The Awesome Chinese Thing From The British Museum I Was Telling You About

Top 5 Harry Potter Endings

Before I start, a quick note from one of my observations on Wikipedia: Did you know that the first book is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the UK? I sure didn’t. In some ways, “Sorcerer’s Stone” sounds more powerful, but “Philosopher’s Stone” appeals to the academic in me. I would wonder whose stone it would be: Aristotle’s? Kant’s? Sartre’s? (I hope not, for everyone’s sake), Santoni’s? (Yes! We have a winner!) I hereby proclaim that the British title of Book 1 should henceforth be Harry Potter and the RON SANTONI MAN-STONE.

On a less ridiculous note, let’s get to the top 5 list, shall we? For clarification purposes, these are the top 5 ways that I hope the story resolves itself in Book 7. I realize that there is almost no chance that any of these are going to happen, but we can always hope. Here goes:

5. Multiple Endings

This ending was proposed by a reader, and was interesting enough in its approach to make in into my top 5 (although just barely). If I understood his suggestion properly, it boils down to this: There is no way that a single ending will please all of the millions of readers of the Harry Potter books; no matter how JK Rowling decides to end the series she will be disappointing thousands (or perhaps millions) of people. In an effort to avoid this, she could release a monstrosity of a 7th Book, complete with multiple endings to please the different and diverse groups of Harry’s fans. This will almost certainly not happen because it would undoubtedly add fire to the fan-fiction/series continuation craze that JK Rowling was looking to douse when she considered killing Harry off. Others might be critical of this from an artistic integrity standpoint, saying things like JK should have the balls to pick and ending and go with it (I realize JK Rowling is a woman and therefore doesn’t have any balls, but I’m talking about metaphorical balls. MAN-balls, if you will.) Note: I realize that my recent recurring praise of masculinity implies an inherent sexism in my thinking. I’m okay with that.

Anyway, I sent the reader an email asking for clarification about how these multiple endings should be packaged, but he didn’t answer, so this is how I see it: A “Choose Your Own Adventure” style Harry Potter. The page sections will be much larger of course; she could even do it in chapters. For example, at the end of chapter 35 or so, she could insert at the bottom of the page little captions that read thusly:

To read the ending where Harry dies, turn to Chapter 36.

To read the ending where Snape dies saving Harry, turn to Chapter 37.

To read the ending where everyone lives happily ever after, turn to Chapter 38.

More true to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” form, and more amusing in my opinion, would be to separate it by events rather than chapters. For example, as Harry comes upon one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, she could insert captions such as these:

Harry tries to destroy the Horcrux, turn to page 425.

Harry takes the Horcrux to Hermione to be analyzed, flip back to page 217.

Leave the Horcrux alone! These things are dangerous! turn to page 538.

While this would mark a complete departure from the style that has won the books such renown, I think it would be hilarious (maybe I’m just having fun reminiscing about Choose Your Own Adventure books). I suppose a simpler way would just have each of the endings written one after the other once they depart from a common plot point, but that really just resembles CYOA option 1, and I like that style, so we’re gonna say JK Rowling would do it that way.

4. Dumbledore finally gets of his deceased posterior and actually does something useful.

First of all, the kind of usefulness I’m imagining here is most-likely advice given from the great beyond, in the style of the Yoda or Obiwan hologram/ghost/spirit guide things in first the Star Wars trilogy. There is a very easy way for this to happen. We already know that the portraits in the Headmaster’s office contain the presences of the deceased Headmasters, who help and abide the new Headmaster of Hogwarts (whoever that may be). The Dumbledore-is-still-useful-via-advice-even-though-he’s-dead scenario is actually quite likely somewhere in the 7th Book, in my opinion. Let me tell you what’s not likely — Dumbledore coming back to life and doing something awesome, or not being dead in the first place. While that would be great, and it could compensate for Dumbledore’s previous failures to be awesome and move him back into my top 5 characters list, it’s just not going to happen. Let me tell you why. Dumbledore had his chance to be awesome. He sacrificed his chance to be awesome in order to give Harry a chance to be awesome because of the prophecy, and then was hit by the Avada Kedavra curse. They buried him, and he showed up in the portraits, as dead headmasters do. We haven’t seen the last of him, to be sure, but what we see from him will most likely be something unsatisfying, like when Obiwan tells Luke, “You see, what I told you about Darth Vader killing your father was true, from a certain point of view”. Then we can all sigh a collective, “LAME…..” What I would really like to see is for Dumbledore’s advice to be something crucial, well-timed and tide-turning, or instead for Dumbledore to come back, dressed in white, and say, “After I touched the Horcrux in Book 6, I was really just battling a Balrog on some other plane, and that’s why I seemed so distant and weakened. But I showed that monster what’s for, and now I’m back, and ready to show off my amazing powers that everyone has been talking about for 6 books”. That clearly won’t happen, although the tide-changing advice thing is a possibility.

