Harry Potter is Standpipe Bridgeplate.
Ogged's scar is the final horcrux.
Something about economics.
Voldemort is a puppet. Becks is the puppetmaster.
Gary Farber already wrote the whole book on his blog.
5: but what will become of Le Show?
8: Le Show is now hosted by Ben w-lfs-n, a charming young DJ, known for playing only the greatest musical acts on Standford's KZSU.
We see from 10 that the seventh book truly is fantastical, and yet (as we see from 11) still grounded in a recognizable reality.
The muggles relieve Harry of his wand and credit cards.
Ron, snapes and voltamort die in the final book
The plot of the book is, literally, wizard cocksucker.
At the end of book seven, the iPhone is revealed to be a fairly useful, reasonably cool first generation phone that was never scarce enough to actually have to line up for.
Who is to Harry Potter as Flashman is to Tom Brown?
b-wo becomes a [big][big][big]BIG[/big][/big][/big] little bitch.
[/yoyo]
Voldemort dances for Weiner.
Why doesn't Weiner comment anymore? This should be the thread for indiscretions of all sorts.
This is clearly the best Unfogged Harry-fucking-Potter thread. I don't really get 22, but just the "[/yoyo]" part was funny.
At the end of book seven you learn it wasn't really a book at all!
At the end, the lights come up to reveal Harry in bed next to Suzanne Pleshette. He tries to tell her about his amaaaaaaaazing experience; she listens in a sweet but uninvolved way and then tells him to go back to sleep. The audience loves it.
Professor Umbrage saves the day; it turns out that Dumbledore really *was* a bumbling idiot, and all this Voldemort stuff was just Harry's schizophrenia.
Impressive display of chaff.
I'm assuming someone here is actually going to read this, and then comment?
Suzanne Pleshette was before my time.
Just as J.K. Rowling is "the richest woman in England," John Emerson is "the richest blogger in his corner of the Dakotas."
Actually, that's probably P Z Myers.
Now here's a nice house in P. Z.'s neighborhood for less than $30,000.
Ron strangles Harry with Draco's intestines, muttering something about "Filthy bourgeois... confine me to the quotidian, will you? ... I'll show you who's thrown into existence ..."
Well, I've just finished it - anyone else?
Had finished it earlier. I think I could have done without the extended Snape flashback sequence.
It was a bit long, but I suppose it had to show that Snape was so devoted to Lily and thus why he was so prepared to do all this for Harry. And it was good to have all the good Snape/bad Snape problem cleared up in a (mostly) convincing fashion.
Hey, I'm just starting. Wait a few days.
I am the richest person in my chair.
If someone could come up with a spoiler so awesome that John was compelled to read all of Harry Potter from start to finish, then Unfogged's work would be done.
The climactic battle for Hogwarts should have been obvious, but that didn't stop it from being totally satisfying.
I'd been a little aggravated before by the passiveness of Harry and the gang in the plots before - spending time sitting around waiting, not knowing what to do. Somehow I made my peace with it last night - it can be aggravating, but it's part of what makes the characters so much more real, rather than having this incredible, single-minded devotion to the quest.
Maybe I'm making this up, but it seemed like there was more conscious mythologizing in this last one, that felt a little tacked on - the Hallows really go back a long time, where most of the other stories they've had to discover were just what happened during the previous generation.
Another thing that jumped out at me was Mrs. Weasley vs. Bellatrix - I was wincing a little bit at the continued super-protective-mother-ness of it, but it felt like the most honest and powerful use of the word 'bitch' that I've seen. Awesome in a different way: "Merlin's saggy left..."
I liked the not-perfect Dumbledore - really I think the most simplistic and onesided important character out there is Lily?
The series thus far is nothing more than a lengthy protreptic concerning the perils of relationships, and in the last novel's final 600 pages, Harry delivers a rousing speech explaining his No-Relationship Policy in detail. All the wizards at Hogwarts are converted, and the book ends with many individual exoduses.
I love your blog's banner image, oztk.
I would take credit, but I had nothing to do with it.
Maybe I missed it, but why did they keep saving Draco? His mother turned and helped Harry (although for selfish reasons), but prior to that they rescued him twice when he was still trying to kill them. And in the epilogue, they're at peace with each other, but had he redeemed himself at any point?
but had he redeemed himself at any point?
Wait, there's redemption in Harry Potter?
Shit.
Harry, Hermione, Ron, the Weasleys and others decide, what the hell, let's leave for America. American quota systems for Jewish, sorry Wizarding, refugees turn away a lot of ordinary wizards, but Hermione gets invited to help make sorcerous weapons of mass destruction while Harry and Ron try to go write scripts in Hollywood while also writing critical theory complaining about how inert the American wizardling class really is and how decadent Americans are. In the meantime, lots of mudbloods get killed. The end.
51 though has a point. I was really thinking that Draco was going to payoff in plot terms, and really the only good thing he does is, well, I dunno? Nothing?
Well, maybe it's showing that for all of Draco's bluster he's really just a nobody. He and his family get dumped by both sides and in the end are pretty much insignificant.
