My gut tells me Dumbledor is not dead. But, I'm not HP scholler. I can barely remember what happens in the last book.

lol! :D That cracked me up, Lisa.

Not at all. By alone I mean without a guardian figure to help protect him. No mom to give him protection, no wizard with a sword toting bird etc...

Having friends you can count on is a different thing entirely in fact for Harry, learning to trust and rely on others is a large part of his journey to adulthood. I fully expect the dynamic due to be hip deep in the action right beside Harry but at the very end, it'll be Harry one-on-one with Voldie.

Oh, I see what you're saying. I thought you meant alone alone.
:)

me type gud

Not to worry my dear, unlike some people around here you can at least count past the number freee .....

I don't do math, so I never noticed

I think the scar as a horcrux would be cool in a way, but it just seems like a horcrux takes quite a bit of work to make. I'll do quite a bit of eyerolling if a horcrux just happens accidentally.

I do think that Fawkes reviving Harry is a likely scenario, though. I don't think Dumbledore will be back, as JK has said before that once someone is dead, they're dead. She doesn't want kids thinking their relatives will come back from the dead or anything like that. Also, if Fawkes were going to revive him, he wouldn't have been mourning for so long. They buried a casket, I'm assuming there was a body in it, though that could have been easily switched.

Another thing that makes me think Snape isn't really bad (well, he's not exactly good even if he is loyal to Dumbledore though, is he?) is that Harry's true enemies are really nice to him until they turn on him. Snape has always been mean. In fact, I think it's possible that he doesn't even dislike Harry. I think that maybe he knows all along what he may have to do and if he were close to Harry (as he is Lilly's son, whom I think Snape loved) then Harry wouldn't really believe that he's a Death Eater. Like Mrs. Figg treated Harry poorly so that the Dursleys would let him come over.

I just read the part where Harry asks Snape about the Death Eater thing, so I guess my idea wasn't that original, lol. I had just forgotten that I read it.

Dumbledore removing himself from the scene would leave Harry alone, at least as far as Voldemort's concerned. I think perhaps, just as Voldemort has the horcrux's (something that was only intro'd in the last book) as a means to defeat death, Dumbledore likely has something as well. Could be something untested, which would explain Snape's reluctance to do it and his fierce denial of cowardice to Harry at the end of book 6. Of course, I've also thought that perhaps Snape has been playing Dumbledore and Voldemort all along- being as skilled as he is at occlumency he could be hiding his true intentions from both of them, and Dumbledore might be aware of this and using it to his advantage. Snape and Riddle seem to both be overly-proud and from humble origins- perhaps Snape thinks he should be the ultimate wizard? Look at some of the wicked spells he created at such a youg age- hardly the sign of someone who would settle for a subordinate position in life. And the whole 'half-blood Prince' moniker, which is not unlike 'Lord Voldemort' in it's pretentions.

Sigh. We'll spend all this time and energy looking for answers, and then JK will likely throw another 'horcrux' scenario at us; something that we know absolutely nothing of and therefore could not possibly guess. I hope not, as I think that would be irritatingly lazy writing. I really hate it when authors pull that sort of crap.

You may be right, WB. There certainly did seem to be a lot of Phoenix allusions in HBP. I think though, that if he does come back it will be in some otherworldly yoda-esque fashion to help Harry in a time of need. Perhaps he will come back as a phoenix? Or in a similar way to what happened when Harry fought Voldemort in GoF.

Might I take this opportunity to say that it annoys me to no end that in the beginning of PoA the movie, Harry uses Lumos out of school. And Sirius the dog growls at him.

Also, rereading the last three books really drove home what a travesty the Dumbledore from GoF movie was. I hope they do better with OotP.