I’ve got a lot of wild, crazy theories about where the Dresden Files will end up, and what’s going on with each character.  Most don’t deserve to really be fleshed out and defended.  Some, I think, are interesting just in their own right.  A few are downright nuts.

This post is, in itself, kind of a ‘statement of belief’ about what I think Jim’s hidden behind the curtain – what was, and is, and will be.  I’m not going to go crazy into detail on any one thing here, at least not on the initial post.  If any of the below theories look interesting to you, or you want to ask me why on earth I think this thing, go ahead and ask.  If you think I’m flat out wrong, then point it out.  I want to temper my theory into something resilient, and that doesn’t happen without whacking something a ton with a hammer.

Plus, if I’m right about something, this’ll be my immortalized “I told ya so.”

So, without further ado, my theories.

•   Malcolm Dresden works in Chicago Between.  When he speaks about being “allowed” to contact Harry in Dead Beat, it’s Uriel who had allowed it.
•   Cowl and Kumori are Harry and Molly, from an original timeline in which Harry went down the left-hand path.  Harry’s habit of barely scraping through every major fight by the skin of his teeth is in part because he’s following Cowl’s path, roughly, and the Law of Conservation of History tends to save his bacon.
•   Mac is a former angel who chose to transubstantiate thousands of years ago.  Most likely, this was due to a love interest.
•   Andi suffered brain damage in Cold Days, and isn’t able to eat, walk, or take care of herself without assistance.
•   The Blackstaff is not, in fact, an actual role within the White Council.  Ebenezer simply allowed Harry to come to that conclusion and didn’t correct him.
•   Ebenezer is still lying to Harry.  He doesn’t have his best interests at heart.  I highly suspect that he is, in fact, Nemifected, and may be the original carrier of Nemesis from beyond the Outer Gates.  Furthermore, I doubt that there’s much difference, if any, between the Gray Council and the so-called “Black Council.”
•   The English-sounding bloke stuck in Demonreach is the original Merlin.  50% chance that Harry’s related to him.  30% chance that Merlin was the REAL target of the bloodline curse in Changes.
•   Donar Vadderung also is lying to Harry.  He has some use for him planned, something not at all nice. 
•   Harry will wield Amoracchius again, at least for a time, though he’d be a “one-off Knight” at most.
•   The one choice that the evil Harry in Mirror, Mirror made differently back around Bianca’s party was being straightforward with Susan and inviting her as his plus one, rather than Michael.

So, what I have is not a weird, wild conspiracy theory at all.  Rather, it’s just a bunch of suspicions and unanswered questions.  I’m throwing this out to you all to ponder.  With all of this information, I suspect that Harry was being prepared, though not yet specifically trained in necromancy.

Jim Butcher has stated several times that there’s a specific literary tool that is used to spoonfeed information to the reader, called the “joy of idiocy.”  Basically, what this means is that if something complex is happening in the book, there must be an idiot around to ask questions so that the reader can get all of his questions answered.  In the first several books, Murphy plays the idiot to Harry for common supernatural questions, and Harry plays the idiot to Bob about more complex questions.  And it’s pretty clear in the beginning that Harry doesn’t know much about the supernatural world around him.  Bob instructs Harry on the different types of werewolves, on the fact that there are multiple faerie queens (because remember, Dresden threatens Toot in Storm Front with the faerie queen, singular), on just about every potion, the Fallen, the differences between vampires…  pretty much everything complex that comes up.

This changes with Dead Beat.  In Dead Beat, Harry questions Bob about Kemmler.  However, Butters questions Harry a lot about necromancy – and Harry has answers.  Without hesitation, Harry is able to tell Butters about necromancers, zombies, drummers, the effect of stopping said drummer versus the effect of cutting the zombie off from the energy, why human spirits are only used in necromancy, the two variables (impression and age) which make a zombie or spirit strong, and much, much more.

In fact, Harry goes far more in-depth with Butters in Dead Beat about the mechanics of necromancy than he goes with Murphy about thaumaturgy in Storm Front.

How does he know all this?  All right, so it’s very possible that there might have been a necromancer as a villain-of-the-week between two of the earlier books.  That’s always possible… except that Dresden never really mentions it.  It would be the perfect time to mention an earlier baddie, and Jim had already made a point in several prior books to outright state that Harry does plenty of other stuff that we don’t see in the books.

So, that’s piece of evidence number one.  Piece of evidence number two is that Evil Bob recognizes the “true power” within Harry.  When Evil Bob (the separate entity, not the “original” Bob) speaks to Dresden in Ghost Story, he states that Dresden’s death would be the loss of potential, that Kemmler would be interested in Harry, and that Harry is perfectly suited to be a far better apprentice than Corpsetaker.  Grevaine, as well, sees the ability within Harry and offers him a partnership deal in Dead Beat.  Furthermore, Dead Beat mentions several times about Harry’s ‘taint;’ Grevaine ‘smells’ the True Magic on Harry, which is presumed to be Evil Bob’s attack.  However, Harry has always been somewhat tainted by black magic.  It’s implied that this is from Harry’s killing of Justin in a duel to the death, but it’s very possible that if Dresden was being taught by a necromancer, and learning the basics of necromancy, that some of this taint might come from dabbling in the basics of the art.

Remember, also – when Butters asks Harry if Grevaine is a wizard like Harry, his response is to snarl back, “He’s not like me.”  True, this could just point to Harry’s overall struggle to be a good person and doing the right thing.  But it could also be that he recognizes on a deeper level that he very much could have turned into a creature like Grevaine had his path been slightly different.

