drm, Rowling has stated that book 7 will be the END for HP. There will be no further books written about him, so the side series isn’t really a possibility…unless she reconsiders.
However, if a new series were written, it could ruin the whole thing. It’s tricky.
~J
I always thought leaving it at seven books would be cool, but then I had a daydream about Harry age 40 or so, and what he would be doing – strangely enough he seemed like a quieter, softer version of Sirius. It would be cool to read more about him then.
Anyway, predictions…
Ooh… while I fully accept that Petunia would refer to James as “that horrible boy”… could “that horrible boy” have been Snape? Could Lily have dated Snape for a time before getting together with James? That would certainly add to Snapes animosity towards James, and by extension Harry…
Two thoughts that have nothing to do with Phoenix.
First, agree with drm about Hagrid’s eventual death. Why? Because when it was announced that there would be the end of a principal character in THIS book the London bookies put Hagrid as odds on first. These oddsmakers who vote with their wallets see a trend.
Second, agree with Lifeonwry about Snape.
In the movies so far, Alan Rickman as Snape seems a good deal more sympathetic than the book Snape. I wonder if he knows something we don’t.
Yes, Rickman DOES know something we don’t. JKR has personally coached each character to prepare them for her future.
Predictions:
Hermione and Ron get together. Whether or not it’s a lifelong romance, I dunno, but they seem fated to liase.
Harry and Ginny get together, and that is a lifelong romance. I think it’ll be a book seven thing, and they’ll get together Harry’s final year at Hogwarts. Before then, I think Harry may either have a crush on Tonks or they’ll have a scandalous relationship, what with the devastating 6-year age difference and all.
Dumbledore dies, or maybe retires, and Lupin becomes Hogwarts’ headmaster. Arthur Weasley becomes Minister of Magic after Fudge leaves the post – maybe he’s killed as well.
And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Snape was at least attracted to Lily, and that fuels part of his resentment of James (who seemed a right git in Snape’s memory – though it would be interesting if we found out that the Pensieve memories aren’t like tape recordings, but instead slant events to the point of view of the rememberer. Not that James and Sirius were blameless, of course, but that Snape’s distaste makes them seem worse than they were.)
It’s pretty clear that the prophesy is about Voldemort, Harry and Neville. Only those the prophesy refers to can touch it without dire consequences, and Neville touches it. How about if it turns out that Neville is the one who destroys Voldemort in the end, rather than Harry. And in a final ironic twist, when Voldemort dies, Harry loses all (or most) of his magic ability. (I don’t really think this loss of magic will happen–but it intrigues me, since Harry and Voldemort are so linked through the curse-that-failed.)
It wouldn’t surprise me if Neville does very well on his potions O.W.L.–it’s not that he’s stupid, it’s that he gets nervous.
I can’t see Remus Lupin having a position at Hogwarts unless a cure is developed (maybe Hermione is sufficiently brilliant to come up with one?).
I’m curious how the Percy situation will be resolved.
Good for Rowling. I haven’t seen this much in children/YA novels, but it is a fairly common device in children’s films to have a parent or parent figure die (or seemingly die) only to somehow return, at least temporarily. I hate that. I don’t mean I merely dislike it, or that I think it is stupid, but it actually makes me feel ill.
My father died when I was young. He died and he did not come back, the same way that no parent of any child has ever come back from the dead. No matter how sad the child is or how much love existed between parent and child, the dead simply do not return for the sake of the living. I think it is twisted to suggest to children that they do. Perhaps it provides some false comfort to children who fear the death of their parents, but when it comes to children who have actually had to deal with death I think kicking them in the stomach would be less cruel. You might as well just come out and say “Hey, not only did your parents die, they never loved you or else they’d have come back! Ha ha!”
Hm. What will happen in future HARRY POTTER books?
CAUTION: SPOILERS! HUGE, ENORMOUS SPOILERS!
Harry will spend a miserable summer with the Dursleys that will be alleviated only by his return to school.
Dumbledore will get two little lines between his eyes and look serious and tell Harry something that he’d wished that Harry had known before, but that he DIDN’T tell Harry for some reason that you’d have to be Dumbledore to appreciate.
Against all odds, Gryffindor will win the Quidditch cup.
Some nasty authority figure(s) will unfairly take points away from Gryffindor at intervals throughout the book, only to be thwarted near the end when all the points are restored and then some.
