Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Review
Happy Birthday, Harry Potter!
I am (re)posting this behind a spoiler cut, but as of tomorrow (August 1st)? There won't be spoiler warnings on this journal.
Overall I loved it. That's not to say I loved it the way I might love any other book. I don't think it was all that well-written or edited, but that only stood in the way of my enjoyment until the story really picked up. I think JK Rowling is a wonderful storyteller, and she can weave a really good web. I think she's the victim of her structure sometimes, but at other times her structure (HI, ALCHEMY) is very inventive. I really, really want her to write the complete Tales of Beedle the Bard for Comic Relief; I want to read all of her fractured fairytales. I loved Deathly Hallows because I have been attached to the characters and plot for such a long time. While I have read fanfic that is more well-written than DH, I have never seen a fanfic with a better plot. Even if the progress of said plot sometimes seems forced along. I'm not complaining!
Things I loved:
1) Luna
2) Neville. Neville the revolutionary. Neville the revolutionary who fights back with Herbology! And swords.
3) Luna
4) Ron. And trust me, I have never been a Ron fan.
5) Luna
6) Dumbledore. And trust me, I have never been a Dumbledore fan.
7) Luna
8) Severus Snape...actually I was a little iffy here. I'll get to him more in a bit.
9) Kreacher
10) Regulus Black
11) Luna's dad
11b) Dirigible plums, "so as to enhance the ability to accept the extraordinary."
12) Remus John Lupin. I've never been a huge fan of his either. And I think I'm one of maybe 10 people who loved his characterization in DH.
13) Aberforth
14) Voldemort improved overall as a villain for me. He was still campy (with his flying) but he actually did some evil and conniving things. The covert Ministry takeover? The Taboo? Wow, I got the chills. Although I wonder how he was stupid enough to think he was the only one to find the Room of Requirement when it was filled with stuff. And I liked how Ron was the only one to spot this.
15) The Deathly Hallows: the symbol (which I am almost positive JKR must have derived from a very similar alchemical symbol for the Philosopher's Stone), the fairytale, Dumbledore being an unworthy master of death because he would abuse it, the fact that the Resurrection Stone is just laying on the ground at Hogwarts waiting for someone to find it...
16) Albino peacocks and receding hairlines <3333 I may hate what Rowling did (or rather didn't do) with Draco's character, but I love him, his yellow belly, HIS LOVING FAMILY THANKYOUVERYMUCH, and his poorly named son.
17) Oh yea, I loved Narcissa Malfoy too. She kind of rocked.
18) Potterwatch.
19) The Ravenclaw common room and its password-puzzles.
20) Crazed assassin Vincent Crabbe.
21) James Potter echoing Draco's robe-shop words about Hufflepuff.
22) I actually really liked Ron/Hermione. Liked it a lot.
23) THAT SNAPE WAS NOT EVIL, DRACO WAS SOMETHING SHORT OF EVIL, AND HARRY AND DRACO BOTH LIVED. This was what I wanted out of Deathly Hallows, and I got it.
Things I didn't like very much at all:
1) KILLING HEDWIG. Really.
2) When there isn't a ton of action going on, JKR has a tendency to tell rather than show. This frustrates me endlessly, and it's especially obvious when it comes to Harry & Ginny's relationship. In HBP there was a lot of "Oh wow they're so perfect and they have this great connection," but we never actually see anything that would prove this. We have to take JKR's word on it. She did this a lot (albeit not with Harry/Ginny) at the beginning of this book too, particularly with the invisible spying at the Ministry entrance. That's shoddy writing. (Or rather that's something an editor should have pointed out, so maybe it's shoddy editing.)
3) JK Rowling being a huge cock-tease with some of my favorite and least favorite characters. Let's show Draco on the precipice of making a choice between good and evil! Let's make everyone think Hagrid is due to die in just about every book! Actually, just kidding. Draco's going to continue along without making any sort of wholehearted choice (because he's a no-good Slytherin, which we're getting to) and Hagrid is going to irritate millions by not dying.
4) Flints like Hermione's inability to remember her own memory charms.
