Why Killing Harry Is the Worst Outcome for Voldemort
AS KIPLING POINTED OUT, “THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES IS MORE DEADLY THAN THE MALE.” APPLYING THIS ASSERTION TO THE WORLD OF HARRY POTTER, RICHARD GARFINKLE OUTLINES THE RESULTING CAMPAIGN SHOULD VOLDEMORT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF TRULY MAKING HERMIONE GRANGER ANGRY.
IHUS SPAKE THE SYBIL, Trelawney, unto the great Wizard Dumbledore:
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. . . . Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. . . . And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. . . . And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. . . . The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies. . . .
Let us consider what happens if, when the prophesied day comes, things do not go as expected. Suppose Voldemort and Harry Potter face each other for the last time, wand against wand, spell against spell. We expect that Harry will emerge victorious—battered perhaps, but still the survivor.
But what happens if it is the Dark Lord who triumphs? If upon that hour Lord Voldemort stands above the lifeless corpse of the Boy Who Lived. If, accompanied by the happy cackles of his Death Eaters, he gloats his triumph to the world, crowing forth mockery against prophecy and hope, crying doom, doom, doom to the wizard and Muggle worlds.
From that moment Voldemort is royally hosed. It is his own doom that he shouts. For the moment Harry dies is the moment when the most dangerous person in the Potterverse becomes Voldemort’s true and final enemy. He will face no longer the power of Harry Potter, but the more terrible force—the brain of Hermione Granger.
Let’s face it: Harry may be powerful and brave, but he is at heart a jock and a slacker. I will leave to the more psychologically minded the question of whether being raised by abusive Muggles is responsible for these two characteristics, and to the more conspiracy-minded the deeper question of whether Dumbledore had him raised by those selfsame Muggles because he wanted Harry to be a jock and a slacker. Instead, let us look at how these two characteristics have made Harry a weak opponent for a dangerous all-rounder like Voldemort.
Harry’s sole magical gifts are in Quidditch and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Both have served him well in his conflicts with the Dark Lord, but as is seen in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is susceptible to having his mind messed with. He lacks the skills to defend himself against this, and he has been too much of a slacker to stick with the training he needs to overcome that deficiency.
Even if he had put in the work necessary to defend against mental attack, Harry is still susceptible to the jockish tendency toward senseless heroism. Voldemort waved a red flag, Harry charged at it and Sirius died.
Who was it who foresaw the danger and warned Harry that Voldemort was manipulating him? Not a prophet, not a seer of the future, but Hermione. Hermione saw through Voldemort’s plans as though they were graven on glass. She, unlike Harry, would not have fallen into the trap at the Ministry. She reluctantly went along on that ill-fated expedition for two reasons: friendship and her long-standing tendency toward bowing to authority, even if the authority is Harry.
Knee-jerk obedience has kept Hermione in the shadows. She assumes, until it is proven otherwise, that those in power know what they are doing—a sad blind spot, and an amazing one, for someone who grew up in modern Muggledom. Fortunately, as the story has progressed, Hermione has begun to break out of this shell. In the early books she would only defy those in power for friendship’s sake, but in Order of the Phoenix Hermione instigated the covert Defense Against the Dark Arts classes and picked Harry as the teacher, knowing talent when she saw it. The shell has begun to crack, though it would take a greater shock to shatter it.
What happens to Hermione on the day Harry Potter dies?
On that day the last of her illusions, her faith in Dumbledore, would likely disappear. For some people this would betoken a turning toward evil, but not Hermione. For her, disillusionment would be the breaking of her chrysalis, the emergence of the great and terrible witch within her—great and terrible not because of her power, which is considerable, but because she thinks, plans and is careful. No one else in the Potterverse, neither wizard nor Muggle, does all three.
What would Hermione do if Harry died? Would she charge up to attack Voldemort, seeking to vent her grief in a senseless act of suicide?
Don’t be daft. Harry would be dead. Voldemort would have triumphed. She wouldn’t be able to do anything about that immediately. Hermione, as so far depicted, is just not strong enough to fight Voldemort. Even if she had the power, the prophecy would stand in her way. She could not vanquish the Dark Lord.
What would she do? Probably she would exercise common sense where no one else had.
She would grab Ron, who would naturally be there, and she would run away. First, she would Disapparate to some distant place. Then, there, it is likely that Hermione would do what Hermione does best. She would study.
