FINAL HARRY HINTS: THE END OF THE MUGGLENET INTERVIEW

First, a tiny news flash: According to the Harry Potter Lexicon, "R.A.B." is indeed Regulus Black. So all the weird speculation (Caractacus Burke? Please.) can stop now. Whew.

Okay, I want to finish up on looking for Book 7 clues in J.K. Rowling's publication weekend interview, as posted on MuggleNet.com. (And take a look back at part 2 of my thoughts on her hints from that interview to see how she confirmed R.A.B. w/o directly confirming. I keep saying it: JKR will play fair with her audience.)

On to the last of the interview hints:

1. Will the Pensieve help Harry in book 7?

Well, no real answer to that, but JKR's comments about the Pensieve -- specifically that it shows you what really happened, not your own memory of it -- means it could be handy:

But the Pensieve recreates a moment for you, so you could go into your own memory and relive things that you didn't notice[at] the time. It's somewhere in your head, whichI''m sure it is, in all of our brains. I'm sure if you could access it, things that you don't know you remember are all in there somewhere.

The question for book 7, then, is: Would the Pensieve work on an infant's memory? Could Harry go back and see what really happened at Godric's Hollow? (See if Snape was there, for instance... and, say, Snape's reaction when Lily is killed.) Related questions: Will Harry have access to the Pensieve? (Does it automatically go to McGonagall, if indeed she is confirmed as the new Headmistress (not a given)? Or did Dumbledore leave a will, as Sirius did, perhaps with some items going to Harry?) And will Harry be able to figure out how to access his own memories through it?

And we do need the answer to that question. We know that, because JKR won't answer it!:

MA: Was there anyone else present in Godric's Hollow the night Harry's parents were killed?

JKR: No comment.

[All laugh.]

JKR: I’m sorry!

2. Is Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald in 1945 significant now?

I would have said no, it's in the past. However, maybe I'm wrong, given the following:

ES: Yeah, is [Grindelwald] 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.

ES: Does he have any connection to --

JKR: I have no comment to make on that subject.

[Laughter.]

MA: Do they feed each other, the Muggle and wizarding wars?

JKR: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Mm.

MA: You've gone very quiet.

[All laugh; JKR maniacally.]

So maybe Grindelwald feeds somehow into Voldemort? Or maybe if Harry were to learn about how Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, it would help him? Not sure here.

It does remind me of the wonderful quote from Lord of the Rings in which Gandalf says (paraphrase) that we can't completely defeat evil, can only fight it in the form it takes in our own time, but that's a big enough task. Anyway...

3. Will we return to the Department of Mysteries?

Apparently we may:

MA: Are we going back to that room, that locked room [i.e., the room with the veil where Sirius died]?

JKR: No comment.

I'm not sure what we'd get out of returning to the Department of Mysteries. Ideas, anyone?

4. How will Dumbledore continue to have a role in book 7?

JKR gives us an exceptionally strong pointer here, not even in answer to a question, an outright hint:

JKR:. ... Dumbledore's family would be a profitable line of inquiry, more profitable than sweet wrappers.

MA: His family?

JKR: Family, yes.

MA: Should we talk about that a little more?

JKR: No. But you can! [Laughter.]

We know from previous interviews that Dumbledore's brother Aberforth, who we saw in Mad-Eye Moody's photo of the original Order of the Phoenix, is almost certainly the bartender at the Hog's Head (and that he has a weird affinity for goats). I don't think Harry knows that. But if he were to put it together, he could probably get some valuable information or artifacts from Aberforth. And other adult members of the Order of the Phoenix must know this information, to be able to pass it on to Harry if needed.

In what other ways would Dumbledore's family be valuable? Again, other than Aberforth passing on info, I can't figure this one out. Ideas, anyone?

5. Snape and Lily...

JKR doesn't directly give us any gimmes about a potential emotional relationship between Snape and Lily, of course. But we do get this:

ES: Was James the only one who had romantic feelings for Lily?

JKR: No. [Pause.] She was like Ginny, she was a popular girl.

MA: Snape?

JKR: That is a theory that's been put to me repeatedly.

ES: What about Lupin?

JKR: I can answer either one. [I think this has to be a typo for "can't answer..." -JB]

ES: How about both? One at a time.

JKR: I can't answer, can I, really? [snip] Lupin was very fond of Lily, we'll put it like that, but I wouldn't want anyone to run around thinking that he competed with James for her. She was a popular girl, and that is relevant. But I think you've seen that already. She was a bit of a catch.

So we know that someone else was in love with Lily. She tells us she can't answer whether Snape or Lupin were in love with her -- but one exchange later, she lets us know that Lupin was not in love with her. Leaving the question of whether Snape was in love with her hanging out there...

All of which, I would think, leads us inexorably toward a Snape-Lily connection (which does indeed answer a lot of questions, as we've discussed here before). Nice to have the least little shred of confirmation.

And a little more confirmation, from later in the interview:

MA: ... Has Snape ever been loved by anyone?

JKR: Yes, he has, which in some ways makes him more culpable even than Voldemort, who never has. Okay, one more each!

And again, she changes the subject immediately! Making me fall firmly into the Snape-loved-Lily camp...

6. Dumbledore's Gleam of Triumph

We all knew it was important, of course, when we first read it in Goblet of Fire:

"He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's," Harry told Dumbledore. "He said the protection my -- my mother left in me -- he'd have it too. And he was right -- he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face."

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a glem of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes. But next second, Harry was sure he had imagined it..."

Okay, we were right: It was important. From the interview:

MA: Does the gleam of triumph still have yet to make an appearance?

JKR: That's still enormously significant. And let's face it, I haven't told you that much is enormously significant, so you can let your imaginations run free there.

ES: I think everybody realized it was significant when they read it but we didn't see it materialize in 5 or 6.

JKR: Well, it still is.

ES:We've been kind of waiting for the big revelation.

JKR: Absolutely, that's for seven. That's for seven.

Okay. Somehow, the fact that Voldemort has incorporated (literally) Harry's blood causes Dumbledore to, in essence, know he's already won. We clearly have an echo of Communion going on here. And in general, the Christian theme of protection by blood (Passover, Jesus' blood on the cross) continues.

But I'm darned if I can figure out the specifics. Anyone else got some really good insights on this? (I have to say, I'm feeling pretty dumb as I type this post...)

7. Harry's final tasks.

We've sort of covered most of this already. I don't think there are a lot of radical surprises coming in terms of plot: Harry searches for the Horcruxes, Harry finds the Horcruxes, Harry destroys the Horcruxes, Harry goes after Voldemort. How that all happens will undoubtedly include some surprises. We may get twists along the way, maybe Harry goes after something that isn't a Horcrux by mistake (the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor artifact?). But I think the very general direction of the plotting of book 7 is fairly clear.

MA: Here at the end you sort of get the feeling that we know what Harry's setting out to do, but can this really be the entire throughline of the rest of the story?

JKR: It's not all of it. Obviously it's not all of it, but still, that is the way to kill Voldemort. That's not to say it won't be extremely an torturous and winding journey, but that's what he's got to do. Harry now knows-- well he believe he knows -- what he's facing. Dumbledore's guesses are never very far wide of the mark. I don't want to give too much away here, but Dumbledore says, 'There are four out there, you've got to get rid of four, and then you go for Voldemort.' So that's where he is, and that's what he's got to do.

ES: It's a tall order.

JKR: It's a huge order. But Dumbledore has given him some pretty valuable clues and Harry, also, in the course of previous six books has amassed more knowledge than he realizes. That's all I am going to say.

So from this exchange, I think we can count that we will not learn that there are, say, five remaining Horcruxes. Or that there's a Horcrux completely divorced from any of Dumbledore's theories.

I'm interested in the "valuable clues" and especially in the knowledge that Harry has amassed. We know the obvious clues. What are we missing? What's not so obvious? And what of Harry's past knowledge could be helpful? (And did any of that past knowledge come from Snape, who clearly has been feeding us clues we didn't pick up on all along?)

------

Okay, that's it for the interview. This last part was a little more scattered, I felt. But a lot of good hints...

And now off I go to finish my own writing for the day -- I'm on that wonderful downhill slope where you're just about to write FADE TO BLACK at the end of the screenplay, before you realize that you really need to go back to the beginning and start all over. But I'll enjoy the downhill slide while I can!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on JKR's hints. But for now, I gotta get back to work!

CARPE PHOTOGRAPHEM

I've been rushing to complete my kids' Family Camp scrapbook before school starts next week (the only "mom" thing I really do -- I started scrapbooking to honor the memory of a former nanny of the kids' who died of ovarian cancer four years ago, and who scrapbooked every moment of her life). Cory has to take "summer memories" in to the first week of school, and I figured the scrapbook would be the best bet.

And as usual, there are next to no pictures of me in the pile I'm sorting through. Part of this is because I tend to be the one holding the camera. But also, I tend to avoid being photographed. I'm just not happy with how I look, don't want to preserve it for posterity, etc.

Having just moved, however, I've had occasion to see other boxes of photos, other photo albums from days gone by. And I was mildly shocked by some of the pictures I saw. There was the photo with me and all my college roommates, a week before graduation. "How cute I looked," I thought in surprise. And I noticed how, in the photo, I was sort of trying to hide behind someone else. Standard operating procedure, actually, so I don't look fat, don't look ugly, whatever.

But I didn't look fat or ugly in this picture. I actually looked fairly adorable. I just didn't think so at the time.

And all of a sudden it hit me: I will never look any better than I look at this moment. (Not this side of heaven, anyway.)

I may hate how I look in photos, enough to avoid them. But in 20 years, all wrinkly and saggy, I will look back at the few photos I have from right now, and think that I looked wonderful.

Okay, it was a tiny, personal shock, nothing earth-shattering. I admit it. But it really was sort of a paradigm shift for me. A bit of a carpe diem moment, I suppose.

For what it's worth.....