Hagrid will hide some kind of fantastic creature that he’s not suposed to have from the Hogwarts staff. Even though this is the 6,428th time he’s broken that particular rule, they will not fire him.
The press will say nasty, unfair things about a main character. This character will be vindicated in the end.
Harry will defy authority. This will involve skulking about the school in an Invisibility Cloak after lights out.
There will be a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but something will go wrong and s/he won’t be back next year.
WHEN PEOPLE GET REALLY UPSET THEY WILL START SCREAMING IN CAPITAL LETTERS!
There will be a big showdown at the end of each book between the forces of good and evil in a Hall Full of Spooky Stuff ™.
Not that I’m saying the books are FORMULAIC or anything. Hope I didn’t spoil anything for anyone.
I think since Ron got to shine with Quidditch it’s Hermione’s turn next. I think she’ll do something shocking and unexpected…
In the the long run I think because her parents are muggles she may work with Ron’s dad.
We’re going to learn that the Evans family were Squibs who had decided to live as Muggles, to save their daughters Lily and Petunia the anguish of being on the outside looking in, so to speak. Petunia and Lily were raised with no knowledge of the wizarding world, until Lily’s Hogwarts acceptance letter arrived unexpectedly. Even then, Mr. and Mrs. Evans chose not to reveal to their daughters their magical heritage, in a misguided attempt to save Petunia from the stigma of being a Squib herself.
OR
Mr. and Mrs. Evans were a wizard and witch, who happened to work closely with Muggles. When their elder daughter Petunia was determined to be a Squib, they sacrificed their positions in the magical world, and went to live as Muggles, intending to keep the fact from her. They were amazed at Lily’s unexpected acceptance letter from Hogwarts, and, while still determined to hide Petunia’s “shameful defect” from her, they found it impossible to hide their elation at Lily’s abilities and achievements, the only tie they had remaining to the world they had given up for their daughter.
OR
The Evanses were Muggles, and as is often the case with Muggle families who produce a magical offspring, the sibling was also magical. Petunia went to Hogwarts before Lily, but performed so abysmally, either from her native ineptitude, or due to a psychological block caused by her own childish fear of the supernatural, that she was sent down before learning much of anything. Lily’s success in the face of her own failure ate at her soul for twenty years, turning her into the embittered harridan who runs the household at number four, Privet Drive. The failure was so difficult for her to accept that she actually deleted her Hogwarts year from her conscious memory. She really first heard about dementors in a Defense Against the Dark Arts class, not from James Potter while he was pitching some woo (although the whole eavesdropping thing does seem to fit her character).
I am positively twitching to learn about Petunia’s antecedents, can you tell? 
I suppose it’s all those English lit courses you have to take in order to become a bookie that gives them the ability to predict these things. :rolleyes:
People have been predicting Hagrid’s death for at least two books now, and it hasn’t happened yet. Unless Rowling had planned from before that to kill Hagrid (and perhaps not even then), I don’t see her doing it now. That’s simply because it’s now what people are expecting. She can’t want people to be able to predict major “surprise” plot points years in advance.
I think kaylasdad99 is probably spot on with one of his/her postulations, or perhaps a combination of them 
If it weren’t already totally disproved by the facts in the books (for example Harrys resemblance to his father, scar from Volde etc) I would love to throw out some wild conjecture about how Harry is really the Dursleys real child, and Dudders was the baby on the doorstep, and that the reason they embrace Dudders over their “natural” child is his non-magical tendancies etc. Sorry, I know that is and no doubt would be crap, but if this isn’t the thread for wild and unfounded hypothosising (as well as some dead accurate suggestions) then I don’t know what is
Nothing in the series foreshadows Hagrid’s death, ergo he will not snuff it.
Dumbledore has been shown to be completely unstoppable at magic. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means Dumbledore should easily wipe out Voldemort by the middle of book six. This is obviously wrong - clearly it has to be done by Harry, and clearly it has to be done at the end of book seven.
So from this we conclude that Dumbledore is not around at the end of book seven, no doubt because he snuffs it two thirds of the way through book six. And no doubt this is why the end of OoP spends so much time estabishing that Dumbledore is capable of errors of judgement, despite his skill with a wand. Dumbledore will make a critical error of judgement in book six, and it will be his downfall.
