(Disclaimers: I’ve read all of the books except the stupid werewolf one, and I’m not the world’s biggest fan, but I do live with her. I am not participating in the prediction market.)
Inkling prediction market: Will Harry Potter be alive at the end of the last book of the series? At this writing, it’s trading at $83.81 — that is, an 84% chance that the Boy Who Lived will, you know, live. Here’s a one-week graph (a new Inkling feature):
Do watch this market for any changes in the next few days, although it’s been trading above $70 since May. I’ll go on record with my personal end of Harry Potter prediction here. Basically the little fucker is going to Live and propagate and everybody will exist happily ever after. No SWAT teams, no sniping of hippogriffs, no invisible thestrals biting through night-vision goggles and bullet-proof jackets for a taste of flesh. No squibs with megaphones versus hucksters, shamans, preachers with polycarbonate riot shields. No rocket summer over Hogwarts or Weasley Bros. magicked jellybean radiation-sickness cure or Fortean eruption of giants walking the earth, serpents and great whales swimming beneath it, nocturnal lights flying over it. The whole Dark Lord Trying to Destroy All That is Kind and Good and Cute situation will be neatly resolved, perhaps with a little bloodshed of certain useless tertiary characters (my pick is Ginny, the redhead being stereotypical Dark Lord fodder in this genre), but entirely without patriot redneck muggle hordes slobbering forth about Harry or Neville or Tom or whomever being the antichrist or the Superman or what have you, because the stupid wizard world takes care of its own — because the real world and the hermetically sealed, dysfunctional, useless wizard world never intersect in any meaningful way — because the series never had integrity enough to break through all that (unlike, say, the “His Dark Materials” ‘kids’ series) — because, ultimately, nothing really is at stake in Harry Potter books, besides the generic novelistic concerns of: will our heroes grow up and propagate the species, and in what specific configurations. In light of all this, I should have started a prediction market long ago to track whether or not the last Harry Potter book will end in the most bankrupt of whimpers: with the actual depiction of, in some horrible flash-forward, Harry’s kids. I’d price that market super low, but it is a dreaded possibility, given the prognosis above. Our Living Boy has a Luke Skywalker early retirement in his future, and the way that gets expressed in this cosmology is that (sit down, grab a tissue, you’ll need it) he gets to sire the family he never had! Even better: we also get to see the various supporting characters in Hogwarts faculty positions — proving that those who can’t, teach.
In summary, the Boy Who Lived will live. Mega bullish on the Harry Potter will be alive at the end of the last book of the series market. He shouldn’t be, if there was any justice he wouldn’t be. But he will, and that market will cash out for you at a cool $100.00.
Locally, you can get your copy of this book at the Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor (at the cold, bloodless heart of Art Fair) or The Rocket in Ypsilanti. You can also check it out from the Ann Arbor District Library: “517 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy — 160 copies ordered.” The H. Potter funeral/wedding services will be held this Friday.
(tags: antichrist bloodshed books bullet proof jackets feedback-loop hermetically inkling jellybean little fucker megaphones muggle narratives night vision goggles predictionmarkets psyops radiation sickness riot shields rocket summer serpents squibs swat teams thestrals weasley wizard world)