THE PEDAGOGY OF SEVERUS SNAPE

I want to make sure I get a chance to post the continuing essays of Helen over at the Barnes & Noble book forum before B&N shuts the site down next week. This one is perhaps a tad more provocative than the first. I'm not sure how much I agree with the analysis of Snape's treatment of Neville, only because of the fact that those who have been bullied sometimes tend to become bullies... Yet I think it's worth discussing, and look forward to hearing everyone's reactions.

I have really enjoyed reading Helen's insights on Severus Snape, and, per your comments, some of you have as well. Glad to get to share them! (And thanks, Helen, for your permission!) She has more coming up in the next few days, on "Severus Snape and the Long War," and the first part so far is terrific.

Good Snape, Part II: The Pedagogy of Severus Snape

When we see Professof Snape through the eyes of his least favorite student, Harry Potter, we recoil at his vicious cruelty and unfairness. It's like finding Torquemada serving as a Sunday school superintendent... Whose bright idea was this, anyway?

It was Albus Dumbledore's bright idea. Any understanding of Snape's position as a Hogwarts teacher has to start there. Dumbledore told Harry he felt "deeply uneasy" about the idea of Tom Riddle teaching at Hogwarts:

"But I did not want Lord Voldemort back at this school, and especially not in a position of power."

And yet the Headmaster did place Snape in just such a position of power, and kept him there. We must believe, then, that in some way Snape's performance as a teacher was in furtherance of Dumbledore's objectives for Hogwarts.

Can we know what those objectives are? As a beginning, something can be inferred from the fact that Hogwarts is a much stranger, more unpredictable and more dangerous place than a Muggle school. To give only one example, the Forbidden Forest is forbidden merely, not fenced off.

We aren't dependent on inferences, though. The objectives of a good wizardly education are set forth plainly at the beginning of the Triwizard Tournament. Dumbledore explains:

"There will be three tasks, spaced throughout the school year, and they will test the champions in many different ways... their magical prowess -- their daring -- their powers of deduction -- and of course, their ability to cope with danger."

That "of course" is significant.

Now let us turn to Professor Snape, before he was a professor, when he was disarmed, hexed and hauled upside-down on the afternoon of his Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. exam.

Students all around had turned to watch. Some of them had gotten to their feet and were edging nearer to watch. Some looked apprehensive, others entertained.

Snape began his teaching career at Hogwarts under a tremendous disadvantage. He was very young, and very recently graduated. Some of his students in his first N.E.W.T.-level Potions class had undoubtedly been eyewitnesses, in their first or second year, to his humiliation at the hands of Sirius Black and James Potter, and probably every class he taught included at least one student who had been regaled with the story by older siblings. The approach he took to obtaining and maintaining class control, cultivating a scathing tongue and an aura of hidden menace (no doubt helped along by rumors of his Death Eater involvement), was not only a highly effective method --

He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word -- like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort.

--but was probably the only feasible method available to him. Did it work? What kind of teacher was he? For whatever their testimony is worth, the Slytherins liked him, and it may not have been entirely due to House partiality. Umbridge admitted,

"Well, the class seem fairly advanced for their level,"

and Snape himself said,

"I advise all of you to concentrate your efforts upon maintaining the high pass level I have come to expect from my OWL students." [emphasis mine]

He is cool-headed, quick to react, and prepared in advance for the lab accidents that are inevitable when teaching such a dangerous subject as Potions:

"Silence! SILENCE!" Snape roared. "Anyone who has been splashed, come here for a Deflating Draft -- when I find out who did this--" [...]

When everyone had taken a swig of antidote and the various swellings had subsided, Snape swept over to Goyle's cauldron and scooped out the twisted black remains of the firework.

There was a sudden hush.

"If I ever find out who threw this, " Snape whispered, "I shall make sure that person is expelled."

He did what every "mean teacher" does and piled on the work:

Snape had given them so much homework, Harry thought he was likely to be in the sixth year before he finished it.

Harry also gets to do a "particularly nasty" essay about shrinking potions, the infamous werewolf essay, another "nasty essay" on Undetectable Poisons, a moonstone essay that came back marked "D" for "Dreadful," and this one:

Snape looked round at Harry and their eyes met for a second. Harry hastily dropped his gaze to his potion, which was now congealing foully and giving off a strong smell of burned rubber.

"No marks again, then, Potter," said Snape maliciously, emptying Harry's cauldron with a wave of his wand. "You will write me an essay on the correct composition of this potion, indicating how and why you were wrong, to be handed in next lesson, do you understand?"

Sound teaching practice. Harry will never forget how to make that potion.

But are Snape's teaching methods, harshly effective though they may be, still too cruel to be condoned? Is he, at heart, a bully wrapped in professorial robes? What can we say about Snape's treatment of poor Neville Longbottom?

Since I've been writing in defense of a "good Snape," let us ask ourselves how such a good Snape would feel about Neville Longbottom, magically hapless son of two famous aurors who lost their sanity in the fight against Voldemort. I think the answer has to be, "He would be worried sick." Remember what Snape said to Harry during their abortive Occlumency lessons:

"Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily -- weak people, in other words -- they stand no chance against his powers!"

I'm indebted to this thread from Harry Potter for Grownups, for identifying Neville's principal problem as a lack of emotional control under stress, leading to a lack of magical control.

"As is usual with Snape, the snide tone somewhat masks the real message (as well as the genuine concern for the safety of the students under his care). Snape's concern here is not that Neville is magically weak at all. It is that Neville is magically strong, but that he lacks control, is particularly prone to losing control when under stress, and is therefore more than likely to really hurt his opponent if forced to duel while under the pressure of being put on the spot in front of a large group of spectators."

And, in fact, when we look at the actual descriptions of Snape's dealings with Neville, his performance as a bully is... disappointing. Somehow, he seems to lack the bully's knack for picking on the weakest victim and continuing to pick until that victim is destroyed. Or maybe he's doing something else altogether. Look at what he does when Neville has one of his first cauldrom meltdown accidents:

"Idiot boy!" snarled Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?" [...]

Then he rounded on Harry and Ron, who had been working next to Neville.

"You -- Potter -- why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he's make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."

Just two irate words, and then he immediately (1) tells Neville what he did wrong and (2) shifts his focus to Harry, who is much stronger and able to stand up to his castigation without falling apart, to send a clear message that he expects his students to look out for one another's safety. Just as he carefully measures the ingredients he adds to a potion, he seems to be carefully exposing Neville to just enough stress to make him uncomfortable -- very uncomfortable -- but not enough to make him come apart at the seams.

For example, when Gilderoy Lockhart tries to pick Neville for a public demonstration in the dueling club, Snape intervenes:

"A bad idea, Professor Lockhart," said Snape, gliding over like a large and malevolent bat. "Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox."

And as soon as Snape has extricated Neville from the spotlight, he leaves him to practice in relative peace with Finch-Fletchley without any further looming, hovering or commenting on his prowess. Something similar happens when he uses Trevor for a class demonstration:

"Everyone gather around," said Snape, his black eyes glittering, "and watch what happens to Longbottom's toad. If he has managed to produce a Shrinking Solution, it will shrink to a tadpole. If, as I don't doubt, he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned."

...Snape picked up Trevor the toad in his left hand and dipped a small spoon into Neville's potion, which was now green. He trickled a few drops down Trevor's throat.

There was a moment of hushed silence, in which Trevor gulped; then there was a small pop, and Trevor the tadpole was wriggling in Snape's palm.

The Gryffindors burst into applause. Snape, looking sour, pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his robe, poured a few drops on top of Trevor, and he reappeared suddenly, fully grown.

"Five points from Gryffindor," said Snape, which wiped the smiles from every face. "I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed."

It does not seem very likely to me that a Potions Master of uncommon skill and long experience would actually need to test a Shrinking Solution to know whether it was properly made. Snape knew beforehand that Neville would not have to watch his pet die in front of a gawking Potions class. And again, it is Hermione who becomes his focus, and she, stronger than Neville, is the one who loses House points for helping. The implicit message is that Neville needs to learn to be self-sufficient.

He takes advantage of another opportunity to deliver the don't-be-dependent-on-Hermione message in Remus Lupin's D.A.D.A. class.

At the doorway he turned on his heel and said, "Possibly no one's warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear."

Neville went scarlet. Harry glared at Snape; it was bad enough that he bullied Neville in his own classes, let alone doing it in front of other teachers.

Professor Lupin had raised his eyebrows.

"I was hoping that Neville would assist me with the first stage of the operation," he said, and I am sure he will perform it admirably."

Neville's face went, if possible, even redder. Snape's lip curled, but he left, shutting the door with a snap.

It is very interesting to see that he's chosen Lupin as the person to whom he imparts this bit of information. Lupin, who was a disquieted non-participant in the hazing of Snape back in their fifth year. Lupin the werewolf, who could reliably be expected to align himself with someone being persecuted. He does speak up. Snape lets him have the last word, and sweeps out, leaving Neville to experience a taste of success by defeating his Snape-boggart in front of the whole class.

And then there's this moment of intervention, perhaps the most interestingly subtle of all, when Neville launches himself at Crabbe and Goyle after a veiled reference to his parents:

"Fighting, Potter, Weasley, Longbottom?" Snape said in his cold, sneering voice. "Ten points from Gryffindor. Release Longbottom, Potter, or it will be detention. Inside, all of you."

No one is more exquisitely sensitive to the dynamics of status and power among schoolboys than a former victim of bullying -- and what does Snape do? He refrains from any comment on Neville's prowess or likelihood (or not!) of success, and imposes a surprisingly mild collective penalty on all boys, leaving Neville lumped in with the much higher-status Harry and Ron. They're just a group of fighting Gryffindors, all united in resentment of Snape.

Yes, for all Professor Snape's reputation as mean, nasty, cruel, vindictive... still, "by their fruits ye shall know them," and somehow none of the fruits of Professor Snape's professional labors seem to actually end up crushed to a pulp. And year by year, Neville Longbottom gets more and more in touch with his inner.... GRYFFINDOR!

I AM A NERD!

Okay, don't tell me you knew that....

