Harry Bourne, 8, of Campbell has yet to fall for the charms of his fictional namesake's friend and sometimes muse, Hermione.
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"I don't really think Hermione is cute," the St Thomas Moore student said at the release of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child on Sunday. "She is one of my favourite characters in the series because she is smart."
Harry and his younger brother, Louie, 7, were among more than 200 people who converged on Dymocks in the Canberra Centre for the release of the "special rehearsal edition script" of the two-part Harry Potter play now showing in London.
The final version of the script is expected to be released as yet another book next year.
One Canberran who has already seen the play (which is split into two parts performed separately), Annabelle Nshuti, 19, said the experience had been amazing.
"I saw it three weeks ago in the West End," Ms Nshuti, a Bachelor of Science student at ANU who would love to be able to major in magic, said.
"To see Harry at 37 and as a father is an interesting perspective. You can see how he has grown up after the events of the books."
Ms Nshuti said the atmosphere in the theatre had been electric.
"It was probably the best I have experienced at a play," she said. "Everyone gasped at the surprise reveals; we were all focussed on the stage; everybody [present] was a fan."
The Cursed Child was originally conceived as an original story by J.K.Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne and then developed as a play by Thorne.
More than 175,000 tickets sold within 24-hours when the play's box office opened earlier this year. Performances began at London's Palace Theatre in June.
The owner of the Canberra Centre Dymock's franchise, Alison Kay, said the release party, which fortuitously coincided with 12.01am London time, had been a celebration of literacy and much loved characters.
"We've had the store here for almost 14 years," she said. "We've had two previous Harry Potter book launches and we've sold a lot of Potter books in that time."
Ms Kay questions the conventional wisdom that readers of hard copy books were an ageing demographic.
"Our experience is they are becoming younger if anything," she said. "Our young adult and childrens sections are booming. People don't want the e-book, they want the real thing."
Other popular authors include Cassandra Clare and Andy Griffiths.
"Books like the Narnia series and Charlotte's Web still sell well as does anything that has been on television or been turned into a movie."
Harry Bourne, who is up to the fifth book and the fourth movie so far, said he liked Harry for many reasons.
"His name is Harry and he's awesome," he said. "My name is Harry. We're both fast runners and we don't take much damage from cuts and scratches."
Harry's brother Louie attended the release party as "Nearly Headless Nick", one of the lesser known characters in the Potterverse.
"I only had a ghost costume," he said. "We used a balloon with a face stuck onto it as Nick's nearly headless head."
