This just in from our colleagues at The Daily Prophet:
J.K. Rowling reports that not one, but two characters will die in the seventh and final Harry Potter novel, which at this point is scheduled to be released some time before I die. For those keeping score at home, that’s one dead character for each $500 million of Rowling’s net worth. Rowling obviously wouldn’t confirm the doomed ones’ identities, but for Harry’s sake, I hope her thoughts about killing off a main character were just idle chitter-chatter with the pesky press.
"I’ve never been tempted to kill him (Harry) off before theend of book seven, because I always planned seven books andthat’s where I want to go," the author told Britain’s Channel 4. "I can completely understand, however, the mentality of anauthor who thinks ‘Well, I’m going to kill them off becausethat means there can be no non-author-written sequels … so itwill end with me, and after I’m dead and gone they won’t beable to bring back the character’." Gulp.
Me? I’ve always embraced the books’ masochistic tendencies, so I’m putting my money on both Ron and Hermione to bite the eternal Floo powder in Book 7, especially considering what happened to You-Know-Who at the end of Book 6. At the end of the day, Harry is a miserable little boy, and as such, will need other deaths to brood on.
What do all you closet Potter-philes out there think?
addCredit(“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Murray Close”)
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My money’s on Harry and Malfoy. i’d be thrilled if they off’d each other.
Is there actually anyone out there that does not think it will be Harry and Voldemort? Common guys- of course it will be. They are the counterparts of each other; one cannot exist without the other (at least not anymore), just like good and evil cannot exist without the other.
voldmort and someone else, not harry. as for anyone else who tries to tell me it will i will stick my thumbs in my ears and ignore you. it was bad enough when she killed dumbledore.
I agree with Anna, that it will be Harry and Voldemort; I believed that they would both die before I heard this story.
My thinking is harry and herminoe But i must confess i never thought she would off dumbeldore so we may be in for a suprise.I would love to see snipe and malfoy go but that may be a personal vendetta because of dumbledore.
**** SPOILERS****
Well, not really from me, but Amanda below me gave away the death of a character (which Mickey OBVIOUSLY avoided) in “Half Blood Prince” DO NOT READ THE POST BELOW MINE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ HALF BLOOD PRINCE
**** SPOILERS***
i hope its harry. that would just make an awesome story. but she definitley needs to kill more than 2 people.
Voldemort and Snape. The Big Bad has got to go, and while Snape is tortured and twisted- he’s a good guy. I think Snape will die a noble death.
I cannot believe that she will kill Harry. I think that Voldemort will die (he has to in order for the wizarding community to live in some kind of safety/harmony), and the other deaths will be Snape and Pettigrew. I think that Harry will then become the Defence of the Dark Arts teacher and eventually Headmaster. I also think that one of the Weasleys will die (I am hoping it is not Ron).
common guys? Or Come on, guys?
I don’t know who will or really even should die in the series finale, but I do think………..
Dumbledore will return to life a la Fawkes. He is after all a PHEONIX!!!!
The most predictable would be Harry and Voldemort because she already set it up that their lives are linked to each other. I think Snape should die but at the very end with his dying breath he gives the big explanation to all of his actions so then its sad that he has to die. I would be sad if Hermione and/or Ron died. I would be very shocked and sad if Ginny Weasly died after how she finally got Harry and had to lose him at the end of book 6. Ugh. I just want her to finish!
Of course it’s going to be Snape and Voldemort. It’s so painfully obvious that I hope will at least be done in an unexpected way, just like the Book 6 death which blew me off my socks although we could tell it was coming.
My thinking (and this is a little bit out there logically) is that Harry is the last Horcrux (sp) and will therefore have to die so that Voldemort can die. Yes, no?
I’m still one of the few that believes Snape isn’t really evil so I think he will redeem himself in this last book. I think Malfoy will die. As for the other death, who knows. I just hope it isn’t Hermione.
I think there will be more than two deaths. I think the two JK is talking about are people beyond who lives and dies in the Harry/Voldemort battle.
I think JK will take out two people that will most dramatically effect Harry: Hagrid and Ginny. His last father figure and his love. I think both will sacrifice them self to save Harry.
I do believe that Malfoy will die as will his father but I also think Hagrid will too. I can’t see Harry dying because there needs to be a semi-happy type of ending. Of course Voldemort either needs to die or be so incredibly hummbled somehow that he doesn’t bother anyone again. Pettigrew is an incidental character and should be left alone to wallow in his misery once his “Master” is taken away. Macgonagil I think might die now that Dumbledor is dead. She held the same principles as the Headmaster and that won’t last without the protection of Albus.
I think Sirius will turn up alive, Snape will die (heroically), and Dumbledore will really-and-for-true die in book 7.