The third piece of evidence…  is that Harry is really, really good at necromancy.

I mean, it’s sort of universally acknowledged that the resurrection of Sue is pretty much a monumental masterpiece.  Dresden explains this by stating that he’s read Kemmler’s book.  However, I doubt that the book itself would have spent any time going over the basics of necromancy, something that the followers of Kemmler had devoted their life to studying.  Furthermore, while Lasciel could have taught Harry the forms of basic resurrection, what Harry does with Sue is neither a resurrection of a ghost or a resurrection of a zombie – he calls forth flesh made from ectoplasm to serve as living flesh.  Furthermore, even if Lasciel taught him everything here, it would mean that Harry pulled off, with no issue or error at all, an incredibly huge, difficult piece of magic in an art he had never before used, did not feel comfortable with, and until then had treated as evil, on his first try.  This goes from improbable to almost completely unbelievable.

Harry uses the excuse of Halloween as the reason for why he’s able to do said magic, and perhaps there’s some truth to this.  But Molly’s training shows us just how difficult it is to pick up a new discipline, especially one that you’re not familiar with.  In Skin Game, Harry is fairly confident that it would take Hannah some time to learn to open a Way back to Chicago.  With this in mind, combined with the knowledge that Harry has a very solid understanding of the mechanics behind zombies, spirits, and necromancy, plus the fact that two separate practitioners of necromancy clearly see the potential and ability within him, makes me think that it's extremely likely that his first tutor, the evil warlock and owner of Kemmler's trusted assistant, was likely including necromancy in the coursework.

Thoughts?

So, I was listening to the dulcet tones of James Marsters narrating White Night for the umpteenth time, when there was a particular line that stopped me in my tracks.  Quite frankly, it fairly overturned what I thought of as a hard-and-fast rule of the Dresden Files, and shook up my understanding of what Ways are and how they are formed – something that I thought was pretty simple to understand.  Is this a goof of Jim’s?

This passage happens in the fight in the Deeps; Marcone suggests that they leave the fight and escape to the Nevernever:

The gate was six feet away from me; we could pull up stakes, hop through, and close it behind us.  Gates to the spirit world paid absolutely no attention to trivial things like geography.  They obeyed laws of imagination, intention, pattern of thought.  Even if Cowl was back there, he wouldn’t be able to open a gate to the same place as mine because he didn’t think like me, feel like me, or share my intent or purpose.  White Night chapter 39

But… this doesn’t make sense, on several levels.  If two people opening a Way in the same place cannot open it to the same location – if, as suggested, the location it is opened to is somewhat reliant on the intent, purpose, and feelings of the individual – that would completely destroy some of the mechanics of travel in the Nevernever.  There would be no point in Dresden having Graver stake out the Way in Chicago during Turn Coat, for example, because there would not be a common path from one location to another.  There would be no point in Dresden advising Morgan what was on the other side of his storage bolthole in TC, either, because Morgan would undoubtedly open it to a different location than Dresden would.  In fact, Margaret’s gift to her son would be completely useless if this was the case; she gives exact directions through the Ways, down to the number of paces, which could not function well if there was some sort of ambiguity.  And that’s not to mention that it would be impossible for Harry and crew to follow the Fetches in Proven Guilty, or Agatha Hagglethorn in Grave Peril.  If Cowl couldn’t follow Harry by opening a closed gate, then Harry couldn’t follow the fetches for the same reason - he certainly didn’t have the same thoughts, feelings, intent, and purpose as the Fetches.

So why does Harry act as if he were to close his gate to the Nevernever, no one could open up a gate in the same location and follow?

I understand that Ways are fluid and don’t always stay the same, but Jim has always portrayed their locations as being anchored to their metaphysical resonance of the real world – i.e., a creepy-and-scary location in the real world might connect with a scary place in the Nevernever, and a creepy-and-sad location a few yards away connect to a sad place a hundred miles away in the Nevernever.  If the nature of the place changes – such as blasting into Marcone’s vault instead of breaking in, for example – the end point of the Way might change, but this is related to an actual change that happened to the nature of the location, not due to the perception of the person performing the ritual.  If Ways change naturally – and they do – they often change gradually, over years and decades.  Not immediately, because someone who thinks differently opened a Way.

It seems at first as if Dresden's quote in White Night is a goof… but this isn’t the only time that Jim communicates the idea that if a person steps into the Nevernever and closes the gate behind him, he can’t be followed.  In Turn Coat, Peabody’s escape ends with him ripping open a gate into the Nevernever, causing a significant injury to a Warden in order to delay Dresden, and jumping through.  Dresden follows Peabody before the gate closes thanks to Luccio’s intervention and tackles Peabody.  Instead of preparing to ambush Dresden with a lethal attack, Peabody had instead been wasting his time trying to close the gate.  Why waste the time he bought himself trying to close a door that could so quickly be opened again?  By messing with the gate, Peabody exposed a weakness and delayed his escape, which eventually led to his death.  Completely stupid, unless he knew that he couldn’t be followed if the Way was closed.

I know that Jim presents Ways in this exact same way in at least one other instance, but I can’t recall the source.

How do you all understand Ways to work?  Is this a goof of Jim’s, used for narrative convenience in this scene?  Or are Ways far more complex than the broad brushstrokes I’m painting them with?