the boy who had lived?

So we had picked up a copy of the new Harry Potter book on Monday. Shan read the ending and a few parts and skimmed through it but hasn’t actually read it yet. I won’t get to read it until she does though. She seems to be in no rush to start though, so who knows when I will know.

I can speculate though – I meant to get this up on last Friday – so those who have read the book can smile knowingly. To start, there are rumors of 2 major characters (see other rant about what classifies a “major” character) being killed in this book. This is also rumored to be the final book. Rowling has previously said that she didn’t want anyone else writing her characters.
- Harry dies. It would make a final end to the series and prevent others from writing sequels. I also feel that it would work well with the “in order for one to live, one must die” quote from the last movie. Most had disagreed with me on Friday but I pointed out that he doesn’t have to stay dead.
- Ron or Hermione die. One of them could die but people felt that it would be too cruel to the other character. If they both died though, that would work – but people didn’t like that idea as they felt it would be too cruel to the fans.
- Snape dies. Most people at work, plus Shan, believed that Snape will die protecting Harry. This would redeem him as most of us never really believed the fact that he abandoned Harry in the previous book.
- Voldemort dies. Okay, as the big bad (a phrase from Buffy – means major villain) of the series, he is expected to die. He’s a borderline major character in that he’s mentioned in all the books and he is behind the scenes in a lot of the action. He’s really more of a strong supporting character and an easy cop out as one of the two deaths if he is.
- Hagrid or McGonagall die. Strong secondary characters again. Shan did believe this as valid as it helps to remove Harry’s support before the final battle.

There is also some debate about whether Dumbledore is actually dead. A person who has a phoenix for a pet is playing with heavy foreshadowing. Being alive though makes it harder for Harry to take over as head of the school though - unless Snape lives and gets to take over.

Anyone else dying is either a secondary character at best, and a late add-on disposable red shirt (old Star Trek OS reference for a disposable character) at worst.

I mention it now as we’re off to a barbeque on Sat and discussion may inadvertently come up. Knowing smiles all around, I’m sure.


Since we’re speculating, for those who saw the 1-18-08 trailer before Transformers and were wondering, what the heck? There were a few websites devoted to it already. It looks like a Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla (HSX agrees with us). We’ve been keeping up with the rumors at work and, according to JJ Abrams from Comicon, it’s not Godzilla but sort of his version of that kind of story. Since a lot is on handheld, I don’t expect we’ll really see much more of the monster (or monsters) than feet and silhouettes.
In many ways though, I was really hoping for another Godzilla film. The roar in the trailer certainly sounded like the big G to me.

David