More Harry Pothead goodness! (For all you non-Potheads, too bad…but this craze will be around pretty much all month!)

Yesterday, ET e-mailed me his theory about how the Harry Potter series will end. When I responded, I CCed Melanie, thus starting this dialogue below. Those of you who have your two cents (or Galleons), please comment!

From ET: I don’t think Harry is going to die after all in his final battle with Voldy.  Instead of death, he’s going to sacrifice his magical powers to bring down the Dark Lord, but he will end up surviving.  He’ll just turn into a regular ol’ Muggle, marry Ginny, and become the Prime Minister of England.

OK, the last part might be a bit of a stretch, but you get the general gist.  I don’t think Rowling will kill off Potter just like that. Harry wants too much to be a martyr for Rowling to just grant that request for him.  It’d be too easy of a route to take.

My response: your prediction certainly is…well, a new one. haha…is “sacrificing magical powers” even possible??? i suspect rowling will kill off potter partly because she wants to be the one to close off the series (as opposed to risking someone else try to take it over later on down the line). but even without that reason in the picture, it just seems to be too much of a perfect ending to have harry kill off voldemort. i definitely believe voldemore (or “voldy,” as you called him) will die. he simply has to. but if rowling doesn’t kill off harry, it will be interesting to see how the series finishes. but i DO believe that harry and ginny will end up together, as will ron and hermione. oooh, maybe in the course of killing voldemort, harry will be in the position to sacrifice himself in place of ginny? imagine this: voldemort will try to kill ginny, but harry will jump in front of her. he will die, but ginny will be left with a scar on her body and be known as “the girl who lived.” because of harry’s love, ginny was saved. hahahah…OK, a bit farfetched…

Melanie’s response: I still haven’t made a decision about whether or not Harry’s going to make it passed the ripe old age of 17.  I know there’s so much talk about him not making it and I think if he doesn’t, it’ll probably be some sort of sacrificial move in getting rid of Voldemort in the process, however, I think my gut REALLY just doesn’t want Harry to die.  ”Sigh”  So I’m still torn and just try not to think about it.

And Mel, even if it is too “perfect” of an ending to have Harry live, it is, technically, supposed to be a children’s saga, right?  So maybe it isn’t such a stretch to kill off the bad guys.  Too bad JK felt the need to kill off TWO main characters though (that was confirmed about Book 7, right?).  MAYBE Snape will be one of the ones that die in the fight against Voldemort so that he can redeem himself after his jerkiness in Book 6.  I still can’t get over what he did.  What was he thinking??

And yah, I think Harry needs to end up with Ginny because he can’t be the third wheel in his own series.  That sucks!

My response: Both your points about the main character not being killed off in a children’s saga makes sense. I’m really starting to rethink my opinion about Harry dying off. Even though the writing style caters to youth, I forget that there are a lot of kids who are reading this and could possibly be traumatized to see their hero die (like ET said). A lot of parents will be writing to Rowling, complaining that their kids can’t sleep at night and have lost their will to do anything. hehe…Most of these readers probably haven’t been exposed to more realistic books and movies where happy endings are not always the case. (Boo hoo, why does the Terminator have to lower himself down into a vat of molten steel, especially while John Connor is sobbing and ordering the Terminator not to kill himself?)

Melanie mentioned Snape possibly being one of the characters who dies. I never thought about that! Maybe Snape dies trying to save Harry–and then maybe Harry kills Voldemort? From what Melanie and I discussed on the phone about Snape being such a main character to have a book named after him, he will probably have a large role in the 7th book. I think we might have also discussed this after book 6 came out, that Snape and Dumbledore had previously discussed that in any efforts to kill Dumbledore, Snape would be the one to do it to save his reputation among the Death Eaters. I don’t think there would ever have been in a situation where Snape would just kill Dumbledore, though, unless someone were close to doing it first.

ET, it’s funny that you mention pg. 262 in the Half-Blood Prince, because I just read that last night and thought of what you said about Harry’s powers being sapped. But I can’t really foresee both Harry and Voldemort becoming Muggles (or would they be Squibs?). I think regardless of what happens, Voldemort has to die.

And about Sirius emerging from the veil? All this time, I didn’t believe he was really dead (just like I was a firm believer that Harry would die), but after reading book 5 again, I think he’s really dead. The clincher was when book 6 opened up with Kreacher obeying Harry, which confirmed that Harry had taken ownership of everything under the Black name. But you said that you think he’ll come back “in some or another,” that he’d appear in some magical venue, but not necessarily still be alive??

I bet there are a gazillion websites dispelling all these theories, but it’s way more fun to have these discussions on our own. :)