There’s a flurry of discussion about whether or not Harry will die in the last book, as well as the related issue of whether or not Harry is a horcrux. Next week, I’ll do some summary and speculation on the horcrux issue, but for now, the Poll Troll has a question:
What do you think will happen to Harry in book seven?
a) Harry is a horcrux, and he will have to die in order to defeat Voldemort.
b) Harry is a horcrux, but he will find away to destroy the horcrux within him and live, while defeating Voldemort.
c) Harry is not a horcrux, but he will die.
d) Harry is not a horcrux, and he will not die.
e) I have absolutely no clue.
SchoolMarm on 
Travis Prinzi on 
Arabella Figg on 
SPT on 
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Matthew, I agree with your theory that Harry’s going beyond the veil is going to wake up a few dead people. I’ve argued elsewhere that the term Deathly Hallows refers to the four founders of Hogwarts (interpreting the word “Hallows” as meaning “saints” or “holy people”). The fact that they’re described as “Deathly” – and interpreting deathly as meaning dangerous – suggests that they won’t be benign, and may potentially be dangerous to Harry. Or Voldemort.
Gandalf died. Orpheus didn’t. Neither did Enoch. JKR said that Dumbledore wouldn’t be doing a Gandalf. She did not say that Harry wouldn’t be doing an Orpheus. Or Enoch.
Unlees Harry goes back to Hogwarts (unlikely to the extreme) or spends half the last book researching evil and powerful magic, I don’t see how he can do everything that we’ve been talking about. I don’t see how he’ll get past Voldy’s defences, I mean there is that love thing, but that can only take him so far. Without increasing his magical strenght I don’t see how he’ll get past unadultered magic which can’t be affected by love alone. Plus, there are all those Death Eaters, Giants and Dementors sure to be lurking about.
I just had a brainwave ~
If the Dementors are on Voldemort’s side, then to get by them, Harry will have to conjure a Patronus. There has been much emphasis on love in the books and if you guys remember, in the third book (and movie) it was said that to conjure a Patronus Harry’s happy thought was of talking to his parents,can there be a greater love than that? I think that in the seventh book, Prongs will ride again and lead Harry out of the darkness of the veil.
To Reyhan, seriously_black and all others, please give your thoughts
Boggart, we don’t know enough about what will happen in DH to say with any certainty how it will happen.
The path Harry will follow, however, has been identified this far: he needs to find and destroy the remaining four Horcruxes. Once he destroys the Horcruxes, then in theory, all it will take to destroy Voldemort is one carefully applied Aveda Kedavra curse. Which Snape, amongst others, is more than qualified to do.
Now Voldemort has quite a lot of help. Fenrir. Bellatrix. Wormtail. Motley crew of giants (?), werewolves (?), goblins (?), Dementors, vampires (Scrimgeour, anyone?), whichever Death Eaters survived the battle of the tower, and any turncoats we are unaware of.
But so does Harry: the Order, especially Lupin and Moody, all the Weasleys, including Ginny who is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, not to mention Hermione who is a repository of knowledge, and the indispensible, faithful sidekick, Ron. And, I would speculate, they will be joined by Padfoot at some point.
There are also characters whose loyalties are ambiguous: Snape, Draco and Wormtail, any one of whom might well tip the balance at the crucial point.
Anyways, my point is that Harry won’t be fighting alone. And I seriously doubt that he will deliver the final blow. His job is to take care of the Horcruxes, rendering Voldemort mortal. I think that he will need to go beyond the veil to answer a vital question about a suspected Horcrux. Maybe – and this is wild conjecture – Voldemort himself will do something which will backfire on him, destroying him.
As for your theory about Prongs. Well, as the Dementors appear to have switched over to Voldemort’s team, I don’t doubt that there’ll be a lot of Patronus spells used. But I don’t see Prongs having a major role beyond the veil. Prongs represents happiness, which Harry will find a lot of, given who’s already there. My money is on Fawkes, who already has a very strong association with resurrection – as well as already having led Harry out of a literal underground in CoS.
Boggart, I thought some more about your theory about Prongs in the land-beyond-the-veil. Not so much about Prongs specifically, but about the role of a Patronus.
Fawkes is Dumbledore’s pet. He has acted as his messenger and his emissary. Almost like his familiar. I was thinking that he might continue to help Harry by acting as Dumbledore’s familiar, bringing him messages, leading Harry to clues, guiding him back from beyond the veil, and so on.
But Dumbledore’s Patronus is also a phoenix. And the Order has used Patronuses as messengers as well. If a Patronus can continue to exist beyond the veil, then Dumbledore’s Patronus might serve as Harry’s guide in the great beyond.
We don’t really know the rules on the other side, so probably your guess is as good as mine.
Reyhan, I was under the impression that Fawkes was indeed dead. I know that there is that regeneration thing, but to me at least, it seemed that Fawkes, in his grief(as was proved by his miserable song) had indeed finished himself so as to not come back. And if Dumbledore is dead I don’t see how his Patronus would come into play.
JK Rowling is an exellent writter. Did it ever cross your mind that all of our theories may be incorrect. The purpose of a searies is to surprise us, and i believe that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will do just that.
Of course that occured to me! Whatever we come up with on this site won’t detract from the surprise when book 7 is released. And it doesn’t make it less interesting to talk about- knowing that we may be wrong.
