Book 7 Ponderings

Well, I was just poking around on the internet taking a break from working on a paper, looking for any news on the progression of Book 7 I might have missed or any new news on titles and release dates etc and came across these 2 that I am sure that everybody else who is more in the know has known for some time but I just thought I would toss in on them. The First is not really news I guess ... I just liked the title for the piece: "Harry Potter: Wanted Dead or Alive" Which just struck me as funny because it is the desperate cry of all fans: "Kill him or don't, but we're dying with wanting to know how it ends!" ... but of course, the good story I know JKR will provide is worth waiting for her to write it well and I am satisfied that her intuition of when the story is well written enough to see the light of day will make the best call on it. The other is the probably "old news" piece: 2 Characters dying unexpectedly This is some piece from a lit expert saying Harry won't die. I haven't read enough to see what other arguments Prof. James Kranser gives to say that in general Harry won't die, but I would definitely agree that Harry wouldn't be one of the 2 characters Rowling said did have to die that she had not anticipated (I know ... this was from way back in July, but I've been a little behind the times). If Harry dies in Book 7 I would wager he has been going to die all along. It doesn't seem like the type of meaning thing you change part way through, definitely not half way through the final installment. I would say she would have known by at least OotP or HBP on something that big. And if she is changing Harry's fate this late, I doubt she would be bringing it up. Never a good idea to give any hints that something that big might have been flying by the seat of your pants. As for who does die ... I hope they're death eaters, but I suspect that at least one of them has the last name Weasley ... don't ask me to support that with argumentation, just a gut feeling ... and I sure hope that both characters don't have the last name Weasley because then the fact that the decision for both deaths came at the same time (sometime just prior to the Richard and Judy show appearance) increases the possibility that they are the two characters you cannot think of one being alive without the other, literarily, because who would finish the other one's sentences for them the way identical twins do? (in other words, decide to kill one as a writer and you might as well kill the other ... hence the decision being simultaneous ... if both newly deceased characters have the last name Weasley the twins' chances don't look that good ... glad she didn't tell us though :) ). If Fred and George do die I'll be very sad but I'm sure it will be a real show; they never disappoint for putting on a show. :) POST-SCRIPT: I just read some of Krasner's arguments and they seem weak ... and downright off-base with this one "Neville Longbottom is really the chosen one, so I suspect he'll die." Neville isn't the chosen one because Dumbledore has made it pretty clear that the title "chosen one" really refers to Voldemort's choice in trying to kill Harry at Godric's Hollow (In other words, I'm not saying that the title "chosen one" is complete bunk ... but it is an "ironic" title, in the technical sense of the word ... the wizarding world, as well as the reader, wants to hop on the "prophecy train," and that is basically what Voldemort did and what started the whole saga of Harry's involvement ... so in a way the books are sort of revelation about self for the reader too ... I think a gentle revelation, and not heavy handed, as would be the case if the reader is supposed now to feel guilty about being part of the same "structures" as the great evils in the world, but I think still a bit of a self-checking revelation, "for those who have ears to hear"). Neville may well die but the fact is that he is not "the chosen one" because one of the things Rowling is primarily doing (and that she is pretty clear about in the places where Dumbledore is obviously her mouthpiece) is challenging a "deterministic" concept of "fate." She is doing this primarily by challenging the mis-conception of "prophecy." Harry will have to fight Voldemort, but because of the way Voldemort pushed things from his own putting stock in the prophecy in a certain (wrong-headed) way. That seems to me to be one of the primary themes of the series: There are certain patterns in the world that things follow but unless your a centaur (and even the best of them, like Firenze, admit the tentativeness of even their ability to read such things) getting your head around those patterns will blow your mind apart and you'll probably misread it anyway ... better to stick with your moral center and courage and just try to do the right thing. Oh yeah ... Krasner also appears to have been on the "Dumbledore will come back, at least as a ghost" bandwagon, which she seems to pretty much have put the squelch on back in August. 1. He's officially dead (unless she is pulling a really big ruse, but I don't think she would ruse on something like this to this level ... it seems like it would dip into the realm of being actually duplicitous ... with the Romance thing of Ron and Hermione and Harry and Ginny she just cast aspersions on the "shipping wars" in general as a mild ruse to hide her hand ... I know I may be doing a 180 from something I said before, hopefully not too bad though ... but I take her at her public word on this one that DD has really exited stage left) 2. If we are to believe Nick's comments about why Sirius won't come back as a ghost, in the end of OotP (which I thought was a really good piece), then even moreso for Albus Dumbledore. 3. Harry will probably have some access to Dumbledore's memory and thought at the time of his death but I am willing to bet that there will be some pointed statement in it of the limitedness and purpose of those paintings - that Harry will try to get as much out of the DD painting as possible and be told by the painting (in that typical patient and endearing DD way we have all come to love so much in how he deals with and relates to Harry), something like that the paintings are only there to help the present headmaster/mistress and to help them with the running of the school etc ... meaning maybe not just mundane operational things but wisdom and knowledge that might help in actively protecting the students (such as checking on matters in other locations where they have paintings, letting the headmaster/mistress know that the minister has just left the ministry to apparate in Hogsmead to come to the school, since that falls under "protecting" the schools interests from being encroached upon by the state and that sort of thing) ... but I suspect that there will be some type of curb in Harry's encounter with the portrait (not sure exactly all what, just a gut feeling). Rowling's is a pretty complex world and she is a pretty talented writer. I would not be surprised if the painting has everything in Dumbledore's mental powers (memory and intellectual powers) but that there are parameters on the "advisor paintings" system that control what the painting itself can disclose or do. If she uses such a device in book 7 I suspect it will be as much a part of the "needing to come to grips with death and have closure" thing as anything else, like the experience of looking for Sirius as a ghost in OotP. I suspect that if such an incident occurs, one of the points will be some sort of statement by the painting that it is only a painting of Dumbledore and not the man himself, a portrait with a certain defined function, and Harry should not look to it for "all the answers" ... both on the level of solving the problem of Voldy and Snape etc, but also on the level of emotional desire to be with Dumbledore again -- that he should let grieving and closure take their natural course and accept that he will not see Dumbledore again on this side of the veil. I suspect Harry will get something helpful from the painting but also be slightly frustrated somehow by not being able to get everything he is asking (it is a type she has used before: the room of requirement gives you what you need but it has parameters to that system, and in HBP we saw Harry pushing and bucking against those parameters frustratedly, and I suspect we'll see the same sort of thing with the painting in book 7). Just my thoughts though ...