(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

And the saga is over! Voldemort is dead and Harry lives on.

I can’t really see how the book could have ended in any other way – if Harry had died and Voldemort lived on to terrorise the wizarding and Muggle world, the whole series would have gone against its “Good triumphing over Evil” theme.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

The battle has begun. This is what all the books were building up to – the face off between Harry and Voldemort.

Think it’s quite fitting that Harry and the Dark Lord return to Hogwarts in the end. The school is probably the most important place in both their lives.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

The inventive genius behind the Harry Potter series is what first drew me to the books - the Every Flavour Beans, the Enchanted ceiling at Hogwarts and the heart-shaped confetti.

Then things started to get slightly darker. Diaries began to write back (and possess people) and creatures like thestrals (who are visble only to people who have witnessed death) began to appear.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

Almost two-thirds of the way through and I’m amazed that Rowling has managed to keep the plot going at such a feverish pace.

And the title of the book is finally beginning to make sense. (Although, since starting the book, I can honestly say I didn’t once think about the meaning of the term Deathly Hallows until it actually popped up in the narrative.)

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

Almost halfway through the book now and things are beginning to go horribly wrong. Harry is losing allies, faith in people he previously believed to be infallible, and he now has a price on his head.

Ron and Harry have a row leading to Ron’s departure from the team, and Harry and Hermione are attacked by Nagini the snake and Voldemort at Godric’s Hollow, the little village where Harry’s parents were killed and buried.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

The plot is picking up speed quickly – people are dropping like flies and almost every page contains some new piece of information that will no doubt neatly slot into place at the end. Top marks to Rowling for somehow revealing and concealing things simultaneously.

And Harry, Ron and Hermione really aren’t going back to Hogwart’s (I was half hoping they would). The hunt for the Horcruxes is on and though that seems to be the main link between this book and the last, the Dumbledore sub-plot is starting to look highly interesting.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

Fifty pages in and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is definitely delivering the goods.

I was beginning to wonder if all the fuss was worth it when it took me a whole five minutes to choose which of the myriad versions I wished to buy (UK children’s, UK adult, US edition, gilt-edged J.K Rowling signed edition…) I settled on the garish UK kid’s version as it looked the most handbag friendly.

(Spoiler warning: The Harry Potter blog will be updated several times a day until the book is completed and will contain the major dramatic points in the plot.)

So this is it! The last book in the series of Harry Potter.

For someone who swore not to get sucked into Pottermania when the books first came out, I’ve spent too much time following the escapades of the boy wizard with the lightening scar through the years, and have lately been spending way too many hours wondering whether Harry will actually make it.