The only book I ever had to worry about spoilers for was Deathly Hallows, having been much younger and oblivious to the Potter fandom up to then. (The Potter fandom as far as I was concerned consisted of my best friend and her little brother.) When DH came out I avoided all media sources and the internet like the plague.

But I remember right after the sixth book had come out I had already finished reading but my mom hadn't. We were in the doctor's office and she picked up a newspaper article about the book. Within that article it had let go that Dumbledore had died. She freaked...

I stayed off the internet for a week before the DH launch. So I was spoiler free. I bought the book at the midnight release and was walking out the bookstore door, already reading. I had to look up to open the door, and i saw a teenager outside. he was wearing a t-shirt that said Voldemort kills harry, harry comes back to life, harry kills voldemort. I was MAD. I just wanted to punch him in the face. I didn't though. I should have.

Think you had a hard time avoiding spoilers? Check this out: I was writing my second book when Deathly Hallows came out, and knew that if I cracked open Rowling's final tome, I could say good-bye to getting any writing done for anywhere up to a month. So I made a deal with myself: No Potter book until MY book was done. The catch was, I didn't finish my book until the following APRIL, almost NINE MONTHS later. Luckily, her book was worth the wait!

Thank god I was never spoiled. About two weeks leading up to the release of HBP and DH I completely avoided any kind of media that I could. I wouldn't get online, read any kind of newspaper, or watch the news. I just knew something would be spoiled. I had friends (non Potter fans) that would tease me and say they read online what happens, but I'd just yell at them to shut up before they could say anything. I miss having to worry about spoilers...now we all just know everything.

I was never spoiled, luckily, but almost worse is watching someone else be spoiled and not be able to do anything about it. I was talking to a professor and another student once, and we were discussing the 6th book, and I told the professor at the start of the conversation that the other student hadn't finished the book yet, and the stupid woman must not have been listening, and she goes and says, "oh it was so sad when Dumbledore dies." The other girl was so shocked and upset. And I'm standing there trying to take it back, saying "oh no, no, you heard her wrong, he almost dies," or something like that, but of course it didn't work. I felt so horrible for the other girl, but the teacher didn't even care! I was so pissed at her!

I have both spoiled and been spoiled. My brother spoiled OoP for me, but worse is that I spoiled HBP for someone. I was talking to a friend of a friend who had introduced us because she knew we both liked the Harry Potter series. He mentioned at some point that he watched the movies first and then read the books, but he was cute and I was psyched to be talking to a real-live Potter fan, so I totally spaced. So, we were discussing how Michael Gambon was ruining the movies, and I said, "At least we won't have to deal with him anymore soon" and he was like "We won't...?" And I gasped and apologized profusely, but the damage was done.

For HBP and DH I completely avoided fan sites and any news stories for a while in effort to not be spoiled, and took vacation time from work in order to hide until I finished. I'm sure everyone remembers the video where some jerks cruise by a bookstore on the release of HBP shouting "Snape kills Dumbledore!", so I had a pretty strong fear of something like that happening to me at the release of DH. Sure enough, while standing in line outside Barnes & Noble, two guys cruised past and yelled, "Hermione DIES!". I was devastated. I read the book in mortal terror each time Hermione was in danger, which was pretty much constantly. I could accept anyone's death except that of the trio or Ginny or Hagrid. Of course, as you all know, it was a stupid prank. Jo broke my heart, but she didn't smash it.

i don't think i ever got spoiled. the first three books were lent to me by my friend who never gave anything away as she did. starting with GOF i purchased and read the books on the day they were released.

there was a moment, however, during the book launch party of DH. i was torn between lingering or going straight home to start reading AND avoid any possible spoiler (i didn't put it past 'em to yell it out)... but i *had* to stay coz i was a finalist in a contest.

at one point i shushed a group who were loudly discussing (though i didn't clearly understand) what they've read so far. BUT there was one instance when my ears caught someone whine, " HEDWIG DIED?!"... quickly followed by "oh YEAH on page 56...". my eyes widened as i shot them an admonishing look before moving away.

when i got home i shut myself in my room and finished the book the next day. i was still surprised when hedwig died but there was already the anticipation that something would be happening to her...

