Rowling's Pottermore could be a gaming website

Good news for Harry Potter fans, as a new project called Pottermore, involving a treasure hunt linked to an online game, is in the offing, according to The Times.

Details of the mysterious project were sent to the newspaper apparently by mistake by a party involved with the official Pottermore launch event on Thursday, although skeptics may call it a canny marketing exercise.

The memo, which sets out the marketing strategy for Pottermore, suggests that it is a sophisticated online game that contains clues to prizes that are hidden in the real world. These include a number of magic wands hidden in Britain and America, and possibly other countries.

It is not clear, however, whether the treasure hunt is Pottermore itself, or merely a marketing drive for another product. Stonehill Salt, one of three public relations companies involved, has said that the project "is not a new book".

The Pottermore project appears to be masterminded by Adam & Eve, a PR company that has previously conducted online-only treasure hunts using Google Maps.

JK Rowling, who will make an announcement tomorrow at the Victoria and Albert Museum in southwest London, had previously said that the seventh Harry Potter book would be the last in the series.

"I've got enough story for seven books and I never planned to carry the story beyond the end of book seven," she wrote on her website.

"I might do an eighth book for charity, a kind of encyclopaedia of the world so that I could use all the extra material that's not in the books... we'll see!" However, this may refer to the two spin-off books she has already published for charity, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.