On a non plot note, did anyone go to the Harvard yard party last night? There were several bands, the later ones were decent, but the first one was just about the worst thing I'd ever seen- some 8 year olds (the Hungarian Horntails) that they let do a 40 minute set of basically screeching and yelling. I figured if they were going to let some kids on stage they'd either do a couple bad songs (oh, how cute) then kick them off, or they'd actually be talented. But, then I searched for them, and apparently they tour and people pay to hear them- boggle. And I know there's nothing people here like more than making fun of 8 year olds.
that was great. you thought snape's flashback was too long?! i thought it wasn't nearly enough motivation for us to believe how deeply he was in love with lily to keep doing the things he kept doing. it felt somewhat tacked on. but i was pretty satisfied overall. the hogwarts battle was AWESOME.
question: how does the sword get away from griphook into neville's hands in hogwarts?
Voldemart is a chain of stores: finally a way to turn a profit from magic.
how does the sword get away from griphook into neville's hands in hogwarts?
This, and how can Harry be sure that the Elder Wand's power will die with him as long as he dies peacefully? After all, the power got transferred from Draco to HP with a simple Expelliarmus spell, didn't it? Or do I need to go back and re-read Book 6?
how does the sword get away from griphook into neville's hands in hogwarts?
This, and how can Harry be sure that the Elder Wand's power will die with him as long as he dies peacefully? After all, the power got transferred from Draco to HP with a simple Expelliarmus spell, didn't it? Or do I need to go back and re-read Book 6?
Snape loving Lily is one of the things that already seemed pretty clear from the previous books. The only plot-critical information in that long series of flashbacks was that Dumbledore had told Snape that Harry had to let himself be killed by Voldemort; from that scene alone, just two pages, we would have learned that Snape was expected to kill Dumbledore, that Snape's patronus was a doe, and had explicit confirmation that Snape loved Lily and always had. That would have been plenty.
Seeing Snape and Lily grow up together was nice, but I think unnecessary, and slowed the book at a time when it shouldn't have been slowed. As you say - it felt tacked on.
Dumbledore tells Snape in the flashback that the sword must be taken under conditions of need and valor. Griphook's last minute betrayal doesn't really look like either. Presumably, the sword either found its own way to the hat, or used the hat to arrive in answer to Neville's valorous need.
The Hogwarts battle was very good.
Harry can't be sure of the Elder Wand until death - presumably he means to die undefeated, and expects conflict to die down after the death of Voldemort.
Or do I need to go back and re-read Book 6?
Everybody says you have to go back and reread book 6. Duh.
Now see. If Rowling had just put out her books in installments, like in magazines or journals, we might have something collectible on our hands.
(/asshole)
Now that it's over and so totally played, I'll probably get into it.
Now see. If Rowling had just put out her books in installments, like in magazines or journals, we might have something collectible on our hands.
There are actually EXTREMELY expensive deluxe editions of the HP books. An antiquarian bookstore that was selling books on consignment at one of the stores my mom buys for had a then-current set, not out in the store on display, but back in the vault, with the really rare/spendy stuff (like a first ed. of one of Freud's early works, with an inscription by Sigmund to one of his patients).
Now that it's over and so totally played, I'll probably get into it.
Me too. I've found that you can save dozens of dollars just by waiting a couple of decades in situations like this.
There are actually EXTREMELY expensive deluxe editions of the HP books.
Oh, hey, Ben.
Yes, I know that. Did you know that an early edition of Curious George recently sold for $19,000? I found that fascinating in its way.
Woot! Finished! Very satisfying, especially the humanization of Dumbledore. The epilogue however, was entirely gratuitous.
Done! Required an epic 12:30am-5:30am shift though.
Not only was the epilogue gratuitous, it also is wrong. Harry Potter should end up as the teacher of defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts. The whole series was building towards it. It's a bit sad that otherwise the book matched all the obvious predictions except this one, which I thought was the best of all of them.
I liked the length of the Snape memories sequence - liked that it was frustrating to read because I wanted to get back and know what was happening, thought that just emphasised its importance. And no, I didn't before think that Snape was so deeply in love with Lily that he would spend years endangering himself for her son.
Harry got the sword from the Sorting Hat in Chamber of Secrets didn't he? So the Hat gave Neville the sword because he needed it.
I guess Draco had to be alive by the end for Narcissa to lie to Voldemort about Harry being dead after he'd told her Draco was still alive and in the castle.
And the epilogue - though completely cheesy - was quite a good way of saying, "See, no more Harry Potter books!" I thought. He settles down into boring domesticity - nothing more to see, move along please.
But Harry never wanted to be the DADA teacher, so why make him be it? Although I would have liked to know what he did end up doing.
I started it last night but fell asleep after three pages.
How does it end?
Oddly, the Harry Potter books seem to be the one setting, real or fictional, in which the Unfoggedatchiks do not deplore loving somebody who doesn't love you back. If it were a Modern Love piece, we'd all be cutting Snape a new airhole.
I didnt realize that people were writing new Harry Potter endings and plots.
My head must be in the sand.
The ending got a little Christian for me. Not in the sense that it was poorly done; more in the sense that it left me a little cold for the same reasons I'm no longer Christian.
She certainly made Dumbledore into an ambiguous figure--and I don't primarily mean the stuff with his family & Grindlewald. I mean the ridiculous amount of secrecy & manipulation, to the very end. At the end of the big Snape chapter I briefly hated his, and Rowling's guts. And the fact that he is not, in fact, certain the Harry will die didn't totally get rid of it. It all works out just so perfectly, doesn't it? Just as he foresaw. Oy.
The redemption of Snape & the Malfoys was very well done, very convincing.