It’s unlikely that she would be alone. There are some people Hermione could not leave behind unless she had no choice. First on this list would be Ron, because the two of them are so obviously in love it makes you want to hit them over the head with a mallet and shout, “Get a room!”
Along with Ron she would likely take Neville, out of friendship, and because he has started to show potential, and Ginny, because she knows the inside of Voldemort’s mind. If her common sense outweighed the last shreds of her old views, Hermione would also take the Weasley twins. Any insurgency she would raise against Voldemort would need weapons manufacturers and low-down, sneaky, dirty, underhanded tacticians and commandoes. Fred and George are all of these and much more.
Probably the most difficult choice that would face the girl under these circumstances would be whether or not to return and fight alongside the Order of the Phoenix. Tempting though it would be, that way lies nothing more than a hero’s death—because the Order of the Phoenix will lose. She could try to rescue Molly and Arthur Weasley, or Professor McGonagall, or Hagrid or the older Weasley boys or Lupin or any of the others, but doing so would bring Voldemort down on her head. And she would know, as Harry refused to know, that she is not ready to fight the Dark Lord.
She would have to leave the Order of the Phoenix to fight their last battles, knowing that they would want her and her charges to be safe and ready to rise again from their ashes when the time is right.
Where would she go?
Away from England, for a start. She would take her parents and hide them. They might be targets for petty revenge, but as Muggles they would not be worth Voldemort’s—or that of any Death Eater’s—efforts to find. This is the Dark Lord’s blind spot, one that will serve to keep her safe for the time she needs to prepare: in Voldemort’s eyes she and her fellows would not be worth the effort. The only person associated with Voldemort who might want personal revenge on her and Ron is Draco, but he is more likely to spend his time kissing up.
Where would she go?
Anywhere she could learn. Hermione has shown that she knows her capacities and her limitations, unlike Harry. Under these circumstances she, who had always been a follower, would have to learn to lead. She would need lessons in generalship, in creating a guerrilla army, in fighting against established and overwhelming power. In the Potterverse such lessons are easily available. She could read books (Muggle and wizard) and talk to ghosts. She could even interrogate portraits of great military wizards. Over time she would study magic, tactics and strategy, how to run an insurgent organization, how to start a whispering campaign, and how to undermine those in power.
Hermione would—given her tenderheartedness—obviously regret what she had to leave behind. Voldemort in power would make a terror of England. Even so, she would know that it was nowhere near as bad as it could be.
To see why, let’s look at Voldemort for a moment:
In personality he is a petty tyrant, interested in flashy exercise and the showing off of power, not in the systematic repression of a truly dangerous dictator. And the Death Eaters, while powerful, are in personality fawning slaves. None of them, from Lucius Malfoy on down to the pettiest, has any real ability beyond their powers, or any ambition beyond that of the schoolyard bully. Hermione, I think, would understand what Harry should have: that the Death Eaters one and all are just a bunch of jumped-up Dudley Dursleys.
Schoolyard bullies never need to go looking for targets. Out of sight, out of mind, out of range. Hermione could arrange to be all three of these. That would leave plenty of people for the bullies to torment. Ugly as the situation would be, Hermione would have to sacrifice those people in order to have time to learn and to create the organization that would fight back and ultimately free them.
In forming such a group, Hermione’s greatest advantage would come out of Voldemort’s contempt for Muggles. She was born and raised among Muggles. She learned to live as a Muggle before she ever knew there was such a thing as magic, before she dreamed of being a witch. Hermione Granger sees both sides of the world, magical and Muggle, and sees the strengths and weaknesses of both. Wizards see Muggle technology as attempts to imitate magic, so they ignore it—except for connoisseurs like Arthur Weasley, and even his understanding is extraordinarily limited. The Death Eaters themselves are blind to the advantages of modern Muggledom.
Hermione, steeped in this understanding, could do with her budding organization what no Muggle group could get away with: she could hand laptops to her followers and e-mail them instructions. No wizard would dream of looking on the Internet for enemies.