3. The Bad Guys Win

You can’t ignore this as a possibility. I mean, if JK Rowling wants to stay consistent as a writer, and ensure that all of her characters are consistent as characters, then this is kind of unavoidable. If Book 7 were to stay totally true to the pattern established by the first six books, a bullet-point synopsis of its end would look something like this:

- Harry discovers something even more intriguing and important about Voldemort.

- Another likeable and competent good character bites the dust because of the incompetence of the good guys. Someone like Lupin, or Shacklebolt, or the Weasley parents, or…who else is left?

- Harry survives, because that is the one thing that Voldemort, in all of his competence, can’t seem to do.

- In spite of Harry surviving, Voldemort continues to win moral victory after moral victory, which result in his eventual domination of the globe.

I suppose once Voldemort reestablished a reign of terror, it would be pretty hard for Harry to survive. Then again, it seemed like it would be pretty hard for Harry to survive when the incompetent good guys let him be kidnapped by Voldemort in Book 4. Harry, if nothing else, is a surviving machine. He has luck, or panache, or something.

Another reason this ending appeals to me (aside from its realism) is the grass-roots American, Puritan work-ethic/meritocracy within me. Really, Voldemort is the most competent, hard-workking character in the series. That kind of determination deserves a reward. Voldemort really represents the American Dream — with hard work, you can achieve anything, even immortality and world domination. Voldemort is a social ladder climber. He worked his way up from being a destitute orphan to being one of the biggest movers and shakers in the market. Seeing anyone else win would be like seeing someone other than Will Smith get the stock broker job in “The Pursuit of Happyness”. That movie is great by the way; you should go see it. Anyway, before you dismiss the bad guys winning as a possible satisfactory end to the book series, try to see it from Voldy’s perspective, and think for a second how he feels. Can you tell that I was educated at a liberal arts college?

2. Hagrid to the Rescue!

Now, I’m not exactly sure how this one would pan out, but I’m thinking something like this: Volemort is the master of all things magic, right? So no one is going to out-magic him, right? Meantime, he wasn’t expecting an old-fashion ass-whooping after Hagrid’s beasty MAN-hands snapped his wand like a toothpick. Think about it….it would totally catch Voldemort by surprise. I imagine Voldemort in this scenario kind of like Conan O’Brien playing a famous white boxer being pummelled the first time black people are allowed in the ring on SNL. While he is taking punch after punch to the face, he manages to proclaim an astute, “I do not like this!” BTW, can the wizards do magic with out their wands? I mean, aside from “Accio, wand!” Like, could Voldemort perform the Avada Kedavra curse without a wand? I think not, which is why I think this scenario would work. If I haven’t been paying enough attention to the books, and a full repertoire of magic can be performed sans wand, then this whole ending possibility is bunk. Even if the wand is necessary, I realize that this scenario is still highly unlikely, somewhat like Bruce Lee taking on someone with a machine gun. Yes, if he gets close enough, it could totally happen, but if the person with the gun is a supervillan, why would he let the fighter close enough? There would need to be some major distraction on Voldy’s part.

However, the second way in which this scenario could play out is totally magic-independent. Imagine this: Hagrid sets every manner of hideous beast imaginable on Voldemort simultaneously. Blast-ended skrewts, dragons, giant spiders, hippogriffs, hydras, unicorns, cerberi, all in a concerted effort, swarm over the Dark Lord, overwhelming him in a sea of teeth, horns, fur, scales, exoskeletons, and other unpleasantries. You might think it would be hard to get all of these animals/monsters to cooperate, but if anyone could pull it off it would be Hagrid. The one thing that makes this scenario really infeasible is the fact that I don’t think Hagrid, being the animal lover that he is, would be OK with the mass numbers of monster/animal casualties an operation like this would involve. It would be like D-Day with monsters. After it was over, they would need large fields just to bury and commemorate all of the fallen monster bretheren who served the noble cause. Bit just thinking about how cool this would be makes me consider making this my number 1, or moving Hagrid up in my favorite characters list.

