Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Reaction thread: Harry Potter Book 7. SPOILERS!

Just starting this for anyone who'd like to come in and scream or squeal or cheer or rant or rave or whatever - those who've finished the book, that is

It should be clear from the thread title, but just to make it very clear again...

WARNING - HERE BE SPOILERS


Discuss away!


Wendy

Oh, thank you Wendy! I was bursting to talk about the book, but half the fandom are still reading. It's the height of irony that I had to come here to discuss it.

In my not-so-humble opinion, this book kicked BUTT!! Children's books, my foot! That was nothing less nor nothing more than Young Adult! Anybody noticed all the swearwords? There's an awful lot of "effing' going around, Aberforth repeatedly says “bastards”, Hermione screams "you great ARSE!" and MRS. WEASLEY SCREAMS “YOU BITCH”?! I stared at the page for ten seconds thinking I must just be dreaming of reading HP! I guess this is just Jo's way of telling all the "concerned adults" to grow up.

The most famous fanfic writers have been vindicated. All their theories have more or less come true. And in a completely weird freakishly psychic way, the fic that was attempted to be passed off as the leaked original book weeks ago on Portkey (Melindaleo’s The Seventh Horcrux) so closely resembled the plotlines that it freaked me out monumentally.

Of course, the shippers are going to start complaining. I can see the WotcherWolvie petition now. The Harry/ Hermione shippers are going to howl about the One Big Happy Weasley Family ending, despite the loads of potential conciliatory Harmony material JK has offered. The H/G shippers are going to howl about the lack of Ginny. The Ron/Hermione shippers are going to howl about the limited kissing time. The Lily/ Snape shippers are going to light a bonfire and do war dances. One day, if one is sanguine, they'll all actually realize that romance was never meant to be a focal point in the Harry Potter books.

And then they'll all start howling about how it reads like fanfic. I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.

Character-wise, this was the best book of the series. I don’t dislike Dumbledore, as some now do, but I finally can see past the hero-worship to the man underneath. Harry is, in the end, better than any of us, because he alone had the wisdom and maturity to come to terms with the truth of his mentor’s ambitions and still remember him with love and respect – but also as an equal. This is the crucial point of any child’s development; it is at the point when a child can view his guardians as people and not just as parents that he will have reached the zenith of his emotional maturity. Which some among us has yet to achieve. Harry’s transition from boy to man is breath-taking, and the corresponding shift in his perceptions of the people around him are equally so. I give full kudos to JK Rowling for this.

The parallels between the real-world situations are also well done, though none-too-subtle. The Third Reich comparisons were so obvious, I felt a little like she was beating us on the head with them until I had to repress the desire to shout, “We get it already!” Grindelwald took the sign of the Hallows for himself and corrupted it the same way that Hitler took the Hindu sign of prosperity, the Swastika, and turned it into a symbol of horror. The moral ambiguity of people and situations was the paramount theme in this book, which features Harry using Unforgivables, Dumbledore using people as pawns in his great design and grey characters such as Xenophilius Lovegood. It demonstrates how bigotry and race-bias isn’t the one-sided product of the wizarding sense of superiority but reaped and sown by both sides. The Muggle attack on Ariana Dumbledore, Griphook’s double-crossing and the explanation of Kreacher’s motivations create a sense of depth in this book that sets it apart from the superficial childish black-and-whiteness of the others. A lot of Puritan idealist fans of Potter are going to be very disillusioned. The nature of the Muggle attack on Ariana is left purposely unelaborated, leading the more mature reader to draw some extremely unpleasant R-rated conclusions. Anyone who can still classify this as a children’s book is delusional.

Plot-wise though, it was very precarious and holey and flints abounded. The whole wand lore thing was the most convoluted and precarious plot line I've ever come across. The wand belongs to whomever disarms the wand-bearer? Has Jo even considered the implications of that in relation to a multitude of other people's wands, who routinely get disarmed? Including Harry’s?

And why didn't anybody get her to stop the chapter at the point Voldemort dies? It's supposed to be THE climatic moment of the entire series! Instead what we get is, in the space of four pages, in quick succession - Vodie dies, everybody's happy, Hooray Hooray, Peeves does his Eminem routine, Ron cracks a lame joke and the book ends with Harry contemplating the possibility of a kip in Gryffindor Tower and a sandwich. It's official, boys and girls. JKR has succumbed to her Enid Blyton influences in the end. The title of the 8th book will be "Harry Potter Has A Lot Of Fun" featuring PG bathing suits and a lot of salad and ginger beer.

