Happy endings and locked rooms

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 164636

eggplant wrote:
>
> Considering that locked room, the most mysterious thing about it is
if it's just love behind it as most assume then why is it locked? I
would think you'd want to set love free and get into the world. There
must be something besides ordinary vanilla love in that room, love on
steroids or something that makes it downright dangerous. Or maybe the
Ministry wizards didn't lock it and are in fact trying to unlock it,
but without success. Maybe in book 7 Harry will find a way to unlock
it, something even Dumbledore couldn't do. He knows that opening the
door is the only way to destroy Voldemort but Harry also knows that if
he does so he will die too; remember that powerful "old magic"
involves sacrifice. Perhaps in the second to the last chapter, the one
just before epilog where the adult lives of the surviving characters
are described, Harry opens that door and Harry Potter is no more.  
> 
> Maybe that also explains the gleam of triumph in GOF seen in
Dumbledore's eye immediately followed by sorrow. Whatever that was
about it seems clear to me it must have involved having a glorious
idea followed by a very sad idea. The most glorious idea I can think
of is a way to defeat Voldemort, the saddest idea I can think of is
Harry's death.  
> 
> But even if I'm wrong and the second to last chapter of the last
book is not entitled "The Man Who Died" and Harry survives, do you
think the series will have a happy ending? To put it more concretely,
will you be happy when you read the last page or will you have a tear
in your eye? I think that largely depends on if Harry is happy on the
last page. Personally I think if Harry survives he will be crippled
emotionally and perhaps physically as well.

Carol responds:

"Love on steroids!" Colorfully expressed. Certainly Love, if that's
what's in the room, is, like Truth, a beautiful and dangerous thing.
(Your post makes me think of Pandora's Box, with all the evils loosed
on the world but Hope still trapped inside.) I don't think, BTW, that
ancient magic necessarily involves sacrifice. The Dark Arts Voldemort
practices are also ancient. Their antithesis is Love magic, but Love
isn't necessarily sacrificial. (I do think, though, that Harry will
have to be *willing* to sacrifice himself, but we've seen that trait
in him since SS/PS.

I very much doubt that JKR would give away the plot by titling the
last chapter "The Man Who Died." (And I know this is silly and
irrelevant, but I have trouble thinking of a seventeen-year-old as a
man in any case.) I also don't think that JKR will kill Harry for a
variety of reasons, ranging from the Prophecy, which seems to imply
that only one will die (obviously Voldemort) to JKR's own feelings
about having put Harry through so much grief for seven books.

And while I disagree that Harry will be crippled emotionally or
physically by the experience (like Frodo), and I don't think that
he'll lose his powers (except possibly those acquired from Voldemort),
of course, he'll be sadder but wiser at the end of the series. That's
what growing up is all about. He will have lost even more friends than
he's already lost, perhaps Hagrid or the Weasley Twins, and he will
have spent the first seventeen years of his life very differently than
he would have done if someone else, say Neville, had been the Chosen
One and his parents had somehow survived VW1 unscathed.

His world is already changed. Hogwarts (which I think he'll return to
a year late to finish his education) will never be the same. 12 GP,
even if he cleans it up and gets rid of Mrs. Black's portrait and
Kreacher, will always remind him of his lost godfather. Even if Harry
makes a fresh start as Just!Harry, talented young Auror whom the WW
has finally forgotten as it turns its collective mind to everyday
concerns, he'll never forget his suffering, but, like a young British
soldier returning from World War II (a war that most soldiers felt
wholly justified in having fought), he'll find the strength and hope
to make a new beginning in the world he has saved (unlike poor Frodo,
who has to go into the Uttermost West to find healing and peace).

As for a happy ending vs. an ending that will bring tears to my eyes,
I don't think those endings are mutually exclusive. IOW, I expect to
"cry for happy." Voldemort will be dead, but so will several other
characters on both sides, and Harry will have undergone a terrible
ordeal in ridding the world of Voldemort. Possibly he'll have briefly
encountered his parents and Sirius Black and Dumbledore, whom he's not
ready to join yet and will have to leave behind. So, unlike the
characters who shot magical fireworks into the sky and threw parties
to celebrate the first defeat of Voldemort, my desire to celebrate
will be countered by my awareness of the deaths and suffering that he
caused, and I'll feel that celebration is at best premature. (And, of
course, I'll be in mourning for the end of the series, however much
I'll still want to analyze it. :-) )

At any rate, I have every confidence that JKR can bring about a
poignant, bittersweet ending that brings tears to all but the most
jaded reader's eyes and yet have Harry survive to attend Hogwarts for
a belated seventh year along with Ron, Hermione, and Neville (and
Ginny, who will now be in the same year as Harry, having attended
Hogwarts throughout DH). I not only want but expect Harry to live.

Carol, who will, of course, be inconsolable if Snape dies, "happy"
ending or otherwise, but expects to cry only happy tears for Harry