A very fun test! Try it -- are you a nerd, a geek or a dork?

(And from my pit of useless information: Did you know a dork is the word for a whale's penis? Aren't you glad you know that now?)

Modern, Cool Nerd 73 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! Congratulations! Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

A PORTRAIT OF THE POTIONS MASTER AS A YOUNG MAN

The Barnes and Noble online Half Blood Prince group I've been participating in has had the highest level of discussion and insight of any I've found online (excepting, of course, the brilliant comments posted here by y'all!). I do wish I could link everyone to it, for firsthand discussion of "Stoppered Death" and the like.

Alas, the book group will be shut down in about a week, and all those posts will disappear into the cyberether.

One of the posts I most enjoyed was the following from Helen, who's put together a fascinating look into Snape's background and psychology. She plans to follow up on it, but before it gets wiped from the internet, I thought I'd pass it on to you. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Good Snape, Part I: A Portrait of the Potions Master as a Young Man

This post is the first of several in which I will attempt a "speculative biography" of Severus Snape. My hope is to add just enough conjecture, hopefully not too wildly unsupported by the text, to the scraps and glimpses we have of his early life to
suggest some reasons why Professor Dumbledore persisted in valuing and trusting him.

Severus Snape was born of the marriage of the witch Eileen Prince and the muggle Tobias Snape, and a key to understanding his life and character is hidden in the name his father gave him. "Snape" is not only the name of an English village but also a medieval word meaning "to be hard upon, rebuke, snub," from the Old Norse word "sneypa," meaning "to outrage, dishonor, disgrace." Tobias Snape gave his son a disastrous patrimony of abuse -- verbal, emotional and probably physical.

In the Pensive, during his abortive Occlumency lessons with Snape, Harry saw: "--a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner..." Now this is very strange indeed. Why would a witch cower before a Muggle?

Dumbledore gives us a clue when he shows Harry another witch who had suffered under continual blows and denigration. It seems very possible that, just as Merope Gaunt's ability to do magic was impaired by her father and brother's abusive behavior, so badly that they called her a Squib, and may even have been lost completely as a result of her despair at losing her husband, so may Eileen Prince have had her magical powers crippled by her life with a brutal Muggle husband.

But how would this have affected her young son? We have a clue in the early lives of Harry and Neville. For these boys, situations of threat, danger and rage were a catalyst for eruptions of "wild magic" -- unplanned and uncontrolled. Neville bounced when dropped from a window by his careless great-uncle. Harry found himself suddenly on a school rooftop, out of reach of Dudley and his gang. The boa was set on Dudley. Aunt Marge was "blown up."

If young Severus, growing up in a violent household, was also liable to lash out with such unpredictable magical outbursts, it's not too hard to imagine that his mother might have had to teach him how to channel and control his powers at a younger age than usual.

We know he had her old Potions textbook. Is it so unthinkable that, even before he went to Hogwarts, he may have had not only her textbooks, but the use of her wand? He would have been safe from prosecution for violations of the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Sorcery because he was living in the household of a witch. The Ministry of Magic would leave him alone because it was his mother's task to curb his use of magic... a task she may have had considerable motivation to neglect.

I work in the criminal justice system, and I've had a great deal of contact with families in which there has been domestic violence, and I've seen how often -- and how desperately -- the sons in such families, as they grow up, try to defend their victimized mothers. I find myself wondering whether at some point Tobias Snape found the path to his intended victim blocked by a furious young wizard with a repertoire of nasty hexes. It would explain why the young Snape "knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in the seventh year."

And so, at age 11, Severus Snape came under the aegis of Albus Dumbledore. When we think about Snape's relationship with Dumbledore, I think we sometimes fail to realize just how long they had known each other. At the time of Dumbledore's death, Snape was 37 years old. Of those 37 years, only the 11 years of his child and approximately three years, the years of his Death Eater involvement, between leaving Hogwarts and returning there to teach, were not spent directly under Dumbledore's eye.

The first answer to "Why did Dumbledore trust Snape?" has to be simply that he had known him since childhood. And there can be little doubt that Snape as he was when he entered Hogwarts -- scrawny, ugly, unpopular, roiling with rage and shame, yet precociously powerful in magic -- would have attracted the attention and concern of the Headmaster who intervened on behalf of the young werewolf and the half-giant, and who knew not only how much Harry yearned for his family but how overshadowed Ron felt by his successful brothers. Throughout the books, it becomes clear (for example, in the episode of the Mirror of Erised) that Dumbledore is as concerned about spiritual formation and moral growth as he is about progress in knowledge of magic. He is functioning, in fact, as what the Celts call an "anamchara."

We don't know how Dumbledore intervened in young Snape's life, but can there be any doubt that he did intervene? And whatever form it took, while not enough to prevent Snape from joining the Death Eaters in the first place, it was enough to bring him back.

But what did Dumbledore see in that young man that he could affirm, foster and encourage? And what did he see in Dumbledore? It may be that Dumbledore saw a boy who had known oppression early and learned to hate it... and perhaps a boy moved to defend those even more defenseless than himself. And young Snape saw in Dumbledore a man capable of anger. We only see Dumbledore really angry a few times -- when dementors invade the Quidditch game, when he is looking at the perfidy of Falsy Moody/Crouch, Jr. -- but when he does, he wells up with white-hto power, and his anger is always righteously directed.

Albus Dumbledore was the person young Snape needed most: a man who could accept his anger (as we see him do with Harry, mildly observing that he probably has too many possessions while Harry smashes up his office) -- and teach him where to aim it.

I'm hoping Helen manages to get part 2 of her essay done soon! Will post the next part if y'all are interested.... Hope you enjoyed it.

HINTS RE: HARRY POTTER AND THE END OF THE STORY, PART 2

Okay, I've done enough real writing to permit myself a tiny bit of procrastination, so back we go to the publication weekend interview J.K. Rowling gave MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron... All in search of hints she may have dropped as to what she has in mind for book 7 (as opposed to what we all have in mind!)....

(Nobody commented on the last set of hints, so maybe you're not interested. But I started, so I gotta finish...)

1. A very mild hint indeed, if it even is one, on Harry's need for a father: [Sirius] kind of wants a mate from Harry, and what Harry craves is a father. Harry's kind of outgrowing that now.

So if Harry is outgrowing his need for a father (having had his last remaining father figure murdered in front of his eyes may hasten that process!), what will that mean for his ability to view James a bit more objectively? Hmmm....

2. No more Quidditch: I knew as I wrote [the match where Luna did the commentary] that it was the last time I was going to be doing a Quidditch match.

Some people have opined that Harry may say he's not going back to Hogwarts, but that doesn't mean he won't change his mind over the summer. (By the way, how do we feel about Harry being, in essence, a high school dropout? Can I just tell my kids, Hey, when you are the Chosen One and have to finish off the most wicked wizard in history, then and only then may you drop out of school?... I mean, if it should come up...)

I think the fact that there is no Quidditch coming up lends credence to Harry's fulfillment of his intentions. If we go to Hogwarts, we have Quidditch (even if Harry is banned). No Quidditch, no Hogwarts (at least not as a student).

3. Are we done with Umbridge?: MA: Are we going to see more of [Umbridge]? [Jo nods.] You say that with an evil nod.

JKR: Yeah, it's too much fun to torture her not to have another little bit more before I finish.

If we're going to see more of Umbridge, that probably means Harry has more run-ins with the Ministry of Magic coming up. Not hard to predict that, given where he leaves things with Rufus Scrimgeour at the end of Half-Blood Prince. So what kind of problems might the Ministry cause for Harry? Insistence that he go back to school and be a good boy? Outright obstacles in his quest to destroy the Horcrux? Will they try to damage his reputation again? Ideas?

4. Dumbledore's presence in book 7: It's always interesting when JKR doesn't answer a question. Hence:

ES: What would Dumbledore see [in the mirror of Erised]?

JKR: I can't answer that.

ES: What would Dumbledore's boggart be?

JKR: I can't answer that either, but for theories you should read six again. There you go.

Huh? How can it possibly be a problem for her to answer the first question. Dumbledore is dead, therefore his heart's desire should be moot, right? Well, apparently not. I firmly believe Dumbledore is dead, so I'm really puzzled here. I assume his heart's desire would be unity among the houses at Hogwarts, but maybe I'm not digging deeply enough. Someone else figure this one out, and let us know!

As to Dumbledore's boggart: The fact that JKR points us to HBP for the answer gives us, I think, a good hint at what's going on when Dumbledore drinks the potion in the Cave. I don't see any other passage that could possibly deal with this question. Based on JKR's hint, I think what Dumbledore is seeing is his greatest fear, which I assume has to do with evil taking over Hogwarts. All the "Kill me instead" stuff I think is Dumbledore offering himself in the place of students about to be killed -- as in fact he will do a chapter later.

...There's more on Dumbledore in the interview:

MA: Now that Dumbledore is gone, will we ever know the spell that he was trying to cast on Voldemort in the Ministry?

JKR: Uuuummmm...[makes clucking noise with tongue ]

ES: Let the record show she made a funny sound with her mouth.

[All laugh, Jo maniacally.]

JKR: It's possible, it's possible that you will know that. You will-- [pause]-- you will know more about Dumbledore. I have to be sooo careful on this.

Again, Dumbledore is dead. But somehow what he has done in the past will be relevant, including stuff from the battle of the Ministry of Magic. Why would that spell be important? Could it be because it's the spell Harry will need to destroy Voldemort? And how will Harry learn it (or whatever he needs to learn)? The portrait? A letter left behind? The Pensieve? (I hope not the Pensieve -- I feel it's on the verge of becoming a crutch. If Harry used it to visit his parents' death, that would be cool. Otherwise, I'd really rather not go there again.)

Dumbledore's death, as we all know is crucial. And JKR gives some (admittedly light) support to the "Stoppered Death" theory in the interview:

ES: Was Dumbledore planning to die?

JKR: [Pause.] Do you think that's going to be the big theory?

MA & ES: Yes. It'll be a big theory.

