June 27, 2003	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 26,1424

LONDON, June 26: Harry Potter author JK Rowling, interviewed by children from around the world, said on Thursday she would love to become invisible so that she could write her books in a cafe as she used to before she became famous.

Rowling admitted she did not believe in magic but said she would love to look in a magic mirror like Potter does and see her late mother who died of multiple sclerosis in 1990.

But the multimillionaire writer, appearing live at London’s Royal Albert Hall in a webcast beamed to millions, warned that the world’s most famous boy wizard may not survive until adulthood.

This provoked a gasp of astonishment from the 4,000 children in the audience.

Rowling, who now earns more than Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, started writing the Potter books in an Edinburgh cafe when she was a penniless single mother.

Asked what magic powers she would like to have, she said: “I would love the power of invisibility. It is a little bit sad but I would sneak off to a cafe and write all day.”

And quizzed about what she would like to glimpse in a magic mirror, she replied: “I would see what Harry saw — my mother again.”

But Rowling confessed: “I don’t believe in magic in the way that it appears in the books. I would want to believe in it but I cannot.”—Reuters