The epilogue was terrible. A few "where are they now" sentences about each character would have been preferable...Her general approach, which makes sense for a children's book w/ an adult audience, is to pick off members of that middle generation one by one & leave the younger one relatively unscathed. The only question seemed to be whether they had a meaningful heroic death, or one which was given rather less significance than the Passion of Dobby. For some reason I thought we were going to learn more details about the first war w/ Voldemort than we ever actually did.
Also: why establish that Harry identifies with Teddy, make Harry his godfather, kill of both of his parents in battle w/ Voldemort, & then write a cheesy epilogue that makes clear that Harry didn't raise him & doesn't make clear who did?
For all this kvetching, it was very good over all.
The epilogue however, was entirely gratuitous.
Ever since I had heard that Rowling had created an "X years later" chapter while she was writing book one (!), I have longed to read it. So many questions: what do Hermione, Ron, and Harry do for their living? Do any of them become Aurors? Does George become a industrial titan on the scale of Bertie Botts? Is McGonagall headmaster of Hogworts? How high does Mr. Weasley rise in the ministry under the new regime? Does Neville marry? Does Luna?
In the event, none of this gets answered. Feh. Also, as someone pointed out, a kid named "Albus Severus" is going to get the tar beaten out of him.
especially the humanization of Dumbledore
One of the slate critics doing the HP book club feature wrote that "Rowling is less interested in exploring moral complexity than some of her fellow fantasy writers, such as T.H. White, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Philip Pullman." (my emphasis) Conclusion -- this person is a grade-A nimrod.
baa makes another good point about the epilogue: it resolves only the questions about which there was least doubt.
The epilogue however, was entirely gratuitous.
I really don't understand why people say this. Badly written, full of extraneous idiocy and plotholes you could drive a truck through, unsatisfying, cloying, etc etc, but gratuitous? She executed it very poorly, but ending it with Harry surrounded by his own family, sending his kids off to Hogwarts seems to me like where and how the serious absolutely had to end, given where it started.
A much more important question from earlier in the book- if Ron hadn't interrupted them, what exactly was Harry's birthday present from Ginny going to be?
81: Memorable.
Probably covered in "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches", in one of the non-wandwork sections.
The redemption of Snape & the Malfoys was very well done, very convincing.
Snape, yes. I liked the Lily thing, and he did do noble service for the good guys in this one - as awful as Hogwarts must have been this year, it would have been insanely worse without him as head.
But the Malfoys, and Slytherins as a whole, are more subtle, I think. They Malfoys are undoubtedly all made human, and not completely evil, but the only place this seems to translate into a positive action for the good guys is Narcissa's lying that Harry is dead.
They rescue Draco multiple times just because that's what the good guys do. They're never out to kill any of the death-eaters, really - even at the very end, it deserves special mention that Mrs. Weasley and Bellatrix are fighting to the death. I'm struggling to think of any other time in the series that a good-guy kills another person. Even Voldemort kills himself, and Harry's struggling for the remnants of his soul right up until he does it. They're despicable, but human, and you just don't kill humans.
Although I didn't like the epilogue (and I haven't actually finished the book, and I don't think I will right now, but I've been kind of skipping around--I'll finish the book when I've finished being sad that the series is over and sad that Snape, the meanest, snippiest, most Frower-like character, has such a cheesey heteronormative motivation...)
But anyway, I did kind of like the ordinariness of the epilogue and the way it so clearly hands things off to the next generation in such an ordinary way. Partly because it reminds me of Wilhelm Meister, not of course in any literary sense but in the idea that you go and have your (guided) adventures and once you've had them you're a grown-up and you've found your place in society, and that this is one of the big goals; that adventure doesn't continue forever, that it can't continue forever. Also that the ordinary appeals to me as sort of the most utopian part, like in The Dispossessed. The most utopian parts of that are just the ordinariness of life as an ordinary person on Anarres--that the goal isn't an exciting! society! with excitement! but a society where people make their own lives.
Although I will add that this whole "ooh, she wrote the epilogue while writing book one" thing is a bit over-rated--that type of epilogue could be written for any middle-of-the-road kids' book. "They all lived happily ever after in unspecified heteronoramtive middle-classitude."
Also, these wizards have a LOT of kids, and they have 'em way young. Jesus, I wouldn't want to be Ginny.
83: yeah, more like the redemption of Snape & the giving of lextremely imited redeeming qualities to the Malfoys.
In addition to Narcissa, Draco bought them some time earlier. But it wasn't much.
Also, these wizards have a LOT of kids, and they have 'em way young.
Three's not a lot! But I guess Ginny and Harry must have been about 23 and 24 when they had James (and likewise Ron & Hermione). No one ever mentions magic university though - the older Weasley boys leave school and go straight out to work - so they must be a bit more grown up than their Muggle age-peers.
Jesus, I wouldn't want to be Ginny
Frowner, you're in the minority.
makes clear that Harry didn't raise him & doesn't make clear who did?
Yeah, some godfather Harry turned out to be.
makes clear that Harry didn't raise him & doesn't make clear who did?
I can't see Mr. and Mrs. Weasley letting a 17 year old Harry raise Teddy. And I thought it was pretty clear Harry was close to him.
1. I agree with folks irritated that Ginny Weasley has such an off-stage role in this book. Basically for most of the series, she's been a bit player with one major storyline early on, limited in her interactions with Harry, etc--this would have been a good book to give her some more on-stage presence and a character that goes beyond, "has a crush on Harry".