JKR: [Pause.] Well, I don't want to shoot that one down. [A little laughter.] I have to give people hope.

If "Stoppered Death" is correct, JKR could easily respond as she has here...

4. How will book 7 end?: JKR said long ago that the last word of the last book is "scar." Now, that's not a very helpful hint. Is the last sentence about, perhaps, the fading of Harry's scar? (Sabrina shyly shared with me last night that she thinks book 7 will be called Harry Potter and the Disappearance of the Scar. I didn't have the heart to point out that that's not a good title because of how much it would give away!) Or is it about Harry lying dead with his scar visible to all? Or something else? Anyway, the scar clearly maintains its significance, whatever that significance may finally be:

ES: Is the last word of book seven still scar?

JKR: At the moment. I wonder if it will remain that way......

MA: But it's definitely still on that track?

JKR: Oh definitely. Yeah, yeah.

5. Is the Sorting Hat the Gryffindor Horcrux?: A lot of people have suggested this, and I think it has to be wrong:

ES: Has the sorting hat ever been wrong?

JKR: No.

It seems to me that, were the Sorting Hat to have a bit of Voldemort's soul inside, its judgments might be skewed by that fact. And besides, since the Sorting Hat can talk, wouldn't it mention that it had suddenly become a Horcrux?

6. The Four Houses

MA: ...How much of a role are the founders [of Hogwarts] going to play in book seven?

JKR: Some, as you probably have guessed from the end of six.

Well, we need those remaining Horcruxes: Slytherin's locket, Hufflepuff's cup, and an artifact from either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw (assuming Nagini is the remaining one). Will we somehow interact with the founders themselves? Through the Pensieve maybe? Or will we just learn about them in our search for the Horcruxes? (Betcha Hermione and all that reading of Hogwarts: A History could be handy there!)

7. Who is R.A.B.?

Well, JKR does tell us that one of the Horcruxes will be comparatively easy for us to figure out. And based on that, I think it's the locket at 12, Grimmauld Place. And based on her reaction here, I think (as many do) that "R.A.B." will indeed turn out to be Regulus Black (Sirius points out on that tapestry an Uncle Alphard, so some have hypothesized that the "A" is for Alphard).

MA: R.A.B.

JKR: Ohhh, good.

[All laugh.]

JKR: No, I'm glad! Yes?

MA: Can we figure out who he is, from what we know so far?

[Note: JKR has adopted slightly evil look here]

JKR: Do you have a theory?

MA: We've come up with Regulus Black.

JKR: Have you now?

MA: Uh-oh.

[Laughter.]

JKR: Well, I think that would be, um, a fine guess.

MA: And perhaps, being Sirius's brother, he had another mirror --

JKR: [drums fingers on soda can]

MA: Does he have the other mirror, or Sirius's mirror --

JKR: I have no comment at all on that mirror. That mirror is not on the table. [Laughter from all; Jo's is maniacal.]

Interesting that the mirror comes up for comment! Let me just note that I pegged that mirror as worth paying attention in my "Questions to Ponder" post back at the beginning of August (pats herself on the back). Who will have the other half, is the question now? (Or can there be more than two, sort of like a wireless network?)

JKR brings up Regulus Black again later in the interview:

JKR: Um -- [long pause] -- such a good question. What do I wish I could be asked? [Pause.] Today, just today, July the 16th, I was really hoping someone would ask me about R.A.B., and you did it. Just today, because I think that is -- well, I hoped that people would.

MA: Is there more we should ask about him?

JKR: There are things you will deduce on further readings, I think-- well you two definitely will, for sure-- that, yeah, I was really hoping that R.A.B. would come out.

MA: Forgive me if I'm remembering incorrectly, but was Regulus the one who was murdered by Voldemort--

JKR: Well Sirius said he wouldn't have been because he wasn't important enough, remember?

MA: But that doesn't have to be true, if [R.A.B.] is writing Voldemort a personal note.

JKR: That doesn't necessarily show that Voldemort killed him, personally, but Sirius himself suspected that Regulus got in a little too deep. Like Draco. He was attracted to it, but the reality of what it meant was way too much to handle.

Oh, how did you feel about Lupin/Tonks?

The fact that JKR doesn't correct the interviewers when they refer to R.A.B. as "Regulus" is, I think, significant, and means we can stop the other wild goose chases. Notice that she doesn't say, "Why, what makes you think it's Regulus Black writing that note?" And I also find it significant that she changes the subject so drastically as the interviewers get a little too close to the target.

And notice how she doesn't even answer the earlier question about whether Voldemort killed Regulus -- all she does is direct us to what Sirius said. But she never answers the question.

8. What clues do we need from Order of the Phoenix?: This question comes from JKR's throwaway comment: You need what's in [OotP] if I'm going to play fair for the reader in the resolution in book seven.

Someone else can go through OotP and list potential clues -- I can't carry my procrastinating that far!...

But I do want to point out JKR's assumption that she needs to "play fair" with her readers. Yes! We must keep this in mind when we start spinning wild theories like Harry falls for Luna, or whatever.

9. Will the love relationships change in book 7?: Apparently not. At least Ron and Hermione will clearly remain an item:

JKR: ...Yes, we do now know that it's Ron and Hermione. I do feel that I have dropped heavy -

[All crack up]

JKR: - hints. ANVIL-sized, actually, hints, prior to this point. I certainly think even if subtle clues hadn't been picked up by the end of "Azkaban," that by the time we hit Krum in Goblet... [snip]

ES: So [Ron's] got a little bit more than a teaspoon, now there's a tablespoon?

JKR: Yeah, I think. [Laughter] [snip]

JKR: Well I think anyone who is still shipping Harry/Hermione after this book -

ES: [whispered] Delusional!

JKR: Uh - no! But they need to go back and reread, I think.

Okay, I'm not sure I feel the need for heavy-duty Hermione/Ron snogging scenes. But I've felt they would end up together since book 2, and can't see why that would change.

10. Is Snape a vampire? Clearly not, given the following:

JKR: ... Generally speaking, I shut down those lines of speculation that are plain unprofitable....-- it's when people devote hours of their time to proving that Snape is a vampire that I feel it's time to step in, because there's really nothing in the canon that supports that.

ES: It's when you look for those things--

JKR: Yeah, it's after the 15th rereading when you have spots in front of your eyes that you start seeing clues about Snape being the Lord of Darkness. So, there are things I shut down just because I think, well, don't waste your time, there's better stuff to be debating....

Snape is not a vampire. Case closed. And I would say JKR's comment, in light of her saying she wants to "play fair" with us, indicates Snape is not a half-vampire either (Sorry, John!).

Now, has Draco, in book 7, become a werewolf?... That, I think, is still up for debate as a (remote?) possibility....

------------

Okay, that's for part 2 of the interview (hope someone out there is interested in this stuff!).... I'll get back to part 3 in a few days. And now I simply must go off and screenwrite for a while.

Looking forward to your comments!

HOW DO MOVIES CHANGE BOOKS?

Cory has just finished reading The Lord of the Rings.

As I have mentioned here before, LOTR is an immensely important book in my life, directly involved in my quite surprising (at the time) decision to become a Christian. So it matters to me that my kids read and hopefully love the book.

I had problems with the movies when they came out. Clearly they were masterworks of filmmaking, a prodigious achievement. But while the filmmakers got much of it right, I found too many things that made me shake my head in disapproval in the theatre: The offhanded treatment of the Sword that was Broken. The mishmash they made of Aragorn's life and quest and legend. The dissing of Gimli by treating him as comic relief. The turning of Lothlorien from a place of wonder and beauty into a place of terror. The rewriting of beautiful language and dialogue for no reason.

I also found the emphasis misplaced in the movies. The movies, it seems to me, are really the story of the One Ring, more than the story of the Fellowship. Peter Jackson has been quoted as having said that he cared "not a whit" about preserving the Christian themes of the books, and I think, for someone familiar with the books, his point of view is very clear. (That any Christian content remained in the movies is, I believe, a wonderful testimony to the power of Tolkien's storytelling.)

Okay, given all that, perhaps it's apparent why I issued a sort of ultimatum to Cory: If he wanted to see the movies, he would have to read the books first.

I guess I was hoping that he would have something approaching the experience I had reading the books. But alas, the movies have reached in and grabbed that experience away from him.

For one thing, he knew pretty much what happened ahead of time. He saw trailers, he saw TV spots for both the movie and the DVD release, he heard friends talking. The thrill of "what happens next" that we only get the first time we read a wonderful book was taken from him.

For another thing, the little he knew/saw of the movies led him to emphasize the battles (as they are indeed overemphasized in the movies) -- in essence, to turn the books into written videogames in his mind. And let's face it, no written battle will be as exciting as the one we see on screen. So things that were breathlessly exciting in print originally are now a bit, well, stodgy.

Knowing that the movies were there waiting, he also rushed his reading, especially of book 3, which he claims to have read in 3 hours. (Okay, it's not that long a book, but still...) The beauty of the language thus became irrelevant in the quest to reach the end of the story.

I can't even begin to think about how the actors in the films affect his mental image. Ian McKellan's brilliant portrayal of Gandalf is quite different from my mental image of the wizard -- but Cory will never get the chance to have that different image. Viggo Mortenson's Aragorn is, for my money, way off the mark (in part because of how he's written). Orlando Bloom may look gorgeous as Legolas, but gee, in my mind, the Elf was a tad less wooden. And on and on.

I find it fascinating -- and sad -- that a movie he has never seen has so impacted his reading of one of the great books of our time. I realize this can happen with any book adaptation. This one, however, because of the undeniable power of the movies, seems much more likely to wipe the books from the mind.

All I can do is tell myself that really, at 11, he was too young for the books anyway. I wouldn't even have given them to him if the movies hadn't been already out, demanding his attention. Maybe in a few years I can hand him the books again and suggest that he take the time and read them. And maybe then he really will read them.

