IS Little Nell dead?" New Yorkers thronging the docks in the winter of 1841 called out to ships arriving from Europe, hoping for news from someone who had read the latest installment of Dickens's "Old Curiosity Shop."

She was, though Dickens said that killing her off had caused him "anguish unspeakable," and both here and in England readers wept in the streets. Daniel O'Connell, the famous Irish member of Parliament, was so upset he threw his copy of the novel from the window of a train.

To prepare her readers for just such a blow, J. K. Rowling, the most Dickensian of contemporary writers and the author of the Harry Potter books, announced the other day that in the seventh and final volume in the series, not yet scheduled for publication, two characters would die, and she hinted that one might even be Harry himself. Not that Potter fans will necessarily accept something so unthinkable, any more than the true believers accepted the death of Elvis.

When Dumbledore, the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts, was murdered in Volume 6 of the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," deniers immediately created a Web site called "Dumbledore Is Not Dead," where they argued that he had merely contrived his own disappearance and would eventually be back.