Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince: Lead-up to the 7th Harry Potter

Jul. 14th, 2007 | 09:48 pm

                       

#60 [a re-read]Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixAuthor: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2003
Genre: Children's/Young Adult Fantasy
870 pages

#61 [a re-read]
Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceAuthor: J. K. Rowling
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2005
Genre: Children's/Young Adult Fantasy
652 pages

You don't really need reviews of these, do you?  Instead, I'll offer a few observations and predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
1. The organization of the series as a chiasmus demands a return to some of the circumstances and themes of Book 1: Who is Harry? Where does he come from? Who will he be now and will he choose good or evil? Less existentially, it ought to show Hermione's use of logic and Ron's of strategy. Some resolution with the Dursleys must be reached.

2. Snape is innocent. I used to think that the mythic structure demanded that Harry sacrifice himself; I now believe that he must be willing to do so, and may even intend to do so, but that Snape is, in fact, the interrex of this tale and, sneeringly and contemptuously, will sacrifice himself in a way that proves his loyalty to Dumbledore and utter contempt for Harry.

3. Harry will have an opportunity to kill Draco; as in his Book 3 encounter with Peter Petigrew, compassion must stay his hand.

4. I was very disappointed that the film of OOTP, which was released last week, showed Harry handing the prophecy to Lucius Malfoy. Harry is not Frodo. A conclusion in which he proves fallible and Snape has to perform the moral equivalent of biting off his finger to seize the One Ring would be deeply unsatisfying. Since we have already seen Snape commit an analogue of this act by killing Dumbledore when Draco could not, perhaps Rowling has already pre-empted this possibility.

5. One hopes that Dumbledore's efforts on behalf of magical multiculturalism have some bearing on the action in the last book.

6. Is some aspect of Lily encapsulated in Harry, whether by accident or design? Did Voldemort's killing curse, intended to create a horcrux for himself, instead send a part of Lily's soul into Harry? We know he has his mother's eyes (not on a salver like St. Lucy, of course, but more than metaphorically). What else of Lily's does he have?

7. Though Dumbledore is dead, he will communicate with Harry through his chocolate frog card.

8. Parenthetically, Tonks and Lupin? Come on. This only works if they're both bisexual, and both seem a lot more on the gay end of the spectrum to me.