How to deal with HP deaths (was Re: HP and LV die together?)

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 55377

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "grace701" <grace701 at y...> 
wrote:
 
> I just realized that, although, I love every character in this book, 
> especially Hermione being that she's my favorite, but being that 
> Harry is the focal point of the story, the narrarator, I may just 
> cry my butt off as though it were a real person.  To me these 
> characters are real.  They come to life for me, as I'm sure to all 
> of you as well.  If not we wouldn't be here discussing their futures 
> the way we want their futures to be.  We wouldn't read fan fics to 
> fulfill our ideas.  
> 
> I can just picture myself crying and my mother, who will most likely 
> read the spanish edition after my sister and I read the english 
> edition, telling me to not tell her who it is! 
> 
> I know this topic has been discussed before, but I never posted.  
> Just wanted to post what I thought now.
> 
> Greicy, who will be depressed for days of Harry and all other 
> characters dies

Annemehr:

Your post really resonated with me, Greicy, because I wonder about 
that a lot, too.

I started off just like Book One did, reading about The Boy Who Lived. 
 All the way through the first four books (much more than once) I 
thought I was reading this story about Harry who survived Voldemort's 
attacks, and I was looking forward to seeing how Harry & Co. would 
defeat Voldemort once and for all -- with a happy ending.

Then, I realized that Harry might very well die.

So, I've cried over him already.

And now, I want to explore the canon a bit, in a general way.
The beginning of PS/SS really does set a tone about a boy who survived 
the darkest wizard of all time, albeit with great loss.  The story 
goes on to have him survive yet again, fighting this time.  It 
continues in the next three books.  I, at least, took it for the 
general thrust of the whole series.

On the other hand, and without taking the time to page through all the 
books, I can think of very many things that seem to point toward 
Harry's death.  There is the fact that Bane was angry at Firenze for 
saving Harry from Quirrell!Mort in the Forbidden Forest.  He seemed to 
imply that Harry's death was written in the stars and that Firenze 
should not be opposing that.  At the end of CoS, when Hermione asks if 
Harry's aunt and uncle wouldn't be proud of the things he's done, 
Harry replies, "Proud?  Are you crazy?  All those times I couldv'e 
died, and I didn't manage it?  They'll be furious...."  Well, how many 
times will Harry have the chance to die -- aren't we afraid that he 
*will* manage it eventually?  People do tell him, in every book, that 
he will be meeting the same sticky end as his parents, that he'll be 
joining his "mudblood" mother and "arrogant" father soon.

There are all Professor Trelawney's predictions for Harry's demise -- 
and then we find out that she indeed does have *some* ability to make 
predictions (and you know, she was right about Neville's teacup and 
Hermione's leaving around Easter time).  Even Ron and Harry's made-up 
predictions are noted for coming true, and there are deaths there.  
Ron's Parrot!wand cuts off the head of Harry's Fish!wand in Professor 
McGonagall's class in GoF.  At Christmas dinner, (PoA, is it?) the 
boys get up from a table of thirteen.  How do we take this?  Since 
they got up at the same time as far as anyone can tell, are they both 
doomed?  Or, since one of them may be presumed to have gotten up 
first, does it apply to only that one?  Do we dare dismiss what 
Trelawney says as utter nonsense?

Then there is the theory personified by Stoned!Harry on TBAY.  It 
begins in a post by Caroline (message #38542), which looks at the 
symbolism behind the elements that make up the Philosopher's Stone (in 
real life alchemy, I mean), and relates it all to Harry.  It fits so 
well with canon that I am using it here -- read the post if you 
haven't yet!  Anyway, it looks as though Harry himself is a living 
philosopher's stone.  Caroline and others believe that this is the 
result of James and Lily's coming together and producing Harry (some 
theorise, on purpose); I, on the other hand, think it more likely that 
Harry became the living Stone when Voldemort transferred some of his 
powers to Harry the night he tried to kill him.  Either way, we all 
know what happened to the philosopher's stone in book one, don't we?

In the Graveyard, Voldemort is revived with a potion containing 
Harry's blood.  Isn't this reminiscent of the first book, where 
Voldemort survives with unicorn blood?  And Harry, though of course 
not entirely innocent, is much more than a unicorn, for which he seems 
to stand in here.  In PS/SS, the unicorn died.

Harry has been completely reluctant to kill his enemies.  Though he 
had feelings of fury toward Sirius Black when he thought Black was the 
traitor, though he even believed that he wanted to kill him, when he 
finally got the opportunity he couldn't do it.  Further, when he found 
out the truth about Pettigrew, he saved his life, also.  What will 
happen when he faces Voldemort again?  Will he only try do disarm him, 
as he did in GoF?  Does anyone honestly see him learning how to do 
Avada Kedavra anyway?  So Harry, in my opinion, will not pick up a 
weapon that it seems others will be only too willing to use against 
him, and which he can only hope to block from one other wand.

I am sure there are other things, and I would welcome anyone pointing 
them out, but I will stop here.  Some seem to be foreshadowing, others 
just give me a "feeling" about things.  But I wonder -- now there are 
so *many* things pointing to Harry's death at the end of the story.  
Is it almost too much?  Am I seeing foreshadowings of a sad ending, or 
am I following Red Herrings now?  At the moment, I am not able to 
think of any foreshadowing of Harry's happy ending -- except maybe the 
title of the very first chapter, "The Boy Who Lived."

Harry has shown that he is quite willing to lose his life in the fight 
against evil.  Will it really change anything if he actually does?  
Right now, I have no idea what's going to happen, which leaves me in a 
state of tension, wondering, until I finish reading Book Seven.  I 
will find it hard to take if the end of the series is also the end of 
Harry.

Annemehr
who trusts that, if Harry dies, it will be essential to the victory 
and not just a wayward last curse from a dying DE that might just as 
well have missed.  That would really *bother* me!