Harry Potter’s end on Web?

The mystery surrounding the end to fictional British boy wizard Harry Potter’s saga deepened Wednesday with a computer hacker posting what he said were key plot details and a publisher warning that the details could be fake.

The hacker, who goes by the name “Gabriel,” claims to have taken a digital copy of author J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by breaking into a computer at London-based Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

For months now, leading to the book’s July 21 release, legions of “Harry Potter” fans have debated whether Rowling would kill Harry or one of his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, in the final book.

Gabriel has posted information at website InSecure.org that, if true, would answer that question.

“We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring,” Gabriel said in the posting.

“Harry Potter” publishers have taken great pains to keep the conclusion a secret and preserve the multibillion-dollar entertainment enterprise surrounding the boy wizard.

A Bloomsbury spokesman declined to comment on the hacker’s claims. Kyle Good, a spokesman for U.S. distributor Scholastic Corp., would not say whether the posting was accurate but did warn readers to be skeptical about anything on the Web that claims to have inside information on the book’s plot.