To build such an organization, funds would be essential. Financing her freedom fighters would be surprisingly simple thanks to two factors: the vulnerability of Muggle markets (stock, art, commodities) to magical manipulation, and Gringotts’ ability to exchange Muggle money for wizard coins. It seems clear that the only thing preventing wizards from using Muggles to make a fortune is the Ministry of Magic, and with Voldemort in power the Ministry would be shut down. (All of which makes one wonder: are those goblins doing this kind of thing already? Are they responsible for the state of modern finance? Nah, it takes humans to be that silly.)
Time is the other thing Hermione would need as much of as possible. Fortunately she has had experience tinkering with it. It is likely that before leaving England, in the midst of the chaos of Voldemort’s rise, Hermione would swipe a Time-Turner or two from the Ministry.1 Using them she could gain much in the way of learning at the cost of confusion and aging, acceptable losses to someone who has seen her dearest friend die and has vowed revenge.
It may sound unlikely that Hermione would take these cold-blooded actions, for she is a young woman of scruples as well as brains. But in the matter of Rita Skeeter, Hermione Granger showed that she would abandon a great many moral objections for the sake of revenge. And in the luring of Professor Umbridge toward the centaurs she showed a willingness to manipulate others for what she sees as good ends.
Even with a Time-Turner Hermione would require several years in which to learn all she needed. In that time she would have to hold the other young people together against their own impatience. But she can be forceful. Ron, Neville and Ginny would bend to her views, they too having seen Harry’s folly. She would likely set them researching, instructing them and directing their practices toward a broad range of magical and Muggle learnings.
The twins would be a different matter. It would be sensible to let them create as they see fit, since genius must be given room to create madness. The only thing Hermione would insist on would be that they learn how Muggles accomplish some of their dirty tricks, so that in the fearsome fertile ground of their minds Fred and George could bring together both worlds in the service of merciless practical jokes. Fred and George let loose to buy toys on the Internet and then enchant them? Shudder.
Hermione would need perhaps ten years to mature in her mind, her magic and her plans. Then, when the time was right, when she and her followers were prepared, she would . . .
. . . certainly not charge forth in blind heroic attack against Voldemort’s entrenched power. Nonsense. She would strike, but in ways that Voldemort, in his arrogance, would not even notice. Like a sapper against a castle, Hermione would undermine Voldemort shovel by shovel.
Where is the most vulnerable point to attack the Death Eaters? We can presume that Hermione, schooled in strategy, would seek to find it. The Death Eaters have many blind spots, one of which Hermione has already shown a keen and angry interest in: the spells that bind house-elves to their masters. These spells would be one of her highest priorities, for all Death Eaters have house-elves. If she could (and she very likely could) reverse-engineer these spells, she could change them, affecting the loyalty and removing the bonds that constrain the fearsome magics of those dangerous little servants. The Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare would emerge once more.
Here we come to another one of those ugly choices. Hermione could free the house-elves, but Kreacher has shown that loyalty can exist even in these slaves. I think she would choose not to free them, not yet. She would instead bind them anew so that she would be the master of the Death Eaters’ house-elves. No longer would the SPEW be a civil rights organization. Now it would become a spy ring and assassins’ group, planted in the hearths of Voldemort’s followers.
At this point any number of courses of action would be open to Hermione. Some are more likely than others, based on her personality, the personalities of the Death Eaters and the available methods of insurgency and infiltration that she would have learned.
The Death Eaters’ troubles would begin slowly. House-elves would be overheard talking about what they had heard from other house-elves about the other elves’ masters plotting against their masters. There would be whisperings of concern for the safety of their beloved masters and mistresses. Objects would disappear from one Death Eater’s home and be found in another. Gradually, throughout the wizarding world rumors would arise that, now that they were on top, the Death Eaters were turning against each other.
Then would commence the spells and curses and poisonings and other little potion effects so easily smuggled into homes. Death Eaters would begin to die. Voldemort’s followers, having lived so long in mutual mistrust, would turn against each other and begin to do their own killing. Voldemort under these circumstances would find himself as a king with a court full of intrigue. Like many a monarch before him he would be distracted from ruling his domain.
Caught in this web of betrayals, the Death Eaters would begin dueling with one another behind Voldemort’s back. But the wands they would use in those duels would have been swapped for Fred and George’s now lethal fake wands, wands that Apparate large amounts of explosives into the middle of these fights. Death Eater homes might explode, or be filled with poison gas or Muggle hallucinogens that produce amusingly lethal side effects when combined with the three Unforgivable Curses. These and other “practical jokes” would ensure a high fatality rate among the Death Eaters, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes at their most effective.
