Harry Potter and the alternate endings
To help prepare for the final book, the Globe asked four well-known local authors to tell us how it might all go down
Chris Bohjalian
Hermione motioned toward the portkey, a cupcake the size of a quaffle, and murmured quietly, "It's time to go."
Harry thought about this, and wondered why almost everything he and Ron and Hermione had ever said was modified by an adverb. Was this a spell left upon Hogwarts by an ancient Slytherin professor?
He noticed now that the crowd around the tombstones was finally starting to thin, though it was clear the large brood of Weasleys was going to remain there well after the rest of the mourners had left. Harry wasn't surprised that so many more people had come to say good-bye to Ron than to Snape, but he still wished there had been more people there for the potions master in the end. After all, they would never have trapped Voldemort were it not for him.
"You know," Hermione continued softly, a little ruefully, "everyone was sure it was going to be you. Everyone was sure it was you who was going to die."
He shook his head. Certainly he'd heard the rumors. "No, not me," said Harry determinedly. "I think I knew all along it would be Ron."
"But Harry, how?"
"My name's on the title of everything," Harry shrugged. "And you're a girl."
"Harry, that's sexist!" said Hermione indignantly.
"No, that's literature. My story may be over, but what of my children -- what Professor Dumbledore saw in the Progeny-Scope? Ron and I could have done may remarkable things together . . . but conceive a child? I think not."
Harry felt the professor's hand on his shoulder through his robes, and turned. The aging headmaster had been comforting Ron's parents, but in his free hand he still held the clear sack with the glittering, brain-shaped Cere-Brawl. The Cere-Brawl would forever imprison Voldemort's violent, fighting urges. Harry understood that the Dark Lord would be no less evil, because -- as Dumbledore had taught him -- you can't root out evil; now, however, that evil would be at once banal and benign. It would be evil without power, because there was no spell that could unlock a Cere-Brawl once it was sealed.
"Professor Dumbledore?"
"Yes, Harry?"
"Will you ever tell us who the wizard was who was working with you and Professor Snape -- the one who was there when Snape pretended to throw the killing curse?"
"I could."
"But you won't."
"That's right," said Dumbledore sagely. "Voldemort may be harmless, but there will always be Death Eaters just waiting to take his place. That, too, is the nature of evil. But I will give you a clue."
"His name is in the Detritus-Arium, isn't it?" volunteered Hermione brightly.
The professor shook his head. "No. But Harry, he has been with you as you've grown up . . . and he will be with you as you grow old." Then, almost imperceptibly, he motioned with his chin and long beard toward Dudley Dursley. When Harry looked over at him, it appeared as if his obese cousin were actually trying to eat the cupcake portkey.
"Him?" asked Harry incredulously.
Dumbledore shrugged and turned away, and Harry felt Hermione taking his hand. "Come along, Harry," she said, and somehow she found it within her to smile. "We have a new series to start."
Chris Bohjalian, who lives in Vermont, is the author of 11 books. His most recent novel is "The Double Bind."
Meg Rosoff
After so many years of battle with the forces of evil, Harry suffers a nervous breakdown and is admitted to McLean Hospital. There, he undergoes extensive psychoanalysis under the auspices of Dr. Weltschmerz, but his PTSD proves intractable. Back in England, Hermione is now pregnant by Ron Weasley. She gives birth to twins, Nigel and Aramintha, and Harry is asked to be godfather. The christening is presided over by the kindly local vicar, Artemis McBurney-Weatherbottom, who turns out to be Lord Voldemort in disguise.
Harry, sedated on Mogadon and Prozac, borrows a broomstick from one of the cleaners, and chugs slowly across the Atlantic towards the picturesque English country church at which the christening is being held. Despite the alleged urgency of his mission, he stops at the Dog and Duck pub, using the sacred A Few Years Older spell to order a pint and a packet of pork scratchings. Through his drug-and-beer induced haze, he notices Lord Voldemort's Dark Mark hanging over the church. A high wailing from within the church convinces Harry that he has, at long last, come to the final showdown with Lord Voldemort. However, it is actually the sound of the cute twins. Harry slays them by mistake. Or is it?
Ron and Hermione discover that the babies Harry slew by mistake were not real babies, rather, twin embodiments of pure evil, and the friends reconcile. With a few phone calls, they arrange for Lord Voldemort to be put in charge of parking and roadworks in London. The job fits him so perfectly that he leaves the rest of mankind in peace forever.