5) Harry's easy Unforgivable use and McGonnagal's flippant response to it (and her own Unforgivable use). Oh man, did someone just insult your favorite professor? Better Crucio their asses. This seems to be Rowling's double standard of morality rearing its ugly head. If a Slytherin did this same thing it would be proof that they had souls of blackest evil, but Harry is just being chivalrous. Plus McGonnagal's Imperio was completely pointless. Why did she have to make Carrow tie himself up? Couldn't she just have stupefied him and transfigured some chains or something? (Harry's Imperio was understandable though. It was life or death.)
6) So, re: #3 and #5? Rowling's double standard of morality and general unfairness to Slytherin House.
7) Ron faking parseltongue. O RLY? Also, how many fangs did that damn basilisk have? I thought two like a normal snake, but apparently heaps and heaps.
8) Molly Weasley crushing all my dreams by saving Ginny from an untimely demise. Actually, #8 should just read "Ginny Weasley." She's the most poorly realized character in canon, and I only hate her so much because JKR is so adamant that we like her. She's more willing to let you make up your own mind on the other characters--for example, while she clearly shows (and the showing, not telling, is important) that Neville is awesome, she is not demanding that everyone love him--but she's always been so adamant that Ginny is a really wonderful, funny, powerful witch who is the perfect match for Harry. So she tells us how perfect Ginny is pretty much all the time, but she shows this awesomeness maybe twice. And it's off-screen. So really it's just glorified telling. I find this endlessly frustrating. I really want to like her because I love Harry want him to be happy and, according to JKR, she's what makes him happy. Great, wonderful. I can accept that on one level, and I do believe in authorial intent, but at the same time I feel like authors should have to work a little to make me believe their characterizations. I don't want to be told that there's this shy little girl who is Suddenly Awesome But Was Apparently Awesome All Along and by the way? She's also the hero's soul mate. Maybe we should see some transition. And yes, bla bla bla Harry's point of view. But shouldn't we see what makes her shift in his esteem? Oh wait we do: she's beautiful and doesn't cry a lot. I don't think that's very much to build a relationship on, especially not a lifelong one that eventually produces 3 kids.
That said, fandom is really unfair to Ginny. She's not some evil slut who must die, she's just a poorly realized character. She's due to become the most divorced and/or conveniently killed character in fanfic though, which brings us to:
9) THE CRAPILOGUE. I've come to accept that Rowling did this more for herself than for anyone else. And that's fine. And yes, I realize she wrote it at the same time as she wrote Philosopher's Stone so the style is completely different and a lot more cutesy and the characters are really just names on a page without any traits because she probably hadn't fleshed them out all that much yet anyway. That doesn't make it satisfying. That doesn't make the names of those poor children (Albus Severus? Scorpius?) anything short of awful. That doesn't make it read any less like a bad fanfic. I thought the book ended very nicely on its own and that the epilogue was completely unnecessary. And maybe this is just me, but does anyone understand why wizarding world people, who seem to live for more than a century, mostly rush into a matrimony (where they are "bonded for life," according to Bill & Fleur's wedding vows) at the ripe old age of 19 or 20? Yea, me neither. Although, on the plus side, the epilogue did make me giggle maniacally about receding hairlines.
The parts where I cried, or at least teared up a little:
1) When I opened the book. Just holding it in my hot little hand was emotional!
2) When I opened the book...and saw that the crapilogue was real.
3) When Hedwig died!
4) At the end of Bill & Fleur's wedding when Kingsley's patronus shows up and says "They are coming." This is just one of those lines that always gets to me. It makes me think of the Dwarves in Lord of the Rings keeping their records even as they're attacked by Orcs, and it makes me think of the end of the movie version of Anne Frank, where everyone is just standing around bravely while the Gestapo climb the stairs.
5) Kreacher's entire description of what happened with the locket and with Regulus. "Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back." I would love more backstory on what caused Regulus to turn from the Dark Lord. Did he too have a lady friend with really lovely eyes, or was he just appalled at all the House Elf cruelty?