2. The epilogue was ok, it didn't bother me so much. I think it's clear that if Rowling feels like it, she can completely write a whole new series of Harry Potter books. Either featuring Harry et al as adults OR featuring the younger generation of Potters, Weasleys, etcetera. Given that this series has revolved largely around facism (notice the date of Grindelwald's duel with Dumbledore? English coming to the rescue of the continent? etc.) Rowling could even take up the meta-theme of terrorism in a Wizarding world more than she does here. (There's a bit of it with the attacks on Muggles, etc.) I'm kind of hoping she doesn't do that, but if she wants to, she's left herself unlimited room to do so.
3. I think Snape's love for Lily is more than just a lost love kind of thing--Lily for Snape is also basically a metonym for being a caring, loving person. Remember that what she dislikes about him is that he goes along with the bullies in Slytherin. In a way, both Snape and Dumbledore are doing what they're doing in life because they're trying to overcome various temptations. For Dumbledore, Hogwarts is enough (mostly) to keep him away from chasing power; for Snape, remembering Lily is enough to caution him to avoid the descent into darkness.
I assumed Teddy was raised by Tonk's mother- when Tonks shows up to fight she says that's where she's left the kid.
They say in Harry Potter
There's two sides at Hogwarts,
You'll either be a Gryffindor,
Or a thug for Voldemort.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
I'm still trying to decide how much the epilogue bothers me. Throughout the books, the internal (psychological) struggle against evil has been at least as much a part of the battle as the external one. The internal seems quite gone in the epilogue. Now, maybe that's part of what it means to become a well-adjusted adult, or maybe once you've accepted death the way Harry does, that struggle is much less important, or maybe it'll just be a long time before any wizards are tempted by the Dark Arts. Dunno.
maybe that's part of what it means to become a well-adjusted adult . . . Dunno.
A sad admission, my friend.
I think the reference to her writing the last chapter at the same time she did book 1 was referring to "The Flaw in the Plan," Voldemort's death, not the epilogue.
94: I'm still trying to decide how much the epilogue bothers me. Throughout the books, the internal (psychological) struggle against evil has been at least as much a part of the battle as the external one.
Well, what about Harry's internal struggle with not being a reactionary asshole about the Slytherins? And Ron's, too, the "we'll disinherit you if you aren't in Gryffindor" and "you can't marry a Pureblood or your grandfather will flip" comments. Even Harry's confession of almost-being-a-Slytherin to his son, which is basically a way of outting himself, is done really quietly.
Rowling did a pretty bad job of humanizing and redeeming Slytherin as a whole, but the epilogue still seems to be taking that redemption as given and making the point that, y'know, prejudice is bad, mmm'kay? and that even the "good guys" in Harry's generation is still working on it.
85: In addition to Narcissa, Draco bought them some time earlier. But it wasn't much.
Yeah. I've gotten the impression that she meant to redeem the Slytherins as a whole a lot more than she actually did; either it got cut or she just never got around to it or something.
You know, if Rowling *did* write more, it would be a very interesting thing if it was about a bunch of Slytherins in the younger Potter's generation. Maybe about how sometimes you have to have a bit of the will-to-power in order to do the right thing? I dunno.
In the event, none of this gets answered. Feh.
That was pretty much my reaction to the epilogue, too. As frustrating as I've found the last several books (even while there was a lot I enjoyed about them), the it still felt like a real letdown. Either really tell us how stuff turns out for all sorts of characters, or don't bother.
I agree with folks irritated that Ginny Weasley has such an off-stage role in this book.
And not just Ginny! Really, the other big letdown? Rowling seemingly thinking that, rather than letting us see more of Ginny, Neville, Fred and George, Luna Lovegood, just to mention a few, it would be a better idea to have Ron, Harry, and Hermione--or just the latter two--sit around in a tent and bicker for what seemed like hundreds of pages.
She didn't get nearly enough out of Fred's death, in my opinion, to make it worthwhile killing him. George losing an ear was done much better, and the two as a team always had so much to offer that it seems to me it would have been better to give them a great scene (like they had leaving Hogwarts in book 6) and either kill them both or let both live.
It'd be fabulous if, someday, they published Rowling's notes, drafts and re-writes that she made throughout the series.
I can't decide if I'm dissatisfied with the book's ending or if I'm just flat out depressed that it's over and done with.
What with the pitiful wails of my children as I neglected them, it took me a bit longer to finish than it might of.
1) Was that crying abandoned child thing in King's Cross supposed to be Voldemort's soul or a hunk thereof?
2) I think its perfectly alright that the scion of Lupin gets raised by wolves or by his grandma. I also think its cool that it doesn't matter if he's a werewolf or if the AZT worked or whatever.
3) Weird part is that in the end Snape doesn't end up killing the snake or saving Harry. He just dies. I thought that was a good touch, although I was creeped out by the idea that Dumbledore knew that Snape killingh him was neccesary not just to cement Snape in his cover but to keep Voldemort from controlling the wand. Dumbledore's manipulation of people as revealed in the book creeped me out in general.
4) Was the escort of dead people (sirius etc) to the last duel unconvincing to anyone else?
5) Does this get an "R" rating for "Bitch"? That was a cathartic moment. Molly was a Prewett, if I recall, and her relatives were killed by deatheaters. Was Bellatrix part of that?