I took leave before and during the launch of DH, and hid at my in-laws where internet is not part of the daily routine. After an all-night readathon, Harry's first encounter in the woods frightened me so much I made my hubby read the last page to assure or prepare me of the ending. All he said was "everything will be ok, baby".

That is crazy and hilarious!! I have never been spoiled on any of the Harry Potter and I never wanted to be. Thank Goodness. So I was ALWAYS very surprised by all the outcomes in the series. The closest I've ever gotten to being spoiled was from listening to Pottercast and Mugglecast and all their theorizing...alot of which turned out to be true in the last book. That's the closest I've ever come, but I had no idea about all this craziness that went on behind the scenes.

I'm so lucky that I never got spoiled on any of the books. I inadvertently spoiled my best friend though, via a Facebook bumper sticker of all things, and I felt TERRIBLE. Her mom had never let her read the books, so I finally gave her the first one last Christmas, since she was 19 and had been kept on the fringes of our friends' HP discussions for years. She immediately got hooked, but she saw a bumper sticker on my Facebook page before she read book 7 that said "Here lies Dobby, a free elf." I had totally forgotten about it. She freaked out, and I felt so bad.

One thing that made me so happy, though, were the people I know who worked so hard to avoid spoilers. There's a family at my church that is basically best friends with my family, and their kids are kind of like my extra siblings. I think every single person in the family has their own copy of DH because they knew they weren't going to be able to share. Curtis, the youngest, was only 8 when DH came out, but he was determined to read it all by himself. It took him two weeks longer than everyone else, but he finally finished the book, and in all that time my family and his were all very, very careful to keep in mind how far he had read so he didn't get spoiled.

I spoiled myself on both OotP and HBP, but avoided spoilers for DH like the plague!! I'd heard rumors of things for both OotP and HBP on the internet, but really didn't hear/read a lot (on purpose). But while I was reading OotP, I was repeatedly distracted by my younger daughter, whose hamster had decided to play escape-artist the morning before the book was released, and was still running loose in a house with two cats! Needless to say, Daughter was quite upset about the hamster, and kept coming to me all during the night to be reassured that we were doing all we could to make sure the hamster would be okay. Finally, I just had to know who died, b/c I was becoming convinced it was going to be Hagrid and I just needed to know... so I peeked myself. I was *shocked*, and I couldn't understand for ages WHY. When Jo kept saying "it had to happen", I kept wanting her to explain WHY, and of course, she couldn't anyway.

So... in HBP... I peeked before I got out of the store the night of the release party! LOL!! Ok, bad me, I admit!! Dumbledore's death didn't bother me as much as Sirius', though, when I read the book initially, mostly because, to me, Dumbledore's death, and Harry's thinking about it, *FINALLY* made *Sirius'* death make "sense" to me, and I could see what Jo had meant.

I knew there were spoilers around for book 7, but I avoided them completely -- I wanted to know *nothing* about what was coming, even from the people I was reading it with at the time. And so I was just totally amazed and enthralled with how Jo wove it all together in the end. My hubby didn't read the book as soon as some of us did; he read it a bit later in the week. And he kept watching the rest of us as we read, and his observation was: "People are just totally devastated and then they're completely elated, and I can't figure out what happens." *grin* Needless to say, I "made" him read it, too, and then he understood :-)

Oh, the spoilers...I admit to being one of those people who would only read Leaky and Mugglenet before the books came out, but I also read every magazine/newspaper article I could find. I remember when Time printed a few quotes from the book before OotP, and it got me so excited for that book! One of them was Dumbledore's "flighty temptress" line, and I couldn't wait for the book to come out after reading that!