Honestly, what is Jo's editorial team DOING?

All in all though, it was a truly grand finale. Trust JK to live up to her threats of killing Harry and then doing it in a way that didn't hurt the fans. Almost came close to matching the magnificence of the third and fourth books. Everyone kicks *** ...none more so than Mrs. Weasley. Take that, Weasley haters!

Ron-bashers, who are gearing up to rip him to pieces for having walked out – it takes a lot of guts to walk out, but it takes even more to walk back in. The whole book is about good people being carried away by their insecurities, their ambitions and their frustrations and making mistakes on account of them. The good guys are not those who never makes mistakes – Rowling makes it clear that such a person does not exist even in Dumbledore or Harry. The good guys are those who are willing to do everything in their power to fix those mistakes and face the consequences.

One thing I'm still steaming over...a few days after HPB came out, the fandom was agog with the notion that Harry's scar was the 7th Horcrux and he would need to kill himself to destroy it. JKR firmly debunked this a few months before DH came out, saying Harry's scar was NOT a Horcrux. I would scream foul at this now, if it weren't for the fact that she was technically right...it was Harry himself who was the Horcrux. Oh, what the heck... FOUL!!!

I can’t get over Fred’s death though. I never thought she’d kill just one of the twins. Actually, I never thought she’d kill the twins, period. That would have been bad enough but killing just one of them is evil. She might as well have amputated George’s arms and be done with it. At least Remus and Tonks died side by side, although even that is small comfort. I always thought it would be Percy who would die, as did everyone else, I think. But his redemption was one of the high points of the book. And the fact that Percy was the one fighting beside Fred when he was killed was as fitting as the fact that Fred died while he was laughing. Fred and Percy had always been each other’s prime antagonists in the family.

Every death felt like a blow to the gut, really, starting with Hedwig’s. I felt winded and numb after a while, although I can’t believe how cut up I felt over Ted Tonks. I cried hardest at Dobby’s death – I actually had to put the book away and sob uninterruptedly for 15 minutes. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said “bloodbath”.

Neville and Luna, though. How frickking AWESOME were they?

The epilogue was a bit of a WTF for me though. Not the content, but the writing style. It was bizzarely tame and regressive. Moral of the story - never write the final chapter of a bildungsroman first and then leave it unchanged , because in the intervening 17 years, your skills as a writer are going to grow so much that it will end up looking like you've pasted a fifth-grader's essay at the back of your Master's degree thesis.

Possible icon captions:

1. Harry/ Hermione - Like a sister, my *** !

2. Remus/ Tonks - In death not divided.

3. Molly Weasley - NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH! (Gang way! Kick-*** Molly coming through!)

4. Hermione - "Ron Weasley, you great arse !! (Punch, punch, punch)"

5. The great shame of Petunia's life...Tuney!

6. Harry: "Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was."

7. Percy: "I was a fool! I was an idiot! I was a pompous prat! I was a -"
Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron?
NO SHIT!

8. Harry: "I am the master of the Elder Wand!"
*Pause*
Observe teh sex.

9. James Potter/ Draco Malfoy: "Imagine being in Slytherin/ Hufflepuff! I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"
Potter and Malfoy -United in the Brotherhood of Berks.

10. Lily/ Severus - Liliverus: now offically canon! Long live the cheese!

11. The new HMS WotcherWolvie slogan - We ship dead people.

12. Dumbledore - Ain't no Obi wan Kenobi after all. PWNed you!

13. Ron Weasley - Parselmouth Extraordinaire! Just gag and blow a raspberry. Snakes will come running.

14. Ron and Hermione kissing - Long live, S.P.E.W!

15. Ron and Hermione - "Always the tone of surprise."

Wotcher Wolvie, for those who can't tell simply by the name, is the fandom Mecca for Remus/Tonks shippers.

And check this out, people: Harry Potter in 100 words
Hilarious!

Man, what to say. I just finished, so I think I'm still in a recovery period LOL.

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SPACE?


Didn't know if I needed to add some spoiler space to the post itself...


Well, for one, you're right. This book kicked BUTT. It kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish since it was basically a chase from start to finish <heh>. I could have done without the epilogue. :rolleyes: I'm not really a shiptastic person. I would have rather looked at the bigger picture than who's married to whom and whose kids are doing what, etc.

