dr4b | Harry Potter aftermath

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harry potter

Harry Potter aftermath

I got here at 10am yesterday due to going to the Everett Aquasox game and taking ninety years to bus back.

I got here at 10:30am today, because I stayed up until 5am finishing Harry Potter. Sigh. Well, next week I will endeavor to get in by 9:30 every day. There won't be baseball so it'll be easier.

It would be too much of a pain for me to remember who has Harry Potter posts I should read now, so if you want me to read a Harry Potter post of yours, please comment and link it.

I'd managed to figure out a good deal of what was going to happen before it happened... except I was wrong about Tonks (I think JKR made her seem like a polyjuiced person as a huge red herring and I caught the hint too early to dispel it), and I didn't realize Rosmerta was under the Imperius Curse. I even actually figured out that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince, and that he was going to kill Dumbledore because Malfoy couldn't. (I wonder, is the typesetting the same in all editions so you turn the page with just the slightest, slightest hope he's not going to kill him, and then you see "Avada Kedavra" at the top of the next in that scene?)

I expected more plot out of that McLaggen chap and out of Blaise Zabini, and the Slughorn parties.

I think I know who RAB is. I suspect most of you do too. I also have a sneaking suspicion I know what the final Horcrux is, although I would have to go back and reread some stuff from the earlier books to be sure. (The more and more she tried to make it look like Tom Riddle was the half-blood prince and the potions book was the last Horcrux, the more I became sure it wasn't. She should know better by now.)

I don't really remember the prophecy, but hm, isn't Draco Malfoy's birthday in June? Something really weird is going to happen in the next book, that's for sure.

I was surprised we didn't see the current incarnation of Voldemort close up in this book; that's gotta be the first since HP3, huh?

Oh yeah, and of course, there are some plotholes all over the place that come about when dealing with a world full of magic. I can't really go there until I reread, I think.

All in all, though, I enjoyed reading this one a LOT more than HP5; looking back on that entry I remember being so horrendously angry and pissed off that I threw the book across the room. This time, I put the book down, stared at the ceiling, and tried to get to sleep amidst all the swirling thoughts in my head as I thought about what to expect in book 7.

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Last Friday I was up to 3am reading HP6, which is why I was so tired playing Nipon Rails.

Questions that I pose after you've read HP6. Though I forgot to note RAB on that list and any thoughts about the horcruxes.

I wish books five and six could be switched in that book six should be the REALLY LONG ONE and five much shorter. Six needed more.

I agree, six could have been meatier, but I have this theory that adding more would have meant getting into the Final Struggle (tm) with Voldemort, and that JKR wanted to reserve that for seven. Seven may well be extremely long, who knows.

By "needed more" I meant fleshed out rather than needed to keep going. Harry/Ginny was an afterthought, and in general... it just needed more meat.

The more and more she tried to make it look like Tom Riddle was the half-blood prince and the potions book was the last Horcrux, the more I became sure it wasn't. She should know better by now.

Okay, I didn't get that one at all. The potions book was pretty clearly nonmagical--I mean, it was always the same, it didn't try to get Harry to do anything, and Hermione's detection spell turned up nothing. I put the hints down merely to characters remembering Ginny's previous experience. I was pretty clueless about the Prince's identity, actually--I kept expecting more clues to turn up about it but they didn't.

For R.A.B. my first guess seems extremely unlikely, so I'll need to think some more.

I was expecting more McLaggen too, or at least an appearance after the quidditch disaster.

Same here. I didn't think the Potions book had anything to do with the horcruxes. The many references to Lily's skill at Potions seemed like another red herring.

I didn't guess the identity of the HBP, but the clues were there as I thought back. We saw descriptions of the handwriting, the levitation spell, and the semperseptum spell in OotP. Bezoars were mentioned in the HBP's first major appearance.

That said, the revelation felt clunky. "It is I, the Half-Blood Prince!" wtf?
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JKR has said that RAB will be "obvious" to close readers, but her comments in the mugglenet/leaky interview are difficult to decipher.

My big post was here, and I'd be interested in what a Princess Smarty Pants like yosef had to say about it.

Your theory is interesting, and makes sense.

Draco has something Voldemort didn't, too: love. I know that's the dorky theme and all, but he obviously loves his family and perhaps even loves his friends and that nitwit Parkinson.

Harry's scar being a final Horcrux would make sense in several ways -- he got those abilities from Voldemort because he had part of his soul in there.

The other reason it makes sense is because Harry would be the Gryffindor item.

I like to say the scar, and not Harry himself, because I don't think he's supposed to die either, but who knows. Removing the scar somehow may very well be the way to destroy the Horcrux, and may be a quest undertaken in the last book.

But on the other hand, is there supposed to be a pattern to the objects? The ring and the locket are both Slytherin's; Hufflepuff's cup, and where do the diary and snake fit in?

Part of the problem is that we don't actually know how Horcruxes work -- I mean, it's obvious Quirrell came across one prior to book 1, right -- or is it?

ack, must think more.