I spoiled OOTP and HBP for myself. I was never interested in fantasy books when I was younger, and thought that Harry Potter would be ridiculous and dumb, so I never read it. My younger brother loved the books, but I expected they would be childish. But when OOTP and HBP came out, everyone was moaning and groaning about the deaths in the books. Since I had no intention of ever reading them, I decided to look and find out who died.

On June 30, 2007, I made one of the smartest decisions of my life. I decided that I would read the Harry Potter books. I made this decision for two reasons: 1) I graduated from college a few weeks earlier and would be starting law school at the end of August, so I wasn't really doing anything else; (2) I knew it was the defining pop-culture item of my generation and I had heard that the final book was coming out soon, so I figured what the heck?

So on June 30, I cracked open SS, and on July 7, I finished HBP. Unfortunately, I felt cheated since I knew of the deaths of Sirius and Dumbledore. So I made sure to avoid all spoilers during the two weeks before DH came out. And I managed to do so. I got my book, locked myself in my room, and didn't come out (except to get some food) until I finished.

I only experienced one spoiler throughout all 7 books, but it was a biggie! I am a late bloomer in the Harry Potter world (I know, I'm sorry) & didn't start with SS until after DH was out. I'd seen all the movies, but that of course is different! A good friend of mine was so happy I was FINALLY reading them. We were discussing what was happening in HBP (I was about half through it), & confused about the chronological order of events, she blurted out how she just couldn't believe it when Dumbledore died! CRIKEY! I about flipped! The saving grace was that I assumed he died from the problem with his hand (like it was cancer-like & progressed). So I was still blind-sided with the way in which Dumbledore lost his life.

My favorite memory on this topic did not actually include any spoilers revealed to me. I was a mere witness to the egregious act.

I was hanging out with my buddy Jimmy at his parent's house, watching a movie, when his younger brother Daniel walks through the door after a long day of work. In Daniel's hand at his side was Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I had already finished it at this point. Jimmy, (who had not read any of the books at all) looks over at Daniel,

"Yo Daniel," he said conversationally, "Bumbledork dies."

Absolutely no couth whatsoever. My eyes, big as saucers darted between the two brothers, anxious to see what might transpire...

Poor Daniel just sighed and set down his book. "Why would you say that to me Jimmy?" He asked at length, in a tone that suggested he had expected nothing less from his brother, and left the room.

I told Jimmy that I couldn't believe he would be so cruel. We both knew that Daniel had been trying with a great deal of success to avoid spoilers on the internet and news. But for some reason Jimmy felt he needed to do the research for him... and I am ashamed to admit, that I was the one who confirmed it for Jimmy earlier that night.

Sorry Daniel. I should have known better...

I am so lucky to have never been spoiled! It also might have something to do with the fact that I lock myself away from the moment that I start the book and don't see anyone outside of my family until I am done, and I also read very fast. I did have to work on the day that DH came out however, and I was scared to death that someone was going to let something slip. But luckily everyone was very careful and didn't let anything slip that they had not already read. We actually had a policy at work that you could not talk about the book unless EVERYONE in ear shot was to that point. I can't remember how many closeted conversations I had talking about what had happened in the book. I have been a fan since before GOF, and it has been incredible!

It's been only 4 years since I first read the Harry Potter books. I started reading them only after the POA film came out in 2004, but I became an instant fan (I knew so many things that even the fans who had been there from the beginning didn't even know, it was weird). Anyway, after POA came out, I read all the books, 1-5, and Half-Blood Prince was my first Midnight Release party. I had been spoiled about Sirius in OOTP thanks to a MovieMagic magazine article. I had been spoiled about Dumbledore thanks to Katie Couric; when she interviewed Jo a couple weeks before the book was released, she said to Jo 'Some people are saying that Dumbledore is going to die'. Aaaaaggghh! I was so mad, and so was Jo (she looked like she wanted to punch her!)