1. Neville is the chosen one.

This idea was proposed before by my roommates at Denison before I even read any of the books. I had seen the first three movies, so I found the idea intriguing. After reading the books and finding out about the prophecy and all that jazz, I am convinced that this needs to happen. All things considered, it still probably won’t happen, but it would totally be great. I’m never one who has put much stock in prophecies. I don’t really like fate, or predestination of any sort (be it religious or behaviorist). I realize that if I don’t like prophecies, then my #1 candidate for hero should be someone completely non-prophecy-related (i.e. Hagrid), but the prospect of everyone interpreting the prophecy incorrectly (including Voldemort and Dumbledore) is just as amusing to me, and technically I think now if Neville were to turn out to be the one to kill Voldemort the prophecy would even be wrong (I may be mistaken about this, but I feel like in Book 6 Dumbledore said something to the effect that Voldemort, in “marking” Harry, fulfilled some other part of the prophecy that wasn’t birthday dependent. Am I making that up?) But just as all of the Hogwarts students find it amusing when Professor Trelawney’s attempts at divination turn out to be wrong most of the time, I would find it amusing if Dumbledore, Voldemort, and everyone else in the magic world was wrong about the prophecy. The other great thing about this ending is it would realize the greatness potential in Neville that really needs to be brought out. Here’s how I see it happening:

Harry, after being saved a bunch of times by various charcters, (Ginny, Hagrid, probably Snape) gets in a tussle with Voldemort, as would be expected. They have a wizard’s duel, culminating in a meeting of the wand beams, similar to what happened in Book 4. Harry and Voldemort are struggling to push their curses at each other, and while they begin at a deadlock, after a few moments, Voldemort’s superior magic skills begin to assert themselves, pushing the beam toward Harry. At this point, Neville, fresh from vanquishing an impressive number of death eaters, joins Harry’s side and adds his own wizard beam to the fray, turning the tide and inevitably winning the duel for Harry. Whereas Harry in his rage of having lost his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, etc, finally busts out Avada Kedavra, Neville, with his own rage, uses Crucio, to avenge the torture inflicted upon his parents. Voldemort dies the most painful death ever inflicted upon a wizard as a result of the mixing of the two curses.

I guess this is sort of a Harry/Neville compromise as far as the prophecy is concerned, but the point is Harry would have lost had Neville not come to rescue his sorry, whiny little butt. Thus, coming out of nowhere, Neville becomes the true hero, even though Harry would still receive the majority of the credit. Neville, in his vanquishing of the Dark Lord, not only avenges his past, but vindicates his present, and in reverence for his new found badass-ness, no one ever picks on him again. This is the most realistic Neville “Hero” scenario I can come up with; the others mostly involve him becoming so powerful that most readers wouldn’t find the sudden change to be plausible. Whatever happens, I’m telling you, there’s potential there. He’s gonna let it out sometime.

Before I end this post, a quick note on the rumors about JK Rowling killing off Harry — I don’t think she will, and at this point I hope she won’t. Don’t get me wrong; I see nothing wrong with martyring him or ending his life so that others don’t pick up the series, I just think if she was going to do it, she shouldn’t have announced that she might do it, as she did this summer. Now if JK Rowling kills Harry, she is the height of bad form, and approaching the height of LAME. If you’re going to have a surprise ending, like Harry dying, you don’t come out to the national media and say, “Hey, I might kill Harry off in the last book…you never know…”, because that is just stupid. In my opinion, if JK Rowling was a good suspense-builder (and I hope she is), she made the announcement that she was considering killing Harry off just to make the readers apprehensive, and then grateful that he is still alive. A sort of “I didn’t have to do it this way, but I did — for you. I hope you’re happy,” kind of thing. Otherwise she’s just a spoiler who can’t keep a secret. And that would be lame. So I hope she’s not lame, for her sake.

