Deathly Hallows shattered sales records upon release, surpassing marks set by previous titles of the Harry Potter series.

The young wizard Harry Potter is about to turn seventeen and therefore lose the protective magic shield his mother's sacrifice gave him.

He is being escorted to The Burrow by members of the Order of the Phoenix when the group is attacked by Death Eaters, who kill "Mad-Eye" Moody and injure George Weasley.

The three friends visit Xenophilius Lovegood, who tells them of the mythical objects known as the Deathly Hallows: the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone and the Cloak of Invisibility.

Harry and Ron are thrown into the cellar with Dean Thomas, Luna Lovegood, Mr Ollivander and Griphook the goblin, while the Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange tortures Hermione for information.

After a brief stay at Bill and Fleur’s cottage, Harry, Ron and Hermione break into Gringotts Bank and retrieve another Horcrux from the vault of Bellatrix Lestrange.

As the Death Eaters enter the school and fight the professors and students, Ron and Hermione destroy the Horcrux from Gringotts.

Voldemort orders Hagrid to carry Harry's body back to Hogwarts, and demands that the professors and students surrender.

Neville, however, pulls the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat and kills Nagini, Voldemort's last Horcrux, rendering him mortal.

She compared her mixed feelings to those expressed by Charles Dickens in the preface of the 1850 edition of David Copperfield, "a two-years' imaginative task".

[15] She also commented that the final volume related closely to the previous book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, "almost as though they are two-halves of the same novel".

[18][19] The launch of Deathly Hallows was celebrated by an all-night book signing and reading by Rowling at the Natural History Museum in London.

[20] Rowling toured the United States in October 2007, where another event was held at Carnegie Hall in New York City with tickets allocated by sweepstake.

[21] Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter series, launched a multimillion-dollar "There will soon be 7" marketing campaign with a Knight Bus travelling to 40 libraries across the United States, online fan discussions and competitions, collectible bookmarks, tattoos, and the staged release of seven Deathly Hallows questions most debated by fans.

On 16 July, a set of photographs representing all 759 pages of the US edition was leaked and was fully transcribed prior to the official release date.

One reader in Maryland received a copy of the book in the mail from DeepDiscount.com four days before it was launched, which evoked incredulous responses from both Scholastic and DeepDiscount.

[38] Scholastic filed for damages in Chicago's Circuit Court of Cook County, claiming that DeepDiscount engaged in a "complete and flagrant violation of the agreements that they knew were part of the carefully constructed release of this eagerly awaited book.

Independent shops protested loudest, but even Waterstone's, the UK's largest dedicated chain bookstore, could not compete with the supermarket price.

[52] To be released simultaneously with the original US hardcover on 21 July with only 100,000 copies was a Scholastic deluxe edition, highlighting a new cover illustration by Mary GrandPré.

[65] The Baltimore Sun's critic, Mary Carole McCauley, noted that the book was more serious than the previous novels in the series and had more straightforward prose.

[66] Furthermore, reviewer Alice Fordham from The Times wrote that "Rowling's genius is not just her total realisation of a fantasy world, but the quieter skill of creating characters that bounce off the page, real and flawed and brave and lovable".

[67] The New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani agreed, praising Rowling's ability to make Harry both a hero and a character that can be related to.

[69] Novelist Elizabeth Hand criticised that "... the spectacularly complex interplay of narrative and character often reads as though an entire trilogy's worth of summing-up has been crammed into one volume.

Craig went on to say that the novel was "beautifully judged, and a triumphant return to form", and that Rowling's imagination changed the perception of an entire generation, which "is more than all but a handful of living authors, in any genre, have achieved in the past half-century".

[72] In contrast, Jenny Sawyer of The Christian Science Monitor said that, "There is much to love about the Harry Potter series, from its brilliantly realised magical world to its multilayered narrative", however, "A story is about someone who changes.

[73] In The New York Times, Christopher Hitchens compared the series to World War Two-era English boarding school stories, and while he wrote that "Rowling has won imperishable renown" for the series as a whole, he also stated that he disliked Rowling's use of deus ex machina, that the mid-book camping chapters are "abysmally long", and Voldemort "becomes more tiresome than an Ian Fleming villain".

[75] Stephen King criticised the reactions of some reviewers to the books, including McCauley, for jumping too quickly to surface conclusions of the work.

He compared the works in this respect to Huckleberry Finn and Alice in Wonderland which achieved success and have become established classics, in part by appealing to the adult audience as well as children.

Before publication of Deathly Hallows, Rowling refused to speak out about her religion, stating, "If I talk too freely, every reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books".

[112] James Bernadelli of Reelviews said that the script stuck closest to the text since Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,[113] yet this was met with negativity from some audiences as the film inherited "the book's own problems".