# Damn you J.K. Rowling (potentially)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [June 27, 2006, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414 "2006-06-27T23:43:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pudytat72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pudytat72)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/1 "2006-06-27T23:43:51Z")
Isn’t there enough evil in the world without you killing off Harry Potter? In my opinion, if Harry dies, evil wins(even if Voldemort dies too). Too many children have read these books and watched these movies. They don’t need to see any more death. You have made your billions off of this. If you don’t want to write about it ever again, you don’t have to. But don’t kill him just to eliminate the possibility of a sequel.
When I first heard the suggestion of Harry Potter dying, I was stunned. And I’m very angry. Damn you for even thinking of it.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/2 "2006-06-27T23:47:18Z")
Grow up.
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### Author:  [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/3 "2006-06-27T23:48:45Z")
Has it been confirmed that Harry dies? I appear to be a bit behind the times…
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### Author:  [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/4 "2006-06-27T23:52:27Z")
Doh, just read the ‘potentially’ bit.
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### Author:  [@pudytat72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pudytat72)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/5 "2006-06-27T23:55:51Z")
> [@sandra\_nz](#):
>
> Has it been confirmed that Harry dies? I appear to be a bit behind the times…
[http://edition.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/06/26/potter.deaths.ap/index.html](http://edition.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/06/26/potter.deaths.ap/index.html)
here’s the link to the CNN article hope it works.
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### Author:  [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/6 "2006-06-27T23:58:31Z")
Worked a charm, thanks!
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/7 "2006-06-27T23:59:29Z")
I can neither confirm nor deny the rumours, but I do know that JK Rowling conceived the entire story (minus the details, I’m guessing) in one go on a train from London to Edinburgh many years ago. The arc was decided a long while back. If you invest in fiction, you have to follow the author’s imagination wherever goes.
“They don’t need to see any more death.”
Piffle. Death happens, bad luck. Kids’ literature used to be full of it. If you want real tragedy read _The Happy Prince_, or for the grotesque, the Brothers Grimm, Roald Dahl, or Edward Gorey.
What’s so special about the precious little ones now that they have to be protected from its inevitability? You may not have noticed, but death has been quite common for a long time.
I’m not religious, but the Buddhists have it right, IMO: all is impermanent - even fictional characters.
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### Author:  [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/8 "2006-06-28T00:00:11Z")
“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.”
So Harry Potter isn’t a character?
/pedant
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### Author:  [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/9 "2006-06-28T00:02:24Z")
What a sophisticated rant. :rolleyes:
Of course you’d never get a top author like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to behave like this.
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### Author:  [@pudytat72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pudytat72)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/10 "2006-06-28T00:03:49Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Grow up.
I’ll be 52 in August.
I’m tired of all the violence in life. I know this is fantasy, but why not make it a positive thing, since there is a choice to be made? Maybe it is all a publicity stunt.
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### Author:  [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/11 "2006-06-28T00:05:23Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> Piffle. Death happens, bad luck. Kids’ literature used to be full of it. If you want real tragedy read _The Happy Prince_, or for the grotesque, the Brothers Grimm, Roald Dahl, or Edward Gorey.
I can’t remember getting anywhere near as attached to characters in any of those books, as I am to the ones in Harry Potter. Um, six giant novels versus a six-page Gorey storyboard?
Anyway, my money is on Hagrid dying. I know how English literature works (taps noggin).
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### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/12 "2006-06-28T00:08:04Z")
I’m impressed. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Pit thread that was quite this stupid on quite this many levels. Let’s see how many we can list, shall we?
-The book hasn’t even been written yet
-It’s fiction
-Death in books is hardly an unusual concept
-The whole “won’t somebody please think of the children??!” attitude
Ah, screw it. I’m bored already.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/13 "2006-06-28T00:13:35Z")
> [@pudytat72](#):
>
> I’ll be 52 in August.
Then you don’t have much of an excuse, do you?
> [@](#):
>
> I’m tired of all the violence in life.
And God knows, there hasn’t been any violence whatsoever in Harry Potter up to this point.
> [@](#):
>
> I know this is fantasy, but why not make it a positive thing, since there is a choice to be made? Maybe it is all a publicity stunt.
Because that’s not the story Rowlings wants to write? Because she’s trying to achieve a specific dramatic effect, and that might require that her protagonist die? Or, at the very least, that people not assume that her protagonist is bulletproof, and sure to survive the series? Because tragedy is often more dramatically satisfying than a happy ending? Because sacrifice itself is a “positive thing,” even when it comes with a high price tag? Maybe, _especially_ when it has a high price tag?
