Ten Bold Predictions: Number 10

It's never a pleasant thing to admit to your addictions, especially in such a public forum. However, that's what I'm here to do tonight (or whenever you are reading this). I've alluded to this before, but now I'm finally following through. There will be nine more of these, so I figure I'll start out easy and get to the more juicy thoughts later.

July 21st will see the final installation of the Harry Potter books. We will discover the fate of young Harry, his friends, the locations of the final horcruxes, and the fates of several other main characters that we've all come to know and love. I'm here now to use my "expert" analysis (being a frustrated fantasy author myself) to disseminate what I think will happen in this, the final book. I'm sure that there will be plenty of loose ends left around after the book is finished, but I'm fairly certain that these ten things will crop up during the course of the action of the book.

And, no, I don't have insider information. I just thought I'd toss these out there so that, on July 22nd, we can all get together and praise my ability to pick apart the story (which is kind of a sad notion) or to point and laugh at me like Nelson Muntz (the ha ha kid from the Simpsons...in case you've been living under that cliche rock for a few decades).

Without further ado, let's do this.

R.A.B. is Regulus Black!

One of the first rules about fantasy stories is that, without a body, never trust a death. Regulus has been brought up in conversation a few times in the latter books (by Sirius in Order of the Phoenix and then again by Slughorn in Half-Blood Prince...both of which are important later on for other predictions...so remember those), but we've never seen him. He's allegedly dead, according to Sirius, Slughorn and most of the wizarding world. We have no body, though. We haven't even seen a tomb. There's just been a few reports of how Voldemort sent the Death Eaters after Reggy in order to kill him. Again, this will be important later down the line.

By the way, the "A" stands for Arcturus. This was confirmed long ago on Mugglenet by J.K. Rowling herself. You've gotta love that Black family for their love of the stars and naming their kids after them (how Narcissa wasn't Deneb, I'll never know).

So, that's it. Prediction 10 is that the "mysterious" RAB is Regulus Arcturus Black. I know, it's not a big stretch, but it's a prediction, and I feel pretty good about this one. I like my chances of starting off 1 for 1.