Harry Potter and the Quest for the Horcruxes

I don't care if it's too early to be making predictions for book 7. I just know that there seems to be a whole lot of whack out there, as far as theories go, and I just want to make my position very, very clear.

1. Harry is not a Horcrux, and neither is his scar.

People. Voldemort finds it impossible to possess Harry. How on earth would he manage to establish a permanent residence in him?

2. Ginny is not a Horcrux.

Making a Horcrux is an incredibly difficult piece of magic. Evidence: nobody seems to know how. The subject is banned at Hogwarts, and most people have not even heard of such a thing. This, in Rowling's universe at least, translates to difficult magic. So Ginny becoming an inadvertent Horcrux is just impossible, OK? (The same argument applies to Harry and his scar, come to think of it.) It's like somebody inadvertently writing a novel. You just can't do that.

And if you think Ginny is a deliberate Horcrux: how did that happen? The almost-Riddle thing was finished off with a basilisk fang, remember? There was nobody left after that to perform the complex magic that would make Ginny a Horcrux.

3. Snape is good.

Structural reasons, literary reasons, plain good-writing reasons. It would make no structural sense for Rowling to spend so much time setting up the ambiguity of Snape's character, and then have the characters so vehemently convinced that Snape is bad, if Snape wasn't good.

Note that I don't claim he's all-good, or that he was always good, or even that he's never had a relapse to the dark side since joining Dumbledore. What I am suggesting is that Snape was acting from sincere intentions favourable to the Order of the Phoenix (if not Harry personally) at at least two specific points in time: when he first came to Dumbledore "fresh from his Death Eater days", and now when he murdered Dumbledore on that Astronomy Tower.

See, we've known Snape to do too many 'good' things for him to end up a baddie, e.g. he informs the Order of Harry's intentions to go to the Department of Mysteries, he protects Neville Longbottom from Goyle's strangling grip in Umbridge's office, he gives Umbridge fake Veritaserum, he saves Harry's life more times than you can count... etc etc. This is a very good attempt to pull wool over my eyes, but Jo, my dear, we have been reading the books pretty darn closely.

4. Dumbledore is dead.

Repeat after me: "I have learned my lesson when Sirius failed to miraculously return to life. I will not be a complete moron again."

5. Harry et al will return to Hogwarts.

I'm going to take this one step further and say that he will return to Hogwarts to study. That he will have lessons. He may or may not have them regularly, he may or may not receive these lessons in a traditional fashion (maybe Hermione'll guide them all through a self-study course based - where else? - in the library), he may or may not sit for tests and exams, and he may be in and out of Hogwarts often, but the lessons will be there, and Harry will be right where he belongs, learning them.

Why do I think this? Well, for one, Rowling made us an implicit promise when she wrote the first six books the way she did that the seventh was not going to break the pattern she has so scrupulously followed. This is a school story. That is what it will remain till the last book.

Need another reason? Hogwarts is a living, breathing character in the books, just as big as Lupin or Molly Weasley, bigger than all the characters of the DA (the trio excluded) combined. It's way too important to be forgotten until, say, the final battle (TM).

Still not satisfied? How about this: Rowling took great pains to tie Voldemort to Hogwarts in the 6th book. Voldemort wants to teach (teach - teach lessons... to syudents...) there, for mysterious reasons. He considers it home. He is quite obsessed with entwining his own life with historical objects left behind by the four Founders.

There. I think you skeptics ought to be nodding a little by now.

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