There are a thousand reasons Rowling might want to kill Harry Potter off at the end of her last book, which, it cannot be overstressed, _hasn’t even been written yet._ If you can’t stand the thought of that, maybe you should avoid the wild emotional rollercoaster that is middle-brow children’s literature.
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### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/14 "2006-06-28T00:18:16Z")
Harry Potter MUST die, to show kids what you get when you mess around with the occult. And he’ll die in the first chapter, so the rest of the book will just be hundreds of pages describing Satan sodomizing Harry with a flaming porcupine.
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/15 "2006-06-28T00:19:57Z")
That and I doubt she will kill off Harry, or any of the “Big Three” for that matter. (Considering the hate mail and harassment she got from crazed Harry/Hermione shippers!) I’m guessing it will be
Neville and Draco. Possibly Snape. But definitely Neville. He’s gonna go out a hero.
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### Author:  [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/16 "2006-06-28T00:20:08Z")
> [@Smeghead](#):
>
> I’m impressed. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Pit thread that was quite this stupid on quite this many levels. Let’s see how many we can list, shall we?
>
> -The book hasn’t even been written yet
> -It’s fiction
> -Death in books is hardly an unusual concept
> -The whole “won’t somebody please think of the children??!” attitude
>
> Ah, screw it. I’m bored already.
I don’t know. I agree with many of your points, but I also understand that this book represents something special to a lot of people. It is a chance to make people feel better, happier, for that brief moment of literary bliss.
Did Gandalf die, Frodo, Bilbo? They are magical characters that have lived on in many ways, far beyond that which their author expected.
I can see certain possibilities, a death with ultimate sacrifice, that would embody many virtues that humans hold dear.
But, nonetheless, I am simply saying this: Literature is, and always will be, a road map of our culture. It DOES have an impact, it can change lives and it can make something real that before was just a fantasy. The United States was born in the philosphy of others. Prior to the realization of a nation, they were just words, books and thoughts. Wanting something good, decent, and just to result from a mass-popularized piece of fiction is not something to be criticized. Just because it is massively popular, does not indicate it has not value.
One does not have to grow up when they express this hope. Maybe the poster just wants a piece of happiness, a ray of hope in an otherwise dim world. Will there be a ‘Bill and Ted’s’ world of the future based on Harry Potter: of course not. But, to want something special, that is full of positive messages, to remain that, is not immature or childish. It is the hope that keeps us all going in this horrifying world.
I am cynical anymore, so is my husband. We have all seen what is the horrific side of humanity. We have wept and become sollen when we gaze upon the very negativity that only solidifies our notions of an evil world. But, where there is hope, there is greatness and for a person to ask that this pariticular piece of literature not lose that hope for millions of people is hardly immature, childish, stupid or cynical.
Just my opinion.
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### Author:  [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/17 "2006-06-28T00:23:21Z")
If Harry Potter dying would upset you, never, ever, ever read Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry.
Sob.
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### Author:  [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/18 "2006-06-28T00:27:54Z")
The first 3 books were great. The 4th was okay. The fifth I could hardly finish. I will not read any more.
If I have kids, I would give them the first 3 books only.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/19 "2006-06-28T00:28:56Z")
My Wild-Assed-Guesses:
1. Does Voledemort count? Obviously he’s either going to die or be rendered powerless forever. Assuming he’s not one of the two, I’d guess Snape will die in a way that finally shows which side (if any) he was really on. The other…
2. In keeping with the constant series theme of “Harry’s hard-knock life”, he’ll live but in somewhat less than happily ever after circumstances. My guess would be Hermione dies- is either killed or sacrifices herself- and Ron blames Harry for it and never speaks to him again. So one of his best friends is dead and the other hates him for the rest of his life.
3. And the Longbottoms stay incurably insane. Bad things happen, the tooth fairy doesn’t make it all better in the end, and sometimes all you can do is make bitter sacrifices in order to keep even worse things from happening.
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### Author:  [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2006, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-you-j-k-rowling-potentially/362414/20 "2006-06-28T00:29:26Z")
> [@pudytat72](#):
>
> I’ll be 52 in August.
>
> I’m tired of all the violence in life. I know this is fantasy, but why not make it a positive thing, since there is a choice to be made? Maybe it is all a publicity stunt.
**miller** ’s advice still stands.
Like Rowling needs a publicity stunt to move 10 million _hardcover_ copies of her next book.
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