Blogging them as I think of them, so that later I can comment on how
close (or not) I was to the mark so soon after HBP. SPOILERS of course.
Something was going on between Snape and Lily, back in the day.
Exactly what, I'm not sure. I suspect that when Petunia said "I
heard... that awful boy... telling
her about them", Snape was
the awful boy in question, not James. The fans have been talking about
Snape/Lily for years, but I was never convinced until now, but this
book had a LOT of hints in that direction. The fact that Slughorn keeps
mentioning Harry's inheriting Lily's talent when in fact he's getting
the tips from Snape, for example. And the fact that Snape showed so
much alleged remorse after he found out how Voldemort interpreted the
prophecy.
Speaking of which, I'm now convinced that Snape is good. I'd been
thinking for a while that perhaps Dumbledore had given him an order
that required him to keep up the pretense of being a loyal Death Eater
even if it required him to kill Dumbledore, but on rereading the book,
it turns out that Dumbledore did give him exactly that order, even
though Hagrid didn't grasp the significance of what he'd heard. Snape
"didn't want to do it any more" and Dumbledore said that he'd given his
word and that was the end of it. Furthermore, Dumbledore mentioned
"investigations in his House" - I'm sure that referred to Spinner's
End, not Slytherin, but I don't quite get the significance yet. Perhaps
a Horcrux is stashed away there? In which case, who's the Spinner?
An interesting note, but not a prediction as such: from the note it's
clear that R.A.B. didn't actually figure out that there was more than
one Horcrux. Harry's on his own as far as finding the rest of them.
Here's one that's my twist on what the Leaky Cauldron posters figured out. The TLC people figured out in
this thread
that R.A.B. is indeed Regulus Black because he took the locket back to
Grimmauld Place, and it showed up during the cleaning in
Phoenix.
Furthermore, it's quite possible that Mundungus stole it. My twist:
Mundungus didn't just steal it, he sold it to Aberforth Dumbledore (who
as many fans figured out years ago, is the bartender of the Hog's Head)
outside the Three Broomsticks!
