"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be released at 12:01 a.m. Saturday at bookstores worldwide, giving millions of Potter fans from London to Kahului reason to don their Hogwarts robes and wave their wands in celebration.

To mark the end of the series, Borders Books Music Movies & Cafe at the Maui Marketplace will hold "the Grand Hallows Ball" from 8 p.m. Friday to the stroke of midnight. The night's festivities will include a costume contest, face painting and the "Great Snape Debate" to discuss one of the book's most controversial characters.

"It's going to be huge," said Kahului Borders General Manager Kris Arnett. "This is not just an event. It's an experience."

Borders Express will hold similar events at stores at the Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, Lahaina Cannery Mall, Piilani Village Shopping Center and Whalers Village. A check with Lanai and Molokai vendors revealed that the book will not go on sale on either island on the release date.

The Lahaina Cannery Mall announced it would extend its hours Friday for the book release. With participants encouraged to dress in "magical attire or muggle finery," the mall's scheduled events include a Potter spelling bee at 9:40 p.m., followed by the "Great Snape Debate" at 10:30, the "World of Harry Potter" costume contest at 11, and a raffle and prize giveaways at 11:40.

According to Les Honda, area marketing manager for Borders Books, all 14 Borders locations in Hawaii will participate in "the Grand Hallows Ball" event.

"If (books) six and five are an indication, it'll be big," Honda said.

Selling more than 325 million copies worldwide since its initial publication in 1997, the Harry Potter series has drawn millions of fans of all ages into the magical world of the orphaned boy wizard who has become a household name and pop culture phenomenon.

With six "Potter" novels to her credit, author J.K. Rowling has promised readers that the seventh book will be the absolute last, eliminating talk of a prequel or follow-up series.

"I'm kind of sad that this is going to be the last, but I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of the questions that have been built up answered," said Iris Saturno, a Potter fan and senior bookseller at Borders Express in Lahaina. "It's a bittersweet thing."

The story of the boy wizard, set forth in Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," started with the death of Harry's parents at the hands of the dark Lord Voldemort. Chronicled over the past six volumes, the mystery of Harry's fate, his lighting-bolt-shaped scar and link to Voldemort remain unsolved. The seventh book will have the daunting task of tying up the loose ends of a series that has left readers baffled for the past decade.

Online fan sites like mug glenet.com have given careful consideration to Harry's possible fate on message boards visited daily by thousands of fans. In the months leading up to this summer's release, Rowling drove the rumor mill wild with claims that at least two main characters would be killed off and that the "scar" would be the book's final word.

"I'm hoping for a showdown, and I want to see what the story about Snape is," Saturno said.

"Deathly Hallows" was made available for pre-sale in February at bookstores and online. Barnes & Noble, one of the nation's largest booksellers, reported that the seventh Potter book broke its pre-order record with more than 500,000 copies reserved through its Web site. The novel already has reached the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list.

Scholastic Children's Book, the series publisher, has ordered a record-breaking 12 million books for the novel's first print run in the United States, shattering the previous record of 10.8 million books set by the sixth installment, "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince," in 2005.

Although the book is the last in the series, its release does not spell the end of the boy wizard. There are two more movies in the works following the recently released "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" movie, the on-screen adaptation of Rowling's fifth book. A Florida theme park dubbed the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" is also in the works.

"Harry Potter may be ending, but the magic isn't going to end," Saturno said.

Travis Kaya can be reached at tkaya@mauinews.com.

ACTIVITIES

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be released at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

All Borders and Borders Express locations will remain open for the midnight release of the book, and all will have activities for Potter fans. Borders stores are at the Maui Marketplace, Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, Lahaina Cannery Mall, Piilani Village Shopping Center and Whalers Village.

Borders Books Music Movies & Cafe at the Maui Marketplace will open its doors at 9 a.m. Friday to allow fans to reserve a place in line to purchase the book. Harry Potter festivities will begin promptly at 8 p.m. and last until the book is released at the stroke of midnight. The Borders store at the Lahaina Cannery Mall also will hold Potter events beginning at 9:40 p.m. Friday.