I was under the impression that Quirrell was being possessed by the other 2/7 of Voldemort's soul that had not at that time been bound into horcruces, and was just wandering around the earth.

The diary is proof of Voldemort being Slytherin's heir, the snake is a compromise measure so that he could get a sixth horcrux--it was only created as one recently, during book 4.

If Harry (or his scar) is both the fifth horcrux and the intended victim for creating the fifth horcrux, that's kind of weird... maybe it was intended that he be turned into an inferius or something?

Maybe Voldemort didn't intend for Harry to be the fifth horcrux. Voldemort wasn't expecting Lily to sacrifice herself, so her death created the fifth horcrux in Harry, instead of Harry's death creating a horcrux.

I keep wondering if you have to intentionally create a Horcrux. It's implied that your soul is definitely diminished if you commit murder, but Dumbledore did say he believed Voldemort reserved the process of creating Horcruxes for 'significant' deaths, which seems to mean you can just let that piece of your soul slip away if you want...

but that would also mean Voldemort has significantly less than 1/7 of his soul, as he has surely committed more than six murders. (also, does it split evenly? Like, does he now have 1/64 of his soul, and maybe each Horcrux is less powerful than the last?)

Dumbledore suspects he was intending to create a horcrux that night. (There must be something significant linking Godric Griffindor to Godric's Hollow.) If the preparation was already in place, could things have been mucked up by Lily stepping in between Voldemort and Harry?

Reading Slughorn's description, I was under the impression that a murder makes a tear in the soul, but in order to actually separate the torn portion and embed it in something else, other intentional magic is necessary.

The word is "torn", not "diminished". Both parts are still there unless you pull one away. I suspect that the tears can heal, or at least scar over eventually, though there is no mention of that in the book.

One wonders if it tears down the middle--if so, then rather than having 1/7th of his soul in his body, after six horcruces Voldemort actually has 1/64 of a soul remaining. I suspect the torn and captured portion is actually fairly small, though, so maybe up to half of his soul still remains in his body and the other half is distributed among six horcruces.

Maybe I should read to the end of your comment before proposing something you already mention. [Sigh.]

because I don't think he's supposed to die either, but who knows.

After V is finally defeated, what's left for "the Boy Who Lived"? He's been defined by that all his life. If he does survive Book 7, Harry Potter will have to make a new identity for himself.

I suspect that he's going to become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.

Yeah, I mean, what's the point of being the Boy who Lived, if he dies?

I think I know who RAB is. I suspect most of you do too. I also have a sneaking suspicion I know what the final Horcrux is, although I would have to go back and reread some stuff from the earlier books to be sure.

Rowling has pretty much confirmed who R.A.B. is. She's not really being very secretive about that one. And I have a theory (not my own, but one I heard and that makes the most sense) about how he stole the Horcrux, too.

I have many possible 'last Horcrux' theories, the primary one involving an error Dumbledore made when he said the sword was the last surviving artefact of Godric Gryffindor.

I don't really remember the prophecy, but hm, isn't Draco Malfoy's birthday in June? Something really weird is going to happen in the next book, that's for sure.

The prophecy definitely said 'as the seventh month dies', so it couldn't have been Malfoy, who was born June 5, even if his parents had thrice defied Voldemort, which I'm sure they hadn't. And Voldemort fulfilled the first half of the prophecy by choosing Harry, anyway, so even if it had meant someone else initially, it was made Harry by Voldemort. It's like Dumbledore said - if Voldemort had never tried to kill Harry, the prophecy couldn't be fulfilled.

I was surprised we didn't see the current incarnation of Voldemort close up in this book; that's gotta be the first since HP3, huh?

I wasn't surprised, actually. I found that to be quite brilliant, in fact. We hear about all this horror and devastation, and we never see the person causing it. I think that makes it more terrifying, really.

All in all, though, I enjoyed reading this one a LOT more than HP5; looking back on that entry I remember being so horrendously angry and pissed off that I threw the book across the room.

yeah, this one was considerably better written/edited. I thought it still had a few issues and could have been a little shorter, but overall, it wasn't nearly as tedious.

(oh, also, my big long post about the book with more theories and thoughts is here)

Yeah, I need to go back and reread the details of Regulus's death.

Hmm, I don't think Nagini is a Horcrux after all, now that I think about it.

Ring: Gaunt
Diary: Riddle
Locket: Slytherin
Cup: Hufflepuff

So yeah. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor are missing. Harry's scar might make sense for Gryffindor, but maybe discounted due to thing that makes me discount Nagini: live object no good for Horcrux.

Oh, another detail: do not forget that Dumbledore became famous for the defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945. We still don't know anything about Grindelwald, do we? 1945, coincidentally, is the year Tom Riddle graduated from Hogwarts. Might just be a coincidence... might not...

If Harry is the Gryffindor item, then it can't be because he himself is in that house, because he wasn't at the time. Watch it turn out that Harry's father was the Gryffindor heir. :)

That would be truly brilliant if that tiny tidbit from the first book turned out to be important. :)

In fact:
ES: Our other “Ask Jo” question (the one about James and Lily’s sacrifices), was from Maria Vlasiou, who is 25, of the Netherlands. And then the third is from Helen Poole, 18, from Thirsk, Yorkshire – also one of the “Plot Thickens” fan book authors. It’s the one about Grindelwald, which I’m sure you’ve been gearing up for us to ask.

