Will there be an ESE!character in Book 7? /Regulus Black

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 147428

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <belviso at a...> 
wrote:

> Nora:
> Personally, I don't understand why people are wanting to shove all 
> of the BANG over onto book 7. It seems a perpetual delaying tactic 
> to dispute the solving of mysteries that one would rather see 
> continued, or thought the solution had holes. Alas, holes to us are 
> often not holes to another reader.
> 
> Magpie:
> 
> Heh--the funny thing about that is if the BANG was Snape it didn't 
> work very well.  JKR set it off and half the audience is like, "Was 
> that a bang?  I didn't hear anything.  Of course it wasn't a bang, 
> we just haven't found out what it really was yet.  Well I think 
> it's a bang!  But then, I've always thought Snape was a bang..."

I thought it was quite BANG-y, but then I suspect I got into the 
pattern of reading which I *think* was quite deliberate, and the one 
which I would guess (as I can't know this unless it's confirmed much 
later) she was out to make, which her mental 'ideal reader' would 
catch onto.  We get Spinner's End, with all these explanations which 
seem to point to ESE!, but we the readers know better than that, 
right?  And there's Harry, continuing to doubt and have suspicions, 
but he's just biased and unfair.  After all, Dumbledore believes in 
Snape and we believe in Dumbledore because he's the epitome of 
goodness and is wiser than us and knows more.

And then Snape ups and kills him.  And we-the-readers are left either 
to go "Wow, that was totally BANGy", or to start spinning more 
explanations as to why it wasn't actually a genuine BANG (it wasn't 
an AK curse, they had a plan, Dumbledore isn't actually dead, etc.).

But then again, since when does anything with Snape actually work the 
way that JKR seems to have intended it?  Others may be skeptical, but 
I get the impression that she's genuinely a little befuddled at the 
way that people tend to read the character when she thinks that she's 
made some things ("horrible person") rather clear.  Lesson for the 
author is that you can't control the responses of the reader.  Lesson 
for the reader is that the author in a WiP can make manifest the 
threads and implications that aren't the ones you liked.

> I mean, unlike many other mysteries that people want to see 
> continued long past their solution, this one really didn't have a 
> solution because we didn't get the villain's confession either 
> through his own mouth or through someone else explaining what was 
> going on with him.

I agree that the why is totally up in the air.  What I'd suggest is 
that it's an open possibility that the event was genuinely BANG-y in 
a way that's not going to be mitigated by the explanations, as many 
listies want.  That's what all the "It wasn't actually an AK" 
theories aim for, for instance.  I find that theory distasteful 
because it's a cop-out from the dramatic and stunning connotations of 
Snape using the AK on Dumbledore, but YMMV.

-Nora equates it to the original end of the Ring, where everyone 
lives happily ever after in Valhalla