two characters will die - and speculation abounds that one of them will be Harry himself.

But fans say even that should not prevent Rowling from writing an eighth book - insisting that, in a world of magic and wizardry, Harry could be brought back from the dead.