Points of interest:
-Tonks and Lupin really cut me to the core.
-Speaking of psychic theories, I never believed them when they guessed Harry was related to the Horcurxes. Well I've been served hah!
-I liked the way with which Snape's character was dealt.
-Awww, Hedwig!
-Okay, what was up with Snape towards the end in the Whomping Willow? Clearly I don't remember something from a previous part or book. What did Harry collect from him in the bottle?

I still need a recovery period. It was stressful, sad and killer all at the same time. But strangely, all is well.

JD

Snape's memories...that's what he poured into the Pensive before diving in.

Overall, I'm left with the impression that it was a good book. Lots of action will make for a good film filled with visual effects. However, there was so much exposition thrown in there to finish up all of the plot lines that it seemed a little desperate - as if everything needed to be wrapped up in a nice tidy bow.

Except...The Epilogue. Something that could have been delivered with the latest shipment from the Cheese of the Month Club. :rolleyes: If the Sorting Hat's song in Book 5 warned that the Houses should not be divided, and if the Sorting Hat gets set on fire, and Rowling makes a point at the end of noting that McGonagall had replaced the House tables, but nobody was sitting according to Houses anymore, then what is the point of the childish bickering about being sorted into Houses? Has nothing been learned? Are we supposed to be happy that the kids have nothing to worry about anymore other than this? Really, Rowling should not have included the epilogue. I think it would have been better for her to respect the imagination of her readers and allow all of us to decide what might lie ahead in the future.

I liked it. Lots of action. I thought the whole wand thing at the end went on a bit too long. Fred's death was the one that got me the most, for some reason. I'm glad Neville got to kill Nagini, I thought he was totally kicking butt. Ron was a prat for going off like that, but at least he came back. I loved that even though most of the book wasn't in Hogwarts, the final scenes were; very fitting. I agree with Hasini that this was not a kid's book; there were some pretty deep themes and real consequences. Ron, despite the aforementioned prat-ness, was more grown-up. And Harry really was. You could tell when people were interacting with him that he wasn't viewed as a boy anymore, he was a man, someone to be reckoned with. And D. says it at the end - "brave man". I liked the epilogue, but I wish she had mentioned his occupation.

And now I'm way past my bedtime - good night!

Mostly it worked for me, and once the first death occurred I knew we were in for a VERY interesting ride. As others have said the wand lore thing did seem to be forced into the story a little - if there had been more about it in earlier books I'd be a lot happier. Admittedly that wand was supposed to be exceptional, but it all got a bit silly with the "I've disarmed him and he disarmed Dumbledore" stuff. It would have helped if they'd kept it just a little simpler.

The bit that really annoyed me was the wholly unnecessary epilogue, which was pure pandering to the shippers.

OTOH there's a rather interesting little idea for a Buffy crossover in there, and the character I play in a post-Voldemort RPG (Horace Slughorn) just got a lot more heroic...

*sigh* I just finished (*mutters* other things in life interfering...hmp). And...well, what can I say? I loved it!

I almost cried at Dobby's death. I think that his was the one that affected me the most. Hedwig...her death seemed like kind of a non-event, though sad. Remus and Tonks, Fred, Colin Creevy and Snape...all very sad. Snape especially. I like that he was good after all. I wanted him to be (this seems to be partially because of what was revealed about his character and partially because Alan Rickman plays him in the movies... ).

I agree with those who have said that Harry was incredibly more emotionally mature in this book. I loved the scene with Dumbledore (in Harry's mind...?) and the scene afterwards with Harry pretending to be dead and then shooting off curses from behind his invisibility cloak. Nice. I also liked the twist with Harry explaining calmly to Voldemort that the elder wand had belonged to Draco and that since he had disarmed him, it now belonged to him. That's one thing I wouldn't have guessed. I was a little confused after Harry woke up from talking to Dumbledore - I still thought that he was perhaps going to die, but wasn't quite sure.

*sigh* I even liked the epilogue - looks like I'm one of the only ones who did. It just made me feel all warm and fuzzy, and I liked that. A little shipping romance never hurt anybody, though I agree that it could have been written better, as the rest of the book was. JK should have gone back and edited a little... As others have said, writing styles do change a lot as the years go by.

