Rowling: ‘Harry’s story comes to a definite end’

Author touched by loss
Rowling was profoundly affected by the death of her own mother from multiple sclerosis in 1990 at the age of 45.

“My mum died six months into writing (the books), and I think that set the central theme — this boy dealing with loss,” Rowling says.

And she makes no apologies for exposing children to death.

“I think children are very scared of this stuff even if they haven’t experienced it, and I think the way to meet that is head-on,” she says. “I absolutely believe, as a writer and as a parent, that the solution is not to pretend things don’t happen but to examine them in a loving, safe way.”

NBC exclusive AP Author J.K. Rowling will sit down with NBC's Meredith Vieira in an exclusive TV interview. For the first time, she will talk about the conclusion of the series. Watch for coverage on "Today" Thursday, July 26 and Friday July 27, on "Dateline NBC" on July 29, and on MSNBC.com. More from TODAYShow.com's Wild About Harry Section Click here to preview TODAY in Scotland, Rowling's hometown

Rowling says her success has been “the experience of a lifetime.” But it also has brought an intense level of pressure, scrutiny and criticism. In the United States, her book tours have attracted thousands of screaming children, but also death threats. Some Christians have called for the books to be banned, claiming they promote witchcraft.

But it’s only now that she realizes just how intense the pressure has been at the center of the Harry Potter whirlwind.

“I was very lonely with it,” she says. “It’s not like being in a pop group, where at least there would be three or four other people who knew what it was like to be on the inside. Only I knew what it was like to be generating this world as it became bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more people were invested in it.

Author proud of final book
After producing a book a year between 1997 and 2000, Rowling took a break. There was a three-year gap between the fourth book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” published in 2003. During the gap, Rowling met and married Neil Murray, a Scottish doctor. They live in Edinburgh with their children David, 4, and Mackenzie, 2, as well as Jessica, Rowling’s daughter from her first marriage to a Portuguese journalist.

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Rowling now seems reconciled to her success. She says she lives a normal life and is rarely recognized in the street, although her graystone town house on a tree-lined street is protected by an 8-foot stone wall and iron security gates. Like the neighborhood — a leafy literary enclave that’s also home to crime novelist Ian Rankin and “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” writer Alexander McCall Smith — the house exudes solid affluence, rather than extravagance.

The modestly sized lawn holds a soccer net and a colorful plastic jumble of children’s toys. In the tidy family room are crowded bookshelves, an aquarium, photo albums and board games — the trappings of any middle-class family’s life.

Rowling predicts that some of Harry’s fans will dislike “Deathly Hallows.” But she is proud of it. “The final book is what it was always supposed to be, and so I feel very at peace with that fact,” she says.

As for the future, she says she has no plans.

“I can never write anything as popular again,” she said. “Lightning does not strike in the same place twice.

“I’ll do exactly what I did with Harry — I’ll write what I really want to write, and if it’s something similar, that’s OK, and if it’s something very different, that’s OK.

“I just really want to fall in love with an idea again, and go with that.”

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