Killing Harry

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 175478

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...> 
wrote:
>
> "potioncat" <willsonkmom@> wrote:
> 
> > Did the resolution work? In that 
> > period between putting the book down
> > and picking it up, what were you 
> > hoping/expecting would happen? 
> 
> I always thought Harry would probably die but suddenly at the bottom
> of page 687 I felt certain that he would, but I was no longer 
certain
> that was a good idea. I suppose Harry felt pretty much the same way 
I
> did about it. In a way we got the best of both worlds with many of 
the
> powerful emotions we readers would have had if Harry died but 
without
> him actually dying.
> 
> The real beauty of the book is that if you want Harry dead you can
> have him dead, just rip out the last 53 pages of the book so that 
the
> entire Potter saga ends on page 704 with the words "He saw the mouth
> move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone."
> 
> What sort of reception do you suppose the book would have received 
if
> JKR hadn't written those last 53 pages?
> 
>   Eggplant Gellert Grindelwald

Geoff:
I'm a bit late coming back on this one but I'm 
away from my own computer as I am staying with 
my daughter, admiring our first grandchild and 
having to fight my two teenage step-granddaughters 
for computer time!!

Eggplant, I have never forgotten you writing some 
good while ago that you wanted something along the 
lines of "murder, mayhem and b blood spilt."

Now you can't have all your choices. That would be 
plain greedy... If, using the more sensible UK page 
numbering - because we use a decent type face and 
don't have lots of drawing - the story stopped at 
page 564 and the next 34 pages hadn't been written, 
how many people would have gnashed their teeth,  
kicked the cat and run along the High Street calling 
curses on your head? It's probably saved you from 
permanent Jelly Legs, Bat Bogey Hex and boils. :-)

Without publicising my thoughts, I had quietly  
hoped for three outcomes in DH; I got, I suppose, 
one and a half, one of them being that Harry lived 
(Hooray!).

One of the better known writers in the UK is Daphne 
du Maurier, possibly known in the US at least as the 
writer of the original story "The Birds" which 
Hitchcock turned into a film. In one of her books 
"My Cousin Rachel", the narrator organises a fatal 
accident to the eponymous relative because he suspects 
her of unfaithfulness (IIRC). At the end of the book, 
we (and he) are left wondering whether she was in fact 
guilty and we never, ever, know the truth. I have heard 
many people over the years berating this as her worst 
book because of this. I think that if JKR had done 
something similar, instead of pleasing 50% of the 
fans, she would have riled all of them.

I feel that we needed to know for the sake of our various 
stress levels.

Just passing on to the final confrontation between Harry 
and Voldemort, I may be naive but I thought it was great. 
It would have been a terrible shock for Voldemort to 
arrive in King's Cross as the rather sad little bundle 
under the seat and, if he was able to voice his thoughts, 
say to Dumbledore "What the hell am I doing here?" and 
Dumbledore echoing Harry and saying to him' "You still 
don't get it, Riddle, do you?" :-)

It was good, because it enabled Harry to draw together 
the missing threads, cross the "t"s and dot the "i"s for 
Voldemort's and the listeners' benefit so that they could 
see why things had worked out for good without holding a 
"Council of Elrond" to explain it in detail.