Hermione would not likely be satisfied with thinning the ranks. After all, toady wizards are easy enough to replace. It would be necessary to strike against Voldemort himself. Hermione would no doubt create a careful plan. Here is one such possibility that uses many of the resources already demonstrated to exist in the Potterverse. It is not a simple plan, but it is well within Hermione’s abilities.
When the ranks of their enemies are thinned enough, Hermione would begin the next and riskiest, but most vital, phase of her work. First, she would secretly place certain enchantments copied from Hogwarts and other places upon the Riddle House, a place Voldemort would avoid in his triumph, but which, as we are shown in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, he sees as a refuge when he needs one.
The house prepared, Hermione would then send out Ron and Neville as a team. She would have had the pair of them training for the past ten years until they could fight and spell as well as anyone. Ron would probably chafe under Hermione’s teaching, but, having seen Harry fall from over-quick action, he would accept her love and judgment. Ron would know that Hermione’s plans would give him the best chance to take revenge for Harry and his own parents.
Ron and Neville would undertake a few choice, visible actions against Voldemort’s forces. Lucius and Draco Malfoy would both be killed directly and forcefully, as would other Death Eaters who had troubled Harry while he lived. The deaths of Crabbe and Goyle both senior and junior would show Voldemort that vengeance for Harry was in the offing.
Ron might not at first be recognized by the survivors of his attacks because Hermione would have him wear a turban and seem to be talking to himself, or to some half-audible voice. Neville would be seen and recognized but would appear to have only one hand. During this time, Voldemort would hear rumors of dead unicorns being found in various enchanted forests.
At last the house-elves would whisper, “The Boy Who Lived lives again.”
Voldemort would fret, more so when he heard that one of the places where Ron and Neville were spotted was James Potter’s grave. Afterwards the grave would be found to have been dug up and one arm bone taken, an act of desecration perhaps hard to credit to Hermione. But consider: would not James Potter have given his Marauder’s blessing for this combination revenge and practical joke?
If things go according to plan, Voldemort’s fretting would grow into full worry:
Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son.
Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master.
Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.
Voldemort would now be twitching on his throne, a fragile and tottering king. The first time they fought, Voldemort gave the baby Harry Potter much of his power. Could it be that when he seemed to kill Harry, seemed to triumph at last, all he had done was replay the past? Had he merely reduced the Boy Who Lived to that same condition he himself had suffered under for some eleven years before he emerged (and has it not been some eleven years since the boy wizard’s death)? Was Harry Potter coming back? Back for the blood of the enemy and his own resurrection?
Seeking to prevent this, Voldemort would of course attack. Such forces as he has left, led by himself, would go hunting Ron and Neville. But they would not be found. Hermione would have had ten years (plus the time she gained using the Time-Turner), of research and application, and she would be dedicated in her studies.
Here we come to a question. Who is the more dangerous magician: Hermione trained as above, or Voldemort? I think that he would be no match for her in conventional magics—he relies too much upon the Unforgivable in his battles—and of course he cannot touch her in Muggle knowledge. Even if he can outwizard her, Voldemort would be no match for the twins in unconventional warfare after the decade of chaos they would have put under the belts, their genius fully loosed.
Let Voldemort hunt. He would find only smoke, and the whispers of Harry Potter’s passage.
While he hunted, Hermione and her forces would undermine what remained of his power base, creating cells of rebel wizards and witches and arming them with Fred and George’s creations. Using standard tactics for such groups they could rise up, attack and vanish again, not as wizards vanish, but into simple Muggle obscurity. Voldemort would hear that he had lost control, that some terrorist group called, variously, “Potter’s Army,” “Dumbledore’s Army” or the “Third Order of the Phoenix,” had risen to liberate England. And always he would hear the rallying cry: “For the Boy Who Lived!”
Voldemort isn’t completely stupid. He would know that he was being baited. But who would he think was baiting him? Where Harry suffered from a hero complex, Voldemort suffers from acute villainy. He would believe that Harry Potter was seeking to lure him back so that the ritual of flesh, blood and bone could be completed. But he is the Dark Lord. (Dramatic tone of voice) He Will Not Run.
Yet, he might muse, perhaps it would be wise not to confront Potter’s Army directly. Yes. That would be better. He will reconstitute his forces first. But where to go?
