Please excuse the Fangirl; she only wishes she were reading Fanon

[ciroccoj]

Daniel and I are waiting for Justin's bus and discussing the part of Half-Blood Prince that Daniel just finished reading - the part where it looks like Ron's no longer in love with his girlfriend Lavender but is possibly realizing he's falling in love with Hermione.

"Um... I don't think Ron was ever in love with Lavender," I say. "They just kissed a lot."

Daniel emits the kind of eloquent sound of disgust that only a nine-year-old boy in the presence of the word "kiss" can emit.

"And I don't think Lavender was in love with him either. I mean, remember what Harry said at Christmas, when Ron was so so grossed out by the gift Lavender got him?^* 'Did you give her any kind of sign that you'd really love a gold chain that said "My Sweetheart" on it?'"

"No, he totally didn't!"

"Well, no. And if Lavender knew him well at all she would've known that. Hermione never would've given him something like that."

"No, she would've given him something that shouted 'I LOVE HERMIONE!!' over and over," Daniel says, laughing.

"No... Hermione would've given him a copy of Hogwarts: A History."

Daniel laughs some more. "And! She would've put a spell on it that made it shout 'I LOVE HERMIONE!!' over and over and over until he'd read at least half of it!"

***
a_dawn, you shouldn't have posted that bit on your lj (you know the one "...Particularly this bit JKR has to say about Snape falling in love" - the bit that had people posting their theories of what that might mean.) Because I've got a hot date with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, so this is a perfect opportunity to procrastinate by posting what I think will happen in Deathly Hallows, AKA Harry Potter Book 7.

Right. Without further ado, because Pedagogy is burning a pedantic hole on my desk, here's my predictions for Deathly Hallows:

1. RAB is Regulus Black, and I thought I was all clever for figuring that one out all on my own but quickly realized that most of the fandom had come to that stunning conclusion within minutes of reading the scene with the note and I won't bother explaining why it makes sense because it's been done. And how.
   
   
2. Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's orders, and again, I won't repeat the reasoning for that yet again, since most of the fandom probably figured that one out in plenty of time to want to whack Harry across the head for not figuring it out himself before the end of the book.
   
   
3. Snape was once in love with Harry's mother, and that's part of why he hates Harry so much.
   
   I started to wonder about that when Slughorn kept going on and on about how Lily was such a genius at Potions; after all, she was in Snape's year, and there's only about forty kids per year, and Snape was obviously pretty good at Potions, so wouldn't they have had something in common? Although there might have been some jealousy there if Slug wanted Lily for his Slug Club and Snape didn't rate an invite. And he didn't seem terribly fond of her when she stood up for him against James Potter's taunting, and she didn't seem terribly fond of him either, especially after he called her a Mudblood... but then again, you know, he was a 15-year old boy. No further excuse is needed for surliness, even towards a girl he was sweet on.
   
   Plus, you know, he's Snape. Not exactly Prince Charming even as an adult. Please for to disregard that pun.
   
   Anyway, I thought it was even more likely when Dumbledore told Harry he was absolutely sure that he could trust Snape, even though Snape was the one who'd betrayed Harry's parents, because of how guilty Snape had felt afterwards.
   
   Hm. Snape, a Death Eater who was making up nifty curses For Enemies by age 15, is forever wracked with guilt over having indirectly caused the deaths of his childhood rival and a Mudblood? Something doesn't quite add up...
   
   Then in some interview Rowling said that it's an important point that everyone says Harry had his mother's eyes. Now, assuming she didn't mean that literally and his eyes are, like, Lily's zombie-eyes or something... or maybe Lily-Horcruxes... the most obvious reason (to me) for the resemblance having significance would be that part of why Snape's so pissy with Harry all the time is that Harry looks just like the bastard who tormented Snape all through high school and then married the girl Snape was in love with, and, to add insult to injury, whenever he looks at Harry, he sees Lily's eyes staring back at him. A charming reminder that she (a) procreated with the guy he hated most and (b) got killed because of Snape.
   
