At the stroke of midnight tonight, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince will go on sale. This means that at this moment, lots of weird people are preparing to spend hours standing outside a bookshop dressed up as a wizard.

And, at one minute past midnight, J.K Rowling will descend from the heavens on a cloud and read an extract from the new book to an invited audience at Edinburgh Castle. Anyone planning on going is being advised to wear specially-designed ear protectors, as Rowling's voice is so mighty - and the words she will read are so overwhelming - that the human brain will explode unless precautions are taken.

Perhaps scared that the new book will sell more copies than the Bible, the Pope has hit out at Harry Potter. Apparently, extracts of Pope Benedict's letters to German writer Gabriele Kuby appear in her absolutely-not-a-cash-in book Harry Potter - Good Or Evil. The Pope is said to think that the Harry Potter books contain "subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly".

No matter what the Pope might think, Harry Potter hype is today at fever pitch. Fans are already trying to second-guess the secrets contained inside Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. For instance, will Harry find out that Voldemort is his Dad in this book or the next? Will Hagrid ever embrace the Atkins diet? Will J.K Rowling build a big vault, fill it full of coins and swim about in it like Scrooge McDuck in the opening titles of Duck Tales?

It's expected that Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince will sell around 10m copies in one day alone. Presumably, some of these readers will not be familiar with the world of Harry Potter. To help them along, here's our who's who of the main characters.

Harry Potter - Harry Potter is a young man based on the real-life events of a teenage Paul Daniels. His tricks include going invisible and pulling a bunch of flowers from his sleeve.

Ron Weasly - Harry's ginger friend. All Ron's magic is contained in his face. Whenever he is confused about something, Ron pulls an odd face and magic comes of out his nose.

Hermione Granger - The poshest wizard in the whole wide world, Hermione actually has a team of brown wizards on minimum wage to do her magic for her while she files her nails and looks on disapprovingly.

Voldemort - Harry's enemy ever since Voldemort flicked a rubber band at the back of Harry's head in playschool. He is the evil-est man on the planet. He once stole a kinder egg from a newsagents and laughed at Elton John's eyebrows when he was singing at Princess Diana's funeral.

Dumbledore - Dies in this book.

Finally, for those of us who don't want to read the book but want to know what happens in it really quickly so we can spoil it for our friends, The Guardian are planning on speed-reading it tonight, blogging as they go. See you there...

Why go to a shop when you can order the new book online? Let Kelkoo.co.uk search for the cheapest Harry Potter books

[story by Stuart Heritage]