6) "Here lies Dobby, a free elf." Apparently house elves make me really emotional.
7) "He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here."
8) Harry's walk into the Forbidden Forest as he prepared to die.
9) Kreacher leading the house elves into battle for his kind master and "for brave Regulus." I think I'm prime S.P.E.W. membership material at this point.
10) When I closed the book.
Character development, or lack thereof:
You may have noticed that the majority of what I loved about this book has to do with the characters. Also the majority of what I didn't like. Some characters were developed really well and others really poorly, and some (Snape) come somewhere in the middle. Some of them (Lupin) follow a believable path that isn't spared enough time in the plot to be satisfying. Some (Dumbledore) turn out to have unexpected depths. Some (Ron) fulfill your best and your worst expectations about their character.
I think I've already devoted ample time to the poorly developed Ms Ginevra Weasley and Mr Draco "Huge Pussy" Malfoy. I'd devote more to Draco but there's really nothing to say since his character hasn't grown or changed at all in this book. So now for the good: Ron and Snape and Dumbledore all show how good guys can, you know, screw up. Have funny ideas. Treat those they love with contempt and disrespect. And guess what? In the end they're still good guys. Dumbledore's storyline was the highlight of this book, and Ron had all the best lines. And I hated Ron after GoF and I hated Dumbledore after HBP and they both subsequently redeemed themselves, but getting an explanation for their flaws? Having them atone for their flaws? That made me love them.
This sort of depth has been reserved exclusively for the Good Guys (TM), but even though that means Snape gets to reap the benefits of multi-dimensionality I think he also gets a bit of the short shaft that has been reserved exclusively for Slimy Slytherins (TM). Saved by the love of a good woman? Come ON. I personally like Snape/Lily (though my money for Snape's Unrequited Love Interest was on Narcissa) and was gratified by the Prince's tale but I also felt like it was an easy out in many ways. Snape was still a nasty git, Snape's political and racial sympathies were still with the Death Eaters, and Snape was never ever--not even once--something less than nasty to the Gryffindors. Life saving aside. And yea, from the standpoint that everyone treats the Slytherins like pariahs without just cause I can almost cheer Snape on as he is unfair to the rest of the world. He's got his own issues and is a fucked up character and I love him the best, but I almost feel like Rowling is "pulling a Ginny." I happen to like the end result more than I care for Harry/Ginny, but I do think she glosses over a lot of things to make Snape's 'redemption' believable. And then we have the epilogue which throws this glossing over into stark light: Snape is the bravest man Harry ever knew? Have we been reading the same series? And yea, I think the stuff Snape did turned out to be pretty brave, but I don't think Rowling showed us that well enough to wrap up her story with such a blanket statement.
(Don't get me started on "we sort too soon." Just don't. Clearly a quarter of all children are irredeemably evil and cowardly and will never, ever do what's right. And if they do something good they were obviously mis-Sorted.)
That brings us to Lupin, the Gryffindor who has the audacity to be afraid and shrink from his duties as a father and a husband. My own particular theory on Lupin is that he's been locking away parts of himself and his emotions (aka THE WOLF WITHIN) since he was a kid. He's not going to change all of a sudden and become a demonstrative family man. He understands living rough and guerrilla warfare; he doesn't understand how to have a wife and kid. Lots of people were disappointed in HBP that Lupin didn't try and fill Sirius's shoes as Harry's godfather, but that's just not how Lupin is made. When we see him in Snape's worst memory? He's detached. When we see him holding back CAPS LOCK HARRY in the Department of Mysteries? He's detached. Even when Tonks is tearily confessing her love at the end of HBP he seems very blase about deflecting her. Well he mans up in the end, so cut the guy some slack. He was imperfect and therefore awesome.
Unanswered questions, theories, etc:
- Are we supposed to assume that, because she had been wearing and had presumably grown close to the horcrux, that Umbridge was acting as a Voldie conduit? Was the locket making Kreacher more disagreeable in OotP? And if these horcruxes cause the destruction of fellow-feeling and make people insecure and irritable when they grow too attached to them, did Harry's horcrux-ness cause these same effects in people who were close to him? If not, why not? Or is the Harrycrux a different sort of horcrux altogether, because anything else would just be too complicated, causing Rowling's head to explode?
