I've read the book, and am ready to cop to the obvious: I was wrong about many, many things. I wanted to make sure I came here to admit that straightaway. Many things. Very wrong.

I did get a few not-entirely-obvious things right, but we'll set those aside for now. And there's a number of guesses just hovering around King's Cross, having been neither proven nor disproven. I'll assume they're wrong, I suppose. Because that is all I am here to do today-- to be wrong and let everyone who told me (kindly or otherwise) that I was probably wrong enjoy their rightness.

I'm going to hold off on talking about the actual book for a little while, and just enjoy swimming around the sea in my new wax-and-feathers ensemble. All things considered, it's not the worst way to spend a summer vacation.

This is a spoiler-free entry! This post contains no spoilers (just crackpot theories). I'm also screening all comments on this entry until July 21, so it's safe to click through and follow the LJ cut. (Read comments on entries without this label at your own risk.) Comments are welcome, but won't be read or show up on the blog until sometime after I've finished the book.

Well, here we are.

You know that saying about how an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually reproduce the complete works of William Shakespeare? As I've mentioned before, I think this fandom may be the closest the world has seen to a real-life version of that experiment.

Of course, it takes a lot of monkeys to make it infinite. And while some monkey somewhere is typing up Hamlet, the rest of us have to keep banging away at our keyboards hoping we can at least come up with the script of a sitcom or soda commercial. (And then there's the monkeys that go and open up the big box marked "DO NOT TOUCH," take out a copy of Much Ado About Nothing, and hit other monkeys over the head with it. But let's not talk about those monkeys.)

With that in mind, I present to you the rough draft of a My Two Dads episode one last theory before Deathly Hallows. I know this has to be the one I end on, because this is where other theories go to die. It's made up of scraps of clues, possible clues, imagined clues, and a glimmer of hope that we won't be seeing the other side of the Veil (no matter how many readers want to see it). It will be poorly explained because I'm rushing and tired, I've already lost a more detailed version to this grumpy computer tonight, and the thing's full of plotholes in the first place. But I will post it anyway, thus fulfilling my monkey role to the last.


This will be my last post before reading Deathly Hallows. See you on the other side.

This is a spoiler-free entry! This post contains no spoilers (just crackpot theories). I'm also screening all comments on this entry until July 21, so it's safe to click through and follow the LJ cut. (Read comments on entries without this label at your own risk.) Comments are welcome, but won't be read or show up on the blog until sometime after I've finished the book.

Expanded thoughts on how/why the Gaunts and Blacks could be related, probably via the Peverells.

Spoiler Policy Reminder: No Deathly Hallows spoilers will be posted in my blog entries until after the book comes out. After 12:01 AM on July 21st, you shouldn't read my posts unless you've finished the book. Comments are welcome, but won't be read or replied to until after I finish the book. Read other people's comments to this or any other entry at your own risk.

[Sorry if I'm going overboard with the spoiler warnings, but it's a bit of a minefield out there right now.] 

5 reasons (out of billions!) my sister is Awesome to the Maxx:

1. She told me that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was kind of good, actually. That was back when I was all, "Kid on a broom with a cape? Riiiiight."
    
2. Instead of being (as anyone would have a right to be) annoyed that I'm an adult who has regularly expressed and re-expressed my concerns regarding the fate of a fictional owl, she drew a picture of a snowy owl and gave it to me.
    
3. A long, strange discussion with her was the reason that I asked a question that has probably never been asked before in the history of humanity: "What kind of cheese is like Hagrid?" (We never did figure out the answer, though.)
    
4. She came up with the best horrible Wizard Rock band name ever: "Madam and the Hoochies."
    
5. She is going to stand on line with me at our local bookstore, even though the odds of my not embarrassing her are slim to none.

She also bet me a dollar that Eileen Prince, Irma Pince, Emmeline Vance, and Verity won't all turn out to be the same person. But that's not so much a reason she's awesome as a reason I will almost certainly owe her a dollar.

Spoiler Policy Reminder: No Deathly Hallows spoilers will be posted in my blog entries until after the book comes out. After 12:01 AM on July 21st, you shouldn't read my posts unless you've finished the book. Comments are welcome, but won't be read or replied to until after I finish the book. Read other people's comments to this or any other entry at your own risk.