And here Voldemort’s instincts would betray him, as Hermione would hope they would. He would go home, home to the Riddle House. And there Hermione would slam down the trap. Hogwarts defensive spells turned inside out would bind the House. No one could Apparate into the Riddle House, no one could find the Riddle House, no one could reach it except by a few created routes. Now no one would be able to Disapparate from the Riddle House, no one would be able to find the ways out and no one would be able to leave. Dark Lord or not, Voldemort would be a prisoner in his own home.
Now would come the critical research. What are the limits of the prophecy? Only Harry could vanquish Voldemort, but what about imprisoning him in the place he has chosen to enter? Is that beyond the prophecy? Hermione would seek to know.
Magical defenses combined with the best of Muggle security, suitably enchanted against Voldemort’s magics, would serve to ward her laboratory. Here in the Riddle House Hermione herself would be found. She would not gloat over her victim, for she is not the vanquisher. This is not victory. It is only a series of experiments. Hermione would have to steel herself in order to systematically study and learn and contain her captive.
Like Wormtail before him, Voldemort would become a rat: a lab rat.
There are two magics that Hermione would need to learn about, both poorly understood, and they can only be studied by testing Voldemort.
One is the Dark Arts Voldemort uses to remain alive. What are its limits? Even without finding and destroying his Horcruxes: Can he be killed by bullets, explosives, radiation, hard vacuum, having his body turned inside out?
While he is vulnerable she would place Memory Charms upon Voldemort, wiping out his knowledge of magic, his years at Hogwarts and other sources of learning. As well, she would make him forget who he is, what he has done and why he did it. He would be not an empty shell, but a bewildered one, wandering through a laboratory hell.
The second magic Hermione would study is Divination, a field that annoys her for its inexactitude. She is no Sybil Trelawney, no occasional prophet who is otherwise a thing of glasses and flummery. Hermione Granger would be systematic and learn its limits. What does “vanquish” mean in the prophecy? What can she do to Voldemort, and how far does the prophecy extend in its protection of him?
These matters she would study, working like a graduate student on her thesis, but with much more care, attention and interest. It would take time, and Hermione would know that she has only so much of it before Voldemort or some hidden follower finds some way for him to escape the prison of his home and flesh.
How long? Months, perhaps a year, while the wizarding and Muggle worlds recover from Voldemort’s presence and the passing of his power. Hermione would know that eventually the Ministry of Magic would reassert itself, fear what she is doing and seek to take custody of Voldemort, and then everything would be bollixed up again.
There are plenty of ways she might dispose of the situation. Here’s just one, employing a combination of wizarding and Muggle knowledge:
Hermione could turn the entire Riddle House into a Portkey, one that renews itself every day. It might be impossible to transport something as big as a house by Apparition or Floo Powder, but Portkeys travel with the person who uses them. Why not use a big Portkey? She could set it to teleport the House and the person inside it one light year up in the galactic plane. Wizards never seem to have considered the great uses to which the vast emptiness of space could be put in disposing of people. She could take a Time-Turner and set it to turn time back one day at the end of each day. Then she could let it go, leaving her experimental apparatus in place. Voldemort would vanish with his House, still suffering, still memoryless, and passing one light-year per day in airless space where no spells can be said. That day would be endlessly renewed, as a stream of Voldemorts pass in one day up into the sky, triumphant forever, a constellation of his own glory, while inside Voldemort lives forever and a day.
Whether that is the end of things depends on the nature of Time and causality in Potterverse (something Hermione would have studied deeply). If the past is immutable, she and Ron would simply disappear after she had liberated the house-elves completely. It would not be safe for her to be around after the Ministry reasserted itself.
If what has come before is not fixed in stone then Hermione might set into play another plan entirely:
She could finish her research and distill her more-than-a-decade of studies into a small set of teaching books. She would pack them up with a Pensieve, along with a few of Fred and George’s more devastating creations. She would kiss Ron goodbye.
Then she would pick up her Time-Turner. And turn, and turn, and turn. . . .
Back to the summer after Voldemort’s resurrection, the time when the danger of the Dark Lord has first become real to Harry and his friends. Harry Potter has gone home from Hogwarts to fear what will come and to grow angrier. Young Hermione Granger has gotten off the Hogwarts Express, not knowing that she will be taken later in the summer by the Order of the Phoenix for her own protection. For now, she goes to her Muggle parents, into her Muggle car to be driven to her Muggle home.
