07.26.07
Posted in Theories at 5:02 am by RavenclawWit
*MILD DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILER*
So I was watching Goblet of Fire last night. And I noticed something kind of strange. You know the scene where Harry falls into Dumbledore’s Pensieve? Well, after Dumbledore pulls him out, he and Harry are talking and Dumbledore walks away from Harry across the room. He’s now facing one of the glass cabinets in his office, still talking to Harry. Well, if you look in the cabinet, right at eye level with Dumbledore, there’s a glass pyramid. Inside that pyramid is suspended a sphere, and bisecting the sphere is a rod. In short, it looks like a 3D model of the Deathly Hallows symbol! See below (click to enlarge):
So how did the GoF people know to put that in the movie. Rowling must have told them. I wonder though, if she explained the full import of it to them, or if she just said “there’s this symbol that’ll be important later on, think you can sneak it into the movie somewhere?”. Very interesting. Now I want to watch Order again to see if there are any more clues hidden about.
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07.19.07
Posted in Theories, Questions at 4:11 pm by Headmaster
RavenclawWit has done a great job of holding down the fort in my absence (my wife gave birth to our son on July 3) and I LOVE her predictions.
I’ll share my own tomorrow, but I wanted everyone to see the predictions of Ariel David (daughter of comic author Peter David, a personal fave) and comic author John Ostrander.
Enjoy!
Feel free to share your own predictions in the comments, sign up for an account to blog your predictions or just keep lurking until you get your grubby hands on a copy this Saturday.
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07.18.07
Posted in Theories at 6:00 pm by RavenclawWit
Over at Mugglenet, the staff released their official predictions on what they think will happen in Deathly Hallows. I thought it was pretty cool, so I decided to do the same in the same format. Feel free to leave your predictions in the comments. So here we go:
Who will die? First let me say that Voldemort will definitely buy it. Also I expect, most if not all of the Death Eaters to kiss it, especially Bellatrix, Lucius, and Greyback. Wormtail will also die. Probably Draco as well. Ok now on to goodies. I’m convinced Harry won’t die, but I have this terrible suspicion that Ron will, probably to save Harry. Actually, it’s more than a suspicion; in my opinion, the series foreshadows this several times. I also think that Hagrid and maybe Lupin will die as well. Moody will probably die as well (everyone’s luck runs out at some point). And last but not least, Snape. He will die, whether he’s bad or good.
Will Harry return to Hogwarts? Yes, but not for classes. He’ll go there a few times for info or to find a horcrux. I do think Hogwarts will be open, but the trio won’t be there for regular classes.
How will the various relationships unfold/begin? When the war is over and Voldemort is dead, Ginny and Harry will get back together. Hermione and Ron will probably be “together” at the beginning of DH, but Ron will die late in the book, sadly ending one of the greatest romances in children’s literature. Poor Hermione. Maybe she’ll hook up with one of the other Weasley boys after a few years? One of the twins perhaps? I don’t really think any of the other various romantic entanglements matter much, so I won’t go into them.
To what does “Deathly Hallows” refer? I believe they refer to the horcruxes.
Is Snape good/bad/neither? Personally, Snape is a jerk. But morally, he is good. His “murder” of Dumbledore was planned between he and Dumbledore beforehand. In the end, he’ll do something to help Harry (probably having to do with the fact that Harry is a horcrux), and then he’ll die, probably at Voldemort’s hand.
General comments on the series coming to a close. I am so so sad to see this series coming to an end. It’s an event I’ve both looked forward to and dreaded for more than a year now. I’ll probably be a bit depressed about it for a couple of days, to tell the truth. We still have two movies to look forward to, but I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that while they’ll be enjoyable, it won’t be the same as when we didn’t know how it would all turn out. Hopefully, Jo will write an encyclopedia type book about the magical world. The History of Magic, perhaps? Also, I really hope she’ll keep to her promise to let us know at the end of the book what happens to all of the characters, the ones that are left anyways.
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06.14.07
Posted in Theories at 2:15 pm by RavenclawWit
So, I was examining the book covers that have been released for Deathly Hallows, and I came upon several things that might be clues to the events of the final book.
Let’s look at the U.S. cover.
