Soccer Dad

I asked her for some happy news

I loved the title of this link ...
Rowling mum on who gets killed off in next Potter book

So she told her mother and now her mother will tell us? :-)

The article says that JK Rowling has declared that 2 characters will die in the final Harry Potter book

Author J.K. Rowling said two characters will die in the last installment of her boy wizard series, and she hinted Harry Potter might not survive either.

Now I assume that Voldemort is one of them. Or does she specifically mean two of the good guys?

Before I continue I just want to go off on a tangent that I've wanted to go off on for awhile. I believe that Voldemort will die at the hands of Peter Pettigrew - Wormtail.

JK Rowling has been very deliberate in her choice of names. Sirius is the Dog Star and Sirius Black changed into a dog. Rita Skeeter turns into a mosquito. And everyone takes umbrage at Dolores Umbridge. (She's also foreshadows nearly everything. But that's a different matter.)

So why am I focused on Wormtail? Because his relationship to his evil wizard boss recalls the relationship to another worm who had a troubled relationship with his evil wizard boss. And that worm would be Grima Wormtongue loyal but abused lackey of Sarumen the White.

What happened all the years of abuse built up and Sarumen was no longer potent? Wormtongue seized his opportunity and rid the world of his tormentor.

(Can you see a fantasy Oprah having a show dedicated to "Wizards who hate their lackeys and the lackeys who serve them?")

I mentioned this idea to my daughter and she mentioned something that Dumbledore said to Harry at the end of the Prisoner of Azkaban

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 suspect that this is foreshadowing. Rowling never surprises. (She surprises because her hints are subtle or at least couched in terms that obscure their significance.) Everything has been prepared in advance. Wormtail will play a pivotal role in the downfall of Voldemort.

I find Rowling's suggestion that she might kill off Harry interesting

“I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, ‘Well, I’m gonna kill them off because that means there can be no non-author written sequels. So it will end with me, and after I’m dead and gone they won’t be able to bring back the character’.”

I'd be very surprised if Harry gets killed. I believe his destiny is to become the Defense of Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. But I can also understand her wish to "own" Harry Potter exclusively. Harry Potter, while it may be appreciated at a number of levels, is still a children's series. Having a children's series whose main character is killed just wouldn't work. If that happened Harry Potter would be deemed too dark for children younger than teens. I can't imagine that's something that Rowling seeks.

(Still she's never going to be able to stop the legions of fan fiction that are written by Potter fans of all ages. I think this is just a red herring. Interesting, but unconvincing.)

“The last book is not finished. But I’m well into it now. I wrote the final chapter in something like 1990, so I’ve known exactly how the series is going to end,” she said.

Rowling said people are sometimes shocked to hear that she wrote the end of book seven before she had a publisher for the first book in the series.

“The final chapter is hidden away, although it’s now changed very slightly. One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn’t intend to die,” she said. “A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don’t target extras do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do.”

This is a lot more interesting. She wants us to know how awful Harry's enemies are. She wants us to understand the nature of evil. I can understand that.

What I can't understand is why people would be surprised that she wrote the final chapter first. If she originally conceived Harry Potter as an epic, she obviously had certainl things she wanted to happen. Certain parts may be filler that were added when the story became successful. (Like Rita Skeeter or perhaps the significant role that Dolores Umbridge ended up having.) But overall she had the main points of all seven books - or chapters if you prefer - mapped out before she started. The series would not have been so well written if she didn't have it planned out from the start.

I guess we're still at least a year away from the final edition of the Harry Potter series. But that doesn't mean that it isn't fun to speculate as to how the worm turns.

UPDATE: Wow! the response to this article has been great with some wonderful comments. Thanks so much to Wizard News for linking here! Abracadadbrah (or should that be "Avara Kadavra?") has a nice rundown on those who think Harry will or will not die - including me, in Dead, Deader, Deadest. LaShawn Barber linked here from Fantasy Fiction for Christians. And though he didn't link here, Just One Minute writes why he figures Harry is history and repeats a theory about why Ron is also marked. Sword of Griffindor writes that JK Rowling is playing with the media.

UPDATE: More Harry Potter on Soccer Dad.

Technorati tags: Harry Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail, Grima Wormtongue.