From whence she and her parents would disappear. Dumbledore would be alarmed until he read the message left for him and him alone by an older, wiser Hermione Granger. It would be short and to the point, for old Hermione, having seen the wreckage of his plans, no longer trusts Dumbledore with her secrets.
Hermione would face Hermione, girl to woman, both protected against the madness of the meeting by spells the elder had cast. The younger Hermione would look into her own eyes and see pain and knowledge. She would want the knowledge but fear the pain. The older Hermione would want to give the knowledge without the pain.
Here would come another of those unpleasant choices. Some of the pain would have to be handed down if Harry is to be saved. Young Hermione is a follower, and that will never do if the future is not to be as it was. Harry is a hero. He needs guidance and help from his friends, not just his teachers. Above all he must not be permitted to waste this coming year in anger and foolishness. For the sake of Harry and the wizarding and Muggle worlds, Hermione Granger’s protective obedience must be broken by the memories of Hermione Granger.
Old Hermione would use Pensieve to give Young Hermione enough memories to know what needs to be done and why. Then she would hand over the books. How could Hermione resist? Four of them would be necessary to contain all needed knowledge. The first would be a spell study guide specifically created to teach in the way Hermione learns best, an accelerated course of study that will give her a few years’ learning in a little time. The second book would be an analysis of prophecy and its limits, containing the full prophecy of the Boy Who Lived. The third would be an analysis of the vulnerabilities of Lord Voldemort, and the last a manual of magical strategy and tactics, with a few methods for combining the magical and the mundane. The books would be spelled so that for anyone else they would be dull and uninteresting, the kind of books Hermione would be expected to have and that no one else would look at. The analysis of Voldemort might for irony’s sake be disguised as the Monster Book of Monsters.
There are a lot of things Old Hermione might give Young Hermione: a Time-Turner; a chest modeled on Mad-Eye Moody’s, with multiple containers, each full of Fred and George’s creations, spelled so that only Hermione could use them safely.
After returning Young Hermione and her parents to their home, Old Hermione would probably seek to undo the damage of the year that is to come. For that, two actions would be needed, the first an act Young Hermione could never do.
Old Hermione would slip through the Ministry of Magic’s awesomely pathetic security. Quietly and efficiently she would kill Dolores Umbridge before the Dementors are sent after Harry. Then, making herself appear to be Voldemort, she would fake a very visible raid upon the Hall of Prophecy in such a way that even Cornelius Fudge would have to admit that Voldemort had returned. The news would hit the Daily Prophet, and Harry Potter would grow fearful, but not angry.
As to what would happen to Old Hermione, that depends on how causality works. If she can continue to exist, she would probably stay around as some form of guardian angel for her younger self. If not, she would know that, even if Harry fails again there would be a next time, that the cycle of study can continue if need be until eventually they get it right.
Young Hermione Granger would study the books in light of her new memories. She would take them to the Order of the Phoenix, showing them to Dumbledore, as her older self knew she would. Between them they would work out a better course of study for Harry.
When the Weasleys come to the Order Ron would probably notice a glint, a gleam, almost a look of appraisal in Hermione’s eyes as she looks at him. What can that girl be thinking of? Barking mad, no doubt of it! Why is she smiling like that?
A few years later Harry Potter would face Lord Voldemort, a wiser Harry Potter who did not lose Sirius or anyone else because Hermione was forewarned. Hermione somehow became more forceful, grown up overnight. Harry Potter would face Lord Voldemort armed magically and conventionally and a bit of both combined. Anticipating each of the Dark Lord’s moves, Harry Potter would fulfill the prophecy, destroying his foe once and for all.
Voldemort would come to destruction sulkily, angrily, shouting defiance against Potter and his friends. The Dark Lord would fall, never knowing how lucky he is to lose rather than to triumph forever among the stars.
RICHARD GARFINKLE is the author of two science fiction novels: Celestial Matters (which won the 1996 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in science fiction) and All of an Instant. At present he is engaged in the more dubious practice of writing non-fiction science popularization. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children. He credits J. K. Rowling’s works with motivating his daughter to excel at reading. This essay is the thanks she gets.