If You’re Not Excited For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I Would Prefer Not To Know You

For those of you who are living under a large pile of rocks (or who are, possibly, illiterate), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out tonight. So I’m going to write some of my pre-read thoughts down. Before we start though, I would like to get a couple things straight:

1) I have not looked at anything online. I have been avoiding any mention of Harry Potter online for the last few months, and for the last week and a half (ish) I have been avoiding pretty much anything except sports websites… even facebook is killing me, with people writing on each other’s walls and stuff. My last foray into non-sports media ended when I read this article on Slate, which was actually about the Harry Potter leaks. As in, there have been enough leaks to do an article on just the leaks, with enough material to not even have to mention the actual leaked details. So that’s fantastic.

I was actually talking to a friend today about why we’ve both been assiduously averting our attention from any details that might give plot away before the book comes out. I found this odd because we both are totally cool with stealing music; hell, I’ve listened to half of the new Kanye album that drops in late August already (it’s good, btw). In discussing it, he came to the conclusion that it’s partly about nostalgia, and that since people our age have been reading this since we were 11, 12, or 13, we’re invested in it to the point that not waiting the extra day would be “like spitting on your childhood.” I think this is sort of valid; I also think his other point about actually having the paper copy is good too. In any case, I think it’s a pretty common thing for people who grew up with Harry to want to end it they way they started it–with a book in their hands.

So with that said, everything you read here will be innocent speculation. I really have no idea what I’m talking about. Feel free to treat this as a haven in the internet world of people who don’t give a shit and have already read the epilogue. Fuck them, btw.

2) I’m not going to actually say what I think is going to happen, because honestly, I have no idea. But I’m going to point to some things that I’ve noticed as I’ve reread the other books this week (yes, all of them) that I think are interesting. Here goes.

Some things that I think are very important:

There’s a passage in Goblet of Fire, after Harry has told Dumbledore the story of Voldemort coming back, that goes like this:

“He said my blood would make him stronger than if he’d used someone else’s,” Harry told Dumbledore. “He said the protection my — my mother left in me — he’d have it too. And he was right — he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face.”

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something that seemed like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes. But next second, Harry was sure he had imagined it, for when Dumbledore had returned to his seat behind the desk, he looked as old and weary as Harry had ever seen him.

Obviously the more I read these, the more suspicious little things look. At the same time though, that can’t be a coincidence, can it? She wouldn’t just throw that sentence in there like that, would she? I don’t think she would. I’ve noticed while reading them that little things usually come back in big ways, and I just think that will be one of them.

Next, I want to say that R.A.B. is definitely Regulus Black, Sirius’s brother. This occurred to me roughly 3 minutes after I had read it the first time (I attribute this to having re-read Order of the Phoenix directly before reading Half-Blood Prince). What did not occur to me until much, much later, however, was that the golden locket that Harry found while he, Sirius, and the Weasley’s were cleaning the Order’s Headquarters, the locket that nobody could open, was definitely the horcrux that Regulus had removed (how he got it out on his own, btw, I still can’t fathom) and replaced with the one Harry and Dumbledore recovered. So that’s probably important.

Also, I want to draw your attention to a passage at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, after Harry has talked to Dumbledore (these end segments tend to be really important) and lamented that his freeing Pettigrew is going to return Voldemort to power:

“Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt…. When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them… and I’m much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter.”

“I don’t want a connection with Pettigrew!” said Harry. “He betrayed my parents!”

“This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me… the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew’s life.”

Between that very blatant foreshadowing, and the fact that Voldemort/Snape/Death Eaters generally treat Pettigrew like a piece of shit, I would be very surprised if that time does not come at some point in Deathly Hallows.

Now, some things that I’m purely speculating about:

I don’t think Harry dies. I really don’t. There’s enough wonderfully creative projects that end up as crappy Christian allegories (the Matrix trilogy is a great example… how shitty was Revolutions?) out there that she doesn’t need to add to the stack. Also, I refuse to believe that you can be as invested as she is in this story, and this character, to kill him in the end. She’s been working on this thing for like 15 years now. I just can’t see it. Is part of this hope? Yes. But really, I can’t see it.