- I have a bajillion backstory questions. I think everyone has the same ones. JKR seems pretty eager to fill in the blanks, so I'm sure we'll find out a lot eventually. I'm a little wary of her urge myself, since I think if it doesn't make it into a book it isn't really canon. She may have intended for something to happen/someone to have a certain trait, but if it isn't in the books then I don't think her telling us this factoid or plot point in an interview is really... I don't know what word or phrase I'm looking for here. Above board? Salient? 100 years from now if someone reads the books they're probably not going to take "interview canon" or anything beyond what's written into account. So I don't plan to either.
Fics I want to see:"
- Bring on the old-skool Gin 'n Tonic (Ginny/Tom Riddle) where Ginny finds she is no longer in love with Harry now that he's not a horcrux. She had only been in love with the bit of Tom Riddle's soul that was in him.
- Regulus backstory!
- Really, how did Lily and James fall in love? Inquiring minds NEED to know.
- Dumbledore's Army: Still Recruiting... what other acts of awesome did Neville and Luna (and Ginny...for the love of God, if she's going to be one of your heroines at least make her awesomeness believable) perform?
- There's actually a lot of Ginny fic I'd like to see. Just because I don't like her in the books doesn't mean I don't like her unrealized potential. One thing I'd like is Harry as a stay-at-home Dad and Ginny as the breadwinner because I've seen an unbelievable amount of wank about JKR turning her female characters into nothing more than walking uteruses just because they popped out a couple of kids over the past 19 years. (Woo hoo, run-ons.) Look, we have the crapilogue because Harry wants a happy family so badly. So why not have him be a stay at home dad? And maybe Ginny can go do something kickass.
I know I'm forgetting 32498209834 things. Oops.
I CAN'T WAIT for the movie version of this. I have no idea how they're going to pull it off, but it will be fantastic.
I am (re)posting this behind a spoiler cut, but as of tomorrow (August 1st)? There won't be spoiler warnings on this journal.
Overall I loved it. That's not to say I loved it the way I might love any other book. I don't think it was all that well-written or edited, but that only stood in the way of my enjoyment until the story really picked up. I think JK Rowling is a wonderful storyteller, and she can weave a really good web. I think she's the victim of her structure sometimes, but at other times her structure (HI, ALCHEMY) is very inventive. I really, really want her to write the complete Tales of Beedle the Bard for Comic Relief; I want to read all of her fractured fairytales. I loved Deathly Hallows because I have been attached to the characters and plot for such a long time. While I have read fanfic that is more well-written than DH, I have never seen a fanfic with a better plot. Even if the progress of said plot sometimes seems forced along. I'm not complaining!
Things I loved:
1) Luna
2) Neville. Neville the revolutionary. Neville the revolutionary who fights back with Herbology! And swords.
3) Luna
4) Ron. And trust me, I have never been a Ron fan.
5) Luna
6) Dumbledore. And trust me, I have never been a Dumbledore fan.
7) Luna
8) Severus Snape...actually I was a little iffy here. I'll get to him more in a bit.
9) Kreacher
10) Regulus Black
11) Luna's dad
11b) Dirigible plums, "so as to enhance the ability to accept the extraordinary."
12) Remus John Lupin. I've never been a huge fan of his either. And I think I'm one of maybe 10 people who loved his characterization in DH.
13) Aberforth
14) Voldemort improved overall as a villain for me. He was still campy (with his flying) but he actually did some evil and conniving things. The covert Ministry takeover? The Taboo? Wow, I got the chills. Although I wonder how he was stupid enough to think he was the only one to find the Room of Requirement when it was filled with stuff. And I liked how Ron was the only one to spot this.
15) The Deathly Hallows: the symbol (which I am almost positive JKR must have derived from a very similar alchemical symbol for the Philosopher's Stone), the fairytale, Dumbledore being an unworthy master of death because he would abuse it, the fact that the Resurrection Stone is just laying on the ground at Hogwarts waiting for someone to find it...
16) Albino peacocks and receding hairlines <3333 I may hate what Rowling did (or rather didn't do) with Draco's character, but I love him, his yellow belly, HIS LOVING FAMILY THANKYOUVERYMUCH, and his poorly named son.
17) Oh yea, I loved Narcissa Malfoy too. She kind of rocked.
18) Potterwatch.
19) The Ravenclaw common room and its password-puzzles.
20) Crazed assassin Vincent Crabbe.
21) James Potter echoing Draco's robe-shop words about Hufflepuff.
22) I actually really liked Ron/Hermione. Liked it a lot.
23) THAT SNAPE WAS NOT EVIL, DRACO WAS SOMETHING SHORT OF EVIL, AND HARRY AND DRACO BOTH LIVED. This was what I wanted out of Deathly Hallows, and I got it.
Things I didn't like very much at all:
1) KILLING HEDWIG. Really.
2) When there isn't a ton of action going on, JKR has a tendency to tell rather than show. This frustrates me endlessly, and it's especially obvious when it comes to Harry & Ginny's relationship. In HBP there was a lot of "Oh wow they're so perfect and they have this great connection," but we never actually see anything that would prove this. We have to take JKR's word on it. She did this a lot (albeit not with Harry/Ginny) at the beginning of this book too, particularly with the invisible spying at the Ministry entrance. That's shoddy writing. (Or rather that's something an editor should have pointed out, so maybe it's shoddy editing.)
3) JK Rowling being a huge cock-tease with some of my favorite and least favorite characters. Let's show Draco on the precipice of making a choice between good and evil! Let's make everyone think Hagrid is due to die in just about every book! Actually, just kidding. Draco's going to continue along without making any sort of wholehearted choice (because he's a no-good Slytherin, which we're getting to) and Hagrid is going to irritate millions by not dying.
4) Flints like Hermione's inability to remember her own memory charms.
5) Harry's easy Unforgivable use and McGonnagal's flippant response to it (and her own Unforgivable use). Oh man, did someone just insult your favorite professor? Better Crucio their asses. This seems to be Rowling's double standard of morality rearing its ugly head. If a Slytherin did this same thing it would be proof that they had souls of blackest evil, but Harry is just being chivalrous. Plus McGonnagal's Imperio was completely pointless. Why did she have to make Carrow tie himself up? Couldn't she just have stupefied him and transfigured some chains or something? (Harry's Imperio was understandable though. It was life or death.)
6) So, re: #3 and #5? Rowling's double standard of morality and general unfairness to Slytherin House.
7) Ron faking parseltongue. O RLY? Also, how many fangs did that damn basilisk have? I thought two like a normal snake, but apparently heaps and heaps.
8) Molly Weasley crushing all my dreams by saving Ginny from an untimely demise. Actually, #8 should just read "Ginny Weasley." She's the most poorly realized character in canon, and I only hate her so much because JKR is so adamant that we like her. She's more willing to let you make up your own mind on the other characters--for example, while she clearly shows (and the showing, not telling, is important) that Neville is awesome, she is not demanding that everyone love him--but she's always been so adamant that Ginny is a really wonderful, funny, powerful witch who is the perfect match for Harry. So she tells us how perfect Ginny is pretty much all the time, but she shows this awesomeness maybe twice. And it's off-screen. So really it's just glorified telling. I find this endlessly frustrating. I really want to like her because I love Harry want him to be happy and, according to JKR, she's what makes him happy. Great, wonderful. I can accept that on one level, and I do believe in authorial intent, but at the same time I feel like authors should have to work a little to make me believe their characterizations. I don't want to be told that there's this shy little girl who is Suddenly Awesome But Was Apparently Awesome All Along and by the way? She's also the hero's soul mate. Maybe we should see some transition. And yes, bla bla bla Harry's point of view. But shouldn't we see what makes her shift in his esteem? Oh wait we do: she's beautiful and doesn't cry a lot. I don't think that's very much to build a relationship on, especially not a lifelong one that eventually produces 3 kids.
