Well, I’m waiting for Harry’s hormones to kick in so he and Ginny can get it on. Red-haired girls, r-w-o-o-r-r . . .
What?
DD
Nah, I think Rowling covered this. He’ll be a powerful wizard (unless he loses all his extra powers in the final battle) but he’s not going to be old enough to do things like be minister of magic or headmaster.
Dumbledore covers this at the end of Book5. Harry thinks exactly like you do… and Dumbledore shoots him down by pointing out a couple of other important confirmations.
Well, that’s what happened to Ged in le Guin’s Earthsea books, right? And seems to be happening in Duane’s Wizard series as well. Of course, in both those universes, magic is Newtonian/finite and not to be used frivolously.
I never said Harry would get a top job or anything, I’m just saying he’ll be as powerful as Dumbledore. I wouldn’t be surprised if he became a teacher, like Dumbledore was before he became headmaster. It would be amusing if he became Dark Arts teacher, the job Snape has wanted for years. But he’ll probably go on to train to be an Auror.
This is my interpretation. I think that… …the arch is an execution device, dating back to the days when England still used capital punishment. (Remember, the Death Chamber is in an extremely old part of the MoM building.) It would seem to be the ultimate in “humane” execution methods: quick, painless, not messy; the condemned prisoner just kinda winks out of existance. You don’t even have to bury him. I’ll also cite as evidence the fact that the arch is the central feature in a large, amphitheatre-like room which is similar to the old trial room where Harry has his hearing at the beginning of book 5.
Other speculations:
[ul][li]Dumbledore definitely dies. Either at the end of book 6, or near the end of book 7.[/li][li]Lupin will die. Wormtail will kill him with that silver hand of his. (Werewolves and silver, you know.)[/li][*]If Harry doesn’t die, he’ll end up with Ginny. They’ll get married, making Harry a member of the Weasley family. Ron and Hermione will end up together, so Harry, Ron, and Hermione will all be related by marriage.[/ul]
nocturnal_tick, Lily could not have been a Slytherin. If she had been Hagrid would likely not have spoken of her and James like this:
“Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an’ girl at Hogwarts in their day!”
Quoth kellner:
That question is resolved:James was definitely in Griffindor, since he played for the Griffindor Quidditch team. We also know that Sirius was a Slytherin, since (before he was exonerated), it was believed that all of the wizards who sided with Voldemort were Slytherins. The house of Lupin and Pettigrew is not yet known, though I suspect that Lupin was Ravenclaw and Pettigrew was Hufflepuff.As for further speculations (no real spoilers, since I have no inside information, but I’ll box them anyway):[spoiler]Dumbledore dies, towards the middle or end of the last book. Further, this will be right when Harry finally has the sense to see him at the start of a problem: He rushes to Dumbledore’s office, and finds either him dead on the floor, or McGonagal waiting to explain to him.
Neville is attracted to Ginny, but I agree that Ginny and Harry are meant to end up together. Further, Neville and Harry both have a personal score to settle with Bellatrix Lestrange (Neville for his parents, Harry for Sirius). And Neville needs some sort of unambiguous redemption. My guess is that Bellatrix tries to kill Ginny, but that Neville screams something to the effect of “you won’t take anyone else I love”, and takes the bullet for her the same way that Harry’s mom did. Neville gets his heroic finale, Harry and Ginny get each other, and Bellatrix is still available for Harry to finish off.
Sirius is really, truly dead, and stays that way. There is no coming back in Harry’s world, and through that door was Death. Sirius went through that door, and is now as dead as a coffin-nail, or whatever the deadest piece of ironmongery may be. A shame, though… Prior to that, I was expecting Sirius to be the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in year 7.
Rowling has correctly handled time travel, in that things done by time travellers are already in the past. You can’t change history. I agree with kaylasdad99 that Harry might well be desparate (not stupid) enough to try such a thing, and if he does, I’m sure that Rowling will be clever about how she nullifies his actions. But I don’t think she’ll be quite that clever.[/spoiler]
At an SF con last year I met a woman who was wearing a button showing Harry and Draco having a soulkiss. She said she was a slash-fiction fan. (You know, Kirk/Spock, etc.)
Which book says which houses James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were in? I thought they were all Gryffindors. Seems hard to make friends with people in other houses, anyway.
nocturnal_tick:
Well, you’d think the general security surrounding the Department of Mysteries would be enough to cover that.
Yeah but it’s still just left open. I mean, now that they have Azkaban and never use it, wouldn’t it have been closed up sharpish. It’s the Department of Mysteries, the place where curiousity is off the scale, and they just put such a dangerous thing where someone could just walk right into it. 
