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The Potterverse Collection(s):

We are now officially off the clock.

And off the map as well.

Rowling’s version of the story is now officially complete.

I say Rowling’s version, because by this time it ought to be obvious that the Harry Potter phenomenon has grown to encompass any number of rival versions that Rowling has had little direct input upon. Fandom is like that. It’s taken Potter fandom longer to reach this point than your typical media-based fandom would have, but it is definitely there. For example; after spending a year and a half drafting out ever more intricate methods by which Professor Snape might have managed to survive being bitten by Nagini, it is now largely accepted that — should a fanfic author need him to show up in the course of his or her story — then, of course, he survived. And one is now less facinated by how he did so, than in what happens next.

And, as for what Rowling has to say about who ended up paired off together; it is to laugh! That, dear reader, has devolved into a mere suggestion.

Nor is it all likely to stop on a dime any time soon.

General Updates:

Last General Update was:

October 31, 2007

Next Scheduled General Update:

There isn’t going to one. Or not a general one.

With the closing of the official canon, much of my game has ended. We no longer have a free hand to try to figure out what is going to happen.

We still have a reasonably broad scope for trying to figure out what has happened. As antcipated, there were a lot of loose ends dangling in the breeze at the end of the final volume of the official Harry Potter series.

We also have as wide a scope as we ever did to try to extrapolate what may have happened, or what could have happened.

As a theorist, I was primarily concerned with attempting to sort out the patterns which appeared to be embedded in the text, as we were given it, with a view toward getting a broader, or more focused picture than what was immediately evident upon a casual reading. Many of the theories which I built in pursuit of this goal have either been exploded, or confirmed, partially confirmed, or shown to have been irrelevant to the story as Rowling chose to tell it.

This does not necessarily mean that I am finished with the Potterverse. Only that any theories which I continue to explore will probably have even less to do with those areas with which JK Rowling has concerned hersef.

In the meantime it seemed appropriate to reorganize the material in view of the fact that there will almost certainly be no further professionally published novels concerning the life and times of Harry Potter.

JK Rowling claims to have learned to never say never, so it is unknown whether we may or may not get any additional novels set in the Potterverse. But it would be a bad idea to count upon it.

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Incremental Revisions:

As ever, I am an incorigible incrementalist. So there may be any number of minor tweaks which will set off a little fluries of repostings as I think of new points or as mistatements are pointed out to me. Watch this space.

(It should be noted that some of the older essays may now be out of sync with these particular adjustments.)

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August 8, 2009, [Main collection] (new material, new developments)

Magic & Wizards

March 1, 2009, [Main collection] (additional new material)

O! The Times are Out of Joint!

Note: This revision throws a monkey wrench into some of the extrapolations detailed in older essays. It will be a quite some time before this paradigm shift gets cleared up. (It's all in the backstory and does not affect the events actually watched in canon.)