6) Only part of the epilogue that bothered me was not knowing what happened to Umbridge. I thought Rowling was playing with a lot of stuff about the banality of evil there. I'd have put a bet on Percy fulfilling that role, but Umbridge was perfect for it.
7) Its unclear to me that the Malfoys were redeemed. But I think maybe Narcissa is, and perhaps then, so are they all. Draco staying behind to catch Potter is really not that different than Lovegood's actions. Except that Draco is putting his hand on the stove again thinking that currying favor with Voldemort will actually help, despite being all to aware that this isn't really going to do more than bring immediate relief. Given that Draco was the conqueror of the wand, I wonder if there was a draft with a bigger role for him here somehow.
8) I thought it was cool that Neville was like Clark Gable by the end and that he in fact fulfilled a part of the prophesy.
I agree with folks irritated that Ginny Weasley has such an off-stage role in this book.
Not just Ginny -- what was with Tonks becoming a stay-at-home mom, only showing up at the fight when she was worried about Lupin and needed to die for plot purposes? And Hermione crying every third chapter? And Fleur, Tri-Wizard contestant or whatever she was, doing nothing but cooking? Narcissa seemed like the only female character with any agency, and even she was motivated only by the mothering instinct.
Other than that, and the superlame epilogue, good stuff. The scene in Luna's bedroom and her father's betrayal -- did anybody else find that unexpected and really affecting?
Remember that one Xander episode where he's running around with some dead jocks while Buffy, Giles, et al. are saving the world in the background? If only Rowling had taken that tack and written the book about Ginny, Luna, and Neville resisting Snape in Hogwarts. I didn't need to be in the tent with Harry and Hermione to know that they were on the lamb, waiting for inspiration to strike.
I'm now pissed off with my idiot husband. We took him to town with us on Friday night - I assumed he would take some photos of the kids dressed up seeing as his camera is constantly attached to him, and he didn't. What a moron. When I expressed surprise last night that this was the best he'd managed (you can kind of see the top of the R for Ron), he started making lame excuses like, "No one asked me to" and "They didn't stand still". Fuckwit.
I didn't need to be in the tent with Harry and Hermione to know that they were on the lamb, waiting for inspiration to strike.
Wow, it sounds like book 7 is a little kinkier than the other six.
My daddy was a muggle,
And I'm a muggle's son,
So I'm with Harry Potter,
Hermione and Ron.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
1) Although it's never explicitly mentioned, Harry and Voldemort are related, it turned out. Harry was the last of the Ignotus Peverell line, and Voldemort was descended from the Peverell brother who had the resurrection stone. But Sirius had said in book 5 that pretty much all old wizard families are related.
2) Harry and the others couldn't become professors in the epilogue because none of the professors have kids.
3) The little whiny thing when Harry's in limbo is what you become when you're just a piece of a soul and you die- that's why Harry says later to Voldemort something to the effect of, "I've seen what you become."
107: Well, it does have Aberforth in it.
And there has to be pent up demand for "My last year at School, by Neville Longbottom."
4) Interesting on Petunia- she resents the magic world because it took away her sister and she couldn't go. She and Dudley were pretty abruptly dropped, though- I thought they'd appear again later. Hadn't there been a rumor about someone doing magic for the first time later in life?
5) I wasn't clear on the "try to show remorse" line, but I think it's Harry (and Dumbledore by extension) trying to save Voldemort one last time. He's seen what you become when you die as a fragmented soul, and it's mentioned earlier that the only way to reverse a Horcrux is to show remorse for the killing that formed it. If Voldemort could show remorse, he'd become whole again, although I don't know if that works once the Horcrux is already destroyed.
What with the pitiful wails of my children as I neglected them
Indeed, now I know what it's like in families where the parents are on meth.
17: Harry Potter... is PEOPLE!
Not quite, Sifu.
http://drpaisley.livejournal.com/5701.html
Realize that I've read half of the first book and that was several years ago and in fact most of what I know about HP comes from Unfogged threads. That said, is it possible that Harry's not becoming Professor of Whatever at Hogwarts is a choice by Harry to break the obvious cycle of "fate" that's led so many people to get manipulated to death by one force or another? Hogwarts and the whole magical mirror-face of society in which wizards/etc. travel would be - and obviously is - a tremendously seductive place in which to lose one's self and complete devotion to it as the center of creation seems to get a lot of people a hole in the ground to call their very own. I'm wondering if Harry makes a conscious choice to eschew so-called destiny and whether Rowling means that as a metaphor for one of those great, difficult steps into adulthood: realizing that school memories needn't possess or motivate one for the rest of one's life. We all know that high school jock who shows up at the 10-year reunion with seven kids, three ex-wives and a beer gut that precedes his own entrance by five minutes and does nothing but tell stories about The Big Game and no one wants to be that guy.
It's a nice theory, but unsupported. The only thing we see of Harry after 19 years is him sending his kids off to... Hogwarts.
The most we can say about his career is that he is not teaching there in that year nor was in the year immediately preceding; we have no idea of whether he has in the past, or will again, or in fact any idea whatsoever of what he is or has been doing in all that time, beyond marrying Ginny, fathering children, and having his godson over to dinner four nights a week.
That isn't inconsistent with Rowling thinking that a wider and better life lies outside school and its memories, but it doesn't exactly support it either.