That said, fandom is really unfair to Ginny. She's not some evil slut who must die, she's just a poorly realized character. She's due to become the most divorced and/or conveniently killed character in fanfic though, which brings us to:
9) THE CRAPILOGUE. I've come to accept that Rowling did this more for herself than for anyone else. And that's fine. And yes, I realize she wrote it at the same time as she wrote Philosopher's Stone so the style is completely different and a lot more cutesy and the characters are really just names on a page without any traits because she probably hadn't fleshed them out all that much yet anyway. That doesn't make it satisfying. That doesn't make the names of those poor children (Albus Severus? Scorpius?) anything short of awful. That doesn't make it read any less like a bad fanfic. I thought the book ended very nicely on its own and that the epilogue was completely unnecessary. And maybe this is just me, but does anyone understand why wizarding world people, who seem to live for more than a century, mostly rush into a matrimony (where they are "bonded for life," according to Bill & Fleur's wedding vows) at the ripe old age of 19 or 20? Yea, me neither. Although, on the plus side, the epilogue did make me giggle maniacally about receding hairlines.
The parts where I cried, or at least teared up a little:
1) When I opened the book. Just holding it in my hot little hand was emotional!
2) When I opened the book...and saw that the crapilogue was real.
3) When Hedwig died!
4) At the end of Bill & Fleur's wedding when Kingsley's patronus shows up and says "They are coming." This is just one of those lines that always gets to me. It makes me think of the Dwarves in Lord of the Rings keeping their records even as they're attacked by Orcs, and it makes me think of the end of the movie version of Anne Frank, where everyone is just standing around bravely while the Gestapo climb the stairs.
5) Kreacher's entire description of what happened with the locket and with Regulus. "Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back." I would love more backstory on what caused Regulus to turn from the Dark Lord. Did he too have a lady friend with really lovely eyes, or was he just appalled at all the House Elf cruelty?
6) "Here lies Dobby, a free elf." Apparently house elves make me really emotional.
7) "He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here."
8) Harry's walk into the Forbidden Forest as he prepared to die.
9) Kreacher leading the house elves into battle for his kind master and "for brave Regulus." I think I'm prime S.P.E.W. membership material at this point.
10) When I closed the book.
Character development, or lack thereof:
You may have noticed that the majority of what I loved about this book has to do with the characters. Also the majority of what I didn't like. Some characters were developed really well and others really poorly, and some (Snape) come somewhere in the middle. Some of them (Lupin) follow a believable path that isn't spared enough time in the plot to be satisfying. Some (Dumbledore) turn out to have unexpected depths. Some (Ron) fulfill your best and your worst expectations about their character.
I think I've already devoted ample time to the poorly developed Ms Ginevra Weasley and Mr Draco "Huge Pussy" Malfoy. I'd devote more to Draco but there's really nothing to say since his character hasn't grown or changed at all in this book. So now for the good: Ron and Snape and Dumbledore all show how good guys can, you know, screw up. Have funny ideas. Treat those they love with contempt and disrespect. And guess what? In the end they're still good guys. Dumbledore's storyline was the highlight of this book, and Ron had all the best lines. And I hated Ron after GoF and I hated Dumbledore after HBP and they both subsequently redeemed themselves, but getting an explanation for their flaws? Having them atone for their flaws? That made me love them.