The very first thing I noticed was the locket that Harry appears to be wearing around his neck. One can only surmise that this is Slytherin’s locket, the real one, not the fake that was in the cave in HBP. [Aside: you can get a depiction of this locket by visiting J.K. Rowling’s site. The current wizard of the month is Salazar Slytherin and he’s wearing it around his neck.] Why do I think this? Well the scene depicted on the cover appears to be a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, but Harry would be extraordinarily foolish to come into contact with Voldy before he finds and destroys all of the horcruxes. So the locket must be the real one and the horcrux in it already destroyed. Which brings up an interesting question. Why then is Harry wearing the locket? Well, I don’t know but I think there must be a reason. Some might say that he wants to keep it with him to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, but why doesn’t he carry it in his pocket then or lock it in his school trunk or put it in his vault at Gringott’s?
To answer this question, I think we have to return to HBP and Marvolo’s ring. After Dumbledore destroys the horcrux contained in the ring, he actually wears the ring. That always struck me as extremely odd. Why would Dumbledore want to wear something that a) has been contaminated with a piece of Voldemort’s soul; b) is connected with Dark Wizards of the Slytherin line; and c) very nearly caused his death? And yet, wear the ring he does. Remember back in HBP when Dumbledore was telling us that Tom Riddle liked to collect objects from his childhood victims, sort of like souvenirs of past misdeeds? It is in fact this obsession with darkly meaningful objects that leads Voldemort to choose the objects that he makes into horcruxes. Could Dumbledore’s wearing of the now defunct Marvolo’s ring horcrux and Harry’s wearing of the destroyed Slytherin locket horcrux be related? The keeping of souvenirs from the quest to destroy Voldemort? Whether this has magical or merely psychological significance, I don’t know. Perhaps by Harry and Dumbledore keeping these artifacts prevents them magically from being reimbued with Dark Magic. Or maybe it is psychological; the keeping of the defunct horcruxes reminds Harry (as it did Dumbledore) that his goal is in sight and that Voldemort, as powerful and daunting as he might be, does have a weakness.
The next thing I noticed about the U.S. cover was the environment depicted. In the background, we see what appears to be a bridge of some sort with archways. To me this strongly brought to mind the architecture of Hogwarts. In fact, a very similar bridge is depicted in the movies, especially PoA and GoF, but I can’t remember whether it ever describes such a thing in the books. But, J.K. Rowling did have heavy input into the design of Hogwarts for the films, even down to the placement of the lake and Hagrid’s hut. Could the final battle possibly take place at or near Hogwarts? I’m not sure. Especially as the shadowy shapes directly underneath the archways look a lot like headstones. A graveyard perhaps? The Riddle graveyard? The graveyard where Harry’s parents are buried?
That brings me to my next observation about the cover. In the extreme foreground of the illustration, you’ll see what appears to be broken wood. When I saw this, the very first thing to come to mind was Hagrid’s description of the Potter’s house after they were killed. He said he rescued Harry from the “rubble” before the Muggles started to swarm all over the place. We also know from HBP, chapter 30 that Harry’s parents are buried in Godric’s Hollow. How he knows this I’m not sure, but we can probably assume that Dumbledore, Hagrid, Lupin, or Sirius told him at some point.
Let’s go back to that strange bridge I talked about. I said it was reminiscent of the architecture of Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling has remarked that Hogwarts couldn’t have been built by muggles, therefore we can probably safely assume that Hogwarts was built by at least one of the founders of Hogwarts, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. Let’s assume for a moment that it was Godric who built the castle. Rowling has indicated that Godric’s Hollow, where Harry’s parents lived and where they are buried, has some connection to Gryffindor. In an interview on BBC Newsround:
Interviewer: And I’m going to ask one other question which you’ll say isn’t clever at all. The significance of the place where Harry and his parents lived, the first name -
Rowling: Godric Gryffindor. Very good, you’re a bit good you are, aren’t you?
We know that Godric’s Hollow isn’t an all wizarding village, since we are told in Prisoner of Azkaban that Hogsmeade is the only all wizarding village in Britain. But it’s still possible that Godric’s Hollow was founded and built by Godric Gryffindor, and that Muggles eventually came to live there either after Gryffindor and any other wizards who lived there were gone, or perhaps even while Gryffindor was still alive, as he certainly wasn’t prejudiced against Muggles.
