再给哈利·波特一次机会

再给哈利·波特一次机会

JK罗琳近日承认，让赫敏和罗恩结婚是一个错误，赫敏才应该成为波特夫人。伦敦大学学院荣誉教授萨瑟兰表示，看好罗琳续写小说，再给哈利一次机会。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

paparazzi 狗仔队

shrift 忏悔，认罪

slavering 口水直流

epilogue 结尾，终曲

阅读即将开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用时间，并对照我们在文章最后给出的参考值来估算您的阅读速度。

Give Harry Potter a second chance to find happiness

By John Sutherland

* * *

If Rowling wants the wizard to be with Hermione, she can make it so, says John Sutherland

JK Rowling remains the most interesting writer Britain has. She is even more interesting just at the moment, after a judicious leak concerning some second thoughts she has had about her great work. Normally Ms Rowling is also the Howard Hughes(legendary American business magnate, aviator, engineer, film maker and philanthropist) of her profession: intensely private. News hounds and paparazzi get short shrift with the creator of Harry Potter. But occasionally she throws teasing morsels to keep the fans slavering. A lecture audience in New York, for example, is informed in passing that Dumbledore, his creator now suspects, is gay. A closet door swings half-open. Quidditch, Ms Rowling elsewhere confides, was inspired by a row with her boyfriend. With her latest revelations, she has thrown her fans another dripping chunk of red meat.

In the epilogue to the seventh and last Potter novel it was revealed that Hermione, the series’ most eligible female character, was destined to marry Ron, the hero’s less gifted (magically) sidekick. This elicited howls of joy from the “Harmoniums” – those who wanted this outcome – but confounded the fairytale convention that the hero always gets his girl. Harry would have to settle for Ginny, Ron’s sister, instead.

Ms Rowling says she did this “for personal reasons”, although she does not reveal what they were, and now thinks she was wrong. She predicts marital breakdowns. Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the movies, agrees: “I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.”

Ms Rowling’s afterthoughts have not gone down well. She has been accused of meddling with her own creation, as if Michelangelo had picked up his pot and had a second go at the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But there is another explanation.

As with the Jesuits, if Potter got you as a child, you are Pottered for life. The sequence began in 1997. Harry was introduced to the reading world as an abused child, cowering under the stairs in 4 Privet Drive. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was cannily marketed by Bloomsbury, its publisher, as a children’s book, which is what it was. But unlike other children’s stories, Harry has grown up, and his readers have aged with him.

That much was vividly clear in the loyal midnight crowds who waited in their wizard finery outside bookshops until the witching hour, when the doors were flung open and the awaited volume was released to the thundering horde. Those once-upon-a-time children, who cowered with him in their imaginations in Privet Drive, are now marriageable adults.

I suspect William Hill (a lottery firm) is already shortening the odds on the emergence of not just a second epilogue, to follow the one given to us at the end of the last volume, but another whole cycle dealing with the life complications of the grown-up band of Hogwarts alumni. At two years short of 50, Ms Rowling is in her prime. Her attempts at other lines of fiction have not been entirely successful. Fifty years (at least) of Harry’s un-narrated life awaits, temptingly. And, with more than half of marriages failing in modern times, who knows what exciting things may happen.

......

My guess though is that Ms Rowling might give us another Potterian cycle and, who knows, there might be another Mrs Potter at the end of it all. The right Mrs Potter. Place your bets with Mr Hill now before the odds shorten.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. What did Rowling confide?

a. Prof. Dumbledore is gay

b. Quidditch was invented by her boyfriend.

c. Marital breakdowns would happen.

d. Ron would have trouble making Hermione happy.

2. What is the writer's conclusion?

a. There might be another epilogue, there might be another Mrs Potter.

b. There would be no new epilogue, not to mention Mrs Potter.

c. There will be another epilogue, but without a second Mrs Potter.

d. There will be a new Mrs Potter in later epilogue(s).

3. Why does the writer believe there would be another epilogue?

a. Lottery firm William Hill has shortened the odds.

b. HP series have mass number of loyal readers.

c. Children who read HP are now approaching marrying ages.

d. Just kidding.

4. Why does the writer believe there might be another Mrs Potter?

a. Children who read HP are now approaching marrying ages.

b. Fifty years (at least) of Harry’s un-narrated life awaits.

c. More than half of marriages fail in modern times.

d. Emma Watson thinks so.

[1] 答案c. Marital breakdowns would happen.

解释：第三段的第二句话：She predicts marital breakdowns. A只是怀疑Dumbledore, his creator now suspects, is gay。B魁地奇是罗琳在于男友争吵的时候想到的。D是艾玛·沃森的话。

[2] 答案a. There might be another epilogue, there might be another Mrs Potter.

解释：注意选项中对这两个事件的可能性的不同的分级。would be是语气较为肯定的，当然次于will be，而might be则不那么肯定了。总结自然是在最后一段。

[3] 答案b. HP series have mass number of loyal readers.

解释：当年那些从第一本《哈利波特》读起，想象着在壁橱里蜷缩着的哈利的孩子们，是与他差不多同龄的。也是与他一起长大的，因此"if Potter got you as a child, you are Pottered for life".

[4] 答案c. More than half of marriages fail in modern times.

解释：虽然作者带有戏谑口吻，但这确实是能够让那群忠实读者们理解和产生共鸣的基础。注意A对应的是哈利结婚而非再婚。