A guest post from Serious Striker, Joanne Gray!
Did Lethal White’s Epilogue Give Hints To Book 5?
The fourth Strike book, Lethal White, starts from where Career of Evil had literally left the reader standing at the alter a moment after Robin’s wedding day “I do.” This cliffhanger gave a logical starting point for the next book, but it didn’t provide the reader with any hint on what the mystery part of Strike 4’s storyline might be.
Now that we’ve had time to read Lethal White, we know that there is no cliffhanger ending that will bridge book 4 to book 5. So it appears that we have an open field of story line possibilities when it comes to what the main mystery plot will be for the fifth book of the series.
Fortunately we do have one real place to comb for clues since Lethal White ended with an epilogue. I confess I didn’t expect to find much but it seems that there are what can be seen as several signposts planted on the last two pages of the epilogue. It will only be clear if they truly are pointing to the Strike 5 story line when the fifth book is published but until then I give for your consideration three incidences of what I believe are deliberate (albeit subjective) signposts that appear in Lethal White’s epilogue.
While predicting the future of a popular book series is something I’ll probably never be entirely comfortable with, the fact is I’ve got a rough idea of what could be in store for some of the main characters of J.K. Rowling’s 
(2) This hunt for the vital clue would essentially make the final triad in the 
A Guest Post from the author of 
This is Niantic’s third GPS-based, secret world release. It all began with Ingress in 2013. I’ve been playing Ingress since it hit iOS in 2014, so if you’re in my area, a decent number of Ingress “portals” (which are now HPWU Inns, Greenhouses, and Fortresses) were submitted by me or friends of mine in my local Ingress community. (Join the Resistance!)
HPWU draws, however, on the deep cultural history and love of Harry Potter, and will therefore likely be every bit as popular as PoGo and may last longer as a game. Is HPWU a genuine addition to the Potterverse? Or is this marketing gone crazy?
The Magic of Story: On the other hand, the game pulls us into the Wizarding World, not just in a visual/technical way, but physically. Our bodies simply must move around to play this game. No one can sit sedentary, clicking a controller connected to a TV screen. And as you walk around collecting potion ingredients, releasing “foundables” from chaotic spells, and battling the dark arts, you are also a participant in an unfolding story. You can choose to help the Ministry as an Auror, a Magizoologist, or a Professor (I’m a professor!), but you’re really a detective. In classic Harry Potter fashion, a mystery is unfolding as the game progresses. You get advice and guidance from Harry and Hermione, as well as some new characters. The initia, “official” story about Grim and Penelope certainly isn’t what really happened, and we’ve been trained enough by the Potter stories to far to be looking for the misdirection.
The Magic of Community: The reason I prefer Ingress to PoGo is the heavy emphasis on team play in Ingress. You really need a cohesive team with a strong local strategy to consistently win each Ingress cycle. I know PoGo has its own communities, but it’s a different feel overall than the teamwork of Ingress. HPWU is yet another type of team play, particularly as it relates to Fortresses. To try to sum this up succinctly: You can’t get through the more difficult places unless you team up with other witches and wizards. My wife and I had dinner at a location with two Inns and a Greenhouse tonight, and then we walked a nearby park with multiple Fortresses as well. We faced the dark arts together and came out stronger.
A Guest Post from David Martin!
Example #2:
So, why are such weddings so popular? A few reasons are obvious. 
But I suspect that there is another deeper, unspoken and perhaps unrecognized reason beyond these obvious reasons, that may apply for some couples. If we review examples 1 through 6 above, there is something missing: In none of these weddings was the officiant a clergy person. (True, the officiant in example #3 calls herself “Reverend D” but a quick look at her website shows that the only license she has is from the city of New York as a wedding officiant.) None of these weddings was done in a church, a synagogue, or a temple. In particular:
In example #1, the couple had a civil wedding.
These couples appear not to be particularly religious or to be currently affiliated with a house of worship. (Yes, I chose these examples deliberately to make a point. There are also Harry Potter themed weddings that are in a church and where the officiant is a clergyman. See, for example,
For some couples, in response to the officiant’s traditional wedding question that begins with “Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live …” they answer not with the traditional “I will” but with the single, potent word “Always.” And sometimes at the end the officiant declares the couple “bonded for life.” These are serious weddings.
I’m a member of a church on a main highway in a “nice” suburb of Philadelphia. We regularly get inquiries from people who ask about using our church for weddings and funerals. Also, sometimes, about baptisms. Those seem to be the three ties which are the last to break as people pull away from the church: baptisms, weddings, and funerals. When confronting the wonder of new life, the ecstasy of love, and the mystery of death, people sense that they are dealing with the numinous. Then they sometimes want the support of faith. So in the context of what I have written above, this raises an obvious question: Are people involving Harry Potter in those other big events, birth and death? Actually, they are.
The use of Harry Potter to celebrate new life is easiest to document. Just search for “Harry Potter” “birth announcement” (Again, for best results, place the quote marks as shown.) When I did that search just now I got 5,380,000 hits. There are more millions of hits if we change that search slightly and look for “pregnancy announcement” or “baby shower.” Clearly many people are involving Harry Potter in the celebration of the birth of a child.
More often, however, Harry Potter shows up in connection with funerals indirectly. The web site Legacy.com collects obituary notices from many different newspapers. Doing this Google search “Harry Potter” site:Legacy.com searches Legacy.com for all occurrences of the words “Harry Potter.” Doing that search just now, I got 3,800 hits. The obituaries found by this search report, for example, that the deceased loved the Harry Potter novels, or that perhaps the deceased took the grandchildren to one of the Harry Potter theme parks. Apparently someone thought that this was an important thing to have recorded about the deceased. I also suspect that some of the well-known quotes about death from the Harry Potter novels (e.g., “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?”) show up in a lot of eulogies. 
The irony is that Anteros was the god that Matthew and Robin really needed since it was the couple’s inability to grow their initial early infatuation into a more mature and lasting love that doomed their relationship.
Homer includes two famous couples in The Odyssey Book 3, Helen and Menelaus; Agamemnon and Clytemnestra—2 Spartan brothers married to 2 Spartan sisters. Both couples portray unfaithful marriages and Homer used them as counterweights to the faithful relationship and marriage of Odysseus and Penelope.
Recent Conversation