Now the similarity of the architecture on the cover of Deathly Hallows to architecture found at Hogwarts begins to make sense. It was built either by the same person or in the same time period. I conclude that the scene on the Deathly Hallows cover takes place in Godric’s Hollow. The headstones are the graveyard where Harry’s parents are buried, the broken wood and debris are the rubble left from the Potter’s house, and the bridge/archways are likely a part of whatever dwelling Godric Gryffindor built in or near Godric’s Hollow. This makes sense in relation to how some English villages were set up in feudal times. A nobleman or whatnot would build a castle or manor and a “village” where the people who worked for him (farmers, servants, blacksmiths, etc.) would live. The village would often be named for the master of the castle.
There’s another part of the U.S. cover I want to remark upon. That’s the curtains that are framing the illustration. The curtains, I believe, are not something from the actual story, but rather a clue from the illustrator (and through her, the author) that we should think of the Harry Potter story as a play on a stage, and that this is the final act. Note how the curtains are intruding upon the action, as if they are about to close. This leads me to believe that the scene depicted on the cover is the final showdown between Voldemort and Harry, and that it takes place in Godric’s Hollow.
Now let’s look at something that struck me as very odd. This appears to be a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, but two things about it are quite strange. One, neither the Dark Lord nor Harry are holding a wand, and two, they aren’t looking at each other, but rather at something to Harry’s left. In fact, they both have their arms and hands outstretched towards it, whatever it is.
The missing wands immediately brings to mind the events of Goblet of Fire with Priori Incantatem. Voldemort and Harry’s wands cancel each other out, a fact that they are both well aware of. In HBP, Mr. Ollivander, the premier wand maker in the U.K. and the maker of both Harry and Voldemort’s wands, goes missing. But unlike many others who have been kidnapped and/or murdered, there is no sign of a struggle at his wand shop.
There are two possibilities for this. Either Mr. Ollivander, somehow aware of what happened with Harry and Voldemort’s wands in the graveyard and perhaps already being threatened by death eaters, has fled to avoid being forced to make a new wand for Voldemort, or he has willingly entered Voldemort’s service to make him a new wand. But judging from the cover, which as I said must be the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort, any attempt by Ollivander, forced or otherwise, to make Voldemort a new wand has obviously failed. Which of course makes sense. The wand chooses the wizard. Any other wand won’t work as well.
As for the direction of their eyes and hands, one can only speculate. Note however, that Voldemort’s hands are palm outward as if he wants to stop whatever’s happening, while Harry’s hand is palm up with the fingers slightly bent as if he’s summoning something or directing something. Wandless magic perhaps? Another person approaching to help Harry? Or maybe something else like inferi or dementors. We’ll have to wait for the book to come out before we know for sure.
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05.02.07
Posted in Meta, Theories at 1:59 pm by Headmaster
PosterWire.com has an interesting article about Emma Watson’s “digital enhancements” in the IMAX 3-D version of The Order of the Phoenix movie poster as compared to the regular theatrical version.
Click on over there and feel free to post a punny comment about 3-D. Go on. I’ll wait.
For my part, I think it’s reprehensible to exploit a young, underage actress this way. Perhaps behavior like this is more prevalent than we imagine, potentially leading to Emma’s reticence to continue doing the films.
Pure conjecture, but an intriguing thought for the day.
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10.20.06
Posted in Meta, Theories at 11:34 am by Headmaster
Two competing stories today, one from the LA Times, one from the BBC, both concerning a joint team of British and US scientists who have created an invisibility cloak.
Some great pull-quotes:
We’ve opened the door into the secret garden
- Prof John Pendry, Imperial College London
and
“It’s a very good achievement,” physicist Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St. Andrews in Britain told Science. “It’s surprising that it’s as simple as it is and that it works so well.”
[Via Newsarama & Attu]
Bonus link: How Invisibility Cloaks Work
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08.13.06
Posted in Theories, Questions at 4:43 am by RavenclawWit
As you’ll know if you’ve read this post (and to understand the following I think you should), I believe there was something important going on in the scene in Half-Blood Prince where Harry catches Mundungus Fletcher selling Black family artefacts. The scene includes an appearance of the Hog’s Head barkeeper, who we know is Aberforth Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore’s brother.