If anything, it seems from crowd reaction that Harry is quite famous. Perhaps he's done great things since, but the parsimonious explanation is that everyone else, at least, still remembers the stories about The Big Game against You-Know-Who.
The scene in Luna's bedroom and her father's betrayal -- did anybody else find that unexpected and really affecting?
The paintings in Luna's bedroom were great--one reason why I'm annoyed that, if Rowling understood that, why she couldn't have given us more of it (and yes, getting to or showing us Hogwarts under Snape would have been a good way to do it.) Her father's betrayal was somewhat affecting, but needed a bit more or a follow-up.
I thought the epilogue was sweet. Contrary to the "oh, Potter's wanting to be a hero and show off" attitude that his enemies had, Harry really *does* just want quiet family life -- the kind he never fucking had as a kid himself. Sorry that's not exciting, but the guy's had enough excitement for a lifetime.
And I thought she finessed Voldemort's death pretty well -- I'd been looking for Harry to cripple, but not kill, Voldemort, b/c it was too awful to see Harry as a killer of anybody. Effectively, however, Voldemort killed himself, in sheer rage at being outthought.
Generally quite satisfied, which I didn't expect to be -- Rowling's plotting continues to be her strongest quality.
90.2: I hadn't thought of the date of the Dumbledore/Grindenwald duel, no.* But that reminds me of something I read years ago, which I was amused to see offhand confirmation of in this book. Based on an offhand clue in book 2**, some Web page somewhere figured out that Harry Potter was set pretty firmly in the 1990s, and I liked to see recognition of that in the dates on the graves in Godric's Hollow. Therefore, whatever parallel may exist between wizarding history and the real world is a loose relation, unless Northern Ireland flared up in 1997 or something.
102.1: That's what I thought, yes.
109.1: I thought the name Peverell had some connection to Voldemort, but when they made the connection to Lily explicit, I assumed I had just remembered wrong. Thanks.
109.2: Well, not that we know of. We never learn much about any of the professors, except for Dumbledore himself, and even that only very late. But that's just nitpicking; I agree with you that if any of the three main characters had become professors, we should/would have got some sign of it.
* That reminds me, any German speakers out here? What does "Grindenwald" mean? It has to mean something. Fleur Delacour "is flower of the heart" or "flower of the court," depending on how you misspell it. Viktor Krum is "twisted winner," I seem to remember looking up once. And so on.
** It is stated that Nearly Headless Nick was celebrating his 500th deathday party. It is also stated that he died in the same year (same day, maybe? I don't remember) that Columbus discovered America. Ergo, Chamber of Secrets was set in the 1992-1993 school year, and the book we just finished reading ended in the spring or early summer of 1998. Voldemort died never having seen an iPod or a blog, the poor bastard. That may seem like a trivial detail, but I was amused to read that Harry Potter would be about two years older than me.
It's Grindelwald, haven't noticed any particular meaning. Grindel = standard, wald = forest. Grindelwald is also a resort villiage in Switzerland.
Ah, so Voldemort did get to vote for Tony Blair. Or would it have been against?
what was with Tonks becoming a stay-at-home mom, only showing up at the fight when she was worried about Lupin and needed to die for plot purposes
I was reading this not as Tonks going all at-home-mom, but just having been out of commission for a bit what with being very pregnant, very recently post-partum.
I was reading this not as Tonks going all at-home-mom, but just having been out of commission for a bit what with being very pregnant, very recently post-partum.
I thought it was striking that Harry goes off on Lupin for wanting to run around and be a hero, instead of staying home with wife and son and working through his issues.
117: My problem with the epilogue is more one of focus than of what actually occurred--the intersection between the set of questions it answered and the set of questions I wanted answered was essentially nil.
I mean, it would be entirely in character for Harry to retire on Sirius's inheritance and become a stay-at-home dad, but if that's what Rowling intended I'd have liked for her to bloody well say so.
the intersection between the set of questions it answered and the set of questions I wanted answered was essentially nil.
Precisely. To pick one, what about George? One half of arguably the comical heart of the series, he came out of it all as damaged as anyone I can think of, having lost his ear and his identical twin and partner. What's his life like?
That Harry settled down to bourgeois domesticity I would have taken for granted. He always wanted it, as Rowling made perfectly clear all along. It's whatever else he might be doing that would have been interesting to know.
Did anyone notice that the spoilers linked in the enquirer article last week were total crap? There were somewhat correct chapter summaries for the first half of the book, but the "big" spoilers were totally wrong.
You mean the spoilers linked here?
I was wondering why nobody got upset that Ron died.
Right- the chapter summaries are reasonable (but actually don't reveal specifics) but the top spoilers-
1- wrong
2- right
3- wrong
4- right
5- right
6- wrong
7- half
8- wrong
9- wrong
10- right
11- wrong
12- wrong
13- wrong
14- right
15- right
16- wrong
17- half
18-26- all wrong
I've done enough carping (for now); in the end, I've no reason to be surprised I found book seven, like books four through six before it, an overlong, sometimes maddening story redeemed by some affecting touches and strong scenes.
in retrospect it of course makes absolutely no sense that 17 year old Harry would start raising Lupin's kid. I was just pissed off about the epilogue in general & the narrative fate of basically every character of that generation except Snape. (not only in the literal sense of they all died, but that they all basically peaked in book 3/4.)
they all basically peaked in book 3/4.
I got hooked on the series when Azkaban came out, making this fact even more annoying in my case.
