| 1 | [[AC:Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[WMG: In the Wizarding World, the British Empire never ended.]] |
| 4 | Put it this way. Voldemort takes over the U.K, which is treated as taking over the entire world, which implies that Britain's international standing in the Wizarding World is much greater than its standing in the Muggle one. Secondly, Grindelwald was "never powerful here", so presumably his reign of terror did not affect the UK too badly. Also, the Muggle British Empire fell due to two main reasons: Political awakening (both in terms of nationalism amongst the colonies and liberalism amongst the British) and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII causing economic hardship. World War Two was not fought in the wizarding world, and political ideologies (especially with regard to human rights etc) as we understand them seem to be very different for wizards. So, as British muggles expanded across the globe, carving out their vast empire, wizards went with them, and, given the ascendancy of British muggles in the colonies, it was natural British wizards should rise to prominence. Ultimately, while the Muggles of India etc are no longer citizens of the Empire, the Wizards of these nations still are. Thus, Britain is the Wizarding World's superpower, and that is why Voldemort's takeover is treated as an act of world-conquering importance, rather than the oppression of a rainy island off Europe's coast. |
| 5 | ** Hermione sends her parents to Australia — which was a dominion of UK before WWII — to keep them safe. If she knew (and she ''would'' know) Voldemort can control the entire former British Empire by taking over UK, then she would have sent them somewhere safer, like the US. |
| 6 | ** If the historical development of the Wizarding!British Empire and the Muggle!British Empire only diverged in WWII, then Australia was already an equal Commonwealth ''partner'' as per the Statute of Westminster and the Balfour Declaration. The Dominions were not subordinate; a huge part, in fact, of Chamberlain's pre-WWII diplomacy was done out of fear that the Dominions would remain neutral if they didn't feel enough had been done for peace. So it's possible an independent-but-affiliated Wizarding government in Canberra would refuse to back Voldemort, and could even do what Churchill planned for the Dominions to do in WWII if Britain was occupied; continue the battle for true government from overseas. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | [[WMG: Dudley knows that Harry has a girlfriend called Ginny.]] |
| 9 | In HBP, Harry starts having dreams about Ginny because of his growing (though largely repressed) romantic feelings for her, and it has been mentioned on a couple of occasions that Harry talks in his sleep. He may have dreamed about her over the summer out of lonesomeness and longing and Dudley can apparently hear him loud and clear, since he's able to taunt Harry about Cedric's death a couple years before, which he couldn't have otherwise known about. It is reasonable to assume that Dudley knows that Ginny is a young witch in school with Harry, and is apparently the object of Harry's affection. It is not known if he knows what she looks like, [[FieryRedhead her personality]], or that she's the younger sister of Fred and Gorge Weasley. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | [[WMG:The eavesdropper heard the entire prophecy, and arranged to tell only a fragment.]] |
| 12 | Trelawney describes the eavesdropper's "rude interruption" as having happened ''after'' she felt a bit queasy — an inconsequential queasiness that she still remembers some seventeen years later, mark you — and, being totally oblivious to what had occurred, she has no reason to lie. Dumbledore, however, whose version is utterly incompatible with Trelawney's, has every reason to lie. This is also his Ironclad Reason, which explains why he won't discuss ''that'' with Harry, either. His understandable guilt regarding the incident inspires his mutterings in The Cave and his over-sheltering of Harry. |
| 13 | * [[spoiler:Given everything else we learn about Dumbledore, this theory's refutal is probably for the best.]] |
| 14 | * Quite probably, what happened was that the eavesdropper got caught while the prophecy was being told, Trelawney finished giving the prophecy while the bartender spoke to the eavesdropper about what he was doing, and then the bartender and the eavesdropper entered the room where Dumbledore was holding the interview. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | [[WMG:Dumbledore is actually Ron Weasley, sent back in time. (A.K.A. "Weasley Is Our King")]] |
| 17 | During the chess game in ''Philosopher's Stone'', Ron acts as both the knight and as the king telling Harry and Hermione what moves to make. Logically, if this game is symbolic of the series as a whole, and Dumbledore is the "king" of the wizards battling Voldemort, then Ron ''must'', therefore, be Dumbledore. If Ron was caught in an accident with a Time Turner, he could assume the role of Dumbledore and establish a Main/StableTimeLoop based on his limited knowledge of the future. |
| 18 | * [[spoiler:Pretty clearly not so. People remember Dumbledore as a young man, and it's established that Dumbledore went to Hogwarts like Harry or Ron.]] |
| 19 | * He had red hair when he was younger, though. |
| 20 | ** And a long nose. |
| 21 | ** That is just that wizards are cousins and Gryffs are even closer cousins. |
| 22 | * Disagree: Ron is poor, DD is rich; Ron has the emotional range of a teaspoon, DD knows how to manipulate human emotions; Ron is Harry's best friend, DD sent Harry to the Dursleys and set up a cunning plan to murder him. |
| 23 | ** Disagree with the above. Ron's a very good strategist and Ron is, in fact, capable of complex and deep emotions. Dumbledore didn't send Harry to the Dursleys to murder him. He sent him there to keep using the blood protection from Lily. It was, sadly, the best option at the time to keep Harry safe. |
| 24 | ** Except Ron is a die-hard fan of the Chudley Cannons, whereas Dumbledore states that death will be coming for him as surely as the Cannons will finish at the bottom of that year's league. |
| 25 | * Dumbledore actually died of old age and Ron replaced him in [[{{The Other Darrin}} POA]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[WMG:Harry is just a distraction for Voldemort, it's really Neville who is going to defeat him.]] |
| 28 | The prophecy stated it could be either, but Dumbledore said Voldemort "chose" Harry. But Dumbledore has been shown to be wrong before. Prediction: Harry and Voldemort have a climactic duel, Harry loses, but then Neville strikes Voldemort down while he's gloating. |
| 29 | * [[spoiler: Instead of dying, Harry is whacked into a limbo when the curse takes out the second-to-last Horcrux. He comes back, and is pretending to be dead when Neville kills the last Horcrux, Nagini. Harry goes on to one last battle with Voldemort.]] |
| 30 | * That would have been the best ending ever! Too bad it didn't happen. |
| 31 | ** The problem with this theory is that the recordings of the prophecies in the Department of Mysteries were designed to cause severe brain damage to anyone who tried to pick one of them up, unless the person who tried to pick up a recording of a certain prophecy was mentioned in that prophecy. Harry picked up the recording labeled "SPT to APWBD: Dark Lord and ?Harry Potter" and did not suffer any brain damage; thus that prophecy had to be about Harry. Unless you're suggesting that Harry DID suffer brain damage from picking it up, and everything that happened after that was a figment of an addled mind... |
| 32 | ** It came pretty close actually. Neville really stepped up near the end. If it hadn't been that Harry was already established as TheChosenOne, Neville might have had an even deeper role in the overall plot. Mugglenet even suggested the theory that had something like this happened, it would have given the series an even more poignant ending in one of their books, entitled, simply enough "Harry Potter Should have Died". |
| 33 | [[WMG: Harry did die in book 7.]] |
| 34 | Rather than surviving, Harry went to heaven. In heaven, he imagined the entire defeating Voldemort. Voldemort proceeded to learn that it really was Neville, as described in the jossed theory. |
| 35 | * This theory wins the FridgeBrilliance award, because of how it applies to the prophecy. Voldemort chose Neville "as his equal"...by disregarding him and going for Harry, meaning Neville was ''not'' bound to Voldemort as Harry was, leaving Neville free to act. And because Voldemort was so focused on Harry, he knew nothing about what Neville could do, thus resulting in whole "power he knows not" bit. |
| 36 | ** What FridgeBrilliance are you talking about? Everything in the books clearly points out to Harry being the one marked by Voldemort "as his equal" - where does Neville become that? Certainly not in the argument they have after Voldemort makes Hagrid bring Harry's "dead body": Voldemort does recognize that Neville is a WorthyOpponent, but he only offers Neville the chance to live by becoming his servant. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | [[WMG:Snape is a good guy.]] |
| 39 | Snape's morality has been dubious over the course of the whole series, but his excuses at the beginning of ''Half-Blood Prince'' for why he "seemed to be" siding with the good guys have plausible denial written all over them. You'll also notice that when he killed Dumbledore, the latter didn't specifically say "Please don't, Severus!"; he simply said "Please, Severus!", and he was actually begging Snape to ''go through'' with killing him. Dumbledore's death was all part of an overarching plot to help defeat Voldemort. |
| 40 | * [[spoiler: Confirmed by events in ''Deathly Hallows''.]] |
| 41 | * [[spoiler: Although it wasn't so much a plot to defeat Voldemort as Dumbledore didn't want to give Voldemort the satisfation of A) succesfully killing by proxy and B) turning Draco into a murderer.]] |
| 42 | ** [[spoiler: Or a murder ''victim'', as Voldemort would've killed Draco in order to gain mastery over the Elder Wand.]] |
| 43 | * No. At first glance both Franchise/HarryPotter and Franchise/StarWars seem to be BlackAndWhiteMorality stories but the War is LightVersusDark applying BlueAndOrangeMorality. Snape is on the Light side = DD's side but LightIsNotGood. |
| 44 | ** So, in other words, Snape is [[GoodIsNotNice a flawed but good man]]. |