If they were smart, they would have loudly said around one of Voldies spies, “By Golly, I sure hope Voldemort doesn’t step through THE DOOR OF ULTIMATE POWER. Yep, we sure would be screwed if he just stepped in…”
Except in normal circumstances I think that whoever was in the Dept of Mysteries would be advised to stay well away from it - it’s an area that in normal circumstances, few people are given access to.
Oh and Brutus: :D:D:D
And of course, it’s in the Department of Mysteries because Death is one of the mysteries (along with Thought and Time, certainly, and the perpetually-locked room probably contains either Hope or Love). Presumably, the Unmentionables are studying Death in some (hopefully humane!) way, and they need some degree of access to the Door in order to study it. So it would be counterproductive to wall it off, since everyone who works with it knows what it is and is careful not to go through.
It’s like a chemical laboratory. There’s security around the lab, but in the lab itself cyanide, strychnine, etc. are all in unlocked cabinets. Anyone who has any business in the lab knows not to eat or inhale anything in those bottles, and they’re occasionally needed for experiments.
I believe that it’s settled that James Potter was Gryffindor. The way we know that is that we are told he was the seeker for the Gryffindor Quiddich team.
As for the rest, I don’t believe that there’s been any mention. Although we do know Snape was Slytherin.
My theory is that Sirius Black was a Slytherin. His family was one of the pureblood lines and he had family that sided with Voldemort.
For all we know, I don’t think we should shoot down James, Sirius, Remus and Peter from being in difference houses just yet. It’s possible the division we see between the three houses and Slytherin happened after the downfall of Voldemort. Perhaps it was only in the afterfact that everyone saw that most of the Voldemort supporters were Slytherin and started to be cautious then. Perhaps they were civil towards each other during the time James went to Hogwarts. As we can see in OoTP, Harry is able to make friends with Luna who is from Ravenclaw.
I would have a hard time believing Pettigrew was Hufflepuff. For one thing, IIRC, one of the attributes to being Hufflepuff is loyalty. And as I see it, he’s far from loyal.
I don’t recall the plot in exact detail, but IIRC:
[spoiler] In book 1 Hagrid says that EVERY wizard that went bad came from Slytherin. Doesn’t he know already that Wormtail betrayed Harry’s parents?
Which would indicate that Pettigrew was indeed, Slytherin[/spoiler]
No, remember, everyone thought Sirius Black betrayed the Potters and killed Pettigrew in his attempt to escape.
Yeah, like that Guardian of Forever–just lying on that planet, bold as you please, where Leonard McCoy could just jump right through it. Not a red-velvet guard rope or anything.
Of course, I can’t specifically cite anything since I’m sitting at work with no access to my copy of OotP (which is on my coffee table even as we speak), but in the scene of Snape’s Worst Memory, the grouping of James, Sirius, Lupin, and Wormtail strongly suggests they were all Gryffindors. In addition, there’s the earlier scene in the Black house when Sirius and Lupin tell Harry that Lupin was made a prefect rather than James or Sirius, again suggesting that those three, at least, were all in the same House. Most of the Black family ended up in Slytherin, surely, but I imagine Sirius (as well as his cousin Andromeda, and probably Tonks–you know, all the people burned off the family tree) was Sorted into a different House right off the bat. It’s possible Wormtail could have been a Slytherin, but something tells me that sniveling little weasel wouldn’t have been so eager to take part in Snape-baiting if he had to share a dorm with him.
Lily, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly have been a Slytherin, because she was Muggle-born. Anything else is up in the air.
I’ve always wondered about some of the others. All the Weasley kids have been Gryffindors, and Mrs. Weasley was as well (she mentions the Fat Lady having told her off for coming in late one night in GoF). It’s possible Arthur wasn’t–I can’t recall anything ever being said about it (other than that he got caught the night Molly got in trouble with the painting, but why weren’t they together if they were in the same House?). What about Dumbledore? Was he a Gryffindor? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was a Ravenclaw, either. McGonagall was surely a Gryffindor in her day, but how about Mad-Eye?
Peter, if I remember right, it’s Ron who mentions the connection between dark wizards and Slytherin, but I could be influenced by the fact that I know he’s the one who said it in the movie. 
That’s one of those lines that I’ve kind of put out of mind, because if it was Ron who said it, he was probably grossly misinformed the way only an eleven-year-old could be. I prefer to think of that whole thing as a continuity error.