everything but the girl

Hard to digest that book 7 is post-howarts. I think that will take a while for the brain to wrap around. Boot 7 was supposed to be NEWTS and Auror training and some kind of graduation ceremony.....wow. No Hogwarts...brain is over-heating.

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See before coffee the spell checker just is not functioning - That is really bad!

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We don't ever, ever graduate from school !

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Heidi posting - lj is buggy this AM.
You do graduate on the Uni level and there's no wizarding Uni so they just might have something at the end of 7th as it's the end of their education. We just don't know.

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This is true. However, if JKR wanted it as part of the wizarding structure, she's had more than one ( hah ! ) opportunity to mention that Molly and Arthur had been or would be at some ceremony and to make some reference to it being secret if there were such a thing.

However, in my experience ( when I finally left school, I was at a school which had some of the hallmarks of the private school system in this country ) we had no special ceremony, just a lame tea party. I had to leave one school at sixteen ( no sixth form ), where we got up in assembly and mimed to that song from the end of Grease ( appropriate lyric) and then we had a tea party ( where we got given a little bell and I bawled my eyes out ) but there was no leaving ceremony as such. Therefore, I would strongly suspect that she does not see there being a ceremony.

One other, unrelated point. Everyone is assuming this last book will be post Hogwarts. I am really not so sure. I think he will find that he needs to be there to fulfil his destiny.

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:o( Did not know about the ceremony thing. I just figured Harry had never witnessed one.

I do think Harry will return to Hogwarts for something significant. He will probably need GG's sword, Faulkes, MM's advice, or something. But it is shocking to think Hermione will not be in school for year 7!

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I think she will. I think that one or all of them will realise that there is still a lot to be learnt from being at school.

I think the structure of the academic year ( September to July ) is what helps JKR when she writes. I think this last part of the story still has to be linked to that structure.

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Okay, how about Hermione returns to school as a Hogwarts spy/liaison/internal source of information? They can communicate through the Order's way. Somebody would need to be at Hogwarts. Although my bet is more on Neville, Luna or Ginny being the 'insider' I guess it could be Hermione.

i just cannot picture Hermione at school while Harry and Ron hunt w/o her. Harry said he would go 'home' as AD wanted then off to find the Horcruxes. Ron said they would be with him. After all - Harry is still considered an underage wizard. Ron and Hermione are of age and can do magic that Harry cannot. This will be tricky. Harry will need them.

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Are you being literal? Perpetual students? Or just humor that non of us will ever leave Hogwarts?

I know we have not ever been told of a graduation ceremony, but that just means Harry has never witnessed it. It would have to happen, right?

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As I tried to explain in my other reply, there is no universal ceremony for graduation, as you in the US experience. We take our exams, pretty much like OWLS and NEWTS, we hand back our books, maybe there is some kind of social thing with the teachers, maybe we go back for the last day, but nothing with caps and gowns and diplomas. Since JKR appears to be following the English/Scottish private education system - houses, prefects, heads of house, sporting competitions, I take it that she does not forsee any ceremony otherwise she has had lots of chances of tell us, with lots of characters leaving school.

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shusu.livejournal.com

...we don't need no education?

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1. Actually, I don't really think so. Because for Harry, the Half-Blood Prince isn't Snape. The Half-Blood Prince is this idealised figment of his imagination, a perfect teacher because he can't argue with Harry and always slips him the answers. So while Snape is the Half-Blood Prince, the Half-Blood Prince is not Snape.

That's the whole book, isn't it? Harry's illusions crashing around his ears. His perfect teacher is Snape; Dumbledore will not always protect him; his life is not his own; it's time to stop being a schoolboy and start being a soldier.

2. ROFL. How like a lawyer to find a loophole *teases*

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heidi8.livejournal.com

: weeps

That's absolutely right. That's *it*. And this is why I love reading what you write. You gave me the AU I needed after OotP, and now that we have canon that doesn't, in and of itself break my heart there is only shiny anticipation.

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*grins* thanks. HBP touched very close to my heart in the realm of the Potions book, because I've spent so long as a teacher. The irony of finally learning from Snape, the irony of trusting in Snape so completely, the devastation of thinking you could trust a teacher, even a twisty one, only to realise that you never can...

And then the horrible end at the funeral where he realises he can't trust anyone and shouldn't have from the time he was a year old....

For me, the most terrifying moments in horror films are not where the monster is coming, fangs dripping blood and claws waving, but the moments where you have a sudden revelation that you are not safe behind a door and that walls are just plaster (like in Mouth Of Madness, when he's lying in bed and I'm all "oh good, he's safe" and then realise he's lying in bed in a hotel room where a homicidal maniac has keys to every room.) Harry hit that point; the point where he finally realises he is never going to be safe and no amount of blankets on the bed or locks on the door is going to stop anything.

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ginsu.livejournal.com

Harry hit that point; the point where he finally realises he is never going to be safe and no amount of blankets on the bed or locks on the door is going to stop anything.

He does seem to have realized that, but he's wrong (as usual -- see also his interpretation that Snape hated Dumbledore at the moment he killed him).

That Dumbledore is coming back from the dead, and that indeed his "death" is a totally orchestrated ploy designed to help keep Harry safe, is about as clear to me as the Ron/Hermione relationship always has been.

I'll even tell you what I think inspired the idea in JKR's head, despite the ultra cheese factor, and how it will play out, if you like.

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Well, I think we can't ignore the fact that Dumbledore orchestrated his death carefully and for a reason, but I'm dubious about him coming back from the dead. Dumbledore himself would be horrified at the idea of being resurrected.

Now, of course it's always possible that the AK was a fake, that he fell onto Buckbeak waiting below, and that the body is a spell-created fake, but....somehow I doubt it. JKR has a way of hammering home the finality of such things which makes one think she was thinking the fans would try such mental loopholes, and she's trying to smash them.

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ginsu.livejournal.com

Dumbledore himself would be horrified at the idea of being resurrected.

Not at all; he's endorsed resurrection aggressively for many years.

But there's no sense arguing this point, given that JKR will definitely address it one way or the other in the next book.

makes one think she was thinking the fans would try such mental loopholes, and she's trying to smash them.

My experience with the fans is that they are wonderfully capable of ignoring even the biggest loopholes.

The fourth book's entire plot, for instance, requires Crouch to be borderline retarded, and never realize he can simply ask Harry to touch a portkey the first day of school. The fans barely scratched that problem.

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