Harry Potter and the Getting of Your Act Together

Angela and I are both real­ly excit­ed about Har­ry Pot­ter this month because with­in the span of about a week, both the fifth film will come to the­aters (we’ve already got our tick­ets) and the sev­enth book, and final, book will be arriv­ing at book­stores (yes, we’ve already got one copy on reserve at our local fan­ta­sy and sci­fi book sell­er).

I’m see­ing a lot of sto­ried regard­ing pleas for J.K. Rowl­ing to “save Har­ry!” There is a great deal of con­cern that the char­ac­ter of Har­ry Pot­ter will be killed off in the last book. Frankly, I would­n’t be shocked at all, as it makes for both good sto­ry and char­ac­ter arcs (the fates of the antag­o­nist and pro­tag­o­nist are intrin­si­cal­ly linked; death of the hero/savior for the good of all, etc.). All the same, the time for mak­ing such pleas for Har­ry’s life has long since past. I’m quite sure that the final edit has already gone to the print­ers at this point giv­en this might just be the largest sin­gle book print­ing for a first edi­tion in all of his­to­ry. Where were you peo­ple months ago when peo­ple first start­ed get­ting con­cerned about this?

At any rate, Rowl­ing has been pret­ty clear that whether Har­ry lives or dies in a cou­ple of weeks, she won’t be writ­ing about him any more.