I saw the Order of the Phoenix movie last night. (Hey, I didn't see Sorcerer's Stone until Chamber of Secrets came out, so seeing this within a week of release was pretty good for me.) I think people who don't read the books have a better chance at following this one than they did Goblet of Fire. I did feel a bit like some of the book details were so oddly tacked on that it seemed like someone was crossing things off a checklist. I know this is near blasphemy, but as long as they're already changing so much for the movies they might be better off not using that checklist. It seems like it must leave book fans wishing those details had been done better or more thoroughly and movie fans wondering why all those weird stray lines and shots weren't left on the cutting room floor. But hey, I'm also one of those rare book fans who doesn't want Cuarón & Co. to suffer some painful illness as punishment for not making the Marauders' story explicit in the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.

Of course, the best solution would be if we had someone incorporate the book elements seamlessly into a well-paced movie script... But I'm not holding my breath.

I think my favorite part of the movie might have been

Spoiler Policy Reminder: No Deathly Hallows spoilers will be posted in my blog entries until after the book comes out. After 12:01 AM on July 21st, you shouldn't read my posts unless you've finished the book. Comments are welcome, but won't be read or replied to until after I finish the book. Read other people's comments to this or any other entry at your own risk.

Three crazy theories that I haven't quite been able to shake. I could provide some evidence for them, but who honestly cares at this point?

One: Dumbledore can turn invisible without a cloak because he is an Animagus Tebo. (Look it up in Fantastic Beasts.) Yes, I know a Demiguise would probably make more sense. And I know JKR once made a comment about having a warthog as an Animagus that would be pretty darn bold if this theory were true. But I find it entertaining, so this is my vote. (Plus, warthog... Hogwarts... You know how I am about the wordplay.)

Two: Peter Pettigrew's silver hand wasn't exactly a "reward." Voldemort spent the whole year feeling like Peter was only serving him because he had nowhere else to go, and nervous that Peter would abandon him in his weak state. (Like Merope. You know how I am about Voldemort's abandonment issues.) So that hand was kind of a gift-- it is powerful-- but was also kind of a punishment. I think the hand might keep Peter from turning into a rat and escaping properly. Either because he can't blend in with the other rats due to the shiny silver paw and/or tracking device, or because the silver hand can't transform. Yes, the silver hand not transforming theory is a special kind of insane, but I just keep imagining a rat with a human-sized metallic hand and I think it's funny every time.

Three: Not only is Eileen Prince secretly a Metamorphmagus hiding out as Madame Pince, she also used to be Emmeline Vance until that identity's death was faked. (Last name ending in "-nce" power!) She might also be Verity, the girl who was working in Fred and George's shop last summer. (You know how I am about girls with names that mean "truth." Wait-- you don't. Well, this is pretty much how I am about that.) Oh, and Dumbledore had James' cloak because it was being used in an escape plan for Eileen and/or Tobias Snape.



Everybody who's reading spoilers is just pointing at me and laughing, aren't they? Hey, I said they were crazy theories. (And there's more to come.)

Spoiler Policy Reminder: No Deathly Hallows spoilers will be posted in my blog entries until after the book comes out. After 12:01 AM on July 21st, you shouldn't read my posts unless you've finished the book. Comments are welcome, but won't be read or replied to until after I finish the book. Read other people's comments to this or any other entry at your own risk.

Okay, that's a riddikulusly huge spoiler warning for a tiny, silly post. But it happens to be thematically appropriate for this entry, so I'm leaving it in place.

Because I cannot stand to be without paper in my purse and my current notebook is getting full, I recently picked up a blank journal. I flipped to the back, and found this message from the manufacturer:

While we strive for utmost precision in every detail, we cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies, neither for any subsequent loss or damage arising.

Disclaimers gone mad? I found myself wondering what inaccuracies could possibly appear in a blank book. Then I found myself wondering what loss or damage could result from a blank journal. And then I remembered Chamber of Secrets.

Now I'm scared to write my name in it.