Romance between Hermione and Ron, redemption and deaths - the end of Harry Potter series won't be for faint-hearted.

"I don't always enjoy killing my characters," JK Rowling said at the reading Tuesday night at Radio City Music Hall.

"I had been planning that for years, so I'd already done my grieving when it came time to write it," the writer said hinting on the deadly end of the eighth book in Harry Potter saga.

JK Rowling did hint that Harry Potter's archrival, Draco Malfoy, who was supposed to commit the murder but failed at the last moment, has a chance at redemption.

"Harry believes that Draco, even given unlimited time, would not have killed," she said. "But for Draco's future, you'll have to wait and see."

 

As for Harry's best friends Hermione and Ron, Rowling let it slip that more romance was in the air for them.

"Hermione most likely wants to see the three of them alive, unscathed and Voldemort finished, but I think she also wants to see herself closely entwined with another person," Rowling hinted.

Even though JK Rowling wrote the final chapter of the yet-untitled Book Seven back in 1990, and has steadily been working "towards the end I planned from the beginning," she acknowledged that she'd made some "fairly major changes."

"A couple of the characters I expected to survive have died, and one character got a reprieve," JK Rowling said.

But she's not going to shy away from more death scenes just because "fans accuse me of sadism."

"It's a cruel literary world out there," JK Rowling explained. 

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