| 45 | * No, Snapes an a-hole and a jerk and a villain. He is a 'good guy' only in the Noah Bennet (from heroes) sense of the word. Noah Bennet was always an a-hole, it's just he loved his daughter and family and would do anything to protect them, even turn on his bosses. The only reason Snape turns against Voldemort is because Voldermort threatened the woman Snape loved. Other than that Snape was on board with the whole Death Eater agenda, and the only reason he started working for Dumbeldore is because Dumbeldore swore to protect Lilly...and after failing at that miserably, to get revenge on Voldemort for Lilly's death. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[WMG: The Sorting Hat was the last Horcrux.]] |
| 48 | A theory [[@/{{Loki Lie-Smith}} This Troper]] heard before Deathly Hallows came out was that when Voldemort was in Dumbledore's office in the Pensieve flashback in Half-Blood Prince and he reaches for his wand, he was secretly casting the spell that sends a soul fragment into a host object - in this case the Hat. Then the fragment corrupted the Hat, making it send anyone with the potential for evil into Slytherin, where Voldemort had contacts and could easily recruit them, regardless of what House they were actually suited to. |
| 49 | * [[spoiler: Obviously {{Jossed}} by Deathly Hallows.]] |
| 50 | * Riddle cast a spell to burn the Hat while Neille was wearing it. I assumed that the Hat was only slightly charred, but the text ain't precise. Riddle was holding the IdiotBall throughout bk7. He would have desroyed the Hat ifn it was a horcrux. |
| 51 | [[WMG:Stubby Boardman is really Sirius Black.]] |
| 52 | [[Main/HesJustHiding Seriously]]! |
| 53 | * ''Ahem.'' Don't you mean [[{{Pun}} 'Siriusly!']]? |
| 54 | * He is the only character, beside the first year School song and Luna Lovegood later, that we see singing. He constantly sings God Rest Ye Marry Hippogriffs at Christmas. |
| 55 | * And Stubby Boardman did retire and disappear from public view in 1980, and no one's been able to find him since...probably because the next year, Sirius got locked up. The math all works out. And we had no idea what Sirius was doing after graduation except secretly working for the Order, and he couldn't be living with James like he used to, James had gotten married and had a kid. Sirius had to have some actual real job, since his family had cut him off. |
| 56 | * And Kingsley thought Sirius would find the Quibbler with that information 'interesting', so maybe Kingsley knows it's true. Arthur thought it was 'amusing', so probably doesn't know, but they were hardly in a place where Kingsley could correct his misconception. Just because ''Harry'' thinks it's crazy doesn't mean it can't be true. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[WMG:"Stubby Boardman" was a [[Main/LineOfSightName Line Of Sight Name]] that Sirius invented when he was in a tight pinch.]] |
| 59 | One day, the Marauders were in trouble for some reason (as usual). This time, they quickly passed themselves off as a music band and came up with the name "Hob Goblins", which was also a Line Of Sight Name, probably a stand in for the Beatles. Naturally, [[Main/SpringtimeForHitler they proved a hit]], and so they carried on the deception for several years, à la ''Series/HannahMontana''. It ended only when... you know, three-fourths of them were dead, in Azkaban, or living as someone's pet rat. |
| 60 | * Therefore the Ministry of Magic has a 13 year Statute of Limitations. Why did she take so long to announce the alibi? Ministry sent Sirius to Azkaban without a trial and decreed that no-one may publish any defence for 13 years. When the edict expired, she wrote in. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | [[WMG: Speaking of "Sirius Denial" style theories, Lily Potter is an Animagus and Hedwig is her alternate form.]] |
| 63 | There's no real evidence for this within the books (and it was obviously Jossed), but it did pop up every so often in ''Harry Potter'' discussion boards and is too out-there not to warrant a mention here. |
| 64 | * Well, that makes [[spoiler: Hedwig's death in Book 7]] absolutely awful. And [[EpilepticTrees she's obviously Crookshanks]], who actively sought out Harry('s friend). She was intelligent, friends with Padfoot, and tried to keep Ron away from Hermione to make Harry happy. That pesky little thing about him being a male is because Hermione [[PingPongNaivete didn't quite know how to tell boy cats from girl cats]], and by the time she [[TooMuchInformation read a book on cat sexing]], was too arrogant to admit she was wrong about it. |
| 65 | ** {{Jossed}}. |
| 66 | *** Wait, what? Do you mean "{{Jossed}}", Or did JKR ''actually'' Joss Lilly being specifically Crookshanks? |
| 67 | *** Yes, J. K. Rowling really did specifically say that Ccrookshanks is not an animagus in an interview. The theory had been popular since [=PoA=] came out. |
| 68 | *** Whoever suggested that Lily is Crookshanks: Are you ''really'' that oblivious to how much "Lily Lives!" theories cheapen her sacrifice? Any loving mother, when confronted by a psychopath who wants to kill their child, would offer themselves up in place of the child; to suggest that Lily ''wouldn't'' is to suggest that she was a selfish shrew. |
| 69 | *** This troper firmly believes the following- Lily ''did'' sacrifice herself, meant to die in place of harry, and so on and so on. ''But'' fate/Death/God/Saint Peter or whoever offers her soul/spirit a choice- she can watch from above/the afterlife, or she can spend a few years as, say, Crookshanks. When the cat dies, she will return to her dead human spirit state. kinda like Zee's grandma in The Shadow Thieves. Alternatively, the choice giver uses a good form of the horcrux spell to allow part of her soul to remain alive, in the form of Crookshanks, and the other to go to heaven/the afterlife, until the cat dies and her soul spirit is reunited. |
| 70 | *** This troper wrote the "Lily is Crookshanks" [[PoesLaw as satire on the Lily=Hedwig theories]], and had no idea that anybody already [[PoesLaw seriously]] believed it. I would have thought that if using the word "obviously" in a PotHole to EpilepticTrees didn't get the point across, the point would have been gotten by the book on cat sexing. |
| 71 | *** [[{{headdesk}} *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang*]] |
| 72 | ** Hermione wasn't the first one to call Crookshanks "he", the witch who ran the pet shop did. Presumably ''she'd'' know how to tell a cat's gender. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | [[WMG: Crookshanks Is Lily Potter]] |
| 75 | * It was actually James's sacrifice that protected both Lily and Harry. Voldemort realised he couldn't kill Lily and instead transfigured her into a cat an unable to transform back. (ginger fur and all) he goes to kill Harry, not working and back fires because of two people that just sacrificed themselves for him, even when one was not successful. |
| 76 | * Lily as a Cat wanders around until she gets put into the magic pet shop. In a pissy mood would not anyone buy her. Then the spitting image of her husband walks in, she then sees Peter and causes a commotion and lets herself be bought by Hermie to get back to Hogwarts to be with her son and to get Peter. |
| 77 | * She meets with Sirius, he does not recognize her because her transfiguration was done by dark magic and unable to communicate and tell her she's Lily so Sirius comes up that she was a smart cat. |
| 78 | * Voldemort does not mention it to Harry or anyone else that he didn't kill Lily, thinking it would damage his reputation more badly that he couldn't kill a Mudblood. With the fact that Crookshanks is a male, well,she was transfigured into a cat Voldemort would not have been thinking about the gender. |
| 79 | ** ...Wow. I didn't think there was any worse way to cheapen Lily's sacrifice than the Deathly Hallows theory that she was actually Hedwig, but clearly I was wrong. |
| 80 | ** And I suppose being forced to live as a house pet(and one in the wild for a few years) for the remainder of your life is a bed of roses? |
| 81 | *** *looks at my cats* Let's see... Never having to go to work or school again, having owners who love on you constantly, not having to do anything useful to earn your keep (unless you're a cat who lives in a barn, and even then, ''maybe'')... [[SarcasmMode That's just an awful life, OP; you're absolutely right.]] |
| 82 | *** I wouldn't call it a cheapening of her sacrifice, instead of losing her life, she loses her humanity. Hell, it almost adds to the sacrifice. If Lilly died, she would be able to go on to the next great adventure in Heaven. Instead she's forced to spend her remaining life as a animal knowing that her husband is dead and that an evil madmen is trying to kill her only son. Until book 3 she had to spend most of her time either wandering the forest alone, or cramped in an old pet shop. I really don't see why being happy would cheapen her sacrifice. This is a good theory, Voldemort promised Snape that he wouldn't kill Lily, but he never said anything about transfiguration! |
| 83 | *** I don't really like this idea, but it doesn't matter. If Lily was still alive, she couldn't come out of Voldemort's wand or be brought back by the resurrection stone. Lily is dead. End of theory. |
| 84 | [[WMG: Mad-eye Moody isn't dead.]] |
| 85 | Nobody finds his body, just his eye. Later, when Harry is going down Diagon Alley to Gringotts, they see a scarred man with a bandage over one eye. |
| 86 | * What, Harry does not recognise Moody? Scars are very distinctive. |
| 87 | ** How scarred? LawOfConservationOfDetail, y'know, and I think the original poster might be onto something (even if it is just a loose thread that probably isn't part of the final canon). If he had his face practically smashed in, or had Umbridge or a lackey gouge out his eye and take some flesh with it when he was [[NeverFoundTheBody merely unconscious]], then spent the next year or however long it was living on what little he trusted wasn't poisoned, he wouldn't necessarily be recognizable. |
| 88 | ** Okay, but as Hermione pointed out in the book, he fell at least one mile. Even a wizard couldn't survive that kind of a fall, and that's considering that they can cast a spell to slow their descent. In order to survive a fall from that height, Moody would have had to slow his velocity down to that of a feather, which, whether or not AWizardDidIt, is probably impossible. |
| 89 | *** Feather Fall? |