Luckily, I was not spoiled at all for DH, I made SURE of that. The only things I saw were the betting wars going on with people betting over Harry's survival or death, and I didn't read those. It took me 7 days to read the book, and I tried to stay away from websites for the whole week. I survived it, spoiler-free. Yay!

Actually, the trick is not to read them, or at least just read enough to identify them as possible spoilers (without picking up enough information to know whether the person knows what they are talking about or not). In some cases the spoiler posters made it easy, for example posting the same thing in several threads, which means they are breaking the rules whatever the contents. One tried repeatedly post a big long list of who dies in an image, but then you could go spoiler hunting with the images turned off in the web browser.

But there were a lot of Lounge staff doing this and I am sure others were far more spoiled than I was.

You know, Roonwit, thats probably the best way of avoiding spoilers...read them all because they all say different things! That was courageous of you patrolling the leaky lounge for spoilers though.

I am a bit horrified at the numerous spoiler stories here. I know there are people who spoil just for a kick, but having your friends spoiling it is downright inconsiderate of your friend. I hope you guys gave them a good telling off, just so that they will be aware of not doing it again!

Having said that, it is now in the past. Now, everyone can equally enjoy re-reading the books again taking in the rich details that were missed on first reading, re-experiencing the journey of our hero trio, and piecing together the clues that came before every revelations. And you know, I come to love the books even more on re-reading.

I started reading the books after GoF came out. I remember being so excited for the OotP release party (which turned out to be lame, thank God borders moved in before DH came out). I got home, spoiler free, went to bed and started reading the book the next day when my friend calls and the first thing she says it "Sirius dies!" I was so mad at her I really don't understand why someone would do that. I was only halfway done with the book. Ugh.

Then for HBP I saw the DD dies spoiler on the a.f.h-p newsgroup.

Finally for DH I saw that Dobby dies somewhere. No matter how hard I tried I always seems to find the spoilers rather that avoid them.

I managed to keep myself relatively spoiler free, which was quite an achievement considering I was part of the Lounge spoiler patrol for DH. It helped that I was rather skeptical about the accuracy of supposed spoilers, and I considered who lived or died as less important than the way the story developed.

I remember I was listening to a radio morning show after DH came out and the DJ was talking about the world hot dog eating championships and he said that one of the contestants came out with a shirt on saying “Hermione Dies”. And the DJ decried this shirt and said that it wasn’t true. Of course I didn’t know whether the DJ was just trying to unspoil the spoiler, so I was still pretty confused about what would happen when I read the book, but I kept waiting for something to happen to Hermione.

The Epilogue was spoiled for me. I was watching completely unrelated YouTube vids on the evening before the release, and somebody posted a review on some id saying "Harry lives and he and Ginny have three kids: James, Albus Severus and Lily". I remember freaking out, closing the browser and unplugging my internet conection. I still didn't believe it- 90% of Harry and Ginny's kids are names James and Lily on fanfiction, so the guy who spoiled it might've read a fake one. I hoped.

Book four was completely spoiled for me. I was twelve years old at the time, couldn't read English yet, and had to wait for the Spanish translation seven months. I found another fan through the local publishing house who was a fourteen year old who could read English, and told me the plot, and the ending. Later, somebody published, in English, a chapter by chapter guide, which I had translated on some crappy translation software. It was so bad I couldn't but remain unspoiled over minor details, which I enjoyed, but I already knew the whole plot by heart. Thank God, those three years it took Jo to write OotP, I improved my English enough to be able to read it when it came out.

Gosh, GoF seems so far back now... that was my first release party. I always managed to avoid spoilers - always kept them in the realm of rumors. I do remember that was one of the reasons I only read TLC and MN - no spoilers allowed.

But I loved the release parties; my daughter has practically grown up at them. We have 2 pictures of her - one with a cut-out full sized Hagrid at the OOTP party, and then summer of 2007 with the same cut-out. Precious.

As for your book, Melissa, my husband pre-ordered it the moment it was available, along with the deluxe BtB, so Christmas is going to be very Harry!

