We'd be remiss if we didn't credit some supporting players in this the ultimate year of Potter, notably audiobook master Jim Dale, the only man in the world whose claim to have read every word of all seven books is factually provable; producer David Heyman, who has managed the rare feat of making a movie series that has improved with time (director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg's distillation of the gargantuan Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this year was particularly adroit); and Daniel Radcliffe, who has turned out to be as creditable an embodiment of Harry as anyone could wish. But we're sure they'd admit they owe it all to Jo Rowling. ''J.K.,'' by the way, is the remnant of her British publisher's fear that boys might not want to read an adventure book by a woman, an idea that truly does seem to belong to a previous century.

And now, perhaps we'll leave her alone for a while. Rowling has said that she's working on a couple of new ideas — one for children, one not. ''The idea of just wandering off to a café with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for a while is just bliss,'' she remarked in July. So if you happen to be walking by a coffeehouse in Scotland anytime soon and you spot a 42-year-old blond woman with a pen, a pad, and an expression of intense concentration, do her a favor and don't interrupt her. She knows what she's doing. All is well.

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