MORE HARRY HINTS

Well, I actually got out to see another movie yesterday, but since I strongly doubt many folks out there are clamoring for a review of Sky High (basically a high-end Disney Channel movie, cute but disposable), I thought I'd return to chatting about Harry Potter for a bit.

(I'm supposed to be working on either an overdue script, or on the talk we need to prepare for Act One on "The Spiritual Needs of the Audience," which I floated by here some months ago... but hey, procrastination is an important step in the writing process... right?)

As I've been reading the various posts on the Barnes & Noble "class" I've been part of, it's been amazing to me how often people need to refer to J.K. Rowling's publication day interviews with MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron. I think, in the excitement of the moment and with her guard slightly more down than usual, she may have given us some very valuable information in the quest to suss out Book 7. So I thought it might be interesting to cull through those interviews for clues...

Ready? Here we go -- Let me know what you interpret from some of these...

The Clues from Publication Weekend

1. In response to the question "Is Snape evil?: Well, you've read the book, what do you think?.... Harry-Snape is now as personal, if not more so, than Harry-Voldemort. I can't answer that question because it's a spoiler, isn't it, whatever I say, and obviously, it has such a huge impact on what will happen when they meet again that I can't.

Okay, I've already opined at length about Snape, and have posted the "Stoppered Death" theory which I think makes it clear how it might be possible for Snape to (appear to) kill Dumbledore on the tower, yet have him still be good (not nice, but good).

2. How can Dumbledore be so blind to certain things?: I would say that I think it has been demonstrated, particularly in books five and six that immense brainpower does not protect you from emotional mistakes and I think Dumbledore really exemplifies that. In fact, I would tend to think that being very, very intelligent might create some problems and it has done for Dumbledore, because his wisdom has isolated him, and I think you can see that in the books, because where is his equal, where is his confidante, where is his partner? He has none of those things. He's always the one who gives, he's always the one who has the insight and has the knowledge.

This passage can clearly be used by the people who think Snape is evil. We know the big emotional mistake Dumbledore made in Order of the Phoenix: He avoided Harry and didn't communicate with him, leading to Harry's mistaken adventure to the Ministry of Magic. But what is the "emotional mistake" Dumbledore makes in Half-Blood Prince? Is it trusting Snape? Is it failing to tell Harry that Snape overheard the Prophecy? Is it taking Harry to the Cave? Is it petrifying Harry on the tower? Theories, everyone!


3. Why did Dumbledore offer Lily chances to live?: Can't tell you. But he did offer, you're absolutely right. Don't you want to ask me why James's death didn't protect Lily and Harry? There's your answer, you've just answered your own question, because she could have lived and chose to die. James was going to be killed anyway. Do you see what I mean? I'm not saying James wasn't ready to; he died trying to protect his family but he was going to be murdered anyway. He had no - he wasn't given a choice, so he rushed into it in a kind of animal way, I think there are distinctions in courage. James was immensely brave. But the caliber of Lily's bravery was, I think in this instance, higher because she could have saved herself. ... She did very consciously lay down her life. She had a clear choice.

I think the most interesting comment here is "James was going to be killed anyway." Excuse me? I thought it was Harry that Voldemort was after, to deal with that pesky prophecy. So why would James have to die?!!

Who would want to kill James but not Lily? Well, possibly Snape. Who possibly was at the scene, given that he was the one who conveyed the information about the prophecy to Voldemort. If Snape was there (and this assumes a relationship of some kind between him and Lily), presumably Lily could have appealed to him to save herself.

But why would Voldemort give Snape what he wanted here? Is it possible for Snape to have some kind of hold over Voldemort? Is it possible for Voldemort to even care about rewarding a minion, and to actually follow through on that? A lot of unanswered questions. What do you think?

.........

Okay, the original interview's posted in three parts, so I'll follow those postings and discuss it in three parts. Because really I have to stop procrastinating. Really, I do. So now I'll just check my e-mail and maybe play a game or two of Rocket Mania.... maybe wash the dishes....

MOVIE THOUGHTS: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

I'm a little late coming to this post... but I was a little late coming to Willie Wonka in general.

I never saw the original movie as a child. I can only surmise that my parents didn't want to take me. And I never saw it on TV either, somehow.

And I also never read any Roald Dahl books as a child. That is even more bewildering, given that I was a proto-geek who checked 10 books out of the library per week.

And then I grew up and had kids, and they saw the first movie (someone gave them a video), and they read the books, and somehow it all still passed me by.

But then I began to hear a few people here and there talking about how Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was the movie that most profoundly shaped them in their childhood. So I pulled out the video, saw down with my kids and took a look.

And -- forgive me, all you Willie Wonka fans -- I just didn't get it.

I saw the magicalness of Willie Wonka's world. I saw the brilliance of Gene Wilder's performance (and I was a big Gene Wilder fan as a teenager). But I also saw the creepiness of the whole thing, of the weird guy who doles out these elaborate punishments... And I didn't know how to reconcile the two sides of what I saw.

My kids get it. They love the movie (and the book). And when fashionista Sabrina dislikes an outfit I've mistakenly chosen for her, she has been know to look in the mirror and wail, "I look like an Oompa Loompa!"

But I never quite understood that movie.

So that brings us to the latest reincarnation, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I finally took my kids to see a couple of days ago.

And I still don't get it.

As in any Tim Burton film, the design work was magnificent. The Buckets' house (all tilted!). The factory. The glass elevator. Even the "design" involved in casting only one Oompa-Loompa. (And a terrific performance from Deep Roy there.) Freddy Highmore, playing Charlie, was lovely.

But Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka was, well, creepy... a little too Michael Jackson, I have to say. And the whole storyline still strikes me as too weird to accept.

My kids disagree. They got it, and loved it. Better than the original, they declared. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's off the scale!

And I tend to value my kids' opinions. (Just last night, Cory asked, "Why do they make movies that don't have a meaning?" Hm, I responded. What's an example of a movie that doesn't have a meaning, I asked. "Dukes of Hazzard," he offered. Okay. Point taken.).... But they can't explain to me why this is a great movie.

Can anyone else? Do I have to read the book? Will I get it then?

Oh well... maybe I should just go back to Harry Potter -- something I do understand!

"STOPPERED DEATH"

I feel a little loath to spend so much time on someone else's ideas, but the theory of "Stoppered Death" proposed by Cathy Liesner of The Leaky Cauldron, posted (and greatly discussed!) at the Barnes & Noble book chat site I'm a member of, is so elegant a theory that I feel compelled to pass it on to you all.

Note (8/27/06): John Granger has asked me to note that he has spoken and written extensively on the concept of "stoppered death," expanding on Cathy's original theory, and that he came up with the original name for the theory. He did have an essay on Half-Blood Prince posted on his website that included discussion of Stoppered Death, but it has been (temporarily?) taken down.

While he had seemed to have abandoned "stoppered death" in favor of what he terms "staged death," apparently he is back in the "stoppered death" camp. He is working on a book to come out sometime this year, "Unlocking Harry Potter" (no publication info available) that will apparently incorporate some of his Stoppered Death thoughts. Once I have publication info, I will of course post it as a regular post.End of Note.

There are so many theories that have to bend and twist the Harry Potter stories to fit, or that pull out some obscure reference while ignoring so many others (go visit www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com if you want some of this kind of thinking). But Cathy's Stoppered Death theory doesn't do that. It answers questions without contradicting other clues we already have. I think she is really on to something.

The Stoppered Death theory relies on something all the way back in book 1: Harry's first potions class with Snape.

Now, Harry's first class with Snape is referred to explicitly several times in Half-Blood Prince. First, when Harry is called upon to brew an antidote for a poison:

And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes:

Just shove a bezoar down their throats.

Harry stared at those words for a moment. Hadn't he once, long ago, heard of bezoars? Hadn't Snape mentioned them in their first ever Potions lesson? A stone taken from the stomach of a goat, which will protect from most poisons.

Hermione also mentions their first Potions class a bit later, when remonstrating against Harry's use of the Half-Blood Prince's Potions book:

"Don't start, Hermione," said Harry. "If it hadn't been for the Prince, Ron wouldn't be sitting here now."

"He would be if you'd just listened to Snape in our first year," said Hermione dismissively.

So, with two arrows pointing back at that class, let's go back and see what else Professor Snape may have said to his first-year students:

"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”

(In the movie, the line is "put a stopper in death," which makes it even more clear.)

Cathy Liesner's theory is that Snape has done just what he said he could do: He has "stoppered death" for Dumbledore. And I believe her theory answers a lot of questions -- and it does so without creating a lot of "Yeah, but what about--" responses.

Dumbledore went out to destroy the Ring Horcrux -- and by his own words, it almost killed him:

"Had it not been--forgive me the lack of seemly modesty--for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale..."

Cathy proposes that what Snape did for Dumbledore when he returned to Hogwarts was "stopper" death: Postpone it, but not indefinitely.

This theory answers the question: What happened to Dumbledore's hand? In every scene where Dumbledore appears in HBP, our attention is drawn to that blackened, burned hand. Why, we have to wonder, hasn't Dumbledore fixed it? Well, what if he couldn't? What if he's lucky to have that blackened hand -- because the only other choice was death?

We see support for this in the Dark curse that struck Katie Bell. Dumbledore reports on Katie's prognosis shortly after the curse:

"...She appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest possible amount of skin: There was a tiny hole in her glove. Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly. Luckily Professor Snape was able to do enough to prevent a rapid spread of the curse--"

"Why him?" asked Harry quickly. "Why not Madam Pomfrey?"

A rapid spread of the curse. Hmm. Could that be what happened to Dumbledore? He reached Snape in time for Snape to prevent a rapid spread of the curse laid on the Ring Horcrux, a curse that, in Dumbledore's own words, would have killed him -- but Snape stoppered that death.

Harry has a real objection here: Why go to Snape for healing? Why not Madam Pomfrey, indeed?