JKR: Uh huh.

ES: Clearly -

JKR: Come on then, remind me. Is he dead?

ES: Yeah, is he dead?

JKR: Yeah, he is.

ES: Is he important?

JKR: [regretful] Ohhh...

ES: You don’t have to answer but can you give us some backstory on him?

JKR: I'm going to tell you as much as I told someone earlier who asked me. You know Owen who won the [UK television] competition to interview me? He asked about Grindelwald [pronounced "Grindelvald" HMM…]. He said, “Is it coincidence that he died in 1945,” and I said no. It amuses me to make allusions to things that were happening in the Muggle world, so my feeling would be that while there's a global Muggle war going on, there's also a global wizarding war going on.

so maybe she's just being vague, or maybe there's something to it.

As for the Horcruxes, I think Nagini must be one - either that or there isn't one at all. I've heard the 'Harry's scar' theory, too, like he somehow has to eliminate his scar (the last word of book 7 is reported to be 'scar'), but I think the more likely Horcrux is the Sorting Hat, which did originally belong to Gryffindor.

Um, the Sorting Hat is sentient enough that it might remember being near a murder...

Maybe the (intended) horcrux is something at Godric's Hollow.

I'm starting to think that it's not the hat, but something pulled out of the hat in Book Two: Gryffindor's Sword. Seems to me that it would be something the founder-obsessed one would love to get his hands on.

Dumbledore explicitly pointed out that the sword has been in the Headmaster's office during the time period when Voldemort was looking for objects to turn into horcruxes (horcruces?). The hat has been in the Headmaster's office since the the founders' days.

I guess we still don't know where exactly the sword was before Harry pulled it out of the hat. The sword could have been in the office if the hat was either a gateway to the sword stored in the office or the actual container of the sword. I'm tempted to go back and read the descriptions of the headmaster's office from PS and CoS pre-climax, and see if Harry notices the sword.

My theory is that when the Sorting Hat was created, the four founders each put some characteristic item of theirs in it, which is what the hat used to compare the students to to determine their house.

After hundreds of years of experience, the hat probably no longer needs the items, which is why it still sorts students into Gryffindor even without the sword. Possibly three more items could be pulled out of it, though I'm not sure what they'd be.

1945: the hp-lexicon timeline links those two events based on different evidence. One is directly from the book, the other is pieced together from "50 years ago" based on whenever you think "now" is. Considering how bad JKR is at maths, I can believe she intended the events to be close, but not necessarily the same year.

A few people think they have spotted a theme linking founders and horcruxes through the Tarot suits: cups (Hufflepuff), pentacles/diamonds (Slytherin's locket), wands, and swords. I don't I buy this.

I've given you access to the two posts I made. (July 18 and July 26) Feel free to take a peek at your leisure.

I think Snape is evil and is Voltemort's biggest supporters. Snape had a lifelong fascination with the Dark Arts. Dumbledore made a big mistake trusting him. He never let him teach the Defense Against the Dark Arts because he felt he would go back to being a Death Eater; so why did he let him teach the subject now? Probably because he is getting old, his reflexes are slow and he just gave in to Snape.
Snape was the one who stood outside the door listening to Prof. Trelawney make the prophecy and told Voltemort what he overheard. Snape told Bellatrix that all his work for Dumbledore was done under Voltemore's orders. He abuses his power as a professor and is cruel to students, especially Harry, Hermione and Neville. He is ambitious and resentful of people who are well liked. Snape is a superb Occlumens and could easily have hidden his loyalty to Voltemort from Dumbledore.

He never let him teach the Defense Against the Dark Arts because he felt he would go back to being a Death Eater; so why did he let him teach the subject now?

Dumbledore mentions that, ever since he refused that job to Voldemort himself, no professor of Dark Arts Defense has lasted more than a year. An alternate theory is that he wanted to keep Snape around, so he never gave him the job that might cause him to die or leave Hogwarts after a year. Why he gets it now is either because Dumbledore has completely run out of replacements, or beacuse he knows the end is near. Probably because he noticed that it was book 6. :)

He abuses his power as a professor and is cruel to students

Notably, he is never cruel to anyone in his own house of Slytherin, and has been known to give undeserved favor to Malfoy & crew. We're told at the beginning of book one that Slytherins hang together and favor their own excessively, and this fits. Also, remember that if Harry inherited his father's and Sirius's hatred of Snape, he also inherited Snape's hatred of them, which could be why he and those near him are being picked on more than the other non-Slytherins.

Snape is a superb Occlumens and could easily have hidden his loyalty to Voltemort from Dumbledore.

Or, he could be hiding his loyalty to Dumbledore from Voldemort. By itself, that he's an occlumens doesn't favor him being on either side.

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Harry Potter aftermath

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Re: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince