deathly hallows
I decided just to skip the filter idea. So...
I think many of my thoughts will probably echo those of many other people. I will say, I see many things in this book for many aspects of the fandom. Whether that is a mistake on Jo's part or not remains to be seen. There is a reason that the saying "you can't please all everybody" is an adage. It's true. And while I think that people should enjoy the wonderful moments that are in this book for what they are, and we should all unite as a fandom...I'm realistic enough to know it won't happen. There will always be people angry at Jo because she didn't write the story they thought she was writing, or that they think she should have written.
The journey itself is heartbreaking. Harry loses so much during this journey that I cry even now thinking about it. Hedwig. His firebolt. His wand. He even loses Ron for a while. He loses probably the last remnants of his innocence...his belief that Dumbledore was the epitome of all that is good in the world.
He found out that Dumbledore was human, too. He should have known that already...we saw that at the end of book 5. And I'm of the opinion that Dumbledore's plan came together in spite of his manipulations rather than because of them. There seems to have been very much left to chance. What if Harry and crew hadn't been captured and taken to Malfoy Manor? They may never have learned of the cup's location (unless I missed something in the "tell all" scene that explained where Dumbledore had plotted that out, too). But I like that Dumbledore's fallibility is re-emphasized. I like that we find out that even Dumbledore has his own bit of darkness in him, just as well all do.
I liked that Harry remains "everyman" in this book. He doesn't become "Super Harry" as so many people theorized he might and as we have seen so often in fanfiction. He remains Harry...a boy who has been thrust into unusual circumstances and who deals with it as best as he can.
I sobbed through Hedwig's death...cried for Dobby, too, and Fred, and when Harry met his parents and Sirius and Lupin I could hardly read through the tears.
I don't get Lupin and Tonks's deaths, really. Especially Tonks. Lupin I was kind of expecting. But I think it odd that Nymphadora abandoned her newborn child to go off and make sure her husband was safe. Am I saying that she should have been a good little mum and stayed home with her child and let her husband do all the dangerous, dirty stuff? Noo....not exactly. I think ONE of them should have stayed home with the baby, though. Maybe that's why I just can't get that upset about their deaths...I didn't find their actions particularly admirable in this book.
BAM. Lupin, I like you. BAM. Oh, look, Harry, we're married. BAM. We're pregnant. BAM. The kid is born. BAM. Ooops...we're dead.
I don't know. It just left me unable to have any respect for Tonks's character, I guess. If her actions had been explained as a desire/need to do her duty as an auror...that I might could understand. Instead it was portrayed as more "lovesick Tonks just can't stand to be away from Remus long enough to care for their child in troubled times" or something. It was just...odd.
As always, there are some wonderful humorous moments to lighten up the sadness. Professor Trelawney dropping crystal balls on people. Kreacher whacking Mundungus with a cooking pot. Snape making a Snape-shaped hole in the window and flying away like a bat. George poking fun at his newly holey-status. And many others that I just can't seem to think of right now.
I was not surprised that Petunia had written to Dumbledore before. To me, his phrase "remember my last" implied to me that there had been previous communication between them. I was surprised that Snape knew Lily and Petunia, though. I had seen theories about it and theories that Snape was in love with Lily...I guess I just didn't buy it.
I was a bit off on the mysterious symbol...correct about the line being a wand, but incorrect about the stone and the cape. Correct overall in that it represented the hallows and that they were objects, wrong on who the objects belonged to. I'd be interested to know if the story and symbol as depicted still fits in with the alchemical manifestos that have been passed around in the H/Hr communities.
I think I would have liked to have seen a little more Ginny...but that's just me. It does seem like Jo went through a bit of trouble to try and depict Ginny as Harry's "ideal woman" in the last 2 books and then didn't really follow through. HOWEVER...I do understand that once and for all...Jo was not writing a romance. She was not even writing a story in which romantic love is the Final Mysterious Power that Pulls Harry's Butt Out of the Fire At The End of All Things.
I like that the answer to the question "does Harry live or die?" is, in true Jo fashion...Both. Or Neither.
I could have lived without the epilogue, but at least she left us a 19 year gap to fill in as we please. And I don't understand why some people are so virulently opposed to a "happily ever after" ending. Good lord, the man just *died* for crying out loud. He deserves some happiness! SO WHAT if they named their kids after Harry's dead parents (would YOU not honor your dead parents in the same way?) and after the two men that Harry owes his life to.
And though it does seem as if she tried hard to answer all the questions she's been asked over the years and that just about every spell, item and person Harry has ever seen or met made its way into the book, there are still unanswered questions to theorize and write fanfic about.
So, overall...I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even though there were parts I may have disagreed with personally. The final two-hundred pages especially were gripping...what an emotional rollercoaster. I love that the book comes full circle. Harry begins his adventure with Ron and Hermione, and they are the two people he most wants to be with at the end. And I even like the full circleness of the train station, which is pretty much the whole point of the epilogue. It's not an ending...it's a new beginning.
I'm sure I'll have more to say as I venture forth and read other reviews and think of things that I couldn't remember for this entry.
Edited to add:
Oh yeah. I have to gloat about the fact that I was TOTALLY RIGHT about Harry being one of the horcruxes. That is all.
Edit #2:
Also...did anyone notice that Voldemort asked "the deluded ones" if they "finally understand?" (this was after Harry's supposed death). I can't help but think that Jo is as tired of the wanking as the rest of the fandom.
ETA#3:
The willy nilly use of unforgivables towards the end did kind of surprise me. Harry used the imperius and the cruciatus. McGonagall used the imperius. Illustrating...what, that desperate times call for desperate measures? I'm very glad that Harry didn't use the AK to off Voldie in the end, though. Despite the fact that I've said that if Harry killed Voldemort it would be justice, not murder...it just wouldn't have felt right for Harry to do it that way. Instead it was Voldemort's own curse that rebounded on him, which was fitting.
ETA#4:
Peter's death itself didn't surprise me. But it didn't really go down the way I expected it to. Rather than sacrificing himself to repay his debt...he is, what, killed for a moment of weakness by the hand that Voldemort gave him? That leaves us still not knowing why the hell Peter was ever sorted into Gryffindor...the only thing I can come up with is that he latched onto James and Sirius somewhere on the train and begged the hat to put him into Gryffindor.
I liked the direction she went with the Malfoy family. They were truly Slytherin...they were loyal to themselves, they put their own safety and interests before ANYTHING else. So they weren't necessarily redeemed at the end of the book...but they weren't necessarily strictly evil, depending on your definition of evil.
ETA#5:
She never did answer the question about why/how did Lily and James end up together in the first place. We know that as late as 5th year, Lily doesn't think much of James. The revelation about the true reason that Snape's memory was his worst memory...his calling Lily a mudblood...makes me wonder if Lily didn't go after James just because she knew it would anger Snape. I'm not sure how I feel about Jo not filling in this particular gap for us...on the one hand...lots of fic potential (and I'm sure much has already been written). And on the other hand...well, I guess I still want to know why? And I still don't seem to have gotten an answer to the "thrice defied" bit of the prophecy, unless anyone knows the secret and cares to share...
ETA#6
I'm enjoying the wankage.
Newsflash to those of you out there who have been happily married 19 or more years: We at the Ministry of Marriage regret to inform you that you marriages are past their expiration dates. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in real life, therefore you must have stolen someone else's happiness by force and/or trickery. Please present yourselves to the Ministry of Marriage at once to turn in your marriage licenses and be prepared to submit to questioning so that they may study how this forcible theft of someone else's happiness was accomplished....
And no, this won't make any sense to you unless you happen to be following Fandom Wank, and it probably won't even then. Some yahoo on FAP posted that no one stays happily married for 19 years.
o_0
ETA#7
For sheer creep factor...the flayed-child-voldie-soul-fragment-thing Harry saw in the Great Train Station Beyond... ::shudder::
ETA#8
I was totally right about Snape killing Dumbledore as fulfillment of a prior agreement. Whoever said that the agreement was made partially because Dumbledore was living on borrowed time due to the cursed ring, however.... ::bows to your superior theorization skllz::
ETA some more:
I've seen a couple of posts where people are asking "what was the crying/flayed child all about? So I figured I'd add the answer that I posted elsewhere:
I think the crying, flayed child was that piece of Voldemort's soul that had just died as a result of Harry's death. Which is why Dumbledore told him that no matter what pity he felt for it, he could not help it. Voldemort saw his soul as something worthless...as a means to an end, a means to sustaining his mortal life well past the point that it should end, whereas a normal person would feel that the soul, that innermost essence that is *you*, and that has the potential to go on existing even after the mortal body is shuffed off, would feel that the soul above all other is worth nurturing and protecting. (and I'm trying to phrase this so that it doesn't mean the soul from a religious standpoint, if that makes sense).
Voldemort neglected his soul, abused it, and ultimately destroyed it, and Harry was seeing the results of that. Maybe she was trying to convey that Voldemort never gave his soul a chance to grow beyond infancy, as well, which was why it was represented by a baby. And I think that in this way, Jo was trying to demonstrate that even in Voldemort there was once upon a time the potential for good...he had a soul, but he systematically destroyed it.
I think many of my thoughts will probably echo those of many other people. I will say, I see many things in this book for many aspects of the fandom. Whether that is a mistake on Jo's part or not remains to be seen. There is a reason that the saying "you can't please all everybody" is an adage. It's true. And while I think that people should enjoy the wonderful moments that are in this book for what they are, and we should all unite as a fandom...I'm realistic enough to know it won't happen. There will always be people angry at Jo because she didn't write the story they thought she was writing, or that they think she should have written.
The journey itself is heartbreaking. Harry loses so much during this journey that I cry even now thinking about it. Hedwig. His firebolt. His wand. He even loses Ron for a while. He loses probably the last remnants of his innocence...his belief that Dumbledore was the epitome of all that is good in the world.
He found out that Dumbledore was human, too. He should have known that already...we saw that at the end of book 5. And I'm of the opinion that Dumbledore's plan came together in spite of his manipulations rather than because of them. There seems to have been very much left to chance. What if Harry and crew hadn't been captured and taken to Malfoy Manor? They may never have learned of the cup's location (unless I missed something in the "tell all" scene that explained where Dumbledore had plotted that out, too). But I like that Dumbledore's fallibility is re-emphasized. I like that we find out that even Dumbledore has his own bit of darkness in him, just as well all do.
I liked that Harry remains "everyman" in this book. He doesn't become "Super Harry" as so many people theorized he might and as we have seen so often in fanfiction. He remains Harry...a boy who has been thrust into unusual circumstances and who deals with it as best as he can.
I sobbed through Hedwig's death...cried for Dobby, too, and Fred, and when Harry met his parents and Sirius and Lupin I could hardly read through the tears.
I don't get Lupin and Tonks's deaths, really. Especially Tonks. Lupin I was kind of expecting. But I think it odd that Nymphadora abandoned her newborn child to go off and make sure her husband was safe. Am I saying that she should have been a good little mum and stayed home with her child and let her husband do all the dangerous, dirty stuff? Noo....not exactly. I think ONE of them should have stayed home with the baby, though. Maybe that's why I just can't get that upset about their deaths...I didn't find their actions particularly admirable in this book.
BAM. Lupin, I like you. BAM. Oh, look, Harry, we're married. BAM. We're pregnant. BAM. The kid is born. BAM. Ooops...we're dead.
I don't know. It just left me unable to have any respect for Tonks's character, I guess. If her actions had been explained as a desire/need to do her duty as an auror...that I might could understand. Instead it was portrayed as more "lovesick Tonks just can't stand to be away from Remus long enough to care for their child in troubled times" or something. It was just...odd.
As always, there are some wonderful humorous moments to lighten up the sadness. Professor Trelawney dropping crystal balls on people. Kreacher whacking Mundungus with a cooking pot. Snape making a Snape-shaped hole in the window and flying away like a bat. George poking fun at his newly holey-status. And many others that I just can't seem to think of right now.
I was not surprised that Petunia had written to Dumbledore before. To me, his phrase "remember my last" implied to me that there had been previous communication between them. I was surprised that Snape knew Lily and Petunia, though. I had seen theories about it and theories that Snape was in love with Lily...I guess I just didn't buy it.
I was a bit off on the mysterious symbol...correct about the line being a wand, but incorrect about the stone and the cape. Correct overall in that it represented the hallows and that they were objects, wrong on who the objects belonged to. I'd be interested to know if the story and symbol as depicted still fits in with the alchemical manifestos that have been passed around in the H/Hr communities.
I think I would have liked to have seen a little more Ginny...but that's just me. It does seem like Jo went through a bit of trouble to try and depict Ginny as Harry's "ideal woman" in the last 2 books and then didn't really follow through. HOWEVER...I do understand that once and for all...Jo was not writing a romance. She was not even writing a story in which romantic love is the Final Mysterious Power that Pulls Harry's Butt Out of the Fire At The End of All Things.
I like that the answer to the question "does Harry live or die?" is, in true Jo fashion...Both. Or Neither.
I could have lived without the epilogue, but at least she left us a 19 year gap to fill in as we please. And I don't understand why some people are so virulently opposed to a "happily ever after" ending. Good lord, the man just *died* for crying out loud. He deserves some happiness! SO WHAT if they named their kids after Harry's dead parents (would YOU not honor your dead parents in the same way?) and after the two men that Harry owes his life to.
And though it does seem as if she tried hard to answer all the questions she's been asked over the years and that just about every spell, item and person Harry has ever seen or met made its way into the book, there are still unanswered questions to theorize and write fanfic about.
So, overall...I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even though there were parts I may have disagreed with personally. The final two-hundred pages especially were gripping...what an emotional rollercoaster. I love that the book comes full circle. Harry begins his adventure with Ron and Hermione, and they are the two people he most wants to be with at the end. And I even like the full circleness of the train station, which is pretty much the whole point of the epilogue. It's not an ending...it's a new beginning.
I'm sure I'll have more to say as I venture forth and read other reviews and think of things that I couldn't remember for this entry.
Edited to add:
Oh yeah. I have to gloat about the fact that I was TOTALLY RIGHT about Harry being one of the horcruxes. That is all.
Edit #2:
Also...did anyone notice that Voldemort asked "the deluded ones" if they "finally understand?" (this was after Harry's supposed death). I can't help but think that Jo is as tired of the wanking as the rest of the fandom.
ETA#3:
The willy nilly use of unforgivables towards the end did kind of surprise me. Harry used the imperius and the cruciatus. McGonagall used the imperius. Illustrating...what, that desperate times call for desperate measures? I'm very glad that Harry didn't use the AK to off Voldie in the end, though. Despite the fact that I've said that if Harry killed Voldemort it would be justice, not murder...it just wouldn't have felt right for Harry to do it that way. Instead it was Voldemort's own curse that rebounded on him, which was fitting.
ETA#4:
Peter's death itself didn't surprise me. But it didn't really go down the way I expected it to. Rather than sacrificing himself to repay his debt...he is, what, killed for a moment of weakness by the hand that Voldemort gave him? That leaves us still not knowing why the hell Peter was ever sorted into Gryffindor...the only thing I can come up with is that he latched onto James and Sirius somewhere on the train and begged the hat to put him into Gryffindor.
I liked the direction she went with the Malfoy family. They were truly Slytherin...they were loyal to themselves, they put their own safety and interests before ANYTHING else. So they weren't necessarily redeemed at the end of the book...but they weren't necessarily strictly evil, depending on your definition of evil.
ETA#5:
She never did answer the question about why/how did Lily and James end up together in the first place. We know that as late as 5th year, Lily doesn't think much of James. The revelation about the true reason that Snape's memory was his worst memory...his calling Lily a mudblood...makes me wonder if Lily didn't go after James just because she knew it would anger Snape. I'm not sure how I feel about Jo not filling in this particular gap for us...on the one hand...lots of fic potential (and I'm sure much has already been written). And on the other hand...well, I guess I still want to know why? And I still don't seem to have gotten an answer to the "thrice defied" bit of the prophecy, unless anyone knows the secret and cares to share...
ETA#6
I'm enjoying the wankage.
Newsflash to those of you out there who have been happily married 19 or more years: We at the Ministry of Marriage regret to inform you that you marriages are past their expiration dates. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in real life, therefore you must have stolen someone else's happiness by force and/or trickery. Please present yourselves to the Ministry of Marriage at once to turn in your marriage licenses and be prepared to submit to questioning so that they may study how this forcible theft of someone else's happiness was accomplished....
And no, this won't make any sense to you unless you happen to be following Fandom Wank, and it probably won't even then. Some yahoo on FAP posted that no one stays happily married for 19 years.
o_0
ETA#7
For sheer creep factor...the flayed-child-voldie-soul-fragment-thing Harry saw in the Great Train Station Beyond... ::shudder::
ETA#8
I was totally right about Snape killing Dumbledore as fulfillment of a prior agreement. Whoever said that the agreement was made partially because Dumbledore was living on borrowed time due to the cursed ring, however.... ::bows to your superior theorization skllz::
ETA some more:
I've seen a couple of posts where people are asking "what was the crying/flayed child all about? So I figured I'd add the answer that I posted elsewhere:
I think the crying, flayed child was that piece of Voldemort's soul that had just died as a result of Harry's death. Which is why Dumbledore told him that no matter what pity he felt for it, he could not help it. Voldemort saw his soul as something worthless...as a means to an end, a means to sustaining his mortal life well past the point that it should end, whereas a normal person would feel that the soul, that innermost essence that is *you*, and that has the potential to go on existing even after the mortal body is shuffed off, would feel that the soul above all other is worth nurturing and protecting. (and I'm trying to phrase this so that it doesn't mean the soul from a religious standpoint, if that makes sense).
Voldemort neglected his soul, abused it, and ultimately destroyed it, and Harry was seeing the results of that. Maybe she was trying to convey that Voldemort never gave his soul a chance to grow beyond infancy, as well, which was why it was represented by a baby. And I think that in this way, Jo was trying to demonstrate that even in Voldemort there was once upon a time the potential for good...he had a soul, but he systematically destroyed it.