Harry Potter arrived at about 1:30 this afternoon, just as I was about to leave to get my hair cut. I had to put Harry aside in favor of my hair. It was awful, but my hair looks much better!
My Faithful Reader asked me if I was sad about this being the last book. I’m not. Every journey must come to an end and the end is an exciting thing. This is what that whole series has been leading up to—the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort.
Everyone else is doing predictions. I don’t want to be left out, so here are my guesses.
Voldemort is definitely going to die in this book, so if J.K. is counting bad guys when she says that two main characters will die, then that’s one of the two. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, the twins and Neville will all survive because they’re kids. The casualties have to be adults because Rowling is sensitive to her readership and killing a kid would be too harsh. There are a slew of Weasleys, making them somewhat expendable from a novel-writing point of view, and the emotional impact of losing one could really drive the remaining characters to find strengths that they never knew they had. Mr. Weasley or one of the older brothers could be the other casualty.
Snape will show himself to be well and truly on the side of good. He only did those horrible things in the last book because Dumbledore told him to. Snape and Harry have to make peace in order for Harry to complete his passage into adulthood. It is possible that one will be injured (in the case of Snape, even killed) in service to the other. Neville Longbottom will play a huge role in this book, probably by stopping Bellatrix, but he might even help Harry with the fight against Voldemort (the prophecy could have been about Neville, after all). Percy will get a clue and join the good side at the best possible moment.
But anything could happen.
Time to find out!