This sort of depth has been reserved exclusively for the Good Guys (TM), but even though that means Snape gets to reap the benefits of multi-dimensionality I think he also gets a bit of the short shaft that has been reserved exclusively for Slimy Slytherins (TM). Saved by the love of a good woman? Come ON. I personally like Snape/Lily (though my money for Snape's Unrequited Love Interest was on Narcissa) and was gratified by the Prince's tale but I also felt like it was an easy out in many ways. Snape was still a nasty git, Snape's political and racial sympathies were still with the Death Eaters, and Snape was never ever--not even once--something less than nasty to the Gryffindors. Life saving aside. And yea, from the standpoint that everyone treats the Slytherins like pariahs without just cause I can almost cheer Snape on as he is unfair to the rest of the world. He's got his own issues and is a fucked up character and I love him the best, but I almost feel like Rowling is "pulling a Ginny." I happen to like the end result more than I care for Harry/Ginny, but I do think she glosses over a lot of things to make Snape's 'redemption' believable. And then we have the epilogue which throws this glossing over into stark light: Snape is the bravest man Harry ever knew? Have we been reading the same series? And yea, I think the stuff Snape did turned out to be pretty brave, but I don't think Rowling showed us that well enough to wrap up her story with such a blanket statement.
(Don't get me started on "we sort too soon." Just don't. Clearly a quarter of all children are irredeemably evil and cowardly and will never, ever do what's right. And if they do something good they were obviously mis-Sorted.)
That brings us to Lupin, the Gryffindor who has the audacity to be afraid and shrink from his duties as a father and a husband. My own particular theory on Lupin is that he's been locking away parts of himself and his emotions (aka THE WOLF WITHIN) since he was a kid. He's not going to change all of a sudden and become a demonstrative family man. He understands living rough and guerrilla warfare; he doesn't understand how to have a wife and kid. Lots of people were disappointed in HBP that Lupin didn't try and fill Sirius's shoes as Harry's godfather, but that's just not how Lupin is made. When we see him in Snape's worst memory? He's detached. When we see him holding back CAPS LOCK HARRY in the Department of Mysteries? He's detached. Even when Tonks is tearily confessing her love at the end of HBP he seems very blase about deflecting her. Well he mans up in the end, so cut the guy some slack. He was imperfect and therefore awesome.
Unanswered questions, theories, etc:
- Are we supposed to assume that, because she had been wearing and had presumably grown close to the horcrux, that Umbridge was acting as a Voldie conduit? Was the locket making Kreacher more disagreeable in OotP? And if these horcruxes cause the destruction of fellow-feeling and make people insecure and irritable when they grow too attached to them, did Harry's horcrux-ness cause these same effects in people who were close to him? If not, why not? Or is the Harrycrux a different sort of horcrux altogether, because anything else would just be too complicated, causing Rowling's head to explode?
- I have a bajillion backstory questions. I think everyone has the same ones. JKR seems pretty eager to fill in the blanks, so I'm sure we'll find out a lot eventually. I'm a little wary of her urge myself, since I think if it doesn't make it into a book it isn't really canon. She may have intended for something to happen/someone to have a certain trait, but if it isn't in the books then I don't think her telling us this factoid or plot point in an interview is really... I don't know what word or phrase I'm looking for here. Above board? Salient? 100 years from now if someone reads the books they're probably not going to take "interview canon" or anything beyond what's written into account. So I don't plan to either.
Fics I want to see:"
- Bring on the old-skool Gin 'n Tonic (Ginny/Tom Riddle) where Ginny finds she is no longer in love with Harry now that he's not a horcrux. She had only been in love with the bit of Tom Riddle's soul that was in him.
- Regulus backstory!
- Really, how did Lily and James fall in love? Inquiring minds NEED to know.
- Dumbledore's Army: Still Recruiting... what other acts of awesome did Neville and Luna (and Ginny...for the love of God, if she's going to be one of your heroines at least make her awesomeness believable) perform?
- There's actually a lot of Ginny fic I'd like to see. Just because I don't like her in the books doesn't mean I don't like her unrealized potential. One thing I'd like is Harry as a stay-at-home Dad and Ginny as the breadwinner because I've seen an unbelievable amount of wank about JKR turning her female characters into nothing more than walking uteruses just because they popped out a couple of kids over the past 19 years. (Woo hoo, run-ons.) Look, we have the crapilogue because Harry wants a happy family so badly. So why not have him be a stay at home dad? And maybe Ginny can go do something kickass.
I know I'm forgetting 32498209834 things. Oops.
I CAN'T WAIT for the movie version of this. I have no idea how they're going to pull it off, but it will be fantastic.