Are There 'Eerie Links' Between 'Harry Potter' Films & Osama bin Laden?

Are you a Harry Potter fan? Looking forward to seeing the next installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" in July?Well, if you follow the news, you might have just gotten a preview without knowing it.

A report from Reuters says that there are "eerie" similarities between the Harry Potter series and fight against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The outlet explains:

It set up the ongoing conflict between Harry, the young, orphaned wizard, who gradually discovers his powers, and the malignant force of evil, Lord Voldemort, who is bent on destroying him. First referred to only as "He Who Must Not Be Named," Voldemort is introduced as something of a formless boogie-man -- not unlike the mysterious Osama -- but then, over the course of the series, takes on more and more of a physical presence until in the last volume he and Harry go head-to-head in a final, cataclysmic battle.

For a generation of kids who grew up reading Rowling's books and watching Hollywood's big-screen adaptations in the shadows of 9/11, there have been inevitable echoes of the real world in Harry's sometimes reluctant quest to defeat Voldemort.

Back in 2004, a poster on mugglenet.com made some of it explicit, comparing the Death Eaters to Al Queda and noting of that "just as Voldemort was shaped by his mother's death and his father's abandonment, Osama was shaped by his personal struggle between Western pleasures and Islamic discipline."

And just as Harry is known in the books as "the anointed one," a number of President Obama's critics like Rush Limbaugh have frequently dismissed the president by disparagingly referring to him as "the anointed one" as well -- though on Monday, even Limbaugh had praise for how Obama orchestrated Osama's demise.

Mild spoiler ahead, so stop reading if you don't know the outcome of the final book...

Meanwhile, in the wake of bin Laden's death in a mansion near Islamabad, a meme has already popped up on the web, noting the weird coincidence that Osama and Voldemort both died on the same day, May 1. But true Potter fans have been quick to point out that's not quite true: When Harry and Voldemort actually finally come face-to-face in the Battle of Hogwarts, in the books' chronology the date is really May 2, 1998.