*Deathly Hallows Spoilers Included*

It’s been less than a week since the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, yet most of us have now read the book more than once; inevitably, bits and pieces need to be re-read to make sense of them. In addition to re-reading, the comments on our last post were extremely amazing, and really helped make sense of the book. This week, we look back through the comments and pull out a few topics to discuss further: a possible relationship between Harry and Voldemort? Examples of Voldemort’s spells not working, references to Nazis, the fittingness of Snape’s death. What was the purpose of the epilogue? And what did we need the Deathly Hallows for anyhow? Of course, there’s more questions that need to be discussed (who discovered magic later in life? Where did Harry’s parents get all that money from?), but they’ll have to wait until next time.

Thanks so much for all the great comments, keep them coming, we couldn’t do the show without them!

In the News:

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is breaking sales records.
• JK Rowling on the Today show: Announces Encyclopedia of characters and talks about DH.
• Naomi Watts, Joseph Fiennes, and Stuart Townsend not necessarily in the Half Blood Prince movie.

Make sure to listen to our interview on The James Madison Show from Friday, July 20. The interview can be found a the website if you click the podcast button. Special thanks to James and Frank for having us on.

Don’t forget to order your HPProgs t-shirts! Contact us if you’re interested in a red, white or black limited edition t-shirt.

Join in on the HPProgs Thank-You Book to JK Rowling!

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

We decided in the comment thread of the last post that we wanted to put together a thank you book for JK Rowling from the HPPROGS community. Our listener, Michal (who is a “she” by the way), has graciously offered to organize the effort. Please take some time to participate in this endeavor. It has the potential to be an amazing collaboration on all of our parts.

The following is a message from Michal:

As you may have heard, HPProgs is putting together a “Thank You” book for Jo Rowling. Everyone is invited to submit their letters of thanks, praise and reminiscence to the wonderful woman who has given us all so much. Artwork and poetry can also be included if you wish. All entries will be organized in a binder and sent to Jo- hopefully, we may get a response!

Guidelines are as follows:

1)Please email your letters to me (Michal) at inkasrain@yahoo.com
2)Please submit your letters by SEPTEMBER 1st 2007.
3)Please send letters in file attachments- I will try to keep the format you put together. The greater stylistic variety, the better!
4)TRY not to have your letters exceed two printed pages- although I do understand if you go over, it’s Jo after all.
5)Please spell-check and edit your letters carefully. Unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I will print them out as I receive them.
6)Artwork/handwritten letters must be scanned and sent in file attachments. Please make sure that it will be legible and clear after it has been scanned and re-printed. (I am not sure about color printing yet.)

If you have any ideas or suggestion, feel free to email me!

We’ve finished Deathly Hallows. We sat down to record our initial thoughts immediately after completing Book 7. I don’t think we’ve covered everything, but it’s a good start with out immediate thoughts on the book. What’s to say? The book was great, a great ending to the saga of Harry Potter.

Please note: this podcast is SPOILER-FULL. If you haven’t yet finished Deathly Hallows, and don’t want to hear spoilers, DO NOT listen to this podcast. Comments on this episode will also be SPOILER-FULL.  The rest of the HPProgs.com web site will remain moderated and spoiler-free until Monday, July 23rd.

You can listen to the podcast using the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

As zero hour approaches, we are being hit with not only the actual evidence that this is the end, but the flurry of emotions that everyone in the “Potterverse” is inevitably feeling.

The only comparison I can make is the feeling of graduation week from high school. You are anticipating the momentous occasion and you know that nothing will be the same after it happens. You have gone on a journey with a group of people and you have ambivalent feelings about it ending. On one hand, you feel excitement- the future is about to start, on the other hand you feel unready and wonder where the time has gone. Throughout the time leading up to graduation, exciting things happen every day. One day there is a Senior Dinner, the next day, an awards ceremony. Throughout this time there is a mad scramble to sign as many yearbooks as possible and to try to hold on to the moment for as long as possible.

These last few months and even more so these last few weeks have been like this for me. We started on a journey 10 years ago- some of us were fans from the beginning, some of us were turned on to the books by an eager relative or friend. We are all here because we have fallen in love with something.

Everyone says that Harry Potter “turned a generation back onto reading”. But they did so much more than that. They allowed children of all ages to become immersed in a world of fantasy, drama and mystery. They allowed us an escape when life felt overwhelming. They allowed us to read about a boy who was probably not so different than we were. A boy who made a difference whether he wanted to or not.

So, now I would like to publicly thank JK Rowling for giving us Harry Potter. We know that she didn’t write the books for us, but the fact that they have touched so many of our lives is a testament to the wonderful work she has done. So, for: the trips to Diagon Alley, the Quiddich matches, the Prophecy, the relationships (R/H forever!!), the thestrals, the earwax (alas!), the DA, the nitwit, blubber, odment and tweak, the Mauraders, the spells, the potions, the professors, the 1:1 talks between Dumbledore and Harry, the O.W.L.s, the indignant looks of Hermione, the jokes, the Weasleys, the house elves, the pure evil of characters like Bellatrix and Umbridge, the chamber of secrets, the exclamations of Ron (Blimey, Harry!), the warewolves, the brooms, the Daily Prophet, the Felix Felicis, the horcruxes, the Slytherins who we loved to hate, the mandrakes, the blast ended skrewts, the Cedrics, the Creevy brothers, the OoTP……(we could go on and on)….Thank you.

