As Rocky the squirrel used to say, Now here's something we hope you'll really like. The final Harry Potter book comes out July 21, and here are my predictions.
1. Of course Dumbledore will NOT come back. He's dead. And in the HP novels, dead is dead. Learning to accept the finality of death is one of the major themes of the books. In Book 1, Harry has to give up staring into the mirror of erised to see his dead parents. He has to give them up. In Book 5, Sirius goes "beyond the veil," and although Harry tries to contact him, he can't, because Sirius is dead, and dead is dead. Dumbledore is dead.
I'll say this for J.K. Rowling, unlike Star Trek or George Lucas, she plays by the rules. Dead characters don't get brought back to life or discovered not really to be dead, nor do they attend parties in transparent form--unless, like the ghosts at Hogwarts, they shrank from the final journey and, essentially, chickened out. It's the sad, pathetic ones, not the heroes, who reappear.
2. I think Harry's chance of still being alive at the end of Book 7 is 51% to a 49% chance of his being dead. Harry is a Christ figure; it's all over him (The Chosen One), and Christ figures sacrifice their lives to save others. So it would be entirely consistent for Rowling to end the book by having him save the world by sacrificing his own life. J.R.R. Tolkien, to name one of Rowling's important influences, went that route with Frodo, ultimately. But C.S. Lewis, another major influence, always ended his Narnia books happily, and I think Rowling resembles Lewis more than Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings is full of themes of loss and farewell and a vanishing way of life, and Frodo's departure fits in with that. Lewis's books have dangerous adventures, with heroes willing to risk their lives, but in the end coming through safely. Aslan dies, but rises again, not because dead isn't dead but because there is life beyond death. Lewis goes to Easter and even to the consummation of the Kingdom, but Tolkien goes the via dolorosa and stays in the fallen world that is still being redeemed.
Rowling's books are more like the Narnia Chronicles than the Lord of the Rings. They have dark moments, dangerous adventures, and even deaths, but they always end on an upbeat note. If she does kill Harry, she's going to have to show a lot of good results to make it worthwhile when she summarizes all her characters' post-Hogwarts destinies. But I think she just won't have the heart to disappoint her fans by killing Harry. (She seemed to say in an interview once that she wouldn't even consider killing Harry's best friend, Ron.)
But she has to make it plain that he is willing to die, and that is why she's emphasizing that he very well could.
3. Snape will turn out to be loyal to the Order of the Phoenix. When Dumbledore pleaded, "Severus, please," he was asking Snape to save Draco Malfoy, whom Voldemort would kill if Dumbledore survived. They must have had some sort of agreement that if it was necessary Snape would kill Dumbledore to save Malfoy, and that was why Snape was willing to make the unbreakable vow to Malfoy's mother to that effect. Doing so further protected Snape from Voldemort's realizing he was a double-agent.
4. It's very possible that Snape will save Harry's life. He's done so before. It's been a recurring motif that they dislike each other, that Harry mistrusts him, that he's not in fact a nice man, BUT he's not completely evil either, and he keeps saving Harry. Possibly, Snape will die saving Harry. That would prove his loyalty to everyone beyond a doubt.
5. I don't know if it's just on Pemberley's library board or other places too, but I do NOT believe that Snape ever had a crush on or was in love with Harry's mother, Lily. Rowling would not introduce that plot line in Book 7 without dropping hints about it in previous books, and no such hints exist. People holding this theory read the books just as badly as those who thought that Harry and Hermione would fall in love.
6. Aberforth Dumbledore will do something important. Some people who read the books far more obsessively than I ever did figured out that the barkeep at the Hog's Head is Albus Dumbledore's brother Aberforth, and J.K. Rowling confirmed that they are right, but the books themselves have not yet revealed this. They figured it out by remembering Dumbledore's remark that his brother got in trouble for doing illegal experiments with goats and noticing a book or so later that the Hog's Head barroom smelled like goats. I'm guessing that Aberforth's part in the story will involve a bezoar, the stone from a goat's stomach that is an antidote to many poisons.
7. I'm stretching here, but somehow socks will be important. The story mentions socks a lot. In Book 1, Dumbledore says that his strongest desire is for a nice warm pair of socks. People are always wrapping precious or fragile objects in socks. Harry and Ron give socks to Dobby. Fred and George tell their mom they appreciate her now that they have to wash their own socks. So either socks are important or they are a running gag/motif. At the very least, the references to socks will continue.
For now that's it for what I came up with on my own. Rowling has given some other hints, and I'm less sure what to make of those.
1. She said the fact that Harry, though in every other way he looks like his father, "has his mother's eyes" is important.
2. She said we'd learn something important about Lily (Harry's mom).
3. She said someone who had not had any magical ability all his/her life would finally do some. She has said this person will NOT be Lily's sister, Harry's Aunt Petunia. The two squibs (non-magical children of magical parents) we know of are Arabella Figg and Argus Filch. It seems likely it will be one of those, and I'm betting on A. Figg, who is a member of the Order of the Phoenix.
4. She told her readers to ask themselves why Dumbledore had James Potter's (Harry's father's) invisibility cloak when James died. (Dumbledore handed it on to Harry in Book 1.) Dumbledore himself would not have needed the cloak as he knows how to make himself invisible without one. I'm guessing James asked him to pass it on, probably as a loan for a specific situation, to a particular person, but Dumbledore never got the chance. I don't know to whom he was meant to give it.
5. She said she relented and saved one character she thought would die, but she killed two others to make it happen. I don't think she ever meant Harry, Ron, Hermione, or even Ginny, to die. Maybe it was one of the Weasley parents (Harry keeps losing parental figures) and she sacrificed some more minor characters instead, like Bill or Charlie Weasley. Or maybe it was Hagrid she saved. I just don't know.
6. I think she has said that Aunt Petunia would do something surprising or important. I think Petunia will in some way act to shelter or protect Harry, out of blood loyalty, if not love.
A minor prediction, not based on clues Rowling has given in interviews: I think that Harry and his friends will each use their unique magical gifts in the war against Voldemort. Ron has already used his talent for chess in Book 1; other than that, I'm not actually sure what his talents are. Maybe he'll just overcome his sense of inferiority and act with confidence. Hermione will use her knowledge of runes and/or arithmancy; Ginny will use a really good hex (would it be too frivolous for her to use the bat-bogey hex?); Neville will use his knowledge of herbology; and the Weasley twins will use weapons/merchandise from their shop.
So those are my predictions. Oh, yeah, and people more observant than myself have noticed that the likeliest candidate to be R.A.B. is Sirius Blacks brother, Regulus (?). I agree that it's probably him, and that the locket Horcrux is probably the same locket they saw in a cabinet in the Black house, Grimmauld Place. Ah, and one more prediction: I think that the locket horcrux will be harder to find because Mundungus Fletcher will have stolen and possibly sold it.
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