Spoiler alert – if you have not yet read the conclusion to the Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, you may want to skip this post, in which the ending is discussed.

For companies such as publisher Scholastic Corp. (NASDAQ:SCHL), the US publisher of the books, Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), whose Warner Brothers Studios produces the hugely profitable Harry Potter movies, and General Electric's (NYSE:GE) Universal Studios, which will open a Harry Potter theme park in 2009, the seventh and final Harry Potter book must have come as a great relief.

Despite rumors to the contrary, the title character did not die, and thereby cast a pall on the series and its offshoots. Rather, as I expected, Harry prevailed, and in general the core cast lived happily ever after. Even Snape, as I predicted, achieved redemption, but at a mortal cost.

In the coda to the novel, Harry Potter and his wife, the former Ginny Weasley, watch their children depart for Hogwarts. Also placing their children on the Hogworts train are Harry's best friends, the married couple Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger.

This final scene, nineteen years after the climax of the book, will no doubt inspire a great deal of conversation, as it keeps open a couple of possibilities for future novels in the Potter universe. Harry is still young enough to have more adventures, perhaps as he takes on the role of the era's greatest wizard, much as Albus Dumbledore was in Potter's youth. Rowling could also, should she decide to continue the series, reboot the series with the next generation of Hogwarts students.

I don't expect her to return to the Potter storyline for a long time, if ever, but the lure will always be there; a huge, thirsty audience ready to demonstrate their devotion with their pocketbooks.

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Tom Barlow: Harry Potter ending: A water cooler cheat sheet
Zac Bissonnette: With Harry Potter done, is it time for Scholastic to sell itself?
Zac Bissonnette: Is the last book the end of Potter mania?
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Barry Summerlin: Harry Potter doesn't even need Muggle marketing
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Tom Barlow: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Will Rowling kill off Harry?

In the run up to this weekend's release of the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I stand in awe at the product of J.K. Rowling's imagination. She didn't strike oil, or invent a new telephone, or learn to sink a corner jumper. She created an industry with only the vision in her mind.

From the first pencil scratches of a penniless mother in 1996, her created world has grown to what Advertising Age estimates is now a $15 billion business. Even better, I see this as a business with a very long tail, as the millions of readers, many of them adolescents, will canonize the series and lovingly share it with their own children.