Percy will either become a rabid Death Eater or redeem himself by dying fighting them. Or perhaps he’ll do both, by becoming a double agent a la Snape.
As heavily foreshadowed in the previous books, Harry and Ginny will eventually get together. (Note that most of her appearences in this book are dedicated to setting her up as a worthy match for Harry.) We will, however, continue to see delaying tactics to forestall the invevitable in the next book. Luna may be one of those tactics.
Ron and Hermione will get together sooner or later as well.
Neville, poor lad, will probably snuff it nobly in the end of book seven, no doubt in mortal battle with Bellatrix.
Speaking of Neville, both his mysterious plant and his decision to leave Ron in clutches of the brain (note the scars) will have major effects on book six. How, I have no idea. But the author goes out of her way to draw attention to these things at the very end of the book, indicating that they’re not just loose ends.
Which leaves the most interesting question – what happens to Ron? In earlier books it was suggested that Ron would grow more and more jealous of Harry (the Mirror of eriseD, their tiff in book 4) and that Ron might go over to the Dark Side, as his previous-generation equivalent Wormtail did.
In this book, though, Ron achieves his fondest desire by becoming a Quidditch star (thus removing one cause of jealousy), and the role of betrayer seems to have shifted to Percy. Ron and Harry seem to be getting along great … even though Harry did completely miss Ron’s big moment.
So, will Ron continue on in his role as Rather Dull Ordinary Bloke Sidekick? Or is Rowling lulling us into a false sense of security for book six?
I don’t think this would be the case. Snape has no love for ‘mudbloods’ as he called Lily. It would be a streach, IMO.
One other thing that we’ll see in the next couple of books: We’ll learn more about Lily, and the ways in which her characteristics are manifested in Harry.
Until this book, we’ve heard a lot about how Harry is like his dad – he looks like James, for the most part, and has inherited a lot of his father’s role at Hogwarts. (He literally gets the invisibility cloak and magic map.) Many people that meet him comment on how like his father he is. And Snape punishes him for it.
But in Phoenix, that begins to crack. Rowling comments that Harry’s eyes are like his mother’s. We find out that James was rather more of a jackass than Harry is. It’s forcefully brought home that Sirius, who treats Harry like James II, is wrong to do so. And, although it’s been mentioned before, we find out exactly how Lily has been the main protective influence on Harry in the years since her demise.
I think that Harry’s reaction to Luna in their last encounter is meant to echo his mother’s treatment of Snape in Snape’s memory. Luna’s a misfit, and Harry’s found that amusing throughout the book, but when he finds out how she’s mistreated he’s angry about it. Lily protects Snape in a similar way. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that part of the reason Snape’s a good guy now has something to do with Lily’s treatment of him.
At any rate, we’ve found out a lot about James, and not nearly so much about Lily (and Petunia, who’ll be one way Harry can find out more). Time for that to change, just in time for Harry to use that information to finally defeat Voldemort.
Some of my far-flung theories…
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Crookshanks (Hermione’s cat) at all. I have a funny feeling that we’ll find out he’s yet ANOTHER unregistered animogious (sp?)who has always hated Scabbers/Wormtail, even before the death of Harry’s parents. Sirius Black did say the cat understood him surprisingly well and that he’s the smartest cat he’s ever come across (this is revealed during the talky-scene in the Shrieking Shack in Book 3). Also, I read somewhere that the latest “HP and the PofAz” trailer has what appears to be a cat sitting between Sirius and Lupin (haven’t seen it myself as my computer connection at home is dodgy). Based on previous animogiouses, expect the human form of Crookshanks to have red hair (distant relative of the Weasleys, perhaps?), a squashed face and bow-legs.
Speaking of the movies, did anyone notice what Draco did in the bookshop in the second film? As Harry and the gang are walking away from Gilderoy Lockhart, Draco is on the far left of the screen ripping a page out of a book, an act I don’t recall reading about in “Chamber.” Later in both the film and the book, a crumpled page torn from a book is found in the petrified Hermione’s hand, on which is written “pipes.” Does Hermione strike anyone as the type who would deface a book by tearing a page out? So I betcha we’ll find out in Book Six that Malfoy was really an ally all along, but was intensely jealous of Harry’s fame and even the care he gets from people (I’ve a feeling Draco is a disappointment to his dad - note the elder Malfoy’s reaction to his son’s wipe out during a Quidditch match in the film).
