Harry's fate - Best of Both

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156131

Sandy:
> > 
> > <snip> As to where, I think it [the final battle] will be either
at Hogwarts or at Godric's Hollow. 
> I hope it is at Godric's Hollow because that's where it all began so
it would be fitting that it end there.
> > 
> 
> Julie:
> I'm hoping it's at Hogwarts, which in a sense is also where it
> began, for Tom Riddle/Voldemort. It's also where most of the
> series has taken place, and if a uniting of the Houses is to 
> take place in Book 7, I have to suspect that uniting will at
> least partly happen as a united defense against Voldemort. 
> Also Voldemort has put a lot of his focus on Hogwarts, trying
> to get a position there when he was still Tom Riddle, putting
> a curse of the DADA position, and placing Snape there as his
> spy. One would think he cares more about controlling Hogwarts
> than the WW at large...

Carol responds:
As you may know, I think the final confrontation will occur in the DoM
and involve the Veil. But I like Julie's idea that "it all began" for
Harry and for Tom Riddle at Hogwarts, which became a home for both of
them, the one place TR cared about and one to which Voldemort
connected himself through his Horcruxes. If Hogwarts reopens, DD will
certainly try to reenter it and I think there will be a huge battle
there involving all the creatures in the Forbidden Forest, the ghosts,
the house-elves, even the suits of armor and Peeves. The students can
put Snape's DADA lessons to use (and the remaining DA members can
apply what Harry taught them). I think that Wormtail will reveal some
secret passages as a new way to enter the school. (Maybe Harry will
hand over the Marauder's Map to Ginny and she'll communicate to HRH
via Sirius Black's mirror that the school is being attacked?)  

I also think there will be a smaller battle involving HRH, the
helpless Dursleys, Mrs. Figg, and some belatedly summoned Order
members against LV and the DEs at 4 Privet Drive early in the morning
of Harry's seventeenth birthday. (I predict that Mrs. Figg will
perform magic "in desperate circumstances quite late in life.")

As for Godric's Hollow, though I can't argue with Sandy's logic that
the story begins at GH and would come full circle if it ended there, I
can't see Voldemort returning to the scene of his humiliating and
painful defeat. I'd like to see Harry have a peaceful and revealing
visit to the site, to see his parents' graves and maybe be stimulated
by the wreckage of the house to recall the full memory of what
happened there. I don't expect a battle there, and I certainly don't
expect him to find a Horcrux in the ruins, as Voldemort didn't have
time to create one and would not (IMO) have been foolish enough to
bring a valuable object with him. (In any case, Wormtail would have
found it and run off with it as he must have done with the wand.)

So I vote for a great battle of Hogwarts in which someone JKR expects
the readers to care about (Hagrid?) gets killed, a smaller battle at
Privet Drive in which no one important is killed but with luck, some
DEs are Stunned or "Incarcerused" (tied up with ropes) and arrested,
and a final confrontation at the DoM which Harry survives and LV doesn't.

Carol, who can't decide whether she wants the suspense to end or not
but will carefully avoid the TOC (table of contents in editorialese)
when she gets the last book in her hands