(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.)

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.

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

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.

Oh, yes. Thank you so much, Debet. I kept thinking the thing about Buffy and Harry, but couldn't articulate it. Tool. Exactly.

She's not your bloody instrument.

I think she has to kill at least one of the DA.

I think she has to kill more than one, at least. All we've gotten so far are token deaths. There were other uses for each of them, ways to increase the pathos and move Harry's story in a different direction, but it's so formulaic a method after three consecutive books of it that it's token now.

To elaborate on what I said earlier, I'm actually angry at Rowling for letting everyone get off so light at the end of book VI. If she thinks highly enough of young people that's she's willing to let them watch a character die, then she's got to have the guts to take it further and have there be more than one funeral. The werewolf who assaulted Bill lost all of his scary buildup the moment it was clear he not only failed to kill anyone in a lacked-out building full of scared children, he only managed to harm one person, and he still got a happy ending. One Big Death is such a pat way to write, and it does her no credit.

I say a serious number of people need to die in the next book, at least three of which should be onscreen, as it were. I realize it's the worst sort of fandom to dictate terms, but I'm grumpy. She's diluting the tragedy for Harry, which is why people have so much cause to snark at the melodrama.

I am with ita on the Muggle empowerment.

Just tossing out an idea here. Might Rowling go the other way, with Harry's defeat of Voldemort meaning an end to magic?

It seems unlikely thematically. Magic is at the core of Rowling's world, to the extent that Muggles barely exist except as objects of Mr. Weasley's curiosity.

But at the same time, much of Harry's success has depended on other factors. Go back even to the first book -- would Harry have even found Quirrell, much less defeated him, without his friends?

I think losing magic would be a bigger tragedy than losing Harry, and with less of a balancing factor.

I hold out hope that Hagrid will bite it, but that's just me being selfish and petty.

The werewolf who assaulted Bill lost all of his scary buildup the moment it was clear he not only failed to kill anyone in a lacked-out building full of scared children, he only managed to harm one person, and he still got a happy ending.

Exactly! He was scarier when we heard about the little brother of some previously-unknown Hogwarts students being killed by him than he was when we met him in person.

I think dependence on friends is a completely different question from the Magic/Muggle distinction. I think the first is fulfilled in Harry, the DA, and the OotP standing up together against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, which does feel supported in the text, unlike the destruction of this society that has existed for thousands of years.

And, yeah, we needed more deaths in VI.