But what is left for Harry to do at Hogwarts? No one there can teach him how to beat Voldemort. Even if it turns out that one Horcrux is still at Hogwarts, he’s still got to find at least 2 more somewhere else. He may have to return to research Ravenclaw and Gryffindor’s descendants, I suppose, but there’s no way that he’s going to spend the majority of the book there. There’s just too much to do.
What’s there for Harry to do outside of Hogwarts? Right now, his plan seems to be to wander around looking for Horcruxes, which is an exercise in futility if you don’t know what you’re looking for or how to retrieve and destroy them once you’ve found them. On the other hand, once you do know these things, getting hold of the Horcrux itself takes a matter of hours. There’s a reason Dumbledore spent most of his time at Hogwarts last year and only left it for the odd jaunt around the countryside, rather than the other way around.
Practically all of the resources that could help him are either at Hogwarts or in Hogsmeade – the library, the teachers (I disagree that he hasn’t got anything more to learn at school; the twins are gifted innovators and can do without those last few months of formal education, but Harry doesn’t learn new magical skills unless somebody teaches him), Dumbledore’s portrait, Dumbledore’s brother, the Pensieve, Zacharias Smith (who is, I’m willing to bet, Hepzibah Smith’s relative and probably knows more than anyone else about what might have happened to Hufflepuff’s cup).
Besides, it makes more sense, structurally, for the seventh book to take place primarily at Hogwarts with occasional forays to other locations rather than the other way around. Otherwise, it would not only be a huge break with the pattern of the series, but it would make it difficult for some of the loose ends to be tied up (e.g., the Sorting Hat’s call for the Houses to unite in Book Five seems to be setting up something that hasn’t happened yet).
I don’t know why this got resurrected after three months, but now that it’s well and truly up and running, I want to say that I had a good time rereading it. And I was inspired to come up with the following (which doean’t involve a dilemma for Harry at all):
Okay, let’s try this:
Lily and Petunia Evans, two Muggle-born girls, matriculate to Hogwarts. They fit in well, and are reasonably happy to be learning the magical curriculum. Lily is the more talented of the two, and Petunia resents this somewhat. She also somewhat resents that Lily is her protector and defender, even though Lily is a year younger than she.
The Evans sisters are on reasonably good terms with a young Slytherin, named Severus Snape. Truth be told, Severus and Petunia kind of have sweet feelings for one another. Severus even comes to the Evans home during the summer holidays.
One fine summer afternoon, Petunia is conducting some unauthorized experimentation in the Evans house. Severus is there with her in the room, observing, knowing that some of her activities are dangerous, but not wanting to rock the boat with the girl he dotes on. During a particularly delicate part of the operation, Mr. and Mrs. Evans return home, and enter the room, startling Petunia, who inadvertently misspeaks her incantation, causing a conflagration that destroys half the house. Severus saves himself from harm by performing a Flame-Freeze charm, which he later also applies to Petunia. He does not protect the Evans parents with it, for reasons that he is unable to explain even to himself, and the parents are burned pretty severely. They survive, however, because Lily enters within moments, and saves them with the Charm. They are treated at and released from St. Mungo’s, and suffer no permanent harm.
Lily, the hero of the hour, doesn’t blame Severus for the accident, although she does question his courage for his behavior. Petunia goes into shock, appalled at what she’s done, and is so severely affected that she permanently loses the ability to use witchcraft. Her memory of the accident is modified at St. Mungo’s, and she now has even more reason to resent Lily, and Lily’s talents. She convinces herself that she never attended the school, to which she never returns (a bit of self-applied Memory Modification which can rightly be called the last bit of magic she ever performs), and grows to adulthood a repressed and embittered woman with not the slightest desire to return or respond to Severus’s continued affection.
Severus Snape’s feelings for the Evans family are complex and conflicted. He’s still pining for Petunia, he halfway agrees with Lily’s questions regarding his courage, but he resents the hell out of her for many reasons, mostly dealing with the fact that she is representative of his lost opportunity with Petunia. At the same time, he needs to keep Lily as, shall we say, an unburned bridge, because she is his link to Petunia. Lily, naturally, will still come to his defense when the situation merits it, not out of any affection for him, but because she has always been unable to stand by and watch a bully torment someone.
