I feel both you and storytellers like Regina are good at ferreting out aspects of the story. It would be easy, John, to consider your work “left-brained,” and Regina’s work “right-brained.” This is a pathetic and lacking distillation, but I hope you see what I mean. Both sides of the brain are equally important to the fullness of this grand story.

As I haven’t fully read the scar-o-scope theory, I’m sticking my neck out to say that, from what I have read, I don’t lean toward this. This reduces Harry to mere tool, something I don’t believe DD would do. He knows Harry has had a life of nothing but deceit from his family and, unfortunately, from those he respects in the wizarding world, including DD himself (OoTP). He’s also been used as a tool by Barty Crouch as Moody, Lockheart and others. At least DD is remorseful over his withholding of truths about Harry’s life and mission.

So I can’t see DD using Harry as a weapon.

Neither can I see Snape impersonating DD in HPB. DD is too much HIMSELF in the book, stoppered or not; the book reeks of his personality–one of it’s great delights. I simply can‚Äôt believe Snape could authentically impersonate DD‚Äîhe‚Äôd have to slip up somewhere. I don‚Äôt feel he could maintain DD‚Äôs graciousness for even ten minutes. Also, I feel Harry could detect the difference. He may be a ‚Äúdunderhead,‚Äù but he‚Äôs not emotionally stupid‚Äîabused children have extremely attuned antennae. I believe Snape is a White Hat and possibly DD‚Äôs truest man ‚Äúthrough and through,‚Äù but I also believe he is emotionally crippled and has genuine antipathy to Harry because of old hatreds and because he must subsume his own quotidian heroics to help Harry accomplish his mission.

I think you’re both on the right track. There will be serious twists, surprises and enough alchemical aspects, misdirection, etc., to intrigue us all. But there will also be reader satisfaction in terms of emotional storytelling. We need both analyst (“the incredible symbolic imagery from alchemy”) and storyteller (“dramatic structure and consistency”) to enlighten our way with these books.

Oh, the kitties are howling!
Arabella

Citations from canon were trotted out and it did look pretty damning. Starting with the first chapter in PS/SS and her Animagus form twitching when it saw Dumbledore. (Or some such thing.) It also included her trying to interfere with Harry seeking Dumbledore’s assistance at the end of the book in order to protect the Philosopher’s stone.

I thought it delicious because I find treachery and betrayal of those you thought trustworthy is wonderful dramatic material. I wouldn’t want that in my real life, but I enjoy seeing it in fiction.

However, I could not accept the idea of McGonagall being evil. Why? Because in the Potterverse, names have significance. Her first name is the Roman varient for Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom and victory.

I could not accept the idea of Minerva McGonagall being evil. The subsequent books from OotP and HBP seem to vindicate her as well as being trustworthy.

I brought that up in the context of discussing the idea of storytelling. You need to have character consistency, but also transformation. It is when you change character traits without the seemingly understandable reasons that readers balk.

I’ll have more to say on that topic soon on my blog. I saw some things that I thought were wildly Out Of Character (OOC) for Hermione in HBP that really bugged me. That’s too long for comment posts, but I will let you know when those are up.

I did put another post on my blog about the HP series, and it deals with what I thought were leaps or lapses in logic.

:shrugs: this shows the difference between how we read the series. You understand the incredible symbolic imagery from alchemy and I look at dramatic structure and consistency.

Linda

I think John‘s point about Rowling’s intentions for a huge surprise stands, even if I don’t think Scar-o-Scope is the method she’ll use to make the surprise happen. Her surprises reveal our prejudices, and the surprise will serve that end. Somehow, she’s going to make a surprise happen that will simultaneously fit Regina‘s points about Rowling’s audience (which I agree with entirely) and John‘s point about the need for surprise.

I’m writing a podcast right now called “The Snape Surprise” which is going to address directly the great difficulty Ms. Rowling faces in trying to create a surprise ending to a 10-year long series. John‘s words highlight the great difficulty involved – the “unexpected places she may have to go.” But ultimately, if the surprise fails, it will because she’s been loyal to the heart of her story and audience – and she’ll be right to sacrifice surprise for the heart of the story.

I think this boils down to common sense. I would feel cheated, after my investment in the character and the books, to find he was always to be relegated to the sidelines in the last act. Further, the Scar-o-Scope theory, as you formulated it, breaks down when you realize that they would have to *perfectly* deceive Harry, being able to predict his behavior and all major future events (Besides not believing in divination, DD admitted that when he makes mistakes, they’re big ones; why risk something like this?) and feeding enough accurate info to Harry to finish his mission, while withholding enough information to not tip their hand to Voldemort. That is a balancing act that not even DD could accomplish.

Another difficulty of the scar-o-scope theory is that LV purposefully cut off the connection because Harry had learned to use it in reverse. Could he become more accomplished and subtle? Sure, but Snape, the accomplished legilemens, was still felt by Harry in HBP. I would suggest that LV would only use the connection under desperate circumstances. And with the lack of characteristic scar activity in HBP, I might suggest that LV hasn’t used it in a year or so.

An aside, but I think your theory on the soul fragment “supercharging” Harry during the priori incantatem in GoF is wrong. You underestimate Harry’s willpower and toughness. In showing Harry, enraged by Cedric’s death, persevering through the confrontation and bringing out the essences of those who had fallen by LV’s wand to his aid, it contrasted evil with good and showed which one was truly deficient, having LV reap the “rewards” of his deeds. And all of this happening after LV had just finished talking about how Harry was nothing special (as memory serves).