very simple

I finished re-reading the first six books on Saturday (and saw “OOTP” on Saturday morning), and now I’m waiting obsessively for book 7 to show up at my apartment on Saturday. I pre-ordered it back in May, and am now just dying to find out how it all ends. But I’ve also been studiously avoiding all spoilers, simply because (a) at least half of them are going to be bunk/misinformation and (b) I genuinely want to be surprised. I’ll probably have to impose a media blackout on myself until I finish reading it.But, that’s not going to stop me from throwing out some of my own speculation pre-release. Again, I’m completely non-spoiled, so these are purely guesses (spoilers for the first six books though)…

Dumbledore, living or dead? I think he did die, but that he’ll resurrect somehow. The phoenix imagery is so strongly connected to his character all the way back to the first book, that I think it’s got to have some point other than coincidence. I think he died and will resurrect, rather than some sort of faking death thing, because of (a) his portrait in the headmasters’ office and (b) the release of his spell on Harry at that moment. Oh, and Rowling has said definitively that he died. Still doesn’t mean he can’t come back. This leads to…

Snape, good or evil? If Dumbledore can come back from the dead, this lends more weight to the theory that he and Snape planned that final confrontation as a way to keep Malfoy from truly being evil. Remember that it turned out that Malfoy didn’t want to kill Dumbledore, and that he was afraid his family would be killed if he didn’t (not exactly the motivation of a truly evil person). So Malfoy’s just your garden-variety prat raised by evil parents, but if he had killed Dumbledore, it would have pushed him over a line. Snape not being evil is also argued by the fact that he didn’t kill Harry when he had the chance. Of course, about 10% of me thinks all of this is actually too obvious and Snape is actually the deathiest of all death eaters.

Who is R.A.B.? When Dumbledore and Harry find the replacement locket instead of the true horcrux, there’s a note swearing revenge by R.A.B. Hermione tracks down some names, but not what I think is the most obvious possibility – Regulus Black, Sirius’s brother (some folks on Wikipedia apparently agree with this possibility). Now, Regulus was a Death Eater who supposedly had a change of heart and was killed, but, things are often not what they seem in the HP lexicon, so I think it’s at least as good a theory as anything else.

Speaking of Horcruxes, what is the sixth (or seventh) Horcrux? Dumbledore was largely guessing as to the final few Horcruxes, and as to whether there were six or seven remaining. Remembering that a Horcrux could be a living thing, I think that Harry is actually the final Horcrux. That the reason Voldemort “died” the first time around was that he had split his soul into so many pieces that when he went to kill Harry, he (perhaps accidentally) split his soul too many times.

This of course leads to the final and most important question, will Harry die? Part of me hopes he doesn’t, but I think the best way to create a situation where Harry has to die in order to actually fulfill his destiny to kill Voldemort is precisely that he’s a Horcrux. So long as he lives, a piece of Voldemort lives, and as such, he has to sacrifice himself in order to actually win. Actually, if Rowling is going to kill of Harry, this is probably one of the only ways to do it while still having “good” ultimately triumph.

Anyhoo. I’m looking forward to being proven utterly, irredeemably wrong on Saturday!

Tags: books