[HPforGrownups] Re: List of Chekhov's Guns, unanswered questions

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 171907

From: Goddlefrood <gav_fiji at yahoo.com>
>One that I note that was not on any of the suggestions so far is 
>the little matter of Grindelwald being defeated by Dumbledore. 
>This would also lead on to expecting that all the dates in canon 
>and their significance being explained. I expect an answer to 
>neither of these two before DH is finished. If, however, 
>Grindelwald does somehow feature then he has at least been 
>set up within the so far published books.

Bart:
A prominent science fiction writer (I THINK it was Ted Sturgeon) found out the hard way that if you want to write a series, you have to contend with increasing expectations. The story was about a bear with a human child-level intelligence and his best friend, the scientist who is working with him, at an experimental laboratory. In the first story in the series, the bear saves the world from being conquered by an evil scientist at the lab. The series only lasted 3 stories (in the last, the bear went from saving the world to saving his friend's job). 

I suspect that JKR saw the same sort of problem. Here she has a story of a child growing into a young man who saves the world from the greatest threat it has ever seen. How the hell are you going to top THAT? In the Oz series, although Dorothy managed to get rid of no fewer than 2 major powers, they were a continuing problem, and not an immediate threat, so the Oz books could go on with smaller, but more immediate, problems. Consider:

HARRY POTTER AND THE GNOME OF STUBBORNNESS.
Harry Potter decides to get rid of the lawn gnomes outside his house. A great conflict ensues when he finds one with enough intelligence to keep on coming back, bringing all his friends with him. 

The song, "Extraordinary" from PIPPIN keeps coming to mind. The bridge, alone, sums it up quite nicely:

"If the moat won't stop leaking
And the goat won't stop shrieking
And the griffin keeps losing its hair
If the west wing is rotting
And our best wine is clotting
Well, I'm terribly sorry but I don't care"

Now, if JKR leaves it alone, then she won't fall into the same trap as Marion Zimmer Bradley with the fanfic (MZB allowed fanfic with her Darkover series, until a fanfic author sued her over resemblance between a novel and the fan's story; the result was that the novel never got published, and MZB stopped giving permission for fanfic). 

Now, there is another possibility: Harry attempts interdimensional transport, and finds himself (and perhaps some cohorts) hopping from one dimension to another where he is needed to stop some disaster. This could lead to a fanfic favorite, intersection with other series:

Harry Potter and the Unnamed Doctor: Harry Potter materializes on the Tardis, where the Daleks have almost taken over. 

Harry Potter and the Witches of Oz: With the offices of Wicked Witch of the East and West still vacant, Hermoine and Ginny are thought to be the perfect candidates. 

Harry Potter and the Wizard Assassin: Harry Potter ends up in an alternative England, where a pair of assassins with their own mystical powers, one American and one Korean, are charged with killing all the wizards. 

Harry Potter and the Myth Alignments: Harry finds himself in a bazaar where it appears creatures from all dimensions gather; he joins up with a group where nobody is quite what they seem to be, and everybody calls him a "Potter", even before he's been introduced.

Bart