Friday, February 16, 2007

Harry Potter Visits Parents' Home, Bill and Fleur To Marry

Ron Weasley and Herione Granger plan to accompany Harry Potter to his parents' home at Godric's Hollow. Or what's left of it. Apparently He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did quite a number on it with his green light bomb.

I don't know whether he's going there looking for information that will help him in his quest to put an end to Voldemort or whether it's more of a spiritual journey as he prepares to do what he must, but it will be an interesting trip for us all.

I am also looking forward to the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour, and wonder if Bill is out of the hero business forever now that he is starting a new life and almost didn't make it out of his last adventure alive. I'm sure his new wife won't sit quietly if he decides to go play hero.

Speaking of which, I wonder what the fate of the Order of the Phoenix will be, since it is a group started and maintained by Albus Dumbledore. Without their leader, will they simply settle into their lives and hope for the best, as people tend to do? Or do they think that, at this point, Harry really is the only one who has any business confronting Voldemort?

This is a continuation of the series of posts on unresolved plot issues that will be addressed in Harry Potter Book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I began the series Feb. 14.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Harry Potter Loses Dumbledore's Protection

This is the first of a series of posts on unresolved plot elements to appear in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

As you know, because of a charm Albus Dumbledore enacted, Harry has been protected from harm as long as he returns to live with his Muggle relatives the Dursleys in the summer. That protection will expire on his 17th birthday, when Harry will be considered an adult in the wizarding world. He has said he will not return to Hogwarts for his final year of school, but will instead go out and face down Voldemort once and for all. That means the charm will expire at the begining of the book and so we will see Harry facing a more dangerous world than he ever has before.

Dumbledore has also been a special protector of Harry's. Now that Dumbledore is no longer with us, Harry is also facing the world without that old-world magic. However, even though the old protections he has enjoyed have passed, he has spent his time at Hogwarts cultivating new protections--in the form of his good and faithful friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, not to mention his own magical abilities.

In short, Harry's a man now. We've seen him grow from a pitiful, skinny little kid into quite a talented young man. I hope Voldemort's eating his Wheaties.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I did a bit of poking around and discovered that, in the legend of the Holy Grail, “hallows” are holy relics. It has been suggested that the four founders of Hogwarts have some connection with the four hallows of the Grail legend, and that those relics are actually the same as those of the Grail. Rowling herself won't come off the meaning of the title because she doesn't want to give too much away. I wish someone would ask her, instead, how long the final book of the series is. If she's true to form, it will the the longest one, which is all right by me.

I wonder what sort of mourning process readers and writer alike will experience once the whole thing is over and done with?