   So yeah. Snape loved Lily. Wrote SS + LE, Mr. and Mrs. Severus & Lily Snape, Severus Snape-Evans, on every spare piece of parchment he could find. Then kinda... killed her.
   
   Hey, I'd be grumpy for life too.
   
   
4. Dumbledore was... I dunno, possessed, or under Imperius, or perhaps in actuality was a Polyjuiced Mad-Eye Moody, or undergoing severe magical menopause or something during the last book. Because he was rather un-Dumbledore-like.
   
   I mean, he'd been angry or impatient a few times in the first five books, and shown very human weakness in OoP (in part I think because Harry's older by then and better able to see faults in adults), but in HBP he kinda... went all Michael Gambon on us. Bizarre little mood swings; referring to himself as "very clever" and "blessed with extraordinary intellect" a few times; bitching at a couple teachers; giving Harry a stunning little passive-aggressive smackdown when Harry ddn't get that memory from Slughorn... I dunno, he was just off.
   
   I think he wasn't actually Dumbledore. That's my theory.
   
   
5. In the alternative (as they teach us to say in law school) in the event that Dumbledore was really Dumbledore, my theory is that Rowling realized that Michael Gambon was never gonna pick up a single one of her books and figure out what the hell Dumbledore's all about, and if Mohammed didn't come to the mountain, the mountain would have to come to Mohammed, so she mutilated Dumbledore till Gambon could play him convincingly, mood swings and all.
   
   This also explains why she killed him off.
   
   Also, I miss Richard Harris.
   
   
6. Rowling will explain why Dumbledore had James Potter's Invisibility Cloak when he died, despite the fact that it was a Potter family heirloom.
   
   
7. Rowling will also delve into Lily's family's history, and into Petunia Dursley. And no, she's not a witch.

OK, those last two are not predictions. They're things that Rowling has apparently mentioned in interviews, and I haven't got the slightest clue what they mean.

I'm also not going to bust my brain trying to figure them out, either, because I remember that one of her clues for Half-Blood Prince went something like, "People keep wondering why Harry didn't die during Voldemort's attack when he was a baby, but nobody has asked why Voldemort didn't die."

Apparently people came up with all sorts of intricate theories about it, which is cool, but I can only imagine how many of them beat themselves up later, saying, "Of COURSE! How could I not have guessed that it was because he STUCK PIECES OF HIS SOUL into seven different significant objects? The signs were SO CLEAR!!" So, yeah, I'm not gonna guess on anything that doesn't jump up and bite me ;)


^* Incidentally, seviet has a beautiful illustration of that scene: My Sweetheart.

Comments

[a-dawn.livejournal.com]

Haha. I am friend to procrastinators every where!

The wait for book seven is gonna kill me. But then, having it will too, because the it's *over*.

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

Huh. I didn't think Dumbledore was un-Dumbledore, but then...bear's loathing of him has rubbed off on me, so. And I kind of figured he would be a bit off, what with the tremendous pressure he was under. Harry can't afford to not follow Dumbledore's orders, so he was right in being pissy.

Harry is also remarkably thick where Snape is concerned, so I'm not surprised he didn't think Snape was acting on orders.

I love the idea that Snape loved Lily (though my own private fanon theory is that he was in love with Regulus, and Regulus told him that Voldemort was up to something and he was going out to try to stop him, and then Regulus died horribly, and Snape went over to Dumbledore). However, I worry that it's kind of overdone...but that's not necessarily JKR's fault.

If Snape was in love with Lily, the scene in his "worst memory" makes perfect sense. He was humiliated, and lashed out at the one person he didn't want to see him like that. And it does explain the intensity of his hatred for Harry, all right. Lily's eyes in James's face? I've heard that also used as a partial explanation for Petunia's treatment of him.

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

Your son is funny and a genius! But I bet you already knew that!