Well, if we look through HBP, we see that Snape is really the go-to guy for major healing. He heals Dumbledore after the Ring Horcrux. He heals Katie when Madam Pomfrey, according to Dumbledore, would not have been able to do so. He heals Draco when Harry performs the Sectumsempra curse on him -- and knows what Madam Pomfrey needs to do to finish up the healing. He's the one person Dumbledore insists on seeing when he returns from the Cave (because Dumbledore needs Snape to "restopper" his death?). When Bill is attacked by Fenrir Greyback, even Harry thinks that Snape might have done better than Madam Pomfrey, who has no cure available. And think back to Prisoner of Azkaban, where Snape keeps werewolf Lupin functional through the full moon by brewing up a potion that hardly anyone, according to Lupin, is able to brew.

Snape the Healer. Wow. That's a twist in our thinking, isn't it? But the evidence is there.

So, back to Dumbledore. If we buy the Stoppered Death theory, Dumbledore has been Dead-Wizard-Walking since the beginning of HBP. This explains more than his burned hand. It explains why, after so many years of withholding information from Harry, he is now so eager to pour information into him: Dumbledore knows his time is extremely limited, and is essentially using his tutoring sessions with Harry as his own version of the Upper Room Discourse: He is telling his disciple everything he can to prepare him for the task ahead.

It also helps us to understand just why Dumbledore trusts Snape so much. Snape holds Dumbledore's life in his hands! (Talk about a life debt!) Of course, Dumbledore has avowed his trust in Snape waaaay back in the story, before the Ring Horcrux incident, and we clearly need more backstory to understand why. But the Stoppered Death theory is consistent with what we do know. It makes sense.

The Stoppered Death theory also draws a big flashing arrow to a comment of Dumbledore's on top of the Astronomy Tower just before his death. As he offers to take Draco under the protection of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore says:

"He cannot kill you if you are already dead..."

What an odd comment. The rest of Dumbledore's speech to Draco talks of hiding, of protecting... Could it be that Harry will be able to look back on this comment and realize that, no, Snape did not kill Dumbledore with the Avada Kedavra on the tower -- because Dumbledore was already dead at the time?

Because if Dumbledore was already dead, then Snape's Avada Kedavra was just for show.

What will it take, however, for Harry to realize that Snape is not the bad guy? For him to forswear the vengeance he has vowed to seek? That, unfortunately, is not a question that can be answered by the Stoppered Death theory. (I personally am wondering what Harry's reaction would be if Fawkes, the creature the most loyal to Dumbledore in all the books, were to attach himself to Snape.)

But Stoppered Death answers so much! Truly elegant and well-thought-out! Kudos to Cathy -- I only wish I could have come up with it myself!

Okay, tell me what you think.

ISN'T ANYONE GETTING ANY WORK DONE OUT THERE?

It's fun to click on the stats that track this blog and see where all the readers are coming from. Israel, England, Canada, Australia... Very cool, indeed.

But the stats also show who provides the internet service for the computer being used -- and boy, a lot of you sure are logging on from work! Cal Tech, NYU, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Paramount Pictures, Willow Creek church, and lots and lots of law firms and universities all over the country. Which begs two questions:

1) Is anybody actually getting any work done out there?.... and...

2) How did we kill time before we had the internet? (Does anyone even remember?)

Well, I'm glad you're killing time here rather than playing solitaire!...

I'm very excited, by the way, to share with you an incredibly great HP theory proposed by Cathy Liesner of The Leaky Cauldron, which I just read a couple of days ago on the Barnes & Noble HP book club I've been participating in. I think, in a world of hopeful-but-misguided theories, hers is really worth paying attention to. So give me a day or so to pull together all the pieces so I can represent her ideas correctly, and check back in to read about... "Stoppered Death."

PETER PETTIGREW AND THE LIFE DEBT

Thanks to all who posted your own questions-to-be-answered some two to three years hence in Harry Potter and the End of the Story. I wanted to respond to a few very specifically, starting today with Paul A's comments about Peter Pettigrew. Here's Paul's comment:

With all this talk about setups and payoffs, No one seems to be talking about Pettigrew. In book three, Dumbledore says that Harry might be glad one day that he had saved Pettigrew's life in the Shrieking shack. I would have to look again to find the exact phrase, but I can't help but wonder if there will be a payoff for that in Book 7. It does seem to be a painfully obvious set up for JKR's normal subtlety, but Pettigrew's actual redemption (and possibly Harry's forgiveness?) would seem to be in line with the seeming Christian themes of the book. Pettigrew's relative closness to Voldemort would also give him access to Nagini and Volde himself. Well, we've still got a couple years to think about it.

I actually don't think it's that obvious a set-up, given that it happened 3 books ago. But you're right, Paul, it sure does seem like a set-up that demands a payoff. And so you all don't have to go scramble for your books, here's the relevant passage from the last chapter of Prisoner of Azkaban:

"...You did a very noble thing, in saving Pettigrew's life."

"But if he helps Voldemort back to power--!"

"Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt... When one wizard saves another wizard's life, it creates a certain bond between them... and I'm much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter."

"I don't want a connection with Pettigrew!" said Harry. "He betrayed my parents!"

"This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me... the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew's life."

What a provocative passage this is, in light of what we now know!

Clearly, saving a life is a profoundly consequential thing in the Wizarding World -- as taking a life also seems to be (given that it rips your soul!). So let's look at the people whose lives Harry has saved.

Ginny. In Chamber of Secrets, he saved Ginny's life. Well, we certainly see a bond between them! And I do think that bond will continue into book 7 and beyond. But it's interesting to think that it puts Ginny into Harry's "debt." Somehow, I don't think Ginny wants to be in anyone's debt. So this makes me think that Ginny may very well save Harry's life in book 7 -- thus canceling out the debt and making them even. I don't think this is a "must-happen" moment, but it would certainly be consistent and give a symmetry to their relationship.

Peter Pettigrew. Harry's saving of Wormtail in PoA is, I think, the most significant of all the lives he has saved, because it is a direct act of mercy. Clearly Harry's need to pity those who have harmed him is going to be significant in book 7 -- we've already had pointed set-ups showing Harry feeling pity for Snape (book 5), Draco, and Tom Riddle (both book 6), and Dumbledore has commented on these moments every chance he's had.

I see several parallels in Harry's sparing Peter's life and other life-or-death moments in the books. Harry places himself between Pettigrew and Sirius's and Lupin's wands, just as Lily placed herself between Harry and Voldemort's wand. And we can be certain he would have done the same thing when Draco threatened Dumbledore, had not Dumbledore prevented him from doing so by petrifying him. Instead, it is Draco who has to take Harry's place, as it were, to go through the same psychological and spiritual moment of maturation that Harry went through with Wormtail. And we indeed see Draco lowering his wand, about to take a step forward, not into weakness, as he feels, but into growth -- stopped in the process by the Death Eaters and Snape.

So what does it mean that Pettigrew owes a life debt to Harry? I think Paul A. is right, and we will see Pettigrew again in book 7. (After all, why would we be reminded of his presence in Half-Blood Prince, really a throwaway moment, if we weren't going to see him again?) Will the little rat save Harry's life? It's hard to imagine, but it could happen. Harry is certainly a much more powerful wizard than Peter at this point, though, so it's certainly possible to imagine a situation in which Harry got information out of Peter that advanced his quest. And Peter is a path to two people Harry will definitely need to get to in book 7: Voldemort and Snape.

Is that enough to satisfy a life debt? Probably not. We will see. But somehow that life debt will be satisfied in book 7. In any event, I trust Dumbledore's words that Harry will be glad he saved Peter's life.

Sirius. Harry saves Sirius from the dementors in PoA. And Sirius returns the favor (too weak a word, I know) in Goblet of Fire when he most dashingly fights for, and by extension dies for, Harry.

Arthur Weasley.. Harry indirectly saves Arthur from Nagini in Order of the Phoenix. Molly certainly gives Harry credit for saving him. So will Arthur save Harry in return? Or die for Harry? I have already predicted, a few posts ago, that I think Arthur may very well die in book 7, given Ms. Rowling's penchant for killing off father figures (James, Sirius, Dumbledore...). If he does have to die, I would really like it if he died saving Harry, not sitting in some hallway while a snake attacks him (or the equivalent).

But will he have to die to settle the debt? Isn't it interesting that Harry keeps saving Weasleys? First Ginny, then Arthur, then...

Ron. Harry saves Ron's life with the bezoar in the "Birthday Surprises" chapter of HBP. (And what a magnificent set-up/payoff, with the bezoar planted in book 1, then lying dormant all this time! You gotta love it.) So Ron technically owes Harry a life debt. And we see his willingness to pay it at the very end of book 7. Yes, Hermione's including herself in this pact as well, but note that it's Ron who voices it:

"We'll be there, Harry," said Ron.

"What?"

"At your aunt and uncle's house," said Ron. "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."

I do not believe Ron and Hermione will die in defense of Harry (or vice versa) -- but if they're going with him on a 4-Horcrux hunt, they will certainly have many opportunities to save his life along the way!

And again, isn't it interesting that all these Weasleys owe life debts to Harry? How can they best repay him? Could they possibly do so collectively, by taking Harry into their family?

Note that Harry feels, for some reason, that he needs Ron's permission to date Ginny -- a bit odd, actually. And he certainly needs Ginny's permission. And should the relationship proceed (as I think it will) to marriage, he would need Arthur's permission. The very three people that he has saved!

What Harry lacks most in his life is a family. That's what Voldemort stole from him. And I would think it a wonderful repayment of all those life debts to give Harry what he truly needs... in essence, to give him a life, a future, a hope.

-------

Okay, those are the lives that Harry has saved. Quite a few actually, giving some credence to Hermione's discussion in OotP of Harry's "saving the world" complex. (Have I forgotten any? Let me know.)

But life debts work both ways. And Harry is in life debt to quite a few people himself. Let's look at the people who have saved Harry's life.

Lily. Lily saved Harry's life by a powerful act of sacrificial love. Yes, James was also killed saving Harry, but we know that Lily "didn't have to die." She chose to sacrifice herself for her son. Really, Lily's saving of Harry is the "inciting incident," to use screenwriting terminology, for the whole series.