And to all of our fellow Potterverse fans. Thank you for the fansites, the websites, the podcasts, the blogs, the fanfiction, the fan art, the wizard rock and so much more. This has been a wonderful journey to embark on with all of you.

“And now Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

-Penny

In my email this morning:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We thought you would like to know that we are preparing your items for
shipment.

!!!

A close friend of ours actually got his copy already (he had ordered online from the place that’s in the news that shipped early); he wrote about it on his blog (NO SPOILERS in his post, just a rundown of the legal brouhaha). Apparently, Scholastic is offereing $50 to those who received the books to wait until Saturday to read it.

As a warning, there are major spoilers out there, even the mainstream media, such as the NY Times and Baltimore Sun, are getting in on ruining the book for everyone, which is a shame. HPProgs, of course, will remain spoiler-free.

Due to a few unforseen circumstances, unfortunately we are not going to be able to make it to NYC for the Wizard Rock 2007 show. We apologize to those of you who we were going to meet, but we hope (and know) you will all have an AMAZING time! If you do go to this show, please send reviews.

This may very well be our last full episode before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In this episode, we discuss how we’re feeling (perhaps the five stages of loss would be appropriate), and take one final crack at a few theories before signing off and preparing for the weekend.

No news this week, but a few links of interest:

• Get your HPProgs T-Shirts. You can order through the HPProgs Store, or email us (harrypotterprogs AT yahoo DOT com) to get a limited edition HPProgs red, white or black tee.
• Check out Filmspotting.net’s review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
• If you’re in NY, make sure to check out Wizard Rock 2007.
• Catch us on the James Madison Show on Friday between 6 and 7 PM, it’s all about Potter, and you can call in!.

That’s it. Enjoy the show, towards the end we discuss our plans for the podcast after the release of the book(in short, we ain’t going no where as long as folks want to hear what we have to say).

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

For those of you interested in HPProgs T-Shirts, we’ve got a store set up. Head on over to http://hpprogs.spreadshirt.com and check out the designs. We’ve got shirts with our logo on them, along with a few HPProgs originals (and we’ll be adding more over time). Hope you like them, and thanks for supporting HPProgs.

Last night, at 12:01 AM, we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at Baltimore’s historic Senator Theatre.   Beforehand, we took our video camera and interviewed some of the faithful waiting in line for the movie.  In this episode, we recount the whole experience, from the theories to the costumes, along with our review and discussion of the OotP movie.

In the news:

• The movie is out!
• The book is coming out in NINE days!
• The Baltimore Sun wrote an article about last night’s premiere and interviewed a few local prognosticators.

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

If you’re going to the 12:01 screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at Baltimore’s historic Senator Theatre, keep an eye out for the HPProgs crew.  Penny and I will be sporting our brand new HPProgs t-shirts, passing out HPProgs bookmarks and interviewing folks standing in the line; we’ll post the video here just as soon as we can figure out how to get it off our camera.  If you’re an HPProgs listener, please say hello!
We’ll be seeing the movie sometime over the next day, and will have a podcast up with our review tomorrow night.

More unanswered questions!  True to our word, we’re upping the ante with the movie and book coming out in the next few weeks.  This episode doesn’t have a major news segment, but more unanswered questions, including a killer question from Sister Judy (our sister, not a nun) regarding the Grand-Potters.

We’ll be back later this week with our review of the OotP movie.  Stay tuned!

And check out our new logo!

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

Stephen King writes a semi-weekly column for Enterntainment Weekly, and has many times in the past expressed his love for the Harry Potter books.  In this week’s edition, Uncle Stevie devotes his column to Harry Potter and how he’s feeling approaching the conclusion of the series:

I’m having a day of mixed feelings: happy because I’m reading the manuscript of a novel that’s full of magic, mystery, and monsters; sad because it will be finished tomorrow and on my shelf, with all its secrets told and its surviving characters set free to live their own lives (if characters have lives beyond the end of a novel — I’ve always felt they do).

Read the rest, it’s really great.

We’re getting pretty close the end game. Zero hour. The End of Potter. And we’ve got plenty of unanswered questions. Earlier, we solicited your thoughts on what questions still need to be answered in Book 7. We had a great response, and, in this podcast, we go through some of the questions and give our best guesses as to how they’ll be resolved. So tune in, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The questions we covered are:

• Who will end up a teacher at Hogwarts? (from Greg in Toronto)
• Why did Bellatrix Lestrange go after the Longbottoms? (Nancy)
• What does the symbol mean? (Aaron from HPPC)
• How did the Wizarding World find out the Potters were killed? (from Mrs. Lovegood)
• What connection does Dumbledore vs. Grindelwald have to Harry vs. Voldemort? (Greg in Toronto)
• Why did Snape turn against Voldemort? (Ajit)

Keep sending in your questions, we’ll cover more next week.

In the news:

• HBO’s First Look at OotP movie looks pretty cool.
• Amazon books 1 million preorders for Deathly Hallows in US. July 17th is deadline for first-day delivery.
• Harry Potter virus infecting computers.
• Wizard Rock in the Garden. Hear great music and meet HPProgs!

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download an mp3 directly.

Thirteen minutes with some never-before-seen footage.

Hey everyone- Are there any questions in the Harry Potter series that you feel MUST be answered in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? If so, please send them to harrypotterprogs at yahoo dot com (e-mail format) ASAP so we can include them in one of our next episodes. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Penny