So that rounds out my second and final Harry Potter post for the week. I don’t plan on writing about Harry Potter again for a while, save for revisions and responses, but if someone comes up with a really good Top 5 category or Moral Question concerning Harry Potter I would be willing to consider it. I’ll see you again on Tuesday. Be there or be square, suckaz. Tootles.

Moral Question of the Day

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these. I guess I’m making up for it by hitting you guys with a pretty heavy subject. The question is:

How do we as human beings learn to deal with loss?

Loss is a universal human experience. At some point we all lose something. We lose a basketball game, we lose an iPod (rrrgh…), we break up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, we lose a friend or a loved one, etc. Last October I experienced the first major loss of my life when my dog and long-time friend Darby passed away. I had lost a grandpa to lung cancer, but I had only met him a few times, and I was only five years old. I had lost friends of friends or friends of family, but everyone in my immediate circle of family and friends had somehow stayed alive and kicking for my entire life before I lost Darby.

To be fair, I must say I had lost people in other ways. My family has moved a number of times, and so there are people whom I had once considered among my “best” friends at one point that I rarely (if ever) speak to anymore, simply because of geographical barriers. I remember being devastated when my first girlfriend broke up with me, even though now in retrospect I realize that things probably turned out for the best.

Still, Darby was the first friend of mine that I lost to death, which is significant in a number of ways. Friends/girlfriends lost for geographic reasons can be regained with effort (and via new resources such as myspace.com), or in cases such as breakups there are generally reasons one can point to why the relationship needed to end. Death is so much more final, and there is no why involved. I mean, we know that all organisms eventually die, but there is no clear reason we can point to why they need to die (aside from overpopulation). I don’t feel any better off with Darby now that I have some hindsight and perspective; if he were alive he would still be a great friend. His death didn’t help me grow as a person at all, in the way my breakups with previous girlfriends did. All his death did was leave a void in my life that I have to deal with in one way or another.

As I look at my life up to this point, I realize that I have been fortunate to have kept so many of my friendships and family relationships intact. However, as I look forward to the horizon of my future, I also realize that I will not always be so fortunate. Some of my friends and family have already had near misses with heart problems, cancer, etc, and it’s only a matter of time before old age, disease, and accidents begin to claim more of my loved ones. (I could die before I lose anyone else, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t).

It appears to me that loss becomes an ever-growing presence and force in our lives the older we get and I’m not just talking in terms of friends and relatives (although that might be the part of it that scares me the most). The older I get, the less sharp I feel mentally (and given that I’m only 23, I feel like that shouldn’t be happening at my age). Physical decline isn’t really an issue for me yet, but in 10-15 years that could become a subject of concern as well. At the same time as we must begin coping with increased loss of friends and family, we must also confront the loss of abilities that once came naturally to us. I realize that there are also many things to gain, such as a job, a house,  a car, a wife, children, etc. But then we retire, children move a way, wives can feasibly die or divorce us, and so on. After a point, is life just characterized by more and more loss until we die? If this is the case, how do we cope?

Many would point to religion, and a life beyond this one. That is a comforting scenario, at the least, and perhaps that’s why so many people ”get Jesus” or some other form of religion when they grow up and start families.  Others like Ernest Hemingway write books about how depressing life is, and then kill themselves. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this isn’t an advisable coping mechanism.

I guess in one way, we all just accept loss and realize that life goes on with or without us, and then make the choice whether we’re going to keep up or not. When I found out Darby had died, I cried for almost the entire day, but by the next day, I felt cried out, and I felt a certain need to move on. It was an ambiguous feeling, because while I realized that thinking about Darby was painful, and putting him out of mind was the best way to move on, I felt like it would be disloyal and disrespectful to just forget about someone who had been such a good friend to me for 14 years. Ultimately, I had so many new experiences on my mind while I adapted to life in France that it was no longer really a choice — Darby (and grieving for him) was passively removed from my mental priority list. My life has gone on without him, and I’ve even been quite happy for long stretches since October. I still miss him, but life is filled with so many experiences, I find that other things just move in to fill the void.

But what do we do as more and more losses leave more and more voids?

There’s a real upper of a question for you. It’ll probably be a good thing for me to forget about that question tomorrow while I write about Harry Potter. See you then. Tootles.