I agree with shamrock227 - there is no secret meaning to it: Dumbledore didn’t want Harry to be attacked by a bunch of Death Eaters and killed. This would be the best way to force Harry to remain in hiding (in a fashion) while Dumbledore could find out who was bursting through that door at the top of the tower. Also, this is a good way for the author to show us Dumbledore’s death from Harry’s point of view, while preventing Harry from interfering in the scene.
Oh come on! Would that be so wrong? Good people get rewarded, bad people get punished? It’s a children’s series after all! Why are people wishing so much pain and suffering on poor Harry? Give the guy a break! How about this - his Firebolt is cursed and constantly swerves to the right at high speeds. Is that enough to appease the tragic-ending-loving crowd?
I only see one serpent’s head in the crystal ball. On the front cover, I see three things that look like helms, one with a phoenix device, one with a gargoyle-like creature on top, and one that’s mostly hidden behind Harry’s left elbow. Or is the phoenix one a breastplate?
I agree that that’s Dobby holding the sword. I had thought it was Ron’s other hand, but when I look closer, I see the ear.
On the US cover, that does appear to be some sort of arena - I see what looks like the heads of spectators - but I’m not yet convinced that they are Death Eaters. Perhaps Voldemort is going to attempt the wizard equivalent of nuking the Superbowl and Harry intervenes.
To be honest I don’t know why. I’m usually for happy endings. But there is just something about this series that screams for it not to have a fairy tale ending. Not a “people stepping over piles of dead bodies” tragic, but not a “ZAP! Voldemort is dead. Let’s go play checkers.” ending either.
(and, maybe, I think Harry needs to suffer a little bit because he’s been so mean to Snape for all those books)
Are Harry and Voldemort on the other side of the veil on the US children’s cover? Or I guess, since we don’t know, does anyone think that’s what’s being shown there?
But Harry’s access to the pensieve has been limited first by Dumbledore’s death and the accession of McGonagall, and also by Harry’s mystifying refusal to tell her what they had been doing. McGonagall isn’t going to assume the memory is for Harry, she’ll think that if anyone should see it it should be her.
Now, a highly speculative question:
When Dumbledore’s portrait wakes up, how much will it know? What other portrait is it connected to?
I think that wizard portraits would act like the original does / did, but they don’t have all the memories of the original. If they do, then Harry will be having long conversations with Dumbledore’s portrait in the headmaster’s office.
If the Dumbledore in the Hogwarts portrait is connected to the Chocolate Frogs card Dumbledores, then Harry Potter could carry his chocolate frog card from book 1 around, and have spy eyes everywhere! Like how Dumbledore sends wizards to their other portraits to spy on events or carry messages. Give a Dumbledore chocolate frog card to Hermione and another to Ron, and Harry doesn’t need a cellular tellyfone.
You’re right, I should have said “double-bodied snake” - it looks to me like there are two snake bodies. For the “suit of armor”, I see a helmet, a breastplate / back cover, a shield, something under Harry’s left elbow. I can’t tell if it’s a phoenix on the breastplate.
Oh, and Rysto - that whole conversation about Harry’s ancestry from the mugglenet.com transcript of the interview seems a little disjointed to me.
Q: what about Harry’s family (specific question: were his grandparents killed)?
JKR: This takes us into mundane territory. I killed them off so that Harry would be an orphan. All had normal deaths.
Q:That sort of shuts down Heir of Gryffindor [theories], as well. (my commentary: how does that follow? What kind of weird reasonong are the interviewers using? Because my grandparents die a normal death, one of them can’t be a descendant of Gryffindor? When JK Rowling said “this is mundane territory”, she meant the death of the grandparents, not Harry’s ancestry.)
JKR: [Pause] Yeah. Well - yeah. (my commentary: JKRowling is also confused by the curious leap in logic, and pauses. Then she says “yes” because she doesn’t know exactly what the interviewers mean by “Heir of Gryffindor theories”. She doesn’t want to come right out and give us the answer that I know in my heart to be true.)
I suspected a while back that Harry and Voldy would meet for their final engagement sans wands due to “Priori Incantatum”, and that it would be a battle of silent spell-tossing between them. I dunno how Harry manages to get good at thinking spells in one short book when he has resisted lessons on that and occlumency for two years now, but something must have clicked. It better have, in any case. No wands doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Click on the giganto version, and scroll to the right area. It’s definitely a bird of some variety, with a long snaky neck, and the thing under Harry’s left elbow really looks like another helm to me.
Here’s something that occurred to me the other day: The Potter’s house in Godric’s Hollow was Secret with a capital S. Harry wants to go there, but he’s going to need Wormtail to tell him where it is first, because Pettigrew is the only one who can tell anyone where it is.
But if that’s the case, how did Hagrid go there to find baby Harry after the Potter’s deaths? Maybe the Potters allowed Peter to let Order members in on the secret, though they couldn’t pass it on.
Then why did Hagrid think Sirius was the Secret-Keeper? I’m so confused.
Don’t read too much into the curtains on the US book jacket, by the way. All of the US cover art has been framed by curtains. I think that’s just a decorative touch, not part of the scene.
If we’re going to see two serpents, I’d love to see that boa constrictor from the zoo in book 1 make another appearance. Maybe he fights off Nagini? But that’s probably not going to happen.
When Sirius died, that had no effect on the Order of the Phoenix location being a secret, because the secret-keeper was Dumbledore, not Sirius. Remember that Moody gives Harry Potter a piece of paper from Dumbledore so that Harry can see Grimmauld place. Of course, now that Dumbledore is dead, any member of the order would presumably be able to reveal where the HQ of the Order is.
How did Hagrid know where to find young Harry? From Dumbledore. Why was Dumbledore able to tell him? Because, as shamrock227 says, the spell ended when the Potters died. How did Dumbledore know? The secret-keeper told him. How could this be when Dumbledore thought the secret-keeper was Sirius? Sirius handed over to Dumbledore a piece of parchment with the secret written on it, without telling Dumbledore that Peter Pettigrew was actually the one who wrote it down. Either that, or Dumbledore knew before the Fidelius charm was performed and the secret entrusted to Wormtail.
On Rowling’s site, she says that when a Secret Keeper dies, the status of the secret remains the same; only those who’ve been told the secret by the Secret Keeper continue to retain the information.
I do think Ginny is going to sacrifice herself for Harry, being the second sweet, vivacious redhead in his life. Seriously, I think it will be something of a mirror of the first sacrifice that saved his life.
Seriously, I think it will be something of a mirror of the first sacrifice that saved his life.