My sister spoiled DH for me. I was being so careful to try and stay away from places that might have spoilers, while still trying to make the book last as long as I could (which still wasn't very long). We were on the phone one day, and she said, "Just wait 'til you hear what Harry named his kids!" I was so mad!!! I was glad that he survived, but not happy that she ruined it for me. The Forest Again chapter just didn't have the effect it would have if I didn't know. I still bawled, but it wasn't the same.

Can't wait to read this book! I will definitely get it!

All of my friends spoiled everything for me. My friend got me to read the series, and she spoiled all of the books for me because I was always curiuos and had her tell me everything. So now I feel really bad, but now I'm also really tempted to spoil books for other people!

All of my friends spoiled everything for me. My friend got me to read the series, and she spoiled all of the books for me because I was always curiuos and had her tell me everything. So now I feel really bad, but now I'm also really tempted to spoil books for other people!

I got spoiled for book seven. a friend told me harry lived. and then he told me that dobby died. i hate spoilers and im glad that i dont have to worry about them anymore.

I didnt get into the books until after book 5 was published. So while I missed out on a lot of the fun I think, I also missed out on most of the fear of spoilers. Before OOTP was published, I didnt watch the films and didnt read the books, so even if I heard anything, I wouldnt have been affected.

That being said, I was very worried about spoilers for books 6 and 7. For 6 I was spending the weekend at my sisters, while my book was delivered to my house. I did everything I could not to watch or read any news. My brother-in-law pre-read stuff for me, just to be sure.

I had to LOL at one point: he was reading online, and suddenly he says, "ok, dont read the reviews on Amazon". Apparently one gave away Dumbledores death (this was on Saturday, day 1 of release), and then ranted that if you didnt know, you shouldnt be reading reviews. my brother-in-law was like, "um... most people read reviews BEFORE they read the book, genius". LOL!

Anyway, I was almost going to skip the midnight release of 7 for fear of someone yelling out a spoiler, but decided that it was my last and only chance to experience it. I'm so glad I did! (of course, the moment I had the book in hand, I put my iPod on and cranked the volume, so I couldnt hear anything I didnt want to).

I cant wait to read HaH and relive some of that, and experience what happened before my time.

I got spoiled on one of the worst of all: Dumbledore's death. I didn't read HBP immediately, so was being (I thought) extremely careful to avoid spoilers. One night, whilst browsing a website that sold 'funny' t-shirts, I read one that said 'Snape kills Dumbledore on page XXX. I just saved you 4 hours of reading.' I was HORRIFIED and very very upset.
To this day, I regret that I was never able to experience that shocking moment the way JO intended.

Lol. I can picture the hubbie frantically trying to clean up wondering why he is not getting told off yet. 'F16s take down beach pulls over Virgnia Beach, over Harry Potter...'. Sure this couldn't be included in the book!?!

Its still hard to believe how big this phenomenon was, the ultimate tidal wave. There was no other time when I felt the buzz, the excitement, and...the fear! My god, the fear. I got so paranoid about spoilers, it wasn't even funny. I am so glad I was part of that unforgettable mad frenzy. Those are times to treasure and I think HAH will help preserve that.

ya I never really got spoiled, which is lucky.. EXCEPT that I let my sister read order of the pheonix before me cuz shes faster, and we were in the car, and she gasps and starts bawling while reading the book. She yells "NO! why did he have to die!" and me being too curious leans over and looks at the page shes reading and sees SIRIUS BLACK in caps..... that sucked.

Ah no! That sounds awful, and as funny as it is I'm glad that I wasn't the one who had to deal with it. Spoilers . . . I'm glad the days of fearing them are over. My sister tried to spoil Deathly Hallows for me, as did my cousins, just to get me riled up. And then there was the guy at the store who said "I know who DOESN'T die," before I'd gotten my book, and I was freaking out of course, also discovering just how little those foam ear plugs do.