So when Snape hears part of the prophecy, and tells Voldemort that a baby is going to be born at the end of July, who will have the power to defeat Voldy, he doesn’t know that it refers to James and Lily’s impending son. Voldemort does his own research in that regard, and announces to his trusted adviser, that he intends to track down and kill Harry Potter. Voldemort begins his search for Lily and James, and Snape, realizing what he has done, goes to Dumbledore, spills his guts, and begins his life as a double agent. This is how the Potters became aware that Voldemort was gunning for them, leading to the chain of events that ended in their betrayal at the hands of Peter Pettigrew.
Yadda yadda yadda, now we have a plausible motivation for Snape switching sides, it doesn’t have to involve him being hot for Lily, and it ties up some loose ends regarding Petunia and the knowledge she turned out to have.
Sorry, I have to quibble here. Dumbledore would certainly have told Harry if Petunia had been to Hogwarts, at least in Book Six, if not before. But that does raise the question: Where are Harry’s grandparents? Are they as hostile to Harry as Petunia is?
Unimportant and dead, apparently. I seem to recall JK saying somewhere that she gets asked about James’s parents a lot, and that they’re pretty much irrelevant to the story and dead. The only important tie to the plot is that they left a lot of their gold to James, which goes some way to explaining how Harry is now seemingly pretty rich.
Petunia and Lily’s parent, though, I don’t know about.
We know canonically that Harry’s grandparents are all dead, because the Dursleys are the only family he has left. We don’t know canonically, but do know from interviews and the like, that they’re not particularly relevant. So presumably they all died of old age, or something similarly unremarkable. Plenty of kids have dead grandparents.
Not if he didn’t ask. It isn’t exactly germane to the prophecy, or to the problem of Harry successfully fulfilling his role as “The Chosen One.” I can easily see Dumbledore using that technicality to avoid volunteering the information.
I’ve always taken it as read that they would have been pleased as Punch to have a wizard grandson, just as, according to Petunia, they were thrilled to have a witch daughter. Consequently, I am of the opinion that they are dead.
A quibble I just noticed, however, is that when Dumbledore arrives in Privet Drive to collect Harry, he begins his interview by introducing himself to Petunia, as though for the first time. “We have corresponded.”
I deal with this quibble by slightly altering the course of treatment received by Petunia in St. Mungo’s. When her memory of the accident is modified, the Healers also, after lengthy consultation with her parents, Dumbledore, and the relevant officials at the Ministry of Magic, remove from Petunia’s mind any memory of her having ever attended Hogwarts. Her own bitterness manufactures the memories she has today of the time her sister spent at “that freak school.”
The above would also tend to justify Dumbledore sitting on the knowledge unless directly asked.
More to the point, before Book Six, Petunia had never met Dumbledore before. I had a similiar theory going into Book Six(it being that Petunia had been expelled from Hogwarts before Lily even attended), so I was really disappointed to see it shot down in the third chapter.
Ok, now you’re really reaching. That’s too complicated.
Well, of course I’m really reaching. That’s what makes this speculation stuff fun for me in the first place.
Rowling herself is on record as saying that Snape was never in love with Lily, IIRC, and that if (or when) readers understood certain aspects of his personal history, they would understand why the Snape-crushing-on-Lily rationalizations are non-starters.
Sorry, no cite today.
I’m afraid that I have a counter-cite
Fair enough. Inspired by your example, I went hunting for what I thought I’d read. I did find a quote of Rowling saying “Who would want someone as horrible as Snape in love with them?” Not nearly as definitive as what I said in my prior post, so I’ll withdraw the assertion.
Your cite doesn’t definitively persuade me, however, that Snape loved Lily, or that Lily was the one who loved Snape. She’s (Rowling) been clever enough to have left that vague. I’ll be content to find out next summer.
To be honest, I agree with you that Snape did not love Lily. I absolutely can’t get past Snape calling her a “mudblood”. It’s one thing to lash out when you’re embarassed. It’s quite another to call someone the vilest epithet possible. And if Lily ever did have feelings for Snape, that incident would have ended that, I think.
From before “The Deathly Hallows” came out:
Can I predict or what!?