And I think that will be the child’s equivelant of War and Peace– a massively big book, bigger than even Order.
I think she refers to other two characters, on top of Voldemort (to me it’s obvious that he will die) that will also die…I think Snape (heroically) and someone else of the order of phoenix, e.g. Neville, or Hagrid, or one of Ron’s parents. I cannot believe that she will kill off Harry!
I think it’s assumed that Voldemort will die – it’s already determined that either Harry or him will die. My bet is on one of the twins, Fred or George, maybe Mr. Weasley, or Lupin. My guess is that Ron and Hermione are safe.
Hagrid is a sure bet. I can’t see him surviving.
I think the other one is going to be Snape but I think what happened in book six will be explained and that he will die saving Harry’s life.
I’m guessing that Harry will die, but Ron and Hermione will have something approximating “happily ever after.”
I have a better question – why does she have to tell us? The less I know going into this book, the better, but for the last three, I’ve always had in the back of my mind that someone was gonna buy it. For someone who has always been so secretive about her plots (and I appreciate that), why put out this one thing?
Hermione and Ginny get into a deathmatch over who gets Harry. That’s one death.
* If you haven’t read Book 6 yet, you shouldn’t be on this page.
Then… I want to agree and say that Dumbledore isn’t really dead. That’s what I thought when I read it. But if you go back and read carefully and try to find a way that he isn’t really dead, it doesn’t seem like Rowling left much of a logical way for him to come back. I was thinking that maybe Snape faked it, or he took a potion that would make him look dead, but it seemed pretty air-tight. With magic, nothing’s really air-tight of course… But it seemed to strongly suggest that Dumbledore’s really dead.
But yea, I do think Hermione’s a goner. She’s a mudblood, Voldemort hates mudbloods. I love the girl, but it makes sense.
Perhaps Nearly Headless Nick finally dies all the way.
I just remembered something that I don’t think any of us have considered so far. One of the characters to die will probably be Peter Pettigrew! Harry spared his life in “Prisoner of Azkaban” when Sirius and Lupin wanted to kill him. Pettigrew owes Harry now. He will probably stand in the way of Voldemort and sacrifice himself so Harry’s life is spared. I was thinking Ron and Hermione up to this point as well, but I think one will definitely be Pettigrew, and the other will probably be Voldemort. However, I still can’t shake this feeling Malfoy may bite the eternal Floo Powder as well.
Rowling says:
“But I have to say two die that I didn’t intend to die,” she said. “A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don’t target extras do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do.”
(from CNN)
Sounds like it’s MAIN CHARACTERS that die. I’d argue that excludes Peter Pettigrew from the list-o-two (he very may well die, he’s just not important enough to count here)… And perhaps excludes the Malfoys (which one are you guys talking about – Draco or Lucius?). I think the Malfoys are more along the lines of supporting characters.
If she kills Harry…I don’t even know what to say if she kills Harry, but she seems to be hinting at that for the ending, and I’m not pleased about it. If she kills Harry, she’ll have to kill Voldemort, too, or else it’ll be sending the message that evil triumphs over good, which isn’t what this series is usually about(and it probably shouldn’t be). Obviously at least one of the two is going to die, but I feel like any combination in which she kills them is kind of going to suck; if she just kills Voldemort, the story seems kind of simplistic and predictable; if she kills Harry that veers towards the same thing, and on top of that an enormous amount of people will hate her guts; and if she kills them both that also seems kind of cliched and annoying. Sadly, I’m kind of hoping she just goes the simplistic, predictable route and doesn’t kill Harry, because I’ve gotten so attached to the character…plus I feel like that might sort of ruin the series for a lot of people. Can’t you see some massive hysteria-fueled boycott of people not buying the book after the first few people flip to the last pages at midnight and see that Harry’s dead?
Harry can’t be a horcrux, even though that’s a really interesting idea, it doesn’t make any sense. First of all, why would voldemort want to make a random child a horcrux, if he wanted to make harry one, it would’ve had to have been right after he tried to kill harry, but he was so weak, he wouldn’t have had the strength to do it. And Dumbledore even said that living horcrux’s are hard to control, that’s why the snake is always near him. And if he was a horcrux, than harry would have to kill himself to Voldemort totally mortal, and he can’t, otherwise who would kill voldemort.
One of the characters is Sirius Black (Order of the Phoenix) and the other I think is either going to be Cho or Hagrid. BTW: Dumbledore is not a Phoenix, he has a Phoenix as a pet.
I was always amused at the Christian anti-witch backlash to the Potter books… The over-reaction to the triumph of evil (Voldemort) over good (Harry) might be really interesting.