Of all the disturbing things going on in the world this week I found one item more disturbing than the others. Author extraordinaire J.K. Rowling has piped up yet again, backtracking a bit on her otherwise classic Harry Potter series. She now says she wishes her two main protagonists (the title character and his would-be girlfriend, Hermione Granger) ended up together at the end of the series. (Spoiler alert: they don’t.) Not only do I think second-guessing your work is in bad form and just bad all around, I completely disagree with that ending on its face.

The world, we discover as adults, is much bigger than the world we see as middle school students. You don’t end up marrying the girl you loved in sixth grade. That’s just how the world works. You grow up, you encounter new and better things, and you meet someone else who also didn’t end up with the person he or she loved in sixth grade. Classic example: The Wonder Years, an ending so many viewers disparaged when Kevin and Winnie ended up merely friends in its present-day epilogue. I thought it the perfect ending because that’s how life really works. Ms. Rowling did her young (and old) readers a favor by ending the series that way, and I think she should keep her muggle mouth shut about it now.