My other reasoning for this, btw, is that Voldemort can’t really kill Harry in a typical wizard’s duel. Obviously in Goblet of Fire we learned about “Priori Incantatem,” which means they can’t really duel properly… so unless one of them breaks a wand and gets a new one in the first parts of Deathly Hallows (which I could see, given the mysterious disappearance of Ollivander the wand maker in Half-Blood Prince), that problem still stands. I think that works to Harry’s advantage, because his powers (love) are really not the kinds of powers that the wand deals with. Obviously Voldemort is a better dueler; obviously he’s more than a match for Harry when it comes to it… if Harry’s going to kill him (which I think he is), it’s going to happen in some unorthodox way that probably doesn’t involve a typical duel.

I think, if anything, the final confrontation with Voldemort might involve some combination of Ron & Hermione/Ginny, the people Harry really loves. This is tough, because we’ve never seen any manifestation of that kind of power, other than (and this is not exhaustive): Harry not dying originally; Quirrel not being able to touch him in Sorcerer’s Stone, Voldemort not being able to possess him in Order of the Phoenix, and the magic lock-pick set Sirius gave Harry melting when he tried to open that room in Order of the Phoenix. So we’ve been given every indication that love is more powerful than Voldemort’s form of magic (as Dumbledore would put it), but we have no idea how it can be used in an offensive way. I’m kind of interested to see how this plays out.

The thing that I’m most interested in, however, is what will come of Snape and Malfoy. I’m interested in Snape for a couple reasons. First, I think he’s going to end up redeeming himself in some way, or helping Harry somehow. It has been a theme throughout the series that people who are set up to be “evil” are not always as bad as they seem, nor are they unredeemable. Also, there’s this, in Half-Blood Prince, as Harry’s yelling at Dumbledore about Snape:

“But he’s a very good Occlumens, isn’t he, sir?” said Harry, whose voice was shaking with the effort of keeping it steady. “And isn’t Voldemort convinced that Snape’s on his side, even now? Professor… how can you be sure Snape’s on our side?”

Dumbledore did not speak for a moment; he looked as though he was trying to make up his mind about something. At last he said, “I am sure. I trust Severus Snape completely.”

In my opinion, that “trying to make up his mind” was Dumbledore deciding whether to tell Harry the real reason he trusts Snape (and deciding against it). We are left with Harry’s conclusion later that Dumbledore trusts him because he felt guilty about turning in the Potters to Voldemort, but that doesn’t seem nearly consequential enough to occasion all the trust that Dumbledore has in him throughout the series. I think there’s something else, some bigger, really important reason, and I think we’ll find out in Deathly Hallows. And I think that when we find out it will relate to Snape’s (eventual) redemption. I could totally see him dying, but I think he gets redeemed first.

I also think Malfoy is redeemable. In Half-Blood Prince, Malfoy can’t kill Dumbledore; he’s only working for Voldemort out of fear. For as much of a prejudiced pure-blood as he is, I don’t think he’s actually evil like his father, aunt, or Voldemort, for example. And I think we’ll see that somehow.

A couple other random thoughts that have nothing to do with what I think will happen, just things I noticed:

We all know that Trelawney is a crackpot, but did you ever notice how a lot of her minor, short-term predictions tend to be right? In Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, it’s almost comical. Which I think is what Rowling was going for with it.

Also… so you know how owls can apparently find anyone, at any time, to deliver mail? And how, when Sirius was in hiding and on the run, Harry’s owls could always find him and they could correspond? Well, why didn’t the Ministry of Magic just send him an owl to find out where he was? They obviously can figure it out…

I Would Call Bullshit, But Who Am I Kidding?

According to some guys at the University of Arizona in an article published in the issue of Science coming out this week, the difference between the number of words that men use over the course of a day and the number women use over the course of a day is “statistically insignificant.”

