Forget chasing down evil--I want him to have fun for a change! Maybe professional Quidditch player. Then he can be the first multi-year DADA professor since Tom Riddle cursed the position, and eventually become Headmaster.

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How would you make sense of the narrative?

I can't answer the question. I'd make sense of the narrative because I see no intrinsic disconnect between the narrative to date and Harry dying to save the world. There wouldn't have to be any heavy lifting on my part.

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I have a secret wish for Harry to end up starring in "Welcome Back, Potter" and teaching at Hogwarts. That plot tickled me on SNL.

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Aw, yeah.

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This whole discussion reminds me of the LJ entry in which someone speculated on the possiblity of death on each of the major character. Let me see if I can find the link.

Ahh, found it. [link]

I agree with her, for the most parts. I don't think Harry will die, but I wouldn't be surprised if JKR went there, and I would find it narratively-satisfying, depending on how she handles it. I've also read a theory that a triumph over Voldermort would rob Harry of his magic, and for some reason, that possibility saddens me more than Harry's death.

I think Snape is most certainly dead, must as I love the nasty bastard. My other picks would be Ron and/or Neville. I don't think JKR would kill Hermione, which would be like Joss killing Xander or Wash and... oh, wait a minute...

I don't think I could handle one of the twins dying.

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I think there's a difference between a meaningless story and a meaningless death. I understood Cindy to mean that while Harry could die in a dramatic or sacrificial or whatever way, that death could also render the whole story meaningless.

Raq, your comment helped me clarify (to me) why I think it wouldn't be the right ending for this story. While I do understand ita's point here:

If Harry's just been fighting for himself this whole time (pauses to consider the books to date), then it's all so much smaller.

I guess I see it differently than either-cause-or-self. He is fighting for the cause, but on another level of the story, he is the cause, or emblematic of it. I see Harry Potter, the boy, as a warrior for good. But then on another layer, I seem him as the avatar of good.

How would people feel if the series ended not unlike Buffy. What if to defeat the badness, the power had to be released, and Muggles were empowered, as well?

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(The cynic in me is also dying to point out that Hermione and the Very Sad Funeral would be a terrible title for book 8, should she decide at a later date that she didn't want to end the series after all.)

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I guess I see it differently than either-cause-or-self. He is fighting for the cause, but on another level of the story, he is the cause, or emblematic of it. I see Harry Potter, the boy, as a warrior for good. But then on another layer, I seem him as the avatar of good.

None of this requires his survival to me.

What if to defeat the badness, the power had to be released, and Muggles were empowered, as well?

That would irritate me.

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I think it might irritate me too, but I wonder if that's not where it's going.

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I am with ita on the Muggle empowerment. However, I disagree about Harry, and the best reason I can come up with in words is that, narratively, it turns him into a tool. His only value is in the ability to defeat Voldy, and every other possibility and potentiality within him is subsumed by that. He was spared as a child so that he could defeat V. He was saved from the awful life he had with the Duresleys so that he could defeat V. To have him die to defeat V would make the journey we've gone on with him somehow less to me, because he won't get to have a real place in either world. He's fighting for this world, I think, for what he could have, not for what he has had (as much as he loves his "family"), and to turn him into Frodo (who saved the world, but not for himself) seems not just dark but downright depressive.

It was right that Angel go out fighting. That's where he found meaning and peace in his life (as much as he could). It was right that Buffy go out free, since the fight was only a part of her, and put on her, rather than taken up, in the first place. And, to me, Harry is much more the former than the latter. And especially if it's not just Harry alone at the end fighting Voldemort (which I dearly hope it won't be), having the survivors come out of the rubble to find him dead makes him less a person to me, and more a symbol, a tool. And I can't see an "it's you or me" situation with anyone other than Neville, and while I'm fond of Neville, I just don't see Harry giving himself up for him, and anything more abstract than that seems too etherial.

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