And Harry has been increasingly aware, as he grows in his knowledge of what happened that night, that he must pay that debt by killing the person who killed his mother. He takes a step forward in this understanding in what I have come to think of as the free will/predestination discussion in the "Horcruxes" chapter of HBP:

"But sir," said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, "it all comes to the same thing, doesn't it? I've got to try and kill him, or--"

"Got to?" said Dumbledore. "Of course you've got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you've tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!"

Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father, and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.

"I'd want him finished," said Harry quietly. "And I'd want to do it."

I think Harry will move forward in his understanding of what happened that night when he actually visits Godric's Hollow, as he expresses his intent to do at the end of HBP. And then the boy with "his mother's eyes" will go onward to avenge the life debt he owes to her.

(Interesting to note, however, that Dumbledore says Harry will never rest until he's "tried" -- not until he's actually killed Voldemort. Hmmm. Do we have another saving-Peter-Pettigrew moment coming?)

Dumbledore. Dumbledore -- and by extension Fawkes -- saves Harry in the battle at the Ministry of Magic in OotP. And Harry tries to repay the life debt by saving Dumbledore in the Cave. (We know Harry would also, as I said above, have stepped in front of Draco's wand at the top of the lightning-struck tower.)

The moment in the Cave is, of course, the moment where the torch passes figuratively from Dumbledore to Harry. We see this in the much-noted parallel comments by Dumbledore at the beginning and end of HBP:

From the beginning of the "Horace Slughorn" chapter:

"...I do not think you need worry about being attacked tonight."

"Why not, sir?"

"You are with me," said Dumbledore simply.

And from the end of "The Cave":

"It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again.... "Don't worry."

"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."

So Harry is now ready to repay his life debt to Dumbledore, not by saving Dumbledore's life, but by finishing Dumbledore's quest to bring down Voldemort. Note that in this case he is not technically avenging Dumbledore, as he is Lily, since it wasn't Voldemort who killed Dumbledore...

Which raises the interesting question: Will Harry get sidetracked from the real quest by a need to avenge Dumbledore by killing Snape? It would seem to me that this is the real temptation looming before Harry in book 7.

And that brings us to the last person who has saved Harry's life:

Snape. Snape keeps the other Death Eaters from performing the Cruciatus Curse on Harry. And he doesn't deliver Harry into Voldemort's hands when he has every opportunity to do so. I would say that Harry now owes a life debt to Snape.

And how very interesting that is! I'm sure Harry doesn't mind being in debt to his mother or to Dumbledore, just as I'm sure Ginny, Arthur and Ron don't mind being in debt to Harry. But here's a case where Harry will mind very much owing a life debt (much as Peter Pettigrew must resent owing Harry his life)!

How will Harry repay his life debt to Snape? He certainly won't die for him -- in fact, I think it much more likely that Snape ends up playing the Sidney Carton role from A Tale of Two Cities and goes to his death for Harry.

Could Harry pay his debt by taking Dumbledore's place (as he is already starting to do in other ways) as the one person who trusts Snape? Could he pay his life debt to Snape by willingly putting his life into Snape's hands? By forgiving Snape for his role in the death of his parents? By learning to, in some way, love Snape as Dumbledore evidently managed to do?

Snape/Harry is, of course, the key role in this entire story, as we are learning. And if we see their relationship through the prism of realizing there is now a life debt between them, creating a powerful "bond"... well, it certainly lets us know what to watch for in book 7!

So thank you, Paul, for bringing up this provocative line of inquiry! Again, if I've forgotten any lives saved in either direction, I am counting on all of you to bring them to our attention! Looking forward to everyone's thoughts...

BACK FROM THE REAL WORLD

I was astonished upon returning from Family Camp late last night to log on to this blog and see how many of you kept coming back during the week I was away. Wow! It really made coming home less of a downer than it could have been! Thanks for reading, everyone!

...Family Camp is a little week of magic, basically. We all drive 350 miles away from home to live crammed 4 to 6 in a room, and no one would trade it for the Four Seasons for that one week of the year. It's really impossible to describe, because words make it all seem so mundane. Bible teaching and small groups. Mediocre food with too many desserts. The playground and the pool. All ordinary and really a bit trite. Yet the joy and the transcendance that we've all experienced by the end of the week are not mundane or trite at all.

I was walking back to our cabin on Thursday night with one of my son's 11-year-old friends after a magical night dancing wildly on the basketball courts, and I mentioned what a night of joy it had been. "Yeah," he said, "it was fun." I looked at him, and asked if he really knew what the word "joy" felt like. "No, not really, I guess," he said. "Well, now you do," I responded.

As we packed for Family Camp this year, Sabrina asked, "Mom, will Family Camp have changed?" I was a little taken aback at the question. We have had so much heart-wrenching change this year, I wasn't quite sure how to answer the question. "What do you mean, 'change'?" I asked. "Well, like, will they have torn down the buildings and built new ones?" she asked. Whew. That was an easy one. No, I promised. The buildings will be just the same. And of course, they were.

The only traditional "mom" thing I really do for my kids is to make scrapbooks of the trips we take together. And I always feel a bit weird as I race around taking pictures at Family Camp, because they're the same pictures. The Water Olympics (featuring the Men's Synchronized Swimming Team) and the Field Olympics. The talent show (very big in our house!). The campfires. The same kids singing the same silly songs. The same people sitting at the same tables eating the same food as the previous year. Essentially, I'm turning out the exact same scrapbook every year.

But Sabrina's question got me thinking. About change. And I realized what's going on in those near-identical scrapbooks: The only thing changing in them is us. Family Camp remains the same. But each year, we bring a different person to camp. And, as if we were notching our internal, spiritual, personal growth (or lack thereof) on one of the sequoia trees dotting the camp, we get a chance to see how different we are from the person we were the previous year.

Family Camp becomes a touchstone for us, a way to measure ourselves, to take stock. And so few people have something like that. Which may be why, mundane as it seems from the outside, our week at camp is so very magical from the inside.

People like to say during the week that it's a "little slice of heaven" and to talk about how they feel going back to the "real world." But our speaker for the week (the same speaker as almost always, brother to the pastor in charge of the camp) pointed out that those folks are wrong. "This is the real world," he admonished us.

So I'm back from the real world to the shadowlands of L.A....

(And during the trip up and back, I did indeed finish reading Half-Blood Prince to Lee and Cory -- finally, I can talk about the book at home! Such a relief!... And I loved your comments to my last post, and will get back to them tomorrow or so... As soon as I unpack...)

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

I've just been reading Half-Blood Prince out loud to my husband and son, and we just made our way through the "Horcruxes" chapter. But I found myself interrupted repeatedly.

As I read the description of Horcruxes, and Voldemort's desire to have them, Lee interrupted to say, "The diary! I bet the diary was a Horcrux!" And of course, a page or two later, Dumbledore explains that the diary was a Horcrux (smug smiles from Lee). And as Dumbledore explained that Voldemort would want articles of significance to invest with pieces of his soul, Cory leapt off the couch and said, "The locket!" And Lee followed with, "The cup! Hufflepuff's cup!" And of course, a few paragraphs later, indeed, the locket and the cup came up. (Smugness all around.)

It is such a pleasure to experience these books with smart people! ...As it is to get your comments and e-mails, and toss around theories.

But I will be taking a few days off, I'm afraid. We are off for a week outside Santa Cruz, going to our church's annual Family Camp. 300+ people -- all ages, married/single/families -- will head north to spend a week in some of the most precious fellowship it has ever been my delight to experience. It's almost, dare I say it, magical.

Everyone hangs out together, eats together, learns about God together. After lunch, the kids say, "Bye mom, see you at dinner" -- where else can they do that in this perilous day and age?! And off they go to build bridges across the creek, or search for banana slugs and raspberries, or just hang with their best friends.

There are activities -- a carnival, the "Olympics," the "Water Olympics" (with the highlight of the Men's Synchronized Swimming Team), miniature golf, the all-important Talent Show (Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" for Sabrina this year; a rewritten version of Bowling for Soup's "1985" for Cory and his best friend Max -- "1999," in which they sing about how much they miss preschool). But it's really the utterly predictable flow of the week (b'fast burritos on Monday, stuffed French toast on Thursday...) that provides the comfort zone.

And no e-mail. Also no TV. No videogames. No electronic intrusions into the day of any kind. (Barely even enough cell service to pick up one's messages!) I'm too much of a junkie -- I will probably sneak down to the Santa Cruz library sometime during the week to pick up e-mail (but may not be able to access Blogger from there, unless their services are expanded from last year). But basically, I'm gone for a week.

In the meantime, as Lee and Cory and I finish HBP (me for the 3rd time, them for the 1st), I am sure we will turn our minds to some of the still-outstanding questions to be answered, both major and minor.

Here are some of my questions to be answered:

1. What really happened at Godric's Hollow? Who else was there? Snape? Or...? And what will Harry find when he visits Godric's Hollow, as he says he wants to?

2. Why does it matter so much that Harry has his mother's eyes? Is it more than just one of those things people say? It seems like it should be, given how much people mention it, but... Was it merely a long set-up for the payoff of having Slughorn give Harry the memory?

3. What happens to 12, Grimmauld Place now? Harry inherits, obviously, but with Dumbledore gone, there is no more Secret Keeper for the Order (at least for that particular secret). Can new people enter? Can anyone enter if the Secret is no longer Kept?

4. What does it mean that the dementors are breeding? -- a creepy thought if ever there was one! (I have to assume some kind of asexual breeding -- or the creepiness goes over the edge!) Is the only payoff the mist all over Britain? That seems a little weak somehow.

5. What happens to Fawkes now? Is he a free agent? Will he perhaps align himself to Harry? (Or to Snape???!!)

6. What happens to the Dursleys when Harry turns 17? When the charm is lifted off 4, Privet Drive, will they be in danger? Or will it just be Harry?

