New blog design (for this and the past three new posts in a row) in progress here. Here’s a page about it.
Just so’s if I’m right I can say I said so, before the final Harry Potter book is out this weekend I’d like to make some predictions. I arrived at these on my own and then discovered that big networks of Harry Potter fans have speculated the same. By the way, this portrayal or illustration of Severus Snape, which I love, is taken from Leaky Fan Art, a huge art forum full of Harry Potter fan art, much of it excellent (and much of it not).
These are spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read up to book 6, The Half-Blood Prince.
Oh, I just noticed that with the spoilers in this entry hidden there is a delightfully odd visual juxtaposition between this entry and the last. Click the psychedelic image in the banner to see that layout 
On with the predictions.
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1. Severus Snape is good. He killed Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s own orders. The reason Dumbledore trusts Snape is that Snape underwent an unbreakable vow with Dumbledore. This is possible for both the good and bad side; do we not make vows to defend the right at peril of our life in wars? It was the surest way to show Snape’s penance. The only way for Snape to keep both his vow to Dumbledore and to Narcissa Malfoy is for Dumbledore to sacrifice himself; the oath to Narcissa was necessary to give her complete conviction of his loyalty. Dumbledore dead would seem to show Snape’s truest loyalty to Narcissa and/or Lord Voldemort. Except that Dumbledore knew this, and that’s why he ordered it: to protect Harry and Draco, and for that matter the Order of the Phoenix, all of whom are now completely convinced that Snape is evil. Also necessary, it was pointed out to me, because Harry is terrible at keeping wizards out of his mind, and if Voldemort reads what Harry is thinking and feeling, it again reinforces the idea that Snape is loyal to Voldemort. All of which places Snape in the ultimate position of double-agent, to play behind the scenes and lead Harry to the conclusions, resources, and powers he needs in order to defeat Lord Voldemort.
2. Harry Potter himself is the final Horcrux. We know that a snake can be a Horcrux; or Dumbledore seems to believe it is so. We know that Harry gained powers which link him to Voldemort by ill of V’s attack on Harry; this is why he can speak parcel tongue, why he would be good in Slytherin house, why he knows V’s mind at times. But it’s more than that. The reason Harry has those powers is because he has consumed one seventh of Voldemort’s soul into his own by virtue of his own power to comprehend, internalize, and vanquish V’s evil. V never got to creating a seventh Horcrux, or so he thinks: he wishes to make Harry his murder for his last and ultimate vie for immortality. Recall how Dumbledore said V has become so senseless he is unaware of damage done to the severed parts of his soul? That sets that up. What V does not know is that he already made a Horcrux out of Harry, and spelled his doom in doing so.
3. The opposite of a Horcrux, the power to cut off a part of a soul by murder, is the power to mend a torn soul (or heartbroken soul) by resurrection. Harry will wield this power. How many souls so far have fallen in defense of Harry against V’s Horcruxes? 1. James 2. Lily 3. Sirius 4. Cedric 5. Albus. One more will sacrifice their life for Harry – Hagrid would do that most probably – and then Harry has six sacrifices in his defense, six who have given the last full measure of devotion for him, six who have consecrated, who have hallowed their lives in death. That is the meaning of Deathly Hallows. The Half-Blood Prince speaks of one; Deathly Hallows speaks of seven. Do not all curses in the books have counter-jinxes or opposite charms? If by magic life may be taken, surely under certain circumstances magic may give life. Dumbledore said there is no spell to revive the dead; he is mistaken. When one who has been marked the equal of a Dark Lord by that Lord joins six others against the six parts of that Dark Lord’s murder-divided soul and then willingly gives his own, magic happens.
4. This one was not my idea, but I think it is right. Harry Potter is a squib. He was born without magical power; he acquired magical power through the portion of Voldemort’s soul which he acquired when V unknowingly made a Horcrux out of him. When V is gone, so is the part of Harry’s soul that marked him equal to defeat the Dark Lord, which was the sum of Harry’s power. When those are spent, even to Harry’s life, in defense of the wizards, and he with the six other Deathly Hallows are resurrected, he has no more life and magic to give: destroying the Dark Lord is his ultimate gift. And, to the contrary of all accusations that the Harry Potter books have anything to do with encouraging devilry, that is a powerful Christian allegory.
When the powers of Harry Potter, the squib, the mortal, vanish, he will necessitate a mend of the long mistakenly divided world of wizards and muggles, because while he has no powers to speak of anymore, he has been more in the heart of the wizard community than any wizard in history, and now being squib must more starkly face and comprehend magic everyday life more than any other wizard in history.
(And quite appropriately to such a tale, it will sell more copies than any single-run commercial work in history.)
I hope Harry has to rob a bank to get a Horcrux.
I have wanted to arrange and record a piece of music which has come to me in reference to Dumbledore’s death; I haven’t gotten to it but I hope to.
New blog design, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows predictions
You’re a genius. You’re right. How I fear you!
Nice blog design by the way.
Oh no my comment broke your blog!