Pure evil is thus banished from the world, except for a tiny leftover bit in Washington, D.C., in case of a future sequel. Hogwarts is converted into luxury condominiums. In a surprise move, Harry marries Paris Hilton, is voted Sexiest Man in America by People Magazine, writes his memoirs -- which are chosen for Oprah's book club -- and moves to LA, where he tells the press that he envisages a golden future for mankind, and hopes to direct himself and his wife in a biopic based loosely on his own life.
Boston-born Meg Rosoff, who now lives in London, won the Guardian Children's fiction prize for her 2004 novel, "How I Live Now." Her new novel, "Just in Case," last month won the top British award for children's literature, the Carnegie Medal.
Jeannie Birdsall
Harry knelt in the grass, his forehead pressed against the marble gravestone. "My powers are gone, Professor," he whispered. "Sucked away the instant I killed Voldemort. Who am I, if I'm not a wizard anymore? Where should I go and what should I do?"
No answers came, for wherever Albus Dumbledore was, it wasn't here under these trees, on this hill. Sighing, Harry straightened up, and saw that he wasn't alone. Ron and Hermione were standing in the sunlight just beyond the trees, Ron's arm draped round Hermione's shoulders. Someone else was there, too -- a redheaded girl who'd lately become astonishingly pretty.
"Hello Ron, Hermione," said Harry. "Hello, Ginny."
"Come along now, Harry." Ginny reached out her hand to him. "I've been waiting for you."
Gregory Maguire
We have seen that J. K. Rowling is in thrall to her own volcanic imagination. She's given us Muggles, Aurors, house elves, and Quidditch, as well as Harry Potter himself. And as the series developed over the past decade, it helped change the world of publishing. So now we also are familiar with a new series of fantastic creatures: spoilers, bloggers, transgressive fanzine interpolaters, gamblers with alleged insider knowledge wagering on plot outcomes, and, for the Gore converts among us, green harpies concerned about ancient-forest decimation in the printing of globillions of copies of the last volume in the series.
But though Rowling has been responsive to her readers -- dropping hints, entering into the discussion about the eschatology of the story cycle -- in the last 10 years, the world beyond Harry Potter changed, too. The dread portrayed in a spectral dementor -- the soul-less guardians of the prison called Azkaban -- conjures up the governors and guards of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. We read about disguises, secret codes of ethics, chronic and lacerating apprehension over unidentifiable enemies: the world post 9/11 has met the world of Hogwarts with its own dark scale of horrors. I believe Rowling's response -- to darken the tones and raise the stakes of her stories -- has been the correct response of a writer whose first concern is her young readers, and it has bettered the project as a series.
She is a canny one, that Rowling, and one of her favorite plot twists is the False Identity. So while Rowling is said to have divulged that readers can expect two major deaths this final go-round, I will not weigh in on The-Two-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I do however expect that one of the rules set in Book Six will be revoked. We've been led to expect that either Harry or Voldemort must die, but I think that some portion of Voldemort will survive -- and some portion of Harry Potter, too. After all, Rowling knows that the young who began with the first Harry Potter in grade school have grown up. They have learned too much to believe that evil can be vanquished in a final surge.
As to what twists lie ahead in the romances, the Quidditch championships, the Dursleys, the downfall or rehabilitation of the endlessly guileful Severus Snape, I can wait. What I hope, though, in my heart of hearts, is that Rowling will reveal that she herself is a False Identity. She is really Maggie Thatcher, writing from her retirement, having had a go at the Labor Government of the past 10 years. Or she is Princess Diana, who didn't die in the tunnel 10 years ago this summer, but suffered a blow to the head that made her see things as they really are. Or perhaps I'm not going far enough: What else has Dick Cheney been doing, deep in his secret bunker all this time, but writing deathless prose about soul-eaters and terrorists? I can't say any more than this. My CIA file is already thick. And though I may be a writer, I'm only a Muggle, so I'll plan on being surprised like everyone else.
Massachusetts-based Gregory Maguire's latest young adult novel is "Son of a Witch." The Broadway musical version of his 1995 bestseller, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," is on a national tour.
Jeannie Birdsall's children's novel, "The Penderwicks," won the 2005 National Book Award. She lives in Northampton. 