7. Will we ever see the two-way mirror again? That was an awfully cool magical object to simply toss aside (literally!). Can it be reprogrammed, as it were, perhaps for Harry to use to contact Ron/Hermione/Ginny as he goes on his Horcrux-hunt? (I am assuming that the second mirror is waiting to be found at Grimmauld Place.)

Well, 7 is, as we know, the most magical number, so I will stop there for the time being. I am sure I will come back from camp with 7x7 questions to post and ponder over.

In the meantime, let me just say how touched (and astonished) I am at the hundreds and hundreds (moving toward thousands) of you who have taken to visiting this site over the past couple of weeks. Wow. I hope you don't all disappear over the next week!

Please, feel free to add to this paltry list of questions in the meantime. What are your most important questions to be answered in book 7? I totally look forward to reading the list when I get back, in only a week's time!

Hope to see you again then!

HOW TO DESTROY A HORCRUX

Well, Harry's task is abundantly clear for Book 7. He has four Horcruxes to destroy: The locket, the cup, the snake, something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. (Or is it five? Hang on, we'll come back to that.)

The Locket. I believe it is the heavy gold unopenable locket found during the cleaning-up of 12, Grimmauld Place in Order of the Phoenix. Yes, it seems easy -- but we're just about at the end of the story. Pieces should be coming together by now. So I would be surprised if it were elsewhere. And it makes sense: If R.A.B. is (as I expect) Regulus Black, it's easy to imagine him, dying, coming home, hoping to find a better place to secure the locket, but unable to do so because he died (either due to the poison potion or due to Voldemort killing him in person).

The Cup. It needs to be found. I'd be surprised if it were also at 12, Grimmauld Place. That, indeed, would strike me as too easy. But finding the cup feels like a task someone like, say, Hermione would excel at. A little old-fashioned detective work. I would expect the finding and destruction of the cup to come fairly early in the story.

The Snake. Now we're getting more difficult. Voldemort keeps Nagini pretty close at hand, as we've seen. However, I think we can assume, barring other information leaked by J.K. Rowling over the next couple of years, that if Harry kills the snake, he kills/destroys the Horcrux (one of the "risks," I would assume, intended by Dumbledore in stating that it's risky to use a living object as a Horcrux-depository). So I will make a couple of weak predictions: (1) The snake will be the last Horcrux destroyed, tied in somehow with Harry's final battle with Voldemort (perhaps the moment that precipitates that battle?) and (2) We will get to see Harry speak (not just understand) Parseltongue again in Book 7.

Something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. I'm not so sure about this one. JKR rarely slips us red herrings, but she may have come close to doing so here, given the very vagueness of the item in question.

Dumbledore surmises that Voldemort was trying to invest a Horcrux in one object each from the four founders of Hogwarts (succeeding with the Slytherin ring and the Hufflepuff cup), but that he failed to complete his intent. In fact, Dumbledore suspects that Nagini is, in essence, a fall-back Horcrux, used only because Voldemort failed to get the thing(s) of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's that he really wanted. So who's to say that Voldemort ever succeeded in this particular quest?

If he didstore a Horcrux in something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's, what could it be? Dumbledore states that the only relic of Godric Gryffindor's we have is his sword. That's not quite correct, of course: The Sorting Hat was also Gryffindor's. But somehow both of those items just feel wrong. The Hat has consistently sounded very, well, Gryffindor-ish, and one would think that having a Horcrux of Voldemort's in it would tend an object toward evil (as indeed the diary was a seducer of both Ginny and Harry). And the Sword served Harry well in book 2 -- and did so without drawing any reaction from the Tom Riddle who was there, present, at the time. So I doubt if either of those are the object Harry is looking for.

What about an object of Rowena Ravenclaw's? Well, to the best of my knowledge, we don't know of any such objects, so Harry would have to start such a search very much from scratch. (Again, if he has to do so, Hermione will be invaluable.) Possible, but that's a lot of exposition to cover in a book where most of the exposition should be already done.

I'm curious about the Award Tom Riddle got -- the one Ron Weasley had to polish in the trophy room in book 2. It's certainly, from Voldemort's point of view, a very safe place to store a Horcrux. It's in an incredibly defended place -- Hogwarts -- and in a room filled with objects that no one pays any attention to. And it's an object that has already been set up without any payoff whatsoever. I think it's worth paying attention to.

So that accounts for six Horcruxes (the Diary, the Ring, the Locket, the Cup, the Snake, the Hogwarts-related object). But Voldemort implied to Slughorn that he intended to make seven Horcruxes. So what is/was the last one?

Since each Horcrux requires a murder as part of its creation, Dumbledore surmises that Harry's intended murder was part of the making of Voldemort's final Horcrux. So the question becomes:

Did Voldemort make a seventh Horcrux? And is Harry, perhaps due to the failed Avada Kedavra spell, himself the seventh Horcrux?

I frankly think we don't know enough about Horcrux creation to answer this question fully. I think we state without equivocation that Voldemort certainly didn't intend to turn Harry into a Horcrux. He intended to kill him, making a Horcrux out of some other object.

So that begs the question: Can a Horcrux be created inadvertently?

I think this is really the question at the heart of the issue. Could Harry have been turned into a Horcrux by mistake?

I think (not convinced yet, but leaning that way) the answer is no. Murder seems to be one of the elements involved in creating a Horcrux, but from the descriptions given by Slughorn and Dumbledore, it seems to be separate from the process of splitting the soul. It's certainly not indicated that every killing involves a deliberate splitting of the soul on the part of the killer (certainly members of the Order of the Phoenix have killed in the pursuit of their duties, and we're not hearing lots of concern about how do they restore their souls).

The Avada Kedavra cast at Harry was, due to Lily's sacrificial love and willingness to die in the place of her son, turned back onto Voldemort. It should have killed him, we have been told. (Note that this entails an assumption that "death" is the departure of the soul from the body.) However, because Voldemort's soul was, for all intents and purposes, no longer in his body, it did not kill him.

How, in that moment, could a Horcrux have been created? I know people are surmising that the Horcrux is Harry's scar. Okay, clearly the scar is very very important. We know that it is the way the Dark Lord has "marked" Harry as his equal, per the prophecy. We know that it is somehow part of the link between Harry and Voldemort -- the scar hurt when Harry sensed Voldemort's moods, Harry speaks Parseltongue, etc. And we know that JKR intends the last word of book 7 to be "scar" -- so it's very important indeed. But is it really a sign of the presence of Voldemort's soul?

I don't think so. Wouldn't Harry have some awareness of Voldemort's presence in his own soul? Wouldn't Voldemort have some control over Harry, as he has over Nagini? And think back to the moment at the end of book 5 when Voldemort possesses Harry, but is unable to stay within him because of the love in Harry's heart (specifically his surge of love for Sirius, which drives Voldemort out of his body) -- Wouldn't a sequestered piece of Voldemort's soul have the same problem? If Harry is so "pure of heart," as Dumbledore says, wouldn't any part of Voldemort find him, to say the least, a most inhospitable environment?

Another reason why I think Harry is not a Horcrux: Dumbledore never broaches the possibility with him. Dumbledore is in the process of giving his very life to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, and is training Harry to either stand alongside him or take his place. He is pouring information into Harry at an unprecedented pace. He has given more thought to this, done more research (often dangerous research) than anyone in the world, other than possibly Voldemort himself.

Given this, if Dumbledore even suspected that Harry (or his scar, or any part of him) could be a Horcrux, I have to believe he would have mentioned it to Harry! Instead, he indicates that Voldemort's attempt to make his seventh Horcrux (with Harry's intended death) failed.

So I think Harry's task is as it appears to be at the end of book 6: Find the remaining four Horcruxes (the Locket, the Cup, the Snake, and the last Hogwarts-related one). Then take on Voldemort one-on-one and kill him. (Oh, is that all?!)

Which raises another interesting question: How do you destroy a Horcrux?

It is clearly very, very VERY difficult. Dumbledore basically says that Harry only destroyed the Diary because Voldemort got sloppy, entrusting it to Lucius Malfoy without tell Lucius what he really had in his possession. The destruction of the Ring Horcrux almost killed Dumbledore, and did destroy his wand hand (quite a price to pay, especially with four Horcruxes still to go). We also know that, were it not for Snape's "timely action" upon Dumbledore's return to Hogwarts, Dumbledore very well might have died.

Getting to one of Voldemort's Horcruxes is clearly difficult enough, given the episode in the cave, and Dumbledore's brief description of the finding of the Ring Horcrux. But how do you destroy one? There's nothing in the Hogwarts library about it, we know that. Voldemort probably knows, but he certainly isn't telling. Slughorn may know, but will he tell? Dumbledore can't tell Harry any longer (or can he? What knowledge does his portrait in the Headmistress's office retain?). And one can't carry a basilisk fang around all the time, just in case.

And if Dumbledore needed Snape (with his vast knowledge of Dark magic and curses) to keep him alive after the destruction of the Ring Horcrux, what/who will Harry need if he succeeds? Snape is no longer available to him. Are Hermione/Ron/Ginny enough to get Harry through this?

The tasks ahead of Harry clearly promise an extraordinarily exciting book 7!

A couple of last thoughts on the Horcruxes and especially on the concept of the splitting of the soul:

As a Christian, I am very excited about this storyline, because of the presuppositions it entails: To follow the story, we must assume that humans have souls, and that those souls are vitally important. I think this is a wonderful presupposition to plant in the minds of readers who, in our materialistic post-Christian world, are taught from many many angles to assume just the opposite. Way to go, Ms. Rowling!

And, also as a Christian, as I read about Voldemort and the splitting of his soul to gain immortality, all I could think of was Mark 8:36: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? That is exactly the choice Voldemort has made here: The world (power, immortality, etc.) at the expense of his soul. Never have I before seen such a profound, emotionally-walloping example of that verse. Wow.

There is much more to be said about Horcruxes. And much much more information needed before we can all feel sure we understand (info we probably won't get till book 7)! I look forward to all your thoughts on the subject, as I feel I have barely scratched the surface.

Next post, I think I will talk a bit about the other questions remaining to be answered in book 7. Thanks for reading!