Well, it’s finally nearly here. Tonight at midnight is the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and if you’d have asked me a mere six months ago if I’d have cared about this event, I would have laughed in your face. But, stubborn grumpy old me was finally convinced to read the books (thanks, Roxy!), and then briefly went nutso trying to convince all my friends, present and former, to read them (hi Audz, hi M).

What will happen? I don’t honestly know, as I’ve tried to keep myself as far away from genuine spoilers as is possible — even going so far as to delete any emails or random message board private messages that even hint at being a Harry Potter spoiler. I’ve become adept at skimming enough of a message to know that it’s going to be a spoiler, then trashing it. And, before you get any bright ideas, after I post this blog post, I’ll likely be offline for a few days anyway, so don’t try to challenge me on this one, smartasses.

That hasn’t kept me from speculating on what will happen. Here are my guesses, and perhaps in a few days I’ll post a spoilerful weblog entry seeing how off the mark I was. Note that these spoil various points from The Half Blood Prince, so if you haven’t read that, well, you’ve had plenty of time and I don’t care if I’m spoiling it for you!

• I buy the theory that Harry is actually Godric Gryffindor’s descendent. Roxy pointed out that the Wizard of the Month on Rowling’s website was Gryffindor, and he had the same green eyes that Harry has — it’s been pointed out many times that Harry “has his mother’s eyes,” but his mother was supposedly muggle-born. So, what if she wasn’t and didn’t know that she was a descendant of Gryffindor? There are a few implications to this: (1) Narratively, it’d make for a nice parallel to Tom Marvolo Riddle’s ignorance of his Slytherin bloodline, and there have been tons of parallels between Harry and Voldemort so far; (2) it would be a great end to the Dursley storyline for them to realize that they actually are what they loathe so much (since Petunia was Lily Potter’s sister); (3) it gives credence to the theory that Harry is a Horcrux, as we were basically promised that something of Gryffindor’s would contain a chunk of Voldemort’s soul.
• Deaths, lots of them. I suspect Hagrid, Mad Eye, Lupin, Tonks, and Draco will all die heroically. Yes, Draco — the end of the last book sowed the seeds for his redemption (albeit one that comes from a deep cowardice), and I suspect he’ll go out sympathetically. I would love to see Hagrid face Voldemort himself, as one of my favorite nearly-forgotten bits of the storyline is that Hagrid is the only contemporary of Tom Riddle’s around, and had his life derailed by Tom (back in Chamber of Secrets). Will either Ron or Hermione die? There are rumors that Hermione’s going to bite it, and I just can’t see that happening. The slow build-up of the Ron and Hermione romance hasn’t even peaked yet, and I don’t see Rowling being quite that cruel to us. I predict all three of the primary characters survive and that she won’t kill off Ron, Harry, or Hermione.
• Neville will be integral in killing Voldemort for good. There’s still unresolved stuff from the prophecy (from The Order of the Phoenix) that makes me think that somehow Neville is actually the prophesized one who will get rid of Voldemort. In concert with Harry, yes, but Neville will be integral to it somehow, though I’m not quite sure how.
• We’ll see Sirius again, and find out from Sirius some of the details of RAB, aka Regulus Arcturus Black. We’ll find out that Regulus stole the horcrux from Voldemort with the help of Kreacher (how else would Regulus be able to get on the boat, get rid of the potion, and survive long enough to get out of that place?). We’ll probably see Kreacher betray the Order somehow, too, and then get dealt with by Dobby.
• Snape is quite obviously a good guy. I simply cannot understand those adults who argue that Snape’s actually a villain — there’s no payoff story-wise, if that’s the case! Reading The Half Blood Prince, we see Snape being pressured by Dumbledore to do something he doesn’t want to do, we see a nearly-dead Dumbledore begging Snape to do something just before Snape kills him, and we see Snape leaving Hogwarts without hurting anyone else. Snape, the master of Occlumency and Legilmency, is the perfect “inside man,” and I suspect that the potion was going to kill Dumbledore or incapacitate him enough that it was a mercy killing. Dumbledore knew that the potion was there, presumably knew what it would do before he drank it, and Snape was only following Dumbledore’s orders. If it turns out that Snape was really evil, what in the world point would that serve in the narrative? Basically, we’d have just another villain for Harry to overcome (atop Wormtail, Bellatrix, Voldemort, etc.), and nothing else. With Snape being a good guy we, yet again, have Harry coming to terms one last time with his prejudices. It’s simply more interesting — and it seems obvious to me, as Rowling is ultimately still writing these books for teenagers primarily, I doubt she’ll pull too many elaborate twists into this last book.

Anyway, tonight’s the night and in just three hours apparently a stretch of Soho will be turned into Diagon Alley — I’m in my hotel room in New Brunswick right now, taking a break from the CSCL 2007 conference, and I’m half-tempted to head down to the city to check this out. I’ve got a few more talks I’d like to see, however, and will end up going to those and crashing early tonight. Tomorrow morning, I have to leave New Brunswick at a ridiculously early hour in order to get to Penn Station, figure out how to get to Grand Central Station, then hop another train to Croton-on-Hudson for my friend Rachel’s wedding to her soon-to-be-hubby Bill. After that, I’ll head back to the city and figure out how to get to Brooklyn and hang out with more of my Internet pals. I’m not sure where I’m going to get a copy of the Harry Potter book, but hopefully I’ll find one in a bookstore during my travels tomorrow.

It’s been a busy week, with our GLS Conference in Madison wrapping up just a week ago, then a talk at AT&T Research I did this past week, and then the talk at CSCL that my officemate David and I did for Constance. I’m looking forward to relaxing a little when I get back, but I have two manuscripts to work on, my friend Emily might be swinging through Madison for a few days, plus I signed up for a course.

Somewhere in all that, I’ll be reading the last Harry Potter book. Wish me luck in finding it tomorrow!