I have not had time to digest it (finished it at 2 am, fell asleep promptly thereafter, dreamt of duelling Voldemort all night long--ugh)---but the part that I thought was sticky and annoying was not the Snape interlude (I always liked Snape) but the Dumbledore Kings Crossing interlude---all his blathering on about blood and charms and doubling of the tie felt confusing and redundant. I did think it was interesting that this happened at Kings Crossing--a significant Muggle landmark that Dumbledore is ignorantly charmed by. I was always dissappointed that there wasn't more development of the wizarding muggle relationship----the stuff about the international secrecy bit, Arianna being tortured, Hermione worrying about her parents, integrating Squibs with Muggles, etc, all hint at a lot of neat stuff that should have been explored. I was pleased she finally acknowledged WWII *some way*.
Re the role or women: I thought it was interesting that while Hermione cried a lot in this book, the crying never stopper her from doing something she needed to do, nor did she ever truly screw up extremely badly--nothing like Harry saying Voldemort's name and getting Snatched. If Rowling has a moral lesson in here beyond the obvious, I think it's that losing one's temper is bad but being upset is not---Harry repeatedly screws up when he lets his temper get th best of him, but not when he's merely grieving and unhappy. I also thought it was interesting what a visceral sense I got--almost an umcfortable reminder--of how difficult housework and hosting is. First at the Burrow and then at Fleur's cottage, Harry is acutely aware of how hard all this is on the housewives, and how much they are contributing to the cause.
I think one of the issues in the books as a whole that has struck me was "What the heck does Hermione see in Ron?" and I sort of think that in some ways she had to take a back seat in this one for Ron to occupy some of the narrative space she'd been in. So Ron figures out to go to the chamber, Ron feels compassion for the downtrodden, etc. But I thought this was done somewhat at her expense.
There were some nice moments in their dialogue "Always the surprised tone." But I still think she didn't get the props she should have. Also she was cast, once again, in the Cassandra role -- "Harry don't think about the Hallows, remember the Horcruxes..." "Harry, try to block out his thoughts" etc. It made her into a bit of a nag.
I kinda liked the epilogue. It went on too long, and there were too many new characters named after old dead characters, which was confusing, but overall it was satisfying and necessary. It finally gave Harry a chance to forgive Draco and to thank Snape, and the Albus Severus talk was rather touching.
It also made sense in a way that the narrative tone in the epilogue was suddenly distant. The HP series really was about the glories of growing up, and it wouldn't have been the same if HP had been a man, rather than a boy. So now that he's grown up, he's watching his sons go off to face challenges and dramas of their own, and his days of heroics are over.
130: me too.
131: agreed--the Dumbledore interlude was weaker, was the second of the two, and doing the Dumbledore-explains-it-all thing yet again seemed like cheating.
For that matter, why did there have to be two dramatic final showdowns with Harry & Voldemort right in a row? Why not have someone else kill Voldemort in a rage after he appears to kill Harry? That stuff about the blood & the true master of the wand was wordy & sort of killed the tension.
It's funny--I think the cliffhangers in book 4 and book 6 are the best in the series, so I suppose it's not surprising that I found 5 & 7 the most disappointing books.
Just finished about 15 minutes ago. It wasn't my favorite book overall. I'm a little annoyed that the conventional wisdom (Snape is good, Harry's scar is a Horcrux) was right on both counts.
I really liked getting the Dumbledore backstory through various points of view, especially when Aberforth told his version.
Most annoying bit: Why did Voldemort think that he was the only one who knew about the Room of Requirement, given the centuries of stuff that was already in there? As Ron said, "And he never realized that anyone could get in?"
Why did Voldemort think that he was the only one who knew about the Room of Requirement, given the centuries of stuff that was already in there?
I think all the stuff was in there only because Harry et al needed it to be when they went in. Otherwise my impression was that the room only contained what each individual required at the time.
Thoughts from the morning after finishing Deathly Hallows:
Given the tendency of wizards to lose their wands during battle, why didn't Ollivander make wands with wrist straps, like on the Wii remote?
My favorite bit of the book: the painting on Luna's ceiling.
136: Well, when he went to hide his incriminating Potions book in Half-Blood Prince, he found a massive room full of hidden stuff. That's how he recognized the diadem in the first place. Maybe Tom Riddle assumed all that hidden stuff had been put there years before he found it, maybe even put there legitimately, but the room hadn't been used recently. Or maybe the room was large and empty (maybe small and empty) when he found it, and those mountains of junk and contraband were put there between his applying for the job and Harry's use of the room. It's hard to say which is less likely, so it probably was dumb of Voldemort.
On the other hand, as hiding places go, it actually wasn't that bad a place. Harry had to be told by a house-elf. Malfoy knew about it, but he spent all his fifth year trying to find Dumbledore's Army, while they worked in there. Dumbledore thought the room of requirement was just a bathroom. Most of the students who hid stuff there over the years probably never knew the rules to make it appear, and most people who made it appear for other reasons probably never knew it could be used like that as well.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure in the previous books Rowling referred to the various objects hidden in the Room of Requirement as belonging to generations of Hogwarts students. It should have been pretty obvious that since people had used it before, they'd likely use it again, and that the absence of any other protection might mean it could be discovered. Sure, with all the clutter it would be easy to miss, and most people wouldn't recognize it, let alone be looking for it. But Voldemort never considered that a Ravensclaw student might need to hide something and find the room? They'd know what the diadem looked like, after all--and the lost treasure of a House founder wouldn't be something to pass up. We know from Ravensclaw's daughter that people at the school were looking for it, after all. It's all pretty implausible, resting as it does on the reader accepting that Voldemort thinks so highly of himself that he believes no one can find the place that he did, even though all the evidence goes to the contrary.