| 90 | ** Um, apparition? Sure 'his wand was blasted of his hands'...but did paranoid Moody really only have one wand? Let's recap. Moody picked the person that was obviously going to leave, mid-flight, as his partner, deliberately setting himself up with no close witnesses. He then saw that he had been betrayed somehow, as the Death Eaters knew the time he was leaving, confirming his theory that the Order had been infiltrated, so he uses his exit plan. Months later, we discover just his eye. We have no one who even ''claims'' they've seen his body. The only problem with the theory is that didn't show up during the last fight...of course, he certainly knows about Polyjuice, and anyone who dies while Polyjuiced stays that way. Or he was just out of sight, we barely see the first part of the battle at all. Or maybe he just missed it. |
| 91 | *** Apparition is done wandless, so he wouldn't have to have a wand for that. |
| 92 | *** Apparating would do nothing to shed the momentum of his fall, however, and there's no way to turn on the spot when you're plummeting to your death. |
| 93 | * Maybe Moody knew more of what was going on than he let on - Maybe Dumbledore knew Moody wouldn't blab, and so confided in him. Moody therefore knew that everything was in Harry's hands and there was nothing that could be done - this was powers above and beyond his control - prophecy, etc. He dissapparated and went to live somewhere quiet for the rest of his days. He probably has a spare eye - moody wouldn't be that stupid to not have a backup. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | [[WMG: The entire book is a lie]] |
| 96 | Harry did find the Horcruxes, but he just shot them, or blew them up in some other way. Lord Voldemort was taken out by a sniper rilfe, and the entire book is the story Harry told the Ministry just to screw with them. |
| 97 | * In addition, Molly Weasley actually threw Bellatrix into a volcano and the rest of the Death Eaters were blown apart by land mines. |
| 98 | * None of the characters died and everyone who has read the book does not have a massive case of [[CanonDisContinuity Dis Continuity,]] Harry just told them that they died to make them feel guilty for not doing something earlier on. Or maybe Harry lost contact with them at the point where they "died," so he doesn't know what happened to them after that. So he [[PutOnABus Put Them On A Bus]] in the cruelest way possible, again, to screw with the Ministry. |
| 99 | |
| 100 | [[WMG: There's a reason why Harry came back from the dead and it wasn't involving the Deathly Hallows.]] |
| 101 | The book pretty much makes it clear that the Deathly Hallows aren't all that they are cracked up to be, the invisible cloak notwithstanding. The Elder Wand is a just a stronger wand and the ring just showed ghosts of ghosts. No, what brought Harry back to life was a completely different plot element that was already explained. You see, according to the book, when Voldemort hit Harry when he was shielded by love, part of his soul broke off and went into Harry, giving him the connection/Parsletounge/etc. However, during Goblet of Fire, Harry's blood was taken in a very symbolic manner in order to facilitate Voldemort's revival. The reason why it was so symbolic and the reason why the spell was the evil Black Magic was because it was a ''soul stealing spell'', hence Dumbledore saying that they were 'bound even closer than any wizard before them'. Because no wizarding pair in the world had one person having a part of the other's soul while the other had a part of their soul. So, long story short, when Harry is killed, he dies and so does the part of Voldemort's soul within him. But the reason he could come back to life was because part of his soul still existed somewhere. In short, ''Voldemort was Harry's horcrux!'' |
| 102 | * While this is a cool idea, it is shot down by the fact that, when Harry killed ''Voldemort'', it worked. Remember, when You-Know-Who "killed" Harry, it only destroyed the Horcrux: the bit of his soul has essentially been reduced to a suit of PlotArmor. As such, if Lord Thingy actually was a Harrycrux, Harry's bit-of-soul should've performed a similar function, and You-Know-Who should be able to return for a third time. (...Oh, great, I think I just launched a thousand Book 8 fanfics.) |
| 103 | ** Maybe Harry ended up killing that bit of him, along with Voldemort? |
| 104 | ** I originally thought this (the guess) was true. Harry is Voldemort's last horcrux, and Voldemort is Harry's only horcrux. Killing Harry destroyed the horcrux, so Voldemort had no SoulJar left. Harry still had one (Voldemort). However, as written, there's no real reason the Killing Curse should have rebounded unless the Elder Wand said "screw you, just because you're holding me doesn't mean he's still not my master!" and intentionally won the duel for Harry (please respond if I'm incorrect in any way regarding the final duel). So it's really down to guessing whether the Elder wand was the next best thing to sentient, or Harry screwed up the casting of the curse via his Expelliarmus winning the quick-draw by ''just'' enough, since it didn't seem that clear. |
| 105 | *** But wasn't Nagini not killed until after Voldemort killed Harry? In which case Voldemort still had a Horcrux - Harry wasn't his last one. |
| 106 | *** I think this troper is talking more about the time Harry died chapters before and was brought back, not the anti-climatic duel. Of course, I could be wrong. |
| 107 | *** I was talking about both. When did he come back during the final duel? |
| 108 | *** He(Voldemort) didn't, he(troper) was talking about the Elder Wand killing Voldemort, which has nothing to do with his first sentence OR the original topic. |
| 109 | ** To turn this into a HumiliationConga for Voldemort: Since the way for a Horcrux-master to destroy his is to go into a emo-storm of regret, Harry's is/was effectively immune to that-he has ''absolutely nothing'' to feel sorry about how it was created. |
| 110 | ** Er, is there really confusion about this? Dumbledore specifically said that Harry didn't die because Voldemort used his blood. That kept Lily's protection alive and prevented Harry from dying as long as Voldemort was still alive. It's in the chapter where Harry talks to Dumbledore in King's Cross Station. It has nothing to do with the Deathly Hallows. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | [[WMG: Harry has a mullet.]] |
| 113 | His hair was said to be "down to his shoulders." RuleOfCool. |
| 114 | * Maybe it was worn like that as a tribute to [[spoiler:Rufus Scrimgeour, who died]] early in the book, rather than a mullet? |
| 115 | ** Yes. Having hair "down to your shoulders" is not how you describe a mullet. |
| 116 | * Maybe it was actually a tribute to [[spoiler: Severus Snape]]? |
| 117 | ** I think that's pretty likely, actually. After all, [[spoiler: Severus Snape]] was "the bravest man [Harry] ever knew." |
| 118 | * ''Or'', he's been living on the run for months on end and cutting his hair hasn't really been in his top priorities. Crazy theory, I know. (Also, in response to above, [[spoiler:Snape]] wasn't dead yet when Harry's shoulder length hair is discussed. And Harry still thinks he's an evil SOB at that point, too. |
| 119 | ** Um, yes he was. The "hair down to his shoulders" description is from the epilogue. [[spoiler: Snape]] is cold in his grave by that point. |
| 120 | ** Actually there is a scene describing Harry's shoulder length hair when he see's himself in the mirror for the first time in months when he is at Malfoy Manor after being captured by Snatchers. |
| 121 | |
| 122 | [[WMG: Snape knew that Voldemort was going to kill him.]] |
| 123 | He just didn't expect him to do it with the snake. His reaction to being told he was going to be killed was pretty atypical for someone who wasn't expecting it (unless you believe that Snape was a sociopath), even if he knew it was an occupational hazard of being a spy and a Death Eater. Also, there's the question of what if Snape had survived the battle? He had a very good chance of being killed by someone because he killed Dumbledore and never getting a chance to explain why. So in a way, he not only ''expected'' to die, he might have, in the deepest recesses of his mind, ''wanted'' to. (I can't see Snape living comfortably in the Muggle world, can you?) |
| 124 | * DD knew that Snape would die in the Shrieking Shack in June, while Harry was in the cellar. It was essential for DD's ThanatosGambit that Riddle kill Snape in that exact time, place, manner so that Snape could give Harry the InfoDump. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | [[WMG: WebVideo/PotterPuppetPals is canon, and is a puppet show shown while Harry's kids are at school.]] |
| 127 | Obviously made by George's misfit child, Niel "Ciecaraga" Weasly, this show was a satire on the books. He was expelled for how offensive it was to victims of the Second Wizarding War, mocking their heroes and potraying Voldemort as sympathetic. Even Fred was ashamed in the afterlife. |
| 128 | * [[spoiler:Hagrid and Neville are still alive and at Hogwarts then.]] Hagrid doesn't get why the "rub meat in your hair" cure for wizard lice is funny, and Neville is less than pleased at being portrayed as a squash. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[WMG: If Ron hadn't have broken up Harry and Ginny's kissing at the Borrow, they would have had sex.]] |
| 131 | * If the number of Weasley kids who exist are any indication of Molly's sex drive, then Ginny is probably a horny one when she's ovulating. |
| 132 | * Of course Ron saved Harry's life then. If Ginny got knocked up then, BabiesEverAfter kicks in, possibly bringing us a BirthDeathJuxtaposition when Harry dies during the Battle of Hogwarts as Ginny gives birth. |
| 133 | * On the other hand, that may have also been Harry's only chance to get laid. [[MustNotDieAVirgin Ever.]] |
| 134 | ** [[SarcasmMode That must have been one hell of a cabbage patch, then, if Harry and Ginny managed to find kids that looked so much like them.]] |
| 135 | *** The former troper rather meant that Harry had a good chance to die WAY before that. Going against a band of murderers and their superpowered boss tends to hold that risk. Hell, he was SUPPOSED to die, just had the [[PlotArmour luck]] to come back. |
| 136 | *** "Luck," nothing. Dumbledore flat-out ''told'' Harry that he could choose not to go back, knowing full well that Harry wouldn't chicken out. |
| 137 | * It's not a guess, it's the truth. From the references to time spent in lonely parts of the school grounds, it's pretty clear that they had already made out, so when she was "kissing him as she had never kissed him before", it's pretty obvious that they would have had sex. I like to think that Ron didn't really interrupt them, and JKR showed it because children read the book. It would have worked very well in the plot for Harry and Ginny to have consummated their relationship before Harry sets out on his quest. |
| 138 | ** Hmm... "kissing him as she had never kissed him before", doesn't really specify his lips... |
| 139 | *** Kind of an understated reaction by Ron, then, given his usual temper... |
| 140 | *** And "Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his—" doesn't help matters. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | [[WMG: Teddy Lupin, under the light of the full moon, will morph into a wolf, but will have fur of any wacky color of his choosing.]] |
| 143 | Well, we already know he inherited his mothers metamorphegus abilities, despite the fact that such powers are supposed to be very rare and only show up every few generations or so. Lupin had a feeling that his son would be "like him" (a werewolf). The combination of shape-shifting genes from both parents increased his odds of having shape shifting abilities. He would end up with both, due to the {{Rule of Cool}}. |
| 144 | * So...Teddy is a [[Website/{{Deviantart}} were-sparkledog?]] |
| 145 | * Actually, Teddy Lupin can change into a wolf (father) whenever he wants (mother). |
| 146 | ** And this is different from being a regular animagus... how? Other than being something one is born with instead of learning. |
| 147 | * Best theory ever! This could be a spinoff series. |
| 148 | |
| 149 | [[WMG: Ted Remus Lupin is capable of reforming his entire head more or less into a wolf's, along with the typical slight changes available to a metamorphmagus.]] |
| 150 | The same as the above guess, with even more RuleOfCool applied. [[strike: [[EpilepticTrees And when he died in battle toward the end of his prime adulthood, he was sent to]] [[Manga/{{Bleach}} the Soul Society]]]]. |
| 151 | |
| 152 | [[WMG:[[Film/InglouriousBasterds Hans Landa]] and Dolores Umbridge are related.]] |
| 153 | * Did you SEE the elavator scene? Compare it to Landa's entrance in the restaurant. |
| 154 | ** Does this mean that Hans Landa was a wizard? |
| 155 | *** Well, he's got a scar on his forehead now... |
| 156 | |
| 157 | [[WMG:Harry was not technically a Horcrux]] |
| 158 | That is, the book is right, he does have part of Voldemort's soul in him, but the actual Horcrux spell was not done, obviously. This is the reason why the Killing Curse can take out that part of Voldemort's soul, when it presumably wouldn't work on any other Horcrux. (Surely, someone tried using it.) The actual Horcrux spell, whatever you have to do ''besides'' a murder, protects the soul fragments from getting killed that. |
| 159 | * There's some merit to that. Voldemort used Avada Kedavra on Harry then, and if the Avada Kedavra could have killed a proper horcrux then the trio's job would have been much easier. |
| 160 | ** Doubtful... it's said to take a certain amount of evil intent to work the Unforgivable Curses, with the Avada Kedavra implied to require the most. And it's probable that the Avada Kedavra only works on living organisms. It's the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Killing Curse]]... and you can't really kill something that's not truly alive. |
| 161 | * Perhaps a Killing Curse would only work on a Horcrux that the caster himself created? |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[WMG:Horcruxes work like (and were inspired from) the [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Ring of Power]]]] |
| 164 | * Obviously you've got the important SoulJar element, the evil influence on a carrier's psyche. (Never mind that Voldemort turned an actual ring into his ''first'' Horcrux). But it seems that the Horcruxes that gain sentience (the diary and the locket, for example) attempt to influence the wearers to reunite them with their master, because at the end of the day, a soul is meant to stay whole. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | |
| 167 | |
| 168 | [[WMG: Harry Potter was never the master of the Elder Wand.]] |
| 169 | Draco Malfoy was the master, wand ownership transfers only with magical defeat, and perhaps also non-magical murder in the case of the Elder Wand, but not via physical wand grabbing. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | So why did the Elder Wand not kill him? Because it was facing another wand ''also owned by its master''. It was Draco's wand vs. Draco's wand, and the Elder Wand realized that first (it seems more sentient than other wands) and gave up. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | * Erm, most times in its existence, the Elder Wand changed possession because it was stolen, which was probably more than enough to say who wins. Defeat, for the Elder Wand, would mean being able to prove yourself the more powerful wizard, even if it is by non-magical means. |
| 174 | |
| 175 | [[WMG: The fake locket counted as a piece of clothing.]] |
| 176 | And Harry freed Kreacher by giving it to him, which explains why Kreacher was at Hogwarts even though Harry never ordered him to go there. |
| 177 | * Actually in book 6 Harry tells him to go work at Hogwarts. I guess Kreacher assumes that without any other orders from Harry or his friends, he needs to go back to Hogwarts? |
| 178 | * Brilliant! Maybe Kreacher was so nice to Harry and Co. because he was free! |
| 179 | * Holy cow. That is a seriously solid WMG. |
| 180 | * But Dobby's considered to be an incredibly weird house-elf for being happy about being freed. Kreacher is so into being a servant that his goal is to have his head mounted on the wall in Grimmauld Place. It wouldn't make sense for him to be happy about being freed, just to be happy that this new master (who he previously hated and treated like crap as much as possible) gave him something that had belonged to dear old Regulus. |
| 181 | ** The difference is that, even if he was technically free, Kreacher was allowed to continue to serve Harry. Being free doesn't necessarily mean being forbidden to do what you were ordered to do before. |
| 182 | |
| 183 | [[WMG: While Luna Lovegood was imprisoned in Malfoy Manor, she and Draco fell in love.]] |
| 184 | And Malfoy was totally planning on breaking her out before Harry Potter and Co. Interupted him! |
| 185 | |
| 186 | [[WMG: Peter Pettigrew totally wanted to kill Harry Potter]] |
| 187 | * The reason he hesitated was because he wasn't sure if he would be punished because Voldemort reserved the right to kill Harry himself. He thought he'd be okay since he'd be preventing Harry from escaping, but the instant he tried he was choked to death for betraying his master's direct orders. |
| 188 | |
| 189 | [[WMG: The Tale of the Three Brothers is real.]] |
| 190 | Sure, Xenophilius offered the alternate theory that the three brothers were just very powerful magicians who made their own cloaks and wands and rings, but it doesn't quite gel with what we know about the magic in the series already. |
| 191 | |
| 192 | 1. The Elder Wand: We've been told time and again that wands are only as good as the wizard who uses them, and the real power comes from the wizard who wields the wand. So why suddenly is there a wand which miraculously makes peoples' magic stronger? Unless there's something about crafting wands which was forgotten in the hundreds of years since the Elder Wand was made, then it has to have come from somewhere else, and since it couldn't have been another wizard, Death is as good an explanation as any. |
| 193 | |
| 194 | 2. The Ring: This is literally the only item we've come across which can do this. The Priori Incantatem spells are after images of old spells, Voldemort's appearances are all linked to his soul, because he wasn't really dead, so where exactly does this ring come from? Who has the power to bring people back from the dead, even as some sort of after-image, that stays permanently? Death. The Ring makes people stay until the user wants them to go, Priori Incantatem only lasts for as long as someone's wand is pointed at yours. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | 3. The Cloak: Again, we're told repeatedly that invisibility cloaks either don't make you truly invisible or don't last forever, so why is there one that makes you completely invisible and has lasted for hundreds of years? |
| 197 | |
| 198 | The gist is that there must be limits that human wizards and witches can't surpass when it comes to magic, no matter how skilled they are. If Dumbledore, Grindelwald, the founders of Hogwarts and more haven't been able to replicate the efforts of three wizards despite thousands of years of magical improvements, then where did these three items come from? The story of the three brothers meeting Death must be true, there isn't another explanation. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | ** Pretty much ''confirmed'' in-universe when Ron mentions that the Invisibility Cloak acts exactly as the tale describes, then Harry puts it together that he's descended from the third brother. (This becomes HilariousInHindsight when you realize that Harry and Voldemort are pretty much cousins seventy-times removed since Voldemort is descended of the SECOND brother) And then Dumbledore and Voldemort flat out prove the Elder Wand is real so the first brother also existed. Harry even proves the Stone is real when he uses the thing to summon his parents, Sirius, and Lupin. Since we know Voldemort's grandfather claimed direct lineage to the Peverell brothers as stated in book six and that there were three of them...well, do the math. The Peverell siblings are the three brothers in the tale and their encounter with Death happened. |
| 201 | |
| 202 | [[WMG:The real reason Harry survived Voldemort's curse that destroyed the Horcrux within him was his mastery of the Deathly Hallows.]] |
| 203 | If the Deathly Hallows are real, then by theend of the book Harry is the master of all three - |
| 204 | |
| 205 | 1)He has earned and found and was the last person to use the Resurrection Stone, and even had the phantoms of his loved ones as created by the Stone with him when he was killed. |
| 206 | |
| 207 | 2)He owns and has in his possession the Invisibility Cloak, also given to him by Dumbledore and inherited legally from his father. |
| 208 | |
| 209 | 3)He has, according to the events later in the book, mastery even if not possession of the Elder Wand, which was also the wand used to kill him. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | Thus he is the mastery of all 3 Hallows and according to the legend the master of Death itself. Voldemort's curse didn't kill him because he could not die. He then revokes his mastery when he rejects the Wand consciously later, presumably. |
| 212 | |
| 213 | This also means that Dumbledore also had all 3 Hallows at some point, but I think not all at the same time, and he had only borrowed the Cloak. |
| 214 | |
| 215 | * Actually no. Dumbledore owned the Elder Wand, and at one point had borrowed the Cloak from James. But by the time he got his hands on the stone, Harry had had the cloak for some time. Since anyone would have been able to claim the Stone by that point one could argue Dumbledore was the 'owner' of that Hallow as well, though he later bequeathed it to Harry. Only the Elder Wand genuinely belonged to Dumbledore since he outright won it. The other two weren't truly his and he never had all three at once. |
| 216 | ** It's a combination of the two. Harry was the true Master of Death. He didn't try and avoid death like Voldemort, but accepted it willingly, realizing it was inevitable and natural. When struck by the avada kedavra, Death recognized his Master and knew it was not truly his time. Thus Harry lived. |
| 217 | [[WMG: Harry got a second scar from the Avada Kedavra used to kill him in the forest.]] |
| 218 | Only instead hitting him in the forehead like the first time, Harry recalls that this shot hit him in the chest. So what does this scar end up looking like? [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince "A Hungarian Horntail. Much more macho."]] |
| 219 | |
| 220 | [[WMG: The Room of Requirement is not usable anymore.]] |
| 221 | Not because it got destroyed. It's still there, and works just fine. The problem is that we know the Room does not only work for humans, as House Elves can use it just fine. And all humans left the room, leaving it the control of ''sentient fire''. Sentient fire wants some sort of fuel, which the Room will happily supply. Forever. ('People' are hopefully one of the conjuring exceptions the room can't do or there would be some real FridgeHorror about what would be happening in that room, as Fiendfrye is actively malicious.) |
| 222 | |
| 223 | The only way anyone else is getting in if one of the five people who know this explain what happened so someone know to ask for 'a room full of things I can burn'...and then figure out how to get rid of the Fiendfrye. Which is tricky, as the only WordOfGod ways we know are for it to run out of fuel, or be controlled by its creator, neither of which can happen here. |
| 224 | |
| 225 | * Actually, it's been proven that many spells - even spells cast by a powerful wizard - will wear off after the caster's death. And, in any case, it's very likely the castle simply would have 'grown' a new Room of Requirement soon after. Neville references new passageways appearing in and out of the castle after the known ones have been sealed off, giving credence to the theory that the castle itself is semi-sentient. |
| 226 | |
| 227 | [[WMG:Snape [[spoiler:lied about his memories.]] ]] |
| 228 | |
| 229 | Dumbledore [[spoiler:didn't plan on dying, the curse only disabled his hand.]] Snape wanted to get his revenge on Dumbledore and James, so he [[spoiler:edited his own memories so that Harry would be led to believe he had to die. He never actually loved Harry's mother, he just wanted to give Harry a reason to believe him.]] |
| 230 | |
| 231 | * {{Jossed}}; J.K. Rowling said that a wizard's memories are objectively true, and while a wizard can attempt to alter his memories, such altered memories are more "sluggish" than unaltered ones. (cf. Slughorn in the sixth book.) |
| 232 | |
| 233 | [[WMG: Umbridge was affected by the locket.]] |
| 234 | |
| 235 | Not to cut Umbridge any slack, as she's ''easily'' the most loathsome character in the franchise, but maybe the reason her evil tendencies seemed even worse when we saw her in that courtroom is that she was wearing the Horcrux, and had been for some time. It's evil was enough to drive a wedge between people who care as much about each other as Ron and Harry, so it ''could'' offer an explanation as to why her sadism went from bad enough to punish kids by scratching words on their hands, to giving muggle-borns a FateWorseThanDeath at the hands of the Dementors. She's a heartless bitch, but that really seems like a Voldemort idea, and she ''was'' wearing a piece of his soul around her neck. Again, she's evil without question, but just maybe EvenEvilHasStandards in this case. |
| 236 | * No, no, no ''Umbridge'' [[TooSpicyForYogSothoth corrupted the locket.]] That poor Horcrux. |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[WMG: The parseltounge locks leading to the Chamber of Secrets were deactivated after the Basilisk died]] |
| 239 | Hence Ron could have said ''anything'' to it and it would have opened. (This is for anyone who thought Ron being able to open the chamber was silly) |
| 240 | * Maybe Dumbledore deactivated the locks, or dumbed them down. |
| 241 | |
| 242 | [[WMG: If Harry had elected to die at King's Cross...]] |
| 243 | Neville still would have taken out Nagini, and someone would have manged a lucky shot on Voldemort to kill him. Casualties would be much higher, though. If Voldemort had still managed to get out unscathed he would have figured out his soul was too ripped up to risk a new Horcrux. It would turn out in the end his soul was too mangled for anything to help him and he would die as a result or by someone else in his weakened state. |
| 244 | |
| 245 | [[WMG: Harry, Ron or Hermione tried the avada kedavra on the locket. Didn't work.]] |
| 246 | It seems like an obvious thing to at least ''try''. Harry uses the other two unforgivable curses before the end of the series, I don't see why they would have a problem trying it. Hermione probably not, Harry only after consideration, so my money would be on Ron trying it. |
| 247 | |
| 248 | [[WMG: In the epilogue, those are ''just the first three'' of Harry and Ginny's kids.]] |
| 249 | Ginny and Harry have a mess o' kids, just like Molly and Arthur had. There's a babysitter at home with the unmentioned others. Ginny wanted to see Albus off to school. For all we know, Ginny's pregnant again. |
| 250 | |
| 251 | [[WMG: When Harry drops off his kids at platform 9 and 3/4 in 2017, there are lots of extra muggles milling about]] |
| 252 | Because the story is actually real, but the wizarding world doesn't know about it. The milling muggles are fans going to the station to commemorate the date in the epilouge. |
| 253 | |
| 254 | [[WMG: Harry gave none of his kids the Marauder's Map]] |
| 255 | He kept it to keep an eye on them at school. |
| 256 | * Confirmed ''and'' jossed? Harry didn't give any of his kids the map. But WordOfGod says James Sirius nicked it at some point during his Hogwarts years. |
| 257 | |
| 258 | [[WMG: Voldemort's slaughter of the goblins saved Harry from losing his gold.]] |
| 259 | Harry Potter broke into Gringotts, they even know this at Hogwarts. The goblins were considering confiscating Harry's sizable account as punishment (to cover damages), but Voldemort killing so many goblins swayed Gringotts to see that Harry was doing the right thing. |
| 260 | * [[FridgeHorror Alternately, there weren't enough goblin bankers left to confiscate Harry's gold... one can only imagine how ugly the scene was at Gringotts when Voldemort realized his cup had been stolen...]] |
| 261 | |
| 262 | [[WMG: When Harry kissed Ginny at the Burrow in the film:]] |
| 263 | He was thinking "Wow, this is the first time I've ever snogged anyone outside of the Room of Requirement!" |
| 264 | |
| 265 | [[WMG: Music/NickCave is a wizard]] |
| 266 | And that's why "O Children" is released on the Wizard radio seven years before it was released in the Muggle world. |
| 267 | |
| 268 | [[WMG: The reason why the Horcruxes are the way they are is because you need a personal connection to it.]] |
| 269 | [[spoiler:Asides from Harry Potter of course]]. If any object could be made a Horcrux Voldemort would've used something innocuous that people wouldn't be able to identify. His diary and Marvolo Gaunt's ring are pretty obvious examples, and Salazar Slytherin's locket is due to his close affinity towards Slytherin and him being his heir. Helga Hufflepuff's Cup and Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem is a less obvious example; he considers Hogwarts his true home, and anything important to the founders he'd have attachment to. He could've picked Godric Gryffindor's Sword, but given his personal hang-ups the connection would've failed. Finally there's Nagini, who's attachment is his strong affinity with snakes and that her venom sustained him in his rudimentary body. |
| 270 | |
| 271 | [[WMG: The Suicide Stone]] |
| 272 | Everyone who picks up the Stone dies. So far, so good, right? Wrong! When Harry calls back the shades of his family, he look s at his mother, and his reaction is this: |
| 273 | --->His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough. |
| 274 | |
| 275 | Does that sound familiar? Like a certain mirror from the first book? Yup! But wait, there's more. |
| 276 | For this we need to step back and look at the history of it for a moment: |
| 277 | |
| 278 | The Resurrection Stone. |
| 279 | |
| 280 | Given by Death to the second of Three Brothers, who had asked for the power to recall others from death to life. Cadmus Peverell used it to recall the spirit of his dead beloved, but was so driven mad with longing for her specter, he despaired of living himself. Cadmus committed suicide. And so the stone lay hidden. |
| 281 | |
| 282 | Albus Dumbledore is the next man known to possess the Stone, having destroyed the ring in order to reach the horcrux it contained. He held the Hallow for less than a year, Riddle's withering curse inexorably stealing away his life, before that night on the Astronomy Tower. But how did Dumbledore spend his last months, knowing his death was approaching? Rather than warn others in the Order, or prepare them to keep up the fight in his absence, Dumbledore spent most of the year arranging his own death. |
| 283 | |
| 284 | Dumbledore allowed Malfoy to remain at Hogwarts, despite the danger to students and staff from his repeated assassination attempts. Dumbledore encouraged Snape to assist Malfoy in his mission, even ordering him to take the Unbreakable Vow. Dumbledore petrified Harry beneath the Cloak, so his protege would witness his dramatic final moments. Everything was arranged for one purpose: to ensure that Dumbledore would die on his own terms, at a time and place he chose, even if the hand and wand were not his own. |
| 285 | |
| 286 | The curse of Cadmus, and all who held and used the Stone, was that they would take their own life. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | ---> He was not fetching them. They were fetching him. |
| 289 | There we have Harry's own thought when he calls up his family. Or rather, things that look like them. But they aren't. They all sound identical. The speech patterns of Lupin and Sirius are nothing like the men we've gotten to know over the books. They all encourage him onward to his death, speaking platitudes about how he has been so brave, and how'' he's nearly there.'' Does that sound like the parents who sacrificed their lives so that he could live? |
| 290 | |
| 291 | And there's more: He fells as if life and everyone he loves are far away, as if they are the ghosts and he and the dead are the only real things, and ''as if his body is moving without his input, as if he's just a spectator.'' |
| 292 | |
| 293 | The purpose of the Stone is not to summon the dead, but to summon Death – not to restore life, but to end it. |
| 294 | |
| 295 | There is my theory. The tale of the stone of suicide. |
| 296 | |
| 297 | |
| 298 | [[WMG: The Power He “Knows Not”]] |
| 299 | Of course there was a catch. There’s always a catch to a Prophecy. |
| 300 | |
| 301 | Even given that this “Prophecy” manifestly *didn’t* play out the way the Prophecy claimed that it was supposed to — or not if you believe Harry Potter’s account of it, anyway — we still couldn’t identify the part that was a cheat. Or rather, the way of it that was a cheat. |
| 302 | |
| 303 | We caught a lot of the other “true lies” related to that prophecy. We saw for ourselves that it wasn't that neither Tom nor Harry could ‘‘live’’, but that neither could ‘‘die’’ until the Harrycrux was disposed of. We had it paraded right under our noses that Harry’s power to form, or attract, human attachments clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with the final confrontation — although it does seem evident that he never would have made it to the ‘‘penultimate’’ confrontation without it. And an assurance that this was going to take Tom down gave Harry the nerve to submit to it. But that alone, in itself, didn’t do it. |
| 304 | |
| 305 | But we did still know that there had to be a catch. |
| 306 | |
| 307 | We’ve even all known from the very minute that it was first hinted — all the way back in Book 3 — that a Prophecy was even in the equation that Tom Riddle would be sure to manage to roll himself up by trying to dodge it. Also that if Harry Potter had a power that Tom “knew not” then you could bet 10 to 1 Tom Riddle had probably given it to him. |
| 308 | |
| 309 | But Harry Potter’s allegedly exceptional power to love the wizarding world out of Voldemort’s clutches never really materialized. He's a self-absorbed little clod right to the final page of the final book. And it wasn’t the Prophecy demons that sent us off on that particular wild goose chase. It was Albus. |
| 310 | |
| 311 | Indeed, Harry Potter’s whole exceptional power of Love™ ultimately appears to be just another exercise in Albus Dumbledore’s policy of flannel-mouthed flattery, to butter the kid up and make him feel good about his allotted rôle. |
| 312 | |
| 313 | After having shoved him into it. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | Which of course isn’t to say that Harry Potter didn’t have a power that Tom couldn’t access. |
| 316 | |
| 317 | Because he oh-but-definitely did. |
| 318 | |
| 319 | It just wasn’t a power that Tom was unaware of. Our Tom was VERY well aware of that mysterious power. And he desperately *wanted* it for himself. On stage, in front of witnesses. |
| 320 | |
| 321 | He just didn’t have a clue of how to get it. |
| 322 | |
| 323 | Nor that Harry Potter had it. |
| 324 | |
| 325 | Which is hardly surprising. That particular power hadn’t been in circulation for centuries. (if ever.) |
| 326 | |
| 327 | And Tom lacked the evident qualification anyway. |
| 328 | |
| 329 | Just like we all suspected, he’d given it to Harry. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | Have you figured it out? |
| 332 | |
| 333 | The power that Tom Riddle “knew not” was nothing less than the power to master the Elder wand. |
| 334 | |
| 335 | Tom was hardly alone in that. Nobody else seems to have really understood how to do that either. Let alone have been able to. |
| 336 | |
| 337 | Albus Dumbledore tap-danced around the subject with another load of flimflam and mock modesty about how no, he didn't really have the wand’s *mastery*, per se, but the wand had agreed to let him ‘‘use’’ it. Heavily larded with his own boasts of having only used it “for good”. |
| 338 | |
| 339 | Gellert Grindelwald told us (and Tom) flat-out that he never had it. Period. |
| 340 | |
| 341 | And for that matter, the wandmaker, Gregorovitch, who Gellert had stolen it from (and formally “defeated” with it as he escaped) claimed to have had the wand only “to study” which doesn’t sound to me like he was claiming the mastery of it either. |
| 342 | |
| 343 | Are you detecting a pattern here? |
| 344 | |
| 345 | Frankly, I don’t think that *anybody* has ‘‘ever’’ had the mastery of that wand. Certainly not anybody in living memory. |
| 346 | |
| 347 | And, one suspects, quite probably not from its very beginnings either — particularly not if it really was given to someone by Death himself. |
| 348 | |
| 349 | Antioch Peverill allegedly demanded an “unbeatable wand”. Not, you will notice, a wand that would make *him* unbeatable, even though that’s probably what he meant. Words are very important in magic, and ‘‘especially’’ when one is negotiating with a power such as, oh, ‘‘Death’’ for rewards for besting him. |
| 350 | |
| 351 | By that token, all wands are probably “unbeatable”. You don’t defeat a wand, you defeat its holder. No, no one ever has beaten the Elder wand. After all, they're all gone and it’s still here. |
| 352 | |
| 353 | It would be right up Death’s alley to have handed Peverill a supremely powerful wand that he would never have the wherewithal to actually master. |
| 354 | |
| 355 | And that nobody else has ever mastered either. Although the holders of it have never let *that* piece of information out from under their hats. Indeed, a lot of them, like Antioch, probably never realized that inconvenient fact themselves. |
| 356 | |
| 357 | But Harry actually believes that the wand obeyed him because he snatched somebody else’s wand out of his hand in a scuffle a few weeks earlier? Please. Draco Malfoy was no more the master of the Elder wand than Grindlewald, Snape, or Voldemort. |
| 358 | |
| 359 | It must be admitted that if we’re dealing with technicalities we should downgrade this alleged unknown “Power” to a “unique advantage”, or more properly, a “gift” — because when the chips were down it wasn’t anything that Harry could actually invoke, or use. He just *had* it, at the very time when it counted. |
| 360 | |
| 361 | And yet, even though it wasn’t thanks to anything that he inherently was, or anything that he was aware that he did, by the time of the showdown in the Great Hall, Harry Potter WAS unquestionably the Master of the Elder wand. |
| 362 | |
| 363 | Obviously, we need to take a closer look both at the issue of wand “mastery”, and, just possibly the whole issue of the Elder wand itself, while we’re at it. Because however the business allegedly works with ordinary wands, it doesn’t work with that one. And no one (especially Rowling) seems to have considered that. |
| 364 | |
| 365 | ‘‘‘“Issue #1: Wand “Mastery”’’’ |
| 366 | Apparently wand mastery actually is an issue, even though it reads like a pasted-on afterthought. But we did get at least two possibly deliberate hints all the way back in [=CoS=] One when Lockhart’s wand seems to have been actively trying to abandon him after his duel with Snape. A second in the events of Lockhear’s mindwipe. Lockheart picked up Ron’s backfiring wand and cast a memory charm, getting himself, we think. But is that really what happened? Or did that wand when used against it’s master, retaliate by exploding and sending the entire force of the obliviate back at Lockheart wiping all of Lockheart’s memories, in a way that’s beyond what we’ve witnessed from ‘’every single backfire’’ that wand has ever had. Also, how interesting that the explosion that caved in the tunnel only erased the mind of the spellcaster. Not the wand’s owner, not his friend. |
| 367 | |
| 368 | But there aren’t any other such kinda/maybe hints to point at until we reached DHs, and by that point the whole business had to be laid on with a trowel in order to make her climax work. |
| 369 | |
| 370 | But. Before you can have any hope of “mastering” a wand, you have to have a reasonably sound grasp of what a wand IS. |
| 371 | |
| 372 | The basic parameters are: |
| 373 | |
| 374 | Wands are designed as conduits for magical energies. And Magic is a form of energy, rather like electricity. It operates over a fairly wide range of something very much like a spectrum of tonal frequencies. Different types of spells are apparently known to transmit within certain ranges within the full potential “spectrum” (or, perhaps more properly “scale”). Consequently, Olivander *can* tell you that a certain wand will be good at charms, because he knows that the components of that wand will most easily conduct magic at the frequency that most charms operate. |
| 375 | |
| 376 | An individual wizard or witch’s own personal magic also has its own native range of frequencies. Therefore, a wand which is a good match to the wizard *will* work better for him than one which conducts in a different magical harmonic range. He gets a higher signal to noise ratio from it. But still, any trained wizard ought to be able to conduct magic though any non-defective wand well enough to function. There was no need to suddenly make all wands behave as if they were suddenly defective in the final book to get the point across. |
| 377 | |
| 378 | Okay. So. Carrying this a bit further into the question of “mastering” a wand which Rowling threw at us at the 49th minute of the 11th hour, and trying to make it somehow fit, let’s consider what wands are not. |
| 379 | |
| 380 | Wands are not people. They are not alive. They’re tools. They do not have minds. They do not have feelings. They do not, properly speaking, have memories. |
| 381 | |
| 382 | However, a conduit connects at both ends. And the energy doesn’t appear to be designed to travel in both directions. A wand delivers its holder’s magic to the target. It is not unreasonable to assume that there is a resonance which occurs when it actually connects with that target. This resonance may well set up a form of feedback which is maintained at least for the duration of the spell. Indeed, given that rather a lot of the spells we have seem wizards using are processes which must be maintained for an appreciable amount of time before the work — which may be composed of several different spells in sequence — is complete, it is extremely likely that a wand does indeed set up and register a relationship to whatever target its holder’s magic is affecting. |
| 383 | |
| 384 | And since the magic the operator is conducting is traveling through the wand, to the target, it also registers what direction that energy is moving. The “polarity” so to speak. You do not want your magic to be forced back through your wand to you. We’ve seen that happen. It wasn’t fun for anyone involved. (And I’ll be getting back to that in a minute.) |
| 385 | |
| 386 | Indeed I think a part of the wandmaker’s craft must be designed to prevent anything of that sort taking place under anything but extraordinary circumstances. Magic is supposed to travel through a wand only in the one intended direction. The wand may not precisely be “aware” (not having a brain, after all) but it registers that *it* affects the target. The target does not affect it. Ron’s broken wand in [=CoS=] was defective in exactly that manner. The operator’s magic could not be depended upon to flow in the correct direction. And Ron was still registered as the owner. (more on registration in a minute.) |
| 387 | |
| 388 | And while they don’t have conscious memories (since they are not conscious) all wands build at least a temporary log of the spells that they have conducted, and the targets they have affected. The Priori Incantatum spell is designed to access this log. We've seen it do so. |
| 389 | |
| 390 | We don’t know how long such a log really lasts. Probably not forever. It is most likely to get gradually overwritten by the records of subsequent spells with different targets. But it must remain “set” for the duration of an active spell, and it does not immediately reset when the spell is concluded. A witch or wizard quite often is going to be conducting more than one spell at the same selected target. Therefore, a wand retains some sort of resonance with its most recent targets. And the log does not completely reset when new targets are selected, either. the record is retained until it is overwritten by more recent spells. |
| 391 | |
| 392 | Which means that if one wizard hexes another and the other physically snatches the wand and tries to hex him back, the polarity of the log’s registration of who is the target is going to make for interference. Ergo: the last time Hermione met up with Bellatrix, Bellatrix had her writhing on the floor in the throes of Crucio, and since Harry snatched that wand as well as the hawthorne one, the wand hasn't been used for any significant number other spells in the meantime to overwrite the log. Consequently, when Hermione picked up that wand and tried to use it, it was still registering her as the “target” not the “operator”, and she found it very difficult to get it to work. The polarity was wrong. |
| 393 | |
| 394 | It is doubtful this log lasts forever. Data requires storage, and wands don’t have a lot of mass for storing an extensive log of their past spells. But if not overwritten it does last an appreciable amount of time. Voldemort’s yew wand was spitting up a log of spells cast over a dozen years earlier, and would have continued to do so had Harry not broken contact. So the information doesn’t simply fade over time. It needs to be overwritten. And the log of a 13-inch wand clearly can contain something like records of at least a dozen or so spells, because we saw them ourselves. |
| 395 | |
| 396 | After a long enough interval, particularly if the wand remains in use, it probably will not continue to register someone as a “former” target, even if that person was one. But we do not know how long an interval that requires. Moreover, there are external factors which can erase the log. We noted no complaints from Hermione about Bellatrix’s balky wand after that wand had been taken through the Gringotts security waterfall. Indeed, she was using that wand to duel against Bellatrix herself before the end of the battle. And holding her own with it, too. A conscientious seller of used wands would probably know how to erase such a log before putting any used wand into his stock. |
| 397 | |
| 398 | Or at any rate, this is probably how it should be interpreted to work for normal wands. But there is no reason to suppose that this necessarily also applies to the Elder wand. We have been given to understand that the Elder wand is unique. Indeed, we’ve every indication that it flatly doesn’t work like that, and it is probably a widespread mistake to expect it to. (We’ve still no good explanation for the amazing auto-wand of the Seven Potters, sequence. But I doubt that it had anything to do with Harry’s mastery of his own wand.) |
| 399 | |
| 400 | So. Where does the Elder wand come into it? How is that one different from normal wands? |
| 401 | |
| 402 | HOW did Harry manage to master the Elder wand? |
| 403 | |
| 404 | Because obviously he did. |
| 405 | ‘‘‘Issue #2: The Elder Wand’’’ |
| 406 | |
| 407 | Here is where we need to ignore anything Albus Dumbledore has to say about that wand — and for that matter, about Harry Potter. Albus was not in a position to know that wand’s true history. Nor was he willing to believe that it might be precisely what legend claimed it was. Albus doesn’t believe in a personified Death, and *he* certainly never claims to have been the “master” of that wand. Albus, after all, claims that the Elder wand was created by Antioch Peverill. |
| 408 | |
| 409 | And I just do not see how a wizard such as what we are given to believe that Antioch Peverill was like, would create a wand that couldn’t be mastered, know that it couldn’t be mastered, and then boast about how it was unbeatable. So either he didn't create it, or he didn’t know he wasn't the master of it, or both. |
| 410 | |
| 411 | No. I really do think that we may have to at least consider the possibility that the wand really was given to some fool wizard in a bargain with Death. (Or possibly in a negotiation with something *claiming* to be Death. In any case, some entity that is at least partially from the spirit plane, even though it manifestly is able to affect the physical one.) |
| 412 | |
| 413 | And that the wand was booby-trapped. |
| 414 | |
| 415 | Because if you reconsider the order of events as told in the story of the Three Brothers, Antioch Peverill demanded an unbeatable wand as a reward for escaping one of Death’s traps. |
| 416 | |
| 417 | He didn’t win that wand in a fight. Death just created that wand and handed it to him. |
| 418 | |
| 419 | And Peverill never was its Master. |
| 420 | |
| 421 | ‘‘Death’’ is its Master. |
| 422 | |
| 423 | One thinks that humans, and particularly human wizards, ought to be a little more open-minded about other species’ interpretations of the concept of “ownership”. And perhaps they ought not to be *quite* so hasty to ascribe purely human traditions to anthropomorphicised allegorical entities. Certainly not when there is no shortage of other competing interpretations of the same concept among other sentient creatures who are also subject to the same entity, with all of whom you already have ample experience in dealing. |
| 424 | |
| 425 | Like, say, Goblins? |
| 426 | |
| 427 | Goblin views on property ownership may be very inconvenient to wizards, but they are hardly unfamiliar. And by Goblin law anything that is made belongs to its maker. Even if the maker allows (or in modern terms licenses) its use by others. |
| 428 | |
| 429 | Think about it. |
| 430 | |
| 431 | Death has no particular need of a wand. Death isn’t a wizard, after all. He isn't a human, either. Yes he deals with humans. He also deals with Goblins. And House Elves. And as many other races and species as you care to mention. He clearly had no objection to handing a wand out on a long-term loan to an endless succession of foolish wizards, however. |
| 432 | |
| 433 | But it’s still his. |
| 434 | |
| 435 | Except that for the rest of this lifetime, it’s Harry’s. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | So what did Harry do to win the mastery of the Elder wand? |
| 438 | |
| 439 | Isn’t it obvious? |
| 440 | |
| 441 | He stood there in front of Tom to let Tom kill him. And Tom did kill him. Killed him and dropped him summarily into Death’s own country, into Death’s own keeping. |
| 442 | |
| 443 | And then he picked himself up and walked back out. |
| 444 | |
| 445 | Under his own power. |
| 446 | |
| 447 | Which is probably the only thing that would have ever made an impression on that wand. Or, rather, on its log. That log could no longer record Harry as a target. He wasn’t dead. A wand only recognizes the target and the operator. No 3rd parties. So, it evidently recorded Harry as the operator. Even using an unblockable, unbeatable, permanent, failure-proof death spell on him, the wand hadn’t had any lasting effect on Harry. |
| 448 | |
| 449 | Indeed, that was always the whole point of all the nonsense in attendance to the “Deathly” Hallows. In order to “master” Death, you have to master *Death*. Whether you happen to have physical possession of all three of the fool Hallows at the time is immaterial. Mastery over something and control of it are two different things. |
| 450 | |
| 451 | And we are given to believe Harry’d never have been able to get up and walk back out if the Harrycrux hadn’t been there to help spread the impact of Tom’s curse. That curse did kill the Harrycrux. Wiped it out completely. I’ll get back to that modifier at the top of the paragraph later. |
| 452 | |
| 453 | But even if you can theoretically kill two people with one arrow, or one bullet, you evidently cannot kill two people with one AK. |
| 454 | |
| 455 | And, since the connection between Harry and Tom was still live, and open, when he hit Harry with that AK Tom got hauled into Death’s keeping as well. |
| 456 | |
| 457 | And Harry *could* have let it kill him, too. He really did have a choice about whether or not to go back. |
| 458 | |
| 459 | And if he had chosen NOT to go back. I suspect that Tom would have never regained consciousness. And then, when someone killed the snake, Death would have “taken him for his own”. |
| 460 | |
| 461 | After all, Death was already holding the main portion of what was left of Tom. It was lying there under a bench screaming its head off. There’s no way that Tom was going to be getting up and walking away under his own power. But evidently, even though the Harrycrux was now gone, the connection between the two was somehow still active enough (probably something to do with the blood connection that Tom set up in [=GoF=]) that when Harry returned, he somehow dragged Tom along after him. Temporarily, at least. |
| 462 | |
| 463 | Of course Albus hadn’t a clue. He doesn’t believe in a personified Death (who evidently hasn’t bothered to come out and have a chat with Albus. Death is probably quite unimpressed with Albus). Harry doesn’t have a clue either, or he’d never have spouted that load of bilge about having snatched the mastery from Draco Malfoy (oh Puh-leeze!). And apparently, for that matter neither does Rowling. |
| 464 | |
| 465 | But the fact is that Harry Potter demonstrably came back from the celestial Kings Cross Station the Master of the Elder wand. No curse that Tom sent at him from that point touched him. Or, apparently anyone else, more than momentarily — although it was at least able to do something. Tom aquitted himself very well dueling with Slughorn, [=McGonagall=] and Shacklebolt. If all he was working with was his own magic, using a hostile wand, then he must once have been every bit as formidable as everyone keeps trying to claim. |
| 466 | |
| 467 | But look at the log: that wand had just killed Tom Riddle. The Harrycrux was Tom Riddle. And furthermore, it was dead. More to the point, it was a piece of Tom Riddle that was *still connected* to the one still walking around and trying to use that wand. Who in the wand’s log now solidly registered Tom Riddle as a target. A dead target. |
| 468 | |
| 469 | Which is where I suspect that the real uniqueness of the Elder wand may be confusing the issue. Death handed that wand to Peverill and Peverill expected it to work for him. |
| 470 | |
| 471 | But Peverill was a designated target. ALL living wizards are designated targets to the original Master of that wand. |
| 472 | |
| 473 | But it will function for any of them. It doesn’t invoke the polarity reversal of a normal wand when a target picks it up and tries to use it. It just won’t enhance their own native powers. And it doesn’t give them any clue as to the fact that they are the target. |
| 474 | |
| 475 | But it won’t work against its Master. And they cannot force it to. |
| 476 | |
| 477 | So Harry Potter will either be killed in the course of his Auror duties by some other wand, or he may die in his bed at an advanced age. And in either case, he will take the Mastery of that wand back out of the world with him. |
| 478 | |
| 479 | Tom was absolutely not the boss of that wand. And unlike Gregorovitch or Grindelwald, who realized when they were beaten, or Albus — who Gellert may have warned about the matter when he turned it over — and settled for mere cooperation, Tom just stubbornly kept trying. I’m a bit surprised he even managed to set the Hat on fire. And even at that, Neville doesn’t seem to have been burnt. |
| 480 | |
| 481 | (And we’re told outright that the Hat is still in service 19 years later.) |
| 482 | |
| 483 | So how was that again? |
| 484 | -->“…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…” |
| 485 | How’s about we try it; “and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, and he ‘‘will’’ have power the Dark Lord knows not”? He was handed it when Lily bargained for the life of her son, her life in trade for his, and Tom killed her, accepting the bargain. |
| 486 | |
| 487 | From that moment on, his spells never work directly against Harry. If he’d just let a DE kill harry for him, then his problem would be over. But he had to go and make it personal, make a production of it. Lord Voldemort has to kill Harry Potter before witnesses. |
| 488 | |
| 489 | But Tom Riddle can no longer touch Harry Potter directly with magic. That AK? It didn’t kill Harry. It killed the Horcrux, and Harry was dragged along for the ride. So Harry, at the time of his birth didn’t have the power. This is where that phrase, “he will” have the power comes into play. |
| 490 | |
| 491 | He is given that power through two factors. His mother’s choice, and Riddle’s to kill her, handed it to him on a silver platter, making it impossible for a direct spell to kill Harry. |
| 492 | |
| 493 | Handed it by the Dark Lord himself. That’s the way Prophecies always work. And for a bonus, if the Dark Lord had chosen Neville, but his mother had made the same bargain, then the “Power” would have remained the same, making whichever child untouchable by Riddle’s magic, but leaving behind the horcrucx, which resonates with the matching wand to riddles own, resulting in his quest for the Elder wand. (Not that he wouldn’t have anyway, mind. He’s that sort, but the brother wands certainly sped up the urgency of it.) |
| 494 | |
| 495 | Which brings us right up to the final confrontation; an “unblock able” AK may ricochet off of a solid object (although we’ve never seen one do so. Generally they just damage the object), but it isn’t going to bounce off of another *spell*. Spells are not solid. Or not unless they are something like a shield spell, and Expeliarmus isn’t. Not unless *something* is in charge of that AK other than the caster. Or this is some amazing new variant of an AK that we’ve never heard of? |
| 496 | |
| 497 | But frankly, any explanation for why the AK bounced off the Expeliarmus and yet *both* spells managed to travel in a straight line to solidly nail Tom instead of ricocheting off in two other directions like we’ve seen every other time two spells collide is stretched. |
| 498 | |
| 499 | Or did they? |
| 500 | ---> Harry saw Voldemort’s green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. |
| 501 | |
| 502 | Does that sound to you like the Elder wand began its flight when the spells collided? |
| 503 | |
| 504 | Because it doesn’t to me. That wasn’t Voldemort getting struck by the green jet. The sequence of events looks to me like this: |
| 505 | |
| 506 | They cast. The elder wand rips itself from Voldemort’s hand and flies. The spells collide, and vanish from the narrative complete, as if they canceled each other out. Or something else canceled them both. Possibly Death coming to claim Tom for his own? |
| 507 | |
| 508 | And the Elder wand came spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. Harry thought that, but had no clue how right he had it. |
| 509 | |
| 510 | And if Harry has any sense at all he will take that wand to the Ministry and pitch it straight through the veil right back to its original owner and get it out of circulation permanently. If Tom could take it out of Albus’s tomb so can someone else, and put it back into circulation even if they haven’t a hope of ever mastering it. |
| 511 | |
| 512 | But in any case, it is clear that in the final reckoning, Ignotus Peverill isn’t the only wizard who will one day be meeting Death as an equal. |
| 513 | |
| 514 | [[WMG: The epilogue was originally supposed to have been from Uncle Vernon's point of view]] |
| 515 | Rowling stated in an interview that Dudley was to have shown up with a magical child of his own. Presumably Vernon would have been present too with the sequence shown through his eyes as a BookEnd to the opening of Philosopher's Stone. |
| 516 | |
| 517 | [[WMG: Ron's experience with the Locket exposed him to enough of Voldemort's soul to make him a Parselmouth.]] |
| 518 | Like Ginny five years prior, and Harry for most of his life, Ron was able to speak Parseltongue because of his struggle against a fragment of Voldemort's soul. |
| 519 | |
| 520 | [[WMG: Umbridge isn't Umbridge]] |
| 521 | Or rather, her married name is Umbridge, but her birth name is [[spoiler:Pettigrew]] and she is [[spoiler:Peter's sister before she got married]]. This is the real reason she hated Harry so much, as he had a hand in her brother's fate. This is also why she took the locket: she knew what it was, and wanted to use it as a bargaining chip to keep Voldemort from killing her brother outright. |
| 522 | |
| 523 | [[WMG: If Lavender Brown '''somehow''' survived her injuries, she would have ended up as a werewolf.]] |
| 524 | Think about it. She was already in abysmal physical condition when Fenrir attacked her. A possible reason for Bill not getting infected in the Astronomy Tower battle in the previous book was that, given his physical health at the time, his body was able to stop the weakened werewolf genes from infecting him fully, similar how colds are less severe for healthy Muggles in the real world. However, Lavender Brown, on the brink of death, would not be able to stop the infection, and either would die or be left barely alive with a debilitating condition for the rest of her existence. |
| 525 | |
| 526 | [[WMG: When Colin Creevey's parents saw ''Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheTwoTowers'' in theaters, they broke down in tears when Théoden was mourning Théodred.]] |
| 527 | Like Théodred, Colin only lived until he was a man, and then fell in battle. |
| 528 | |
| 529 | [[WMG: Neville destroying one of the Horcruxes (Nagini) is a MythologyGag that dates back to the very first book.]] |
| 530 | Harry Potter had been in development since 1990, and like any book or film, etc, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen it went through several drafts and ideas which ultimately got thrown out of the window]]. For example, one idea was that Hermione was Harry's step-sister. |
| 531 | |
| 532 | It's not too far-fetched that the main trio was originally a main quartet in the form of Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville. Not only that, but remnants of this original plot device were left over in The Philosopher's Stone. Examples include: |
| 533 | |
| 534 | * Neville having a subplot about learning to stand up for himself. |
| 535 | * Neville tagging along with Harry, Ron and Hermione to the Midnight Duel and running into Fluffy. |
| 536 | * Neville being put on detention alongside Harry, Hermione and Malfoy. |
| 537 | * Neville helping Gryffindor win the House Cup when Dumbledore awards him with house points. |
| 538 | |
| 539 | In a nice case of BookEnds, Neville arguably has an equally large role in The Deathly Hallows. He: |
| 540 | |
| 541 | * Restarts Dumbledore's Army alongside Ginny and Luna. |
| 542 | * Constantly rebels against the regime, even getting to the point where they considered killing him. |
| 543 | * Stands up to Voldemort when he believes the Dark Lord has won and refuses to join him. |
| 544 | * Pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat and kills Nagini, weakening Voldemort to the point where he can be killed. |
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