This contradicts the generally quoted ratio which holds that women talk about three times as much as men over the course of a day. Indeed, the reason these guys made Science and not some JV journal is because their work dispels a pervasive myth. The authors call that statistic an “urban legend” and claim that it gained traction simply by being quoted frequently, and of course, it helped that the number played into accepted gender stereotypes about men and women.

I’m not totally sold on their method (although Science is, and they usually have pretty rigorous standards as far as scrutinizing submitted work), which is basically as follows:

The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669.

The difference: 546 words: “Not statistically significant,” say the researchers.

 

“What’s a 500-word difference, compared with the 45,000-word difference between the most and the least talkative persons” in the study, said Mehl.

I don’t particularly have a problem with that part. 396 people with 2-10 observations per person is a pretty decently sized sample. And 16,215 and 15,669 are pretty big numbers; it’s not like the difference between 100 and 200; I’m sure that once you get to a certain size the difference is insignificant and that that point comes clearly before 15,000+. My problem comes when later in the article, they explain that:

Their research began with one group of students in 1998, two groups sampled in 2001, two in 2003 and a final group in 2004. One of the 2003 groups involved 51 students in Mexico, the rest were all in the United States.

The students were fitted with unobtrusive recorders that sampled their conversations — the students didn’t know when the recorders were on. From the samples, a total number of words for the day could be calculated.

Of the six groups sampled, women used more words than men in three and men used more words than women in the other three, including the one in Mexico.

First of all, miking the kids with “unobtrusive recorders?” Wtf does that mean? And the kids are obviously aware they’re wearing recorders, I don’t care how “unobtrusive” they were. At this point then, you have to assume that each gender will react to being miked roughly the same way; given that this entire study is about gender differences, I don’t know that I’m comfortable with just assuming that. What if girls react to the mikes by limiting their conversations, or if guys react by hamming it up and talking more?

Obviously I have no idea how each gender would react (or any evidence to suggest they would react differently), but I feel confident in stating that there’s probably some subconscious (or conscious) change in speaking habits when you know you’re being recorded. While clearly I don’t have a better idea about how to record someone in a manner that is actually unobtrusive,  I just think that this calls the results into question a little bit.

Also, I’m a little suspicious of the whole process of recording on and off over the course of the day and extrapolating. I don’t know exactly how they worked that, but I just don’t think this is the kind of thing that lends itself to sampling. Given the huge variances in how people speak over the course of the day (clustered around meals maybe, for example) and how words will come in bunches, in ebbs and flows (or torrents), I would need to know a little more about how they sampled to endorse this. I know the census does that, where they sample some people and extrapolate the rest, but I don’t know that this translates.

With all of that said though, I must say that I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt on the methodology and assume it’s legit. I’m doing this partly because I actually have no idea what I’m talking about, and partly because I’m sure it’s been checked.

And with that said, I will say that intuitively, I agree with their conclusions. I think females get an unfair rap with regard to gossip and stuff; I probably talk more than 95% of people I know, girls or guys. I talk faster, I talk more voluminously, and I talk for longer. I think that this is one of those outmoded gender stereotypes that’s rightly going the way of, for example, keeping women out of the workplace. I think it’s telling that they did these studies among college kids. If anything, it shows that for our generation, the stereotype doesn’t hold.

Even outside of my personal experience, it seems to me that there’s a much greater difference between gregarious, outgoing people and shy, reserved people. And I know a lot of shy, reserved girls and a lot of gregarious, outgoing guys. The giggling, gossipy groups of girls are usually not the prevalent presence that they are mythically (although if you’ve never been around for sorority rush and bid day, well let me just say, you’re really missing out… it’s like stereotypes come to life, which is always fun), and extroversion, if anything, is a trait that I imagine would skew toward males. So this shouldn’t be that hard to accept.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the title, my very initial thought was to call bullshit, but then I thought about it and realized that the conventional wisdom on this one is probably just wrong. So congrats to those guys at Arizona for a job well done.