Did Dumbledore really think the Room of Requirement was merely a bathroom? I always thought he was being deceptive about that. Clearly we're told he'd never been to the Room in its form as a hiding place, and presumably he didn't know the diadem was there. But I figured that he understood the basic principle of the Room, though this may simply have been an assumption on my part.
The diadem wasn't in the room until Voldemort got it from Albania and returned to ask Dumbledore for a job. By that point (~30 years ago) people probably weren't actively looking for it any more since it hadn't been found in the previous hundreds of years. Strange that Harry randomly picked it up in HPB to use as a marker for his potions book, though- maybe it's like the One Ring, it wanted to be found by him because Harry was unknowingly carrying another piece of soul?
We don't know how many people were actively looking for the diadem or when, just that students there did, as we also know that they used the Room and left evidence of that fact. I doubt the number was very large, but still: he put it in a place where the likelihood that someone stumbling upon would, in fact, recognize it was higher than practically anywhere outside of Ravenclaw tower--and with no further protection to boot (admittedly the latter would have been difficult to provide in depth given the circumstances he was working under.)
The clutter in the Room of Requirement would not necessarily have tipped Voldemort off that other students had used the room. He could very well have just assumed that the clutter was provided by the Room itself to aid his purpose of having somewhere to hide something -- a room filled with junk is a far better place to hide something than a clean and empty room.
Or maybe Voldemort hid it in a different version of the room that looked like he was the only one who could get in (lock only opened by Parseltongue, eg), but when Harry needed to find the diadem it spit it back out for him. Although that's unlikely, since he saw in in HBP when he didn't recognize or need it yet.
Good one, Di Kotimy.
And don't forget Voldemort's sick need to feel uniquely clever and brilliant, which would make his assumption that *only* he found it. That's another thing he hates about Harry -- that Harry is "the Chosen One" & gets the PR that Voldy would like.
Did anyone comment on Voldemort's efforts to be all magnanimous & stuff in his announcements at Hogwarts? That was strangely spooky in itself.
Katherine: Why not have someone else kill Voldemort in a rage after he appears to kill Harry? That stuff about the blood & the true master of the wand was wordy & sort of killed the tension.
B/c it would've been a huge letdown after 7 books for someone *else* to kill Voldemort. (Tho really, Voldemort basically commits suicide in a rage.) Everyone reads differently, I guess. I thought it was pretty dramatic, Harry calling Voldemort out on his magical expertise and proving to have a superior grasp of the situation.
Back to the final confrontation w/ Voldemort, I heard Harry's words in kind of a Dirty Harry enunciation:
"I know what you're wondering, Voldemort -- did my wand fire six curses, or only five? ... Do you feel lucky, Dark Punk? Well, do ya?"
Hey, help me out here---if Harry was the master of the Elder Wand for battle #2, wasn't he the master of the Elder wand for battle/suicide mission* #1? Why didn't Voldemort's spell backfire *that* time?
Did anyone comment on Voldemort's efforts to be all magnanimous & stuff in his announcements at Hogwarts? That was strangely spooky in itself.
I was wondering why no one ever cast it up to either Voldemort or Snape that that they weren't purebloods.
I was kind of dissappointed that the love of Snape's life was Lily---I had rather liked the theory that it was actually Narcissa Malfoy, and that Draco was in fact his son.
*And what is Rowling trying to say about Suicide missions exactly?
The spell backfiring was due to the disarm charm meeting and overcoming the death curse. Also, remember that Harry wanted the death spell to get him the first time. That last is also why Voldemort didn't become master of the wand then.
Rowling is trying to say that death is not the worst thing?
The clutter in the Room of Requirement would not necessarily have tipped Voldemort off that other students had used the room.
Perhaps, but I still think that's kind of weak. I don't have the books handy, but Rowling writes that it's students' stuff flat out, like it's readily apparent and not something you'd need to figure out. Given that you have to wish for a place to hide something to get into the room, it shouldn't be beyond what we're supposed to believe is one of the most diabolically clever wizard ever to realize that.
Voldemort's sick need to feel uniquely clever and brilliant
This is the reed that Rowling leans on, and while it has a certain plausibility--his downfall ultimately comes because he didn't take the time to understand what he was dealing with, and we're told time and again of his arrogance--but still, it's a pretty lame hiding place. It feels to me that the real underlying reasons were that the book was already too damn long, so building a new s3kr33t hiding place at Hogwarts would have taken too much time in the midst of the climactic battle, plus she seems to have wanted to revisit certain characters and scenes from the previous books to make everything feel like it had come full circle. It's also easy to put Draco, Crabbe and Goyle at the Room of Requirement, since they already know about it. But I couldn't help feeling let down when I realized what the hiding place was--it was like Voldemort hid it under his mattress or something.
Also, remember that Harry wanted the death spell to get him the first time.
Ah, I see. Kinda like the inverse of the fact that the three forbiddgen spells require that you really mean them.
Also, technically the first death spell didn't get Harry; it got the remnant of Voldemort's soul residing in Harry.
