Harry Potter 7 Predictions Examined (SPOILERS)
I am going to talk about the predictions I made previous to the publication of book seven, so don’t click on this link if you haven’t read the book.
Well, OK, I did quite well, I think. Out of fifteen predictions, I only flat out missed two of them, and a third is not quite clear. And ten for the first ten! To recap, Voldemort dies, Harry lives, Snape dies, Lupin dies, Ron lives, Hermoine lives, Ginny lives, Luna lives, Neville lives, and one of the Weasleys dies (Fred).
Neville did NOT defeat Bellatrix, and the last line was not about Harry seeing himself finally without his scar, Flat out missed on those.
The one for Draco is a bit harder. There was no single redeeming event for Draco as I expected, but he was saved from doing anything truly unforgivable and, I think, the epilogue clearly shows that he was redeemed in the end.
As for the scar, I’d have to score that a miss, though it was so close I am tempted to give myself a half point. But no, 12 for 15 will have to do.
Reading the book, especially towards the end, I really thought I was going to miss #2 on my list as it looked more and more like Harry was going to die. Still, I carried on.
You might think, from my 12 of 15 that I didn’t find many surprises in the book.; nothing could be further from the truth. The death of Dobby and Tonks, for example, I never suspected for a second, and because of this those deaths had quite a bit more emotional impact than, say, Fred’s.
The whole take-over of the ministry by the Death Eaters and Snape’s ascendance to the post of Headmaster were huge twists. I had expected that McGonnagal would be headmistress. I had even suspected that she may convince Harry to come back to Hogwarts and use it as his base of operations in his search for the Horcruxes; perhaps by offering him the post of Defense of the Black Arts professor.
My deepest hope, “that we see Snape finally and irrefutably demonstrated to be fighting for the Order” certainly came to fruition as Snape was clearly, and irrefutably, shown to be loyal to Dumbledore. Harry and Ginny’s son being named Albus Severus Potter, and Harry’s comment to him about his namesakes, was worth far more towards showing Snape’s true self than anything else could have. And I think this particular part of the story was handled brilliantly; I was sure, up until Harry dived into the pensieve, that Snape, against all my instincts and hopes, would prove to be a bad guy. The fact that everything he did was with the sole aim of protecting Harry just makes the final revelations about him all that more special.
Although I am overall quite happy with the book and its resolution of all the outstanding threads, I am a bit disappointed in the Epilogue as it tells us nothing about the later lives of Harry, Ron, Hermoine, or Ginny. The only thing we find out about any of the character’s later lives is that Neville is a teacher at Hogwarts and Percy is still an officious little git. I–and I suspect every fan of the series–would really like to have at least a hint as to what those four did between 1999 and 2018.
On the other hand, maybe JK Rowling picked 2018 for her Epilogue on purpose. Perhaps she feels that by then she might be able to face telling us more about Harry’s life? Here’s hoping.