Well, I was rereading Order of the Phoenix this weekend and came across something that I feel could be related and/or important. In book 5, Sirius is telling Harry, Ron, and Hermione that Mundungus Fletcher had overheard them planning their Defense Against the Dark Arts group in the Hog’s Head bar:
“Who overheard us?” Harry demanded.
“Mundungus, of course,” said Sirius, and when they all looked puzzled, he laughed. “He was the witch under the veil.”
“That was Mundungus?” Harry said, stunned. “What was he doing in the Hog’s Head?”
“What do you think he was doing? said Sirius impatiently. “Keeping an eye on you, of course.”
“I’m still being followed?” asked Harry angrily.
“Yeah, you are,” said Sirius, “and just as well, isn’t it, if the first thing you’re going to do on your weekend off is organize an illegal defense group.”
But he looked neither angry nor worried; on the contrary, he was looking at Harry with distinct pride.
“Why was Dung hiding from us?” asked Ron, sounding disappointed. “We’d've liked to’ve seen him.”
“He was banned from the Hog’s Head twenty years ago,” said Sirius, “and that barman’s got a long memory. We lost Moody’s spare Invisibility cloak when Sturgis was arrested, so Dung’s been dressing as a witch a lot lately…”
So apparently, Aberforth banned Mundungus Fletcher from his bar twenty years ago and hasn’t forgotten about it. And yet, only the next year he’s seen having a clandestine meeting with Aberforth outside the Hog’s Head?
My question is, why did Aberforth ban Mundungus from his bar? And why did he apparently forgive that incident in the sixth book? Also, did we ever find out conclusively what tipped off Umbridge to the secret DADA plans? Is it possible that it was either Aberforth or Mundungus? Was Mundungus really in that bar to look after Harry? You’d think that his failure to do so properly once before would give Dumbledore pause in assigning him such a task again. A couple of possibilities present themselves. Perhaps Mundungus was their to spy on Aberforth instead? Or maybe he was their for his own reasons? At any rate, I think there’s more to this situation than meets the eye, and I’m inclined to think that there’s some sort of double crossing going on. I believe that Aberforth and maybe Mundungus could possibly be untrustworthy, especially Aberforth. Why is it that Albus speaks so little of his brother, especially when he lives so close by? Is it possibly because he doesn’t trust his brother either?
What does everyone else think?
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07.11.06
Posted in Theories at 6:38 pm by harrypotter_lover35
Is Dumbledore immortal? I am sorry if this has already been posted. But after reading www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com I was thinking if he could be immortal, if he hasn’t died, if he has this post is pointless! But he said if people remain loyal tohim , he won’t be gone.I know Dumbledore is a wise man, he might have meant in mind and heart but that could mean more. Harry is faithful to Dumbledore….which had been proven throughout the series. In the second movie(COS) Harry goes back 50 years and Dumbledore hasn’t changed much…..that could have been done with makeup, and same in the forth when Harry goes into the pensieve….though that was only 13 years back. Dumbledore is an old wizard but very wise and he has many memories of the past, that would be a long time and big past. Dumbledore knows many people that are older then him ex. Nicholas Flamel(but he had the stone). There could be other reasons as well…like the fact that Dumbledore has been teaching at Hogwarts for ages,and that he knows about many other people and things.
This is an odd possiblility but I would like to hear what all of you think!
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07.10.06
Posted in Theories at 12:36 pm by hpqueen13
Is dumbledore really dead????
Look heres the scoop-when i heard people gossiping about it I was all “DUMBLEDORE IS DEAD. You all are coming up with RIDICULOUS theories!!!!”
but guess what?? someone sent me this page- www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com
and after reading it I was convinces.Check it out!!!! Too much evidence!!!!!!
You see?? Its totally bizarre!!! Look at the circumstances under which he died!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So check it out people!!! Im so convinced.Are you?
Tell me what you think by commenting on this later.
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07.06.06
Posted in Theories, Questions at 10:43 pm by harrypotter_lover35
I know that most of us here are dying to read book 7 of Harry Potter.But I was thinking about what could be the other horcruxes and I came up with one-Harry.It does sound a little oddd, but I was thinking that it might somehow connect with the title! What do you think? Is Harry a horcrux?What is the title and Why?
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