Matthew
Excext that, after *some* of the things I’ve read on this site, *nothing* would surprise me.
Sarafina,
Further to your comment regarding how the purpose of a series is to surprise us, that is true within reason. Obviously Rowling is not going to come up with anything that is inconsistant with what she has already written. We’re going to be able, with the joy of hindsight, to see hints of the final outcome and ask ourselves “Why didn’t I take notice of that?”.
It would be truely surprising if Deathly Hallows contained much that wasn’t suggested in the previous novels.
Matthew
I dreamed about Deathly Hallows last night.
OOOOOOOh the things that are revealed!
But what I cannot work out is why Rowling made it look like rural New South Wales and not Britain.
Matthew
I believe Harry will KNOW death. He doesn’t fear it. He’s attracted to it. Voldy does fear it obviously. There’s where Harry has the upper hand. He’ll drag Voldy into the grasp of death but Harry will escape it. And those that love Harry that are now in the beyond will help Harry get Voldy. Sounds simplistic, but hey, I’m not one for long drawn out explanations.
Oh, yeah. Those that love Harry and are alive will keep him from leaving their world. They’ll give him what he needs to want to stay in the world. His reward will come soon enough, as it does for us all.
2 CHARACTERZ WILL DIE. HP AND VOLD. HP IS HORCRUX AND WILL KILL HIMSELF TRUST THIS COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
c)Harry is not a hurcrux, but he will die.
I just have a feeling that this is going ti happen.
A question: Why I should trust your comment Ronald Potter SP2? Why do you thing Harry is a hurcrux?
MIMU
I have been thinking about the end of Philosopher’s Stone and how events in it may foreshadow events in Deathly Hallows. If the books have a chiastic structure, and we’ve seen that already, then I think we’ll get a good indicator of the final events.
I posted elsewhere about the possibility of Neville being the one who may finally defeat Voldemort. The points that he was awarded at the end of year feast won the cup for Gryffindor. I think he’ll do the same in the coming story.
The tests the the trio have to get through in PS will be similar to the final book. I think that like in the chess game Ron will sacrifice his life to allow Harry and Hermione to carry the fight against Voldemort further. Ron will become a great fighting wizard in DH. I think his selection of himself as a Knight chess piece is the main indicator.
I think Snape will have to overcome by the goodies in DH. I think it will be Hermione to do this. She was the one who was able to solve Snape’s potion challenge in PS with logic. She’ll be the one to nut out his plotting in DH and defeat him.
The final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort will be wandless like the end of PS. There’ll still be plenty of magic used, though.
Matthew
Matthew, I agree that Ron will sacrifice his life in DH just for the reasons you give – the foreshadowing in PS – but more recently I’ve been wondering if Neville and Ginny will also die. Reason: when the six DAs are sniffing around the veil in book 5, Harry is fascinated, Luna is calm, Hermione impatient and frightened, and Ginny and Neville have to be literally dragged away. I’m thinking that the ones who are fascinated – Harry, Ginny and Neville – will go through, and only one will return.
It’s just a hunch.
Travis: are you going to give us a structured forum where we can post all of our prognostictions for book 7? You could call it Sybill’s Corner.
Reyhan, are you looking for an actual foru with various DH prediction topics, or just a post that guides us all in that direction? If it’s the former, I’m going to need a tech-elf for that! I’d be willing to have something like that happen, but I don’t have the time to put it together. Matthew and I discussed a possible “second life” thing (I’d never heard of it before), but I haven’t had the time for that either, sadly.
If a few people are willing to launch a forum and know how to get it linked to this site, and you think you can get it launched by the end of this weekend, I’d be glad to have that happen. I’ve got a second administrative username and password that I’d give to those involved. It might be a nice follow-up to the final pre-DH PubCast as well.
It would also have to come with the understanding that it’s temporary. I’m not interested in moderating a forum full time, so it’d be up for the week prior to DH, and then we’d go back to only posts, pubcasts, and comments.
If anyone’s interested in taking up this project, send me an E-Owl. Otherwise, by the end of the weekend, I’ll put up a post where everyone can write tomes of predictions, which will, of course, be rather difficult to navigate, but potentially fun for those with time to read and contribute this coming week.
Travis, that’ll teach me to be more careful with how I choose my words! I meant “forum” in the sense of a post where we could record our final predictions. Not a website kind of forum. Don’t scare me like that, man, I’m no techn-elf!
On another post, I made a list of 20 key questions which need to be answered (Hog’s Head PubCast #29; Comment #60) To them I’d add a 21st: what is the meaning of the title of the 7th book? Others might have other questions.
I think if you posted a given set of questions like those, it would structure things somewhat. Also, we’d have to try to keep things brief, and not discuss, because it might become quite unwieldy to navigate through, like you said.
harry potter will die.
period.
I’m thinking JKR will think of something creative, but I have no idea as to what that might be.
b) Harry is a horcrux, but he will find away to destroy the horcrux within him and live, while defeating Voldemort.
PERIOD.
why are you fighting with eatch other? you should wait until you see whats gonna happen to potter! look travis im not a bad person but i think that harry should die at the end of the story because JKR wants this to finish. and we can not do any thing to stop that! the problem is now dumbeldore is dead & there is no one to help harry in his job!
i really wanted harry to marry with cho and live happily ever after!
my idea is harry is a horcr
ux because of his scar!
it was nice to know you!
PS.i love this site!
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