Other predictions that are based more on my guts than the text or movies:
Harry and Luna, Gini and Neville and of course Hermione and Ron will become couples, at least briefly.
Aunt Petunia is either a squib (and is therefore terribly jealous of her late sister’s abilities) or she is magical but is all too worried about appearing “normal” and keeping up appearances, therefore her vocal dislike of “oddities.”
Wormtail will get some redemption in Book Seven, perhaps by using his new and powerful hand (he took a twig and “ground it into dust” rather than just snap it). I betcha HE ends up taking out Voldemort - perhaps by shoving Voldemort through the veil that claimed Sirius (and falling in himself) - so Harry doesn’t have to. That “there can be only one” prediction didn’t say HARRY had to do the deed himself, did it?
Severus Snape will get the Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position in the end. Albus Dumbledore was just waiting for him to fully redeem himself before assigning the position. Dumbledore will then retire, Minerva McGonagall will become headmaster and Remus Lupin, after getting much better control on his monthly problem, will become the head of Gryffindor house and teach transformations.
Egypt will be involved somehow, I’m not sure how. I just find it funny that in Book Four (“Goblet of Fire”) that the Weasleys just HAPPENED to win a contest and just HAPPENED to have enough now for a family vacation to Egypt. Something is being set up here.
Arthur Weasley will become the new head of the Ministry of Magic after Cornelius Fudge has to resign in disgrace for ignoring the return of Voldemort and his gathering of allies.
Neville’s parents will fully recover in St. Mongo’s, due in no small part to research funded by a LARGE sum of coinage dumped into a fountain in Book Five.
Voldemort’s mother was a witch, so maybe we’ll learn she’s the older sister or aunt to James Potter and is therefore related to Harry.
Some things I’d REALLY like to see happen…
I’d like The Goddess Herself Kate Bush to get a small movie role as either one of the Weird Sisters (Book Four) or as a member of Harry’s honor guard (Book Five).
Years after Book Seven is published, J.K. Rowling produces “A History of Hogwarts” that Hermione is always quoting.
WOW, I am such a geek.
Hanging Up My House of Hufflepuff Scarf,
Patty
This isn’t so much a prediction as a question.
I always wonder, “what about hermione’s parents?” The only thing we know about them really is that they are Muggles and dentists, perfectly respectable, nice people.
The thing that I find odd about them is that they hardly ever see their daughter. Hermione is away at school all year, and spends most vacations, even summer vacations, away with Ron and Harry, or at Hogwarts. The only time I can recall when she went home on all her school vacations is during Sorcerer’s / Philosopher’s Stone. Anybody else think this is odd for such a young girl? Or do you think that she just needed to have parents somewhere, so Rowling basically made them as mundane as possible?
He spent a couple of years dead for tax reasons…
I am a 92 year-old lifeguard (ps I was on Baywatch once) and fought in WW2 so I am truly convinced that Harry will end up marrying Professor McGonagle and end up with kids that can make really funny faces and can make spaceships out of hula-hoops.
Ron on the other hand will end up living with a paper airplane he purchases at the MuggleFest of 1415. (Believe me it will all make sense in the next book) :D
Hermione will become a cat for a year because at Harry's wedding she still has a hang-over from the bachelor party, and Harry gets so mad that she is still sick that he does the ''turn you into a cat thing'' charm.
This makes no sense now but you will see when the book comes out. 
Things I don’t actually predict will happen, but which I would like to see nonetheless:
– The house-elves revolt and start slaughtering wealthy pureblood families right and left, leaving the Weasleys to inherit the earth.
– The sixth- or seventh-year DADA teacher is … Professor Dobby! (Hey, he’s probably got more direct experience with the Dark Arts than any of the other candidates except Snape, and it would be worth sitting through a year of bad grammar just to see the look on Draco Malfoy’s face.)
– Trevor the toad turns out to be Umbridge’s father.
– Fred and George finally put two and two together and figure out Mr. Moony’s true identity. They hire him as a consultant for the joke shop, but are forced to fire him because he comes up with much better stuff than they do.
– Sirius Black’s motorcycle and Mr. Weasley’s Ford Anglia meet up and interbreed. Everybody rides to the final battle on expandable flying Angliabikes.
OK, I’m off to write extremely silly fanfiction now. Don’t mind me.