What must it be like to be the artist for these things: "Make it interesting! But don't give anything away!"

No shit.

Eventually, I'd just repaint the damn thing with "HE'S FECKING DEAD" on the cover and put crosses over Harry's eyes.

Ooh, that is a good call.

In non-HP book news, Oprah has chosen Cormac McCarthy's The Road for her next book. I haven't read it but I have read some of his work -- this strikes me as an unusual choice for her.

AAAARRRRRRRRREE YOU READY TO CONNNJJUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRE!

Okay, this made me almost spit broccoli on my monitor!

Also, I like the idea of the curtain being The Curtain.

But then Chatty!Co-Worker and I came up with an alternate scenario -- Harry and Voldemort are appearing in a musical, and the curtains are just theatre curtains.

I mean, look at them. Those are CLEARLY musical theatre poses. (Voldemort is more or less doing the Stop! In The Name of Love pose, and Harry kind of has an Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' thing going on there. What? Look at the cover again -- there's CLEARLY a bright golden haze on the hallows.)

Harry and Voldemort are appearing in a musical, and the curtains are just theatre curtains.

Someone sent me a link to their fic once, in which (if I can clearly remember the horrifying details) the Hogwarts students put on a musical. Snape sang "Music of the Night" to Harry.

I think I read that, Dana. It was scary.

this strikes me as an unusual choice for her.

After the light summer fare of As I Lay Dying, I'm not sure what Oprah is trying to do.

All the reviews I've seen for The Road have said not only "This is fantastic" but also "Everyone should read this", so it kind of makes sense to me that Oprah would choose it.

She says not having read the book or known anything about Oprah's book club other than it exists and is a strong force for selling books.

As I Lay Dying? For real? That's kind of, I don't know, neat.

Well, everyone's already seen this, haven't they? (Thanks, Jessica, for providing the giggles in Natter a few days ago!)

something they both are fighting, maybe . . .

Dumbledore came back as a zombie! All wizards must join together to protect their BRAIIIIIIINNNNNNSSSSSSSS.

the UK children's version is super fuggggly.

This is why I always buy the adult versions.

The cover on Amazon does look like there's a row of gravestones--especially clear between Harry and Voldemort, at the line between ground and columns. The columns actually look to me like supports for a viaduct or railway bridge, except the perspective would have to be very strange to make such a thing seem curved like that. But they are arches, you can see the sky behind, so it's not a fully enclosed area. The 'curtains' have very ragged bases-- I can't make any sense of this but they look more like bunched hair. But then, the UK children's cover seems to feature Harry, Hermione and Ron flying through the Stargate onto a dragon's horde, so anything is possible.

ETA: This picture gives a much better chance to analyse the UK children's cover for questions like, "who exactly is holding that sword?", "is that a jar or some armour in the bottom left hand corner?", and "how many bruises does Hermione have?"