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When Harry Potter fans descend upon stores in nine days to snatch up the final book in the series, look past the wands in their hands and the lightning-bolt scars painted on their foreheads, and witness the emptiness in their eyes.

Despite their anticipation, they can't escape the sad truth: It's over. The end. Finite Incantatem, as J.K. Rowling might say.

Regardless of who lives or dies in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, fans who have grown up with the boy wizard over the past decade will be mourning the end of an era.

"I have such mixed feelings. It's sort of bittersweet," says Vishaya Naidoo, 23, who discovered the series eight years ago and became such a fan that she's organizing an international Harry Potter conference in Toronto this August.

She can't wait to learn what happens to the characters she's grown to love when the final book comes out on July 21 but, like many fans, she can't shake a feeling of sadness about saying goodbye.

"Sometimes I'm like if I had a dementor by my side, so sad 'cause it's all ending," one fan wrote on the Mugglenet.com forums, referring to the soul-sucking, happiness-stealing monsters that inhabit Ms. Rowling's fictional world.

The books may be make-believe, but post-Potter depression will be quite real for some fans. Many have followed the series devotedly - even obsessively - since the 1997 publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone .

"The attachment has been so long, and each release has been its own cycle of anticipation and then grief when it's over," says Heather Servaty-Seib, an assistant professor at Purdue University in Indiana and an expert in childhood grief. Mourning the end of a beloved book or series is a normal rite of passage, she notes, although in this case the literary loss is shared by an unusually large number of people.

Dr. Servaty-Seib knows whereof she speaks: She isn't just a counsellor, she's a Harry Potter fan with mixed feelings. "It's almost as if even as I start the book I'll be regretting it, because I know it's the last one."

Emptiness, depression and even anger are among the emotions Harry Potter fans expect to feel when they turn the final page. An online survey of 453 fans conducted by Victoria, B.C.-based online bookseller AbeBooks.com found that 63 per cent expect to feel sadness, as well as craving for another instalment, while 38 per cent say they'll feel completeness. Emptiness, at 31 per cent, beat out happiness at 24 per cent.

Other emotions fans anticipate are depression (20 per cent), relief (18 per cent), serenity (11 per cent), anger (10 per cent) and irritability (8 per cent).

"With the end of Cheers or Friends or even The Sopranos, you see a lot of people are actually very, very upset and it's just a TV show," explains Richard Davies, AbeBooks.com's director of public relations. "With Harry Potter, people are much more deeply involved."

Readers who can't quite relate to Pottermania might think back to the beloved books of their own childhood, and remember bidding a sad farewell to Frodo or Anne Shirley. Ian Donker, manager of the Yonge Street Book City independent book store in Toronto, remembers mourning the ends of the Narnia and Lord of the Rings series when he was a young reader.

"You always want one more story. You wish it would just go on forever," Mr. Donker says.

Such attachment to literary characters has a long history. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tired of his creation and killed off Sherlock Holmes, people wore black armbands in the streets, hate mail poured in, and publishers leaned on him to revive the cash-cow detective. Sir Arthur caved and wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, a tale from Mr. Holmes's past, and eventually resurrected the detective from the dead for further adventures.

Of course, Potterheads have something Sherlock Holmes fans lacked: the Internet. A thriving fan community has spawned reams of fan fiction, art, poetry, even music devoted to creatively expanding upon Ms. Rowling's creation. The fandom frenzy will probably calm down after the final book, but experts don't think it will die.

"Harry Potter fans, as a rule, are very productive," says Heather Mitchell, a PhD candidate in late medieval literature at Duke University and one of a growing number of academics who study Harry Potter. Once fans re-read the books and start to recover from their grief, she expects they'll return to message boards and fan-fiction forums to hash over every detail and pick up where Ms. Rowling left off. For some, the series will never really be over.

"Look at Star Trek fans - they're still going strong 40 years after the series ended," Ms. Mitchell says. "Do I think we're going to see the end of Harry Potter fandom? Not at all."

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Keeping the magic alive

For Harry Potter fans who just can't bear the thought of letting go after the final book in the series comes out July 21, a conference in Toronto promises to prolong the Potter magic.

More than 1,500 people have registered for the Aug. 2-5 conference, according to Heather Mitchell, public relations director for Prophecy 2007: From Hero to Legend.

The schedule attempts to span the diverse interests of Harry Potter fandom, with a presentation called The Magical Worlds of J.K. Rowling and W.B. Yeats: A Study in Intertextuality, alongside discussions of why Severus Snape is so darn dreamy. After hours, fans can unwind by playing Quidditch or downing Harry Potter-themed drinks. ("Veritaserum," aka gin, vermouth and cocktail onions, is apparently Prof. Snape's favourite.)

Ms. Mitchell, a PhD candidate in late medieval literature at Duke University, didn't know what to expect when she presented her paper, Challenging Morality: Fanfiction as Community Dialectic, at a Harry Potter conference two years ago. Five people dressed like Severus Snape sat in the front row, and in the back row three witches in black pointy hats nodded in unison every time she made a point they liked. She was hooked.

"As someone who goes to a lot of really boring, serious conferences, this is great," Ms. Mitchell said.

Rebecca Dube