No I fixed it (entry cluge). Layout flaw in the design, I dare say. No problemo.
And thanks. Incidentally, that, uh, not quite squid thing was your idea, and if it’s true, I find it particularly insightful and poignant. I find it to be that even if it isn’t “true”. Because any story or idea can be true in ways.
Since Pilcrow says you’re a genius and you’re right, I think I’ll wait to read your predictions until after I read HP 7.
(Meanwhile I keep making my own predictions. But mine are bad, so, no harm done.)
1. Agree.
2. Disagree, but you do present compelling logic in favor.
3. Agree with concept, perhaps not individual cited.
4. Disagree on both points. One, I think he is real. Two, J K Rowling said dead is dead.
5. I love the line about the bank.
Spoilers in detail here responding to Larry’s comment.
3. I had thought again that I might say this about Snape (sorry, Professor Snape), not Hagrid.
4. By “real” do you mean really a wizard? I think there’s foreshadowing of the squib possibility in reference to Neville’s character, who was also a potential target in the prophecy and who greatly struggles with magic or is perhaps near-squib (though I believe he acquires more power by virtue of his joining Harry in battle). My siblings have made that comment. Also, I’d thought Rowling simply said Dumbledore won’t “pull a Gandalf”, not that all dead characters must stay dead.
5. Thanks.
I’d like to clarify before the book is out – prediction/spoiler now! – that:
By Harry wielding the power of resurrection, I mean that I think he will resurrect all who sacrificed their lives for him, and also all who were murdered by Lord Voldemort.
Looking back at my predictions now (and be warned these are spoilers if you have not finished Harry Potter book 7) -
I’m happy with how very accurate many of these were, three of them turning out just as I’d predicted or hoped, one along the general lines I’d thought, one not accurate at all.
1. Snape is good – Dead on, with two alterations – I wasn’t onto any hints of Snape’s love for Lily, and that Dumbledore trusted Snape insofar as an unbreakable vow being unnecessary.
2. Harry is a Horcrux – Also dead on, with two alterations – V had no intention of making any Horcrux with Harry, only killing him, and V had already finished making six Horcruxes by then, the 7th part of his soul being kept to himself.
3. Harry will Resurrect himself and others – Pretty square on; accurate in concept (though not applied to all characters), Rowling bringing it about in a wonderful way I’d not have imagined. I’d said:
Indeed he did. But it wasn’t the others who sacrificed for Harry in numbers lining up with the Horcruxes that enabled Harry’s Resurrection, which I realized must be the case when, heading into the final battles, so many more than just 5 turned out sacrificing themselves for Harry, which come to think of it had already been happening in the wider, quieter war leading up the Harry’s final confrontation with Voldemort, and I don’t see the story Resurrected everyone that V and all his cronies have ever killed. I hadn’t thought that Lily’s sacrifice alone would partly enable Harry’s singular resurrection. Also, the fairy-tale version of the Deathly Hallows posits that the one who sought to Resurrect his loved ones was arrogant, which filled me with doubt of this prediction when I read it. I don’t think my idea of how Resurrection would happen lines up as neatly, simply, elegantly – and surprisingly – as Rowlings, either. The added element I’d never have predicted was the Elder Wand, which, as Harry became master of it the moment he snatched Draco’s wand, rendered him, with the other Hallows, invincible – while Harry’s blood in V as he’d taken it from Harry kept them both alive, and V’s Avada Kedavra curse on Harry siphoned off the eerie, miserable, animal portion of V’s soul attached to Harry, by death. Very nice (and apparently, that detached portion of V’s soul will sit in eternal helpless misery in a station moving nowhere – Damnation! How scary). I hadn’t thought how Lily’s sacrifice would continue to help Harry; I thought it would be his own. It turned out both.
4. Harry is a Squib – Entirely false. Many who have read this prediction are glad for it.
5. I didn’t initially number it as a prediction (someone else pointed it out as a number), but this was also dead on; my hope that Harry would have to rob a bank to obtain a Horcrux came true. Harry, to Griphook the Goblin:
I laughed when I read that. And that break-in and break-out was spectacular.
Recently previous to that utterance, Harry’s burial of Dobby the House Elf had me bawling. I don’t know why, but that scene affected me more than any other in the book.
There were very many delicious moments at the end. Neville decapitating and sending the snake flying – but how did that sword get back in the hat? Did I miss that or is it a loophole? – and Mrs. Weasley’s triumphing fury at Bellatrix I particularly liked. That Severus Snape turned out a part of Harry’s family in a way, and that Draco was at least curtly kind toward Harry in the end, and Narcissa also somewhat coming around – I thought that was all very poignant.
I liked your predictions and your comments. I read the book almost straight through. (I fell asleep around 2:00 in the morning reading it
But then continued to read it when I woke up. I like the way it ended, especially the epilogue.
Comment on the sword: Harry was able to “summon” the sword when he needed it and it came through the sorting hat. Likewise, that is how Neville received it when he needed it. Maybe it is proof that the sword really did belong to Godric Gryffendor and not the troll.