Pre-judgements Entering OotP

[Tom Wall <thomasmwall@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52122

All this recent discussion of 
out-of-this-world theories has
gotten me thinking about something
over the past few days. 

I know that there have been 
some posts on Predictions for 
Book 5, so, given that everyone's 
got so many theories and 
interpretations of everything 
under the sun, I'm wondering what 
sort of pre-judgements we all, as
individuals, are going to have 
entering OotP.


Here are mine, to give you an idea of what I mean my pre-judgements 
(I avoided the word "prejudice" here, although that's what I mean, 
because of the heavy baggage that it carries with it):

I trust Harry.
I trust Dumbledore.
I trust Molly and Arthur Weasley.
I trust Snape (only because he's the one that'd be easiest to 
mistrust.)
I trust Hagrid.

I trust that Voldemort is definitely evil. 

The others? All up for grabs.

By "trust," I mean that, in a world of agents and actors and spies 
and so forth, these people are the ones I have no doubts about as far 
as their loyalties are concerned. This is not to say that any one of 
them couldn't make a *terrible* mistake and ruin a lot. For instance, 
Hagrid seems like a perfect candidate for something like this.  

I think what I mean is that going into OotP, I believe in their 
intentions.

Everyone else has been shadowed by doubts, for me, since I started 
reading up on all of the Evil! threads. Lupin, whom I like and want 
to trust so much, has been torn asunder by the Evil!Lupin 
possibilities, and so has McGonagall. I mean, totally. I've got 
doubts on Percy, on the twins, on Ron (along GoF lines), on nearly 
every other professor. Heck, even the Death Eaters: I can't bring 
myself to totally trust that they're all evil. Some of them I think 
may just be terrified and going along with it for that reason. Plus, 
I'm convinced that one of them is a good!spy, since Dumbledore seems 
to *still* have sources from that side of things.

Now, theories aside (although I'm not sure that a conversation like 
this can be had without getting into them a little bit) there's this 
definite trend of JKR's with the red-herring bit. Every book starts 
with false premises and information, and every book seems to end with 
the reversal of some of that information. 

I have this sneaking suspicion that she's doing that on the series-
level as well, and have started seriously doubting a lot of the 
information that I've gotten from PS/SS and CoS. It seems like a lot 
of it is just itching to be overturned.

Anyways, just wondering what everyone else is *certain* of going into 
OotP.

-Tom