A few weeks later, a burst of life rushed out from the production offices of the new play based on the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

We're getting a book!

An influx of new marketing material spread through social media like a wind spell from the elder wand because of the first words we were allowed to see.

Fans had heard rumblings about the play being the 8th story before, but now it was official. It had the most officialest officialness! HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS was not the final story! We were getting an 8th book! The news dropped like a surprise album by Beyonce.

But there was some confusion. It was a book, but apparently not a novelization. They were just giving us the play script.

JKR rushed to Twitter.

The official announcement was that print and digital editions of the script would be available immediately following the world premiere of the play. The first performance was scheduled for Saturday, July 30th, which meant we'd be getting the 8th story on July 31st, Harry's birthday.

As a cynical, graphically minded individual, it was obvious to me that the publishers were capitalizing on the vagueness of the book cover. And to avoid the backlash of fans who were starting to realize that they were being deceived into buying a play script (which would likely be foreign to the eyes of the majority of fans), they released an updated cover image.

While they had to add "Special Rehearsal Edition Script" to the cover, they enlarged J.K. Rowling's name to let us know that she would be the predominant voice in this new book (which, in hindsight, was a problematic decision). Don't forget, publishing houses are businesses first and industry-wide book sales were down 14 percent in print and 25 percent in E-book. They are in this business to make a profit and a new book by JKR was a license to print money. The remaining promotional material that started plastering windows of bookstores and the landing pages of Amazon.com continued to remind potential buyers that this was, in fact, the 8th story. Which worked swimmingly.

We were ridiculously excited and pre-orders were breaking records.

Because HARRY POTTER IS BACK!

Now, although we were all a bit loony over the prospects of an 8th story, we needed to keep our excitement in check. It wasn't a novelization. But, so what... it was more than enough for the fans who thought we weren't getting anything unless we lived in London's West End!

And check it out! There's our new trio! Jack Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany, hard at work on HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD!

With the dulcet, melodic echoes of "the 8th story" ringing in my ears, I couldn't help but be reminded of an interview I'd seen from a year prior when the Today show's Matt Lauer asked JKR, who had been somewhat in hiding at the time, if she'd been out of the public sphere because she was working on a follow-up to DEATHLY HALLOWS. Her response, and I think this goes to her state of mind during that initial acceptance of a new play, was as follows:

"I'm afraid I haven't been writing the next Harry Potter. Well, you know, I keep saying that I feel I've wrapped Harry's story up and you gotta know when to... Look, I've always, I have always said, 'Never say never'-well not, 'Never say never.' I've always said, I'm not gonna say 'I definitely won't' because I don't see why I should say that. But I think Harry Potter 8, as in, what happened next to Harry, Ron and Hermione... I don't think that's going to happen."

But... hang on a second? We are getting "Harry Potter 8". And from all accounts, Rowling had given this interview when she was already in the process of developing the play with Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender in secret. That told me, without a shred of doubt, that the original concept had nothing to do with Harry's adult life. That the play really was going to explore a younger, orphaned Harry living with the Dursleys. So, why the change of heart?

The only logical conclusion I could draw was that it must have had something to do with the introduction of Tiffany and Thorne. And if they had been willing to go in a new direction with the plot, could fans still expect sensitivity, intensity, and intimacy"that would explore a side of Harry that hadn't been seen before"? If the entire vision had been changed, what else no longer applied from that original concept? Is it still"not going to be a big special effects play"? Could the plot still be categorized as"an intimate personal drama about the boy who lived under the stairs"?

I didn't know if I should be concerned. We were all so excited about what was to come. It was just... despite the hype, I was uneasy.

Maybe I was being cynical. Maybe it came from an authorial knack for picking up on a good example of foreshadowing. But something felt off, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Like Harry, I felt as if I was seeing signs of the Grim every time we got a new glimpse into the development of the play.

And while I tried my best to join in with the positive thinking and optimism, knowing that it all did not end, I started to miss the time when the world of Harry Potter was entirely JKR's vision. Yes, there were occasional missteps, but she rarely did us wrong in the books. More importantly, there was a time when it felt right to her to look at the closing punctuation of a paragraph and type THE END. She had once decided to finish the story. And that, in those moments, to her, it was enough. All was well.

I longed to return to that time, just for a bit. Then an ember of faith started to warm within my chest, like when I used to open a new book with all the expectancy of a young man longing for dreams and mysteries, of magic spells and daring adventures. And, once again, I started to have confidence that if Jo wanted to return us to Harry's story, it was for a good reason.

Unfortunately, that warm feeling didn't last very long. While attempting to cast a spell of eagerness on the fans for the approaching world building for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, JKR's charm inadvertently misfired, forcing her foot to reenter her mouth. And the stubbornness returned.

DANG IT!