I don't know about anybody else, but I quite liked that Draco and his parents were all alive and redeemed somewhat - love for your family is obviously more important than serving your Dark Lord. From the epilogue, Draco still doesn't think much of Harry nineteen years later, but he at least acknowledges him and not rudely either. I wonder what exactly happened to him and his family after the party at Hogwarts to celebrate Voldemort's death broke up? Were there people who wanted to kill them lining up to try and do so before someone stopped them? Hmm... Perhaps fanfic will emerge about it.

Anyway, great book. Loved it. Even the epilogue.

~Anna.

What a ride!

Definetely not a child's book, very dark.

Jose

I think what I liked most about it is the perspective on heroes and heroism. It's completely not a one-dimensional view, and nor is it all about Good versus Evil narrowly defined. Yes, there are villains who remain villains, and heroes who have always been heroes, but we see shades of grey too. We see people who have been in the shadows step forward to have their moment of glory. And we see some characters redeemed.

Harry's not the most heroic character in the book, by any means, though he is certainly a hero. Dumbledore's shown to have feet of clay, yet is still redeemed. Neville is amazing and in a couple of respects is crucial to the outcome. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Dobby, Kreacher, Lupin, McGonagall and very many more perform heroic acts and are essential to what goes on.

And Snape. Left looking like a traitor at the end of the last book - though I suspected then that he'd been acting on Dumbledore's orders when he killed him as well - he turns out to be about the most heroic of them all. He played a role for so long, pretending to be one of Voldemort's supporters, having to sit by and watch horrible things done, and at the same time risk discovery to avert disaster when necessary. He had to kill Dumbledore, and we see at the end how much he cared about Dumbledore. He saved Harry with his Patronus. And, no doubt, prevented far worse happening to Hogwarts while he was headmaster.

So loved that aspect.

Some of the deaths left me sadder than others, particularly Fred and Dobby, and I had a lump in my throat when it was casually mentioned that Remus and Tonks were dead too. But more survived than I'd expected, which is good.

The epilogue... I don't mind that there was an epilogue; I just think it was very poorly written. If, as Hasini says, it was written years ago I can believe it; it's not up to the level of the rest of the book. I was happy to know who's paired up with whom (I was hoping that maybe Dean and Luna are together as well), but there was far more important stuff we could have been told. I don't know if Harry and co ever went back to get their AWLs, for instance. Did Hermione become an Auror? What are Harry and Ron doing for a living? What became of the Dursleys, and the rest of the Weasleys? The narrow focus on kids meant a lot was left out. Also, what happened to the senior Malfoys? Yes, Narcissa was somewhat redeemed at the end, but what of Lucius? And who is now Headmaster (or Mistress) of Hogwarts? I was hoping for McGonagall, but we weren't told and I'd have liked to know.

Overall, though, with a few minor quibbles, such as the epilogue and not seeing enough of what was going on elsewhere and what other characters were doing while the trio was wandering aimlessly around England, I did like it. A lot.


Wendy

I agree Wendy, the epilogue seemed diferent, some added characterization would have been better.

We know Neville is a professor... Herbology probably. Mind you I always pictured Hermione as Minerva's subsitute... Harry and Ron probably are Aurors, that's what they said in OotP. The Malfoys were a loose end.

Don't you mean NEWTs"?

Yeah, Neville, Luna and Ginny sneak into the Headmaster office trying to steal Gryffindor's Sword and they get only a detention with Hagrid?

And then, there's the fact that Howgwarts accepted Snape as Headmaster, remember OotP when didn't allow Um-bit... Umbridge?

Jose

yeah the epilogue was poor. We never knew what happend to Luna. I ruled for Neville and Luna since the 5th book. So Harry is the Godfather of Tonk's und Lupin's child, but where does he live?

I am sorry for all the death. Hedwig, Dobby and Fred moved me the most. I still have goosebumps.

It was a great book after all and a great ending.

I loved the book, though I'm left sad even a day later. It's all over! Though I'm thinking I might go back and reread the final battle.

I was sniffling over Dobby, and crying a bit during Harry's walk into the Forbidden Forest. I was so afraid that he was going to die (okay, well, he sorta did, but didn't stay dead), but I was still hoping he'd live. And I still can't believe that she killed off Fred, Lupin, and Tonks! Though I admit I was wriggling when I was watching the live broadcast of Jo reading the first chapter, and she mentioned the marriage.

I did like the epilogue, but thought it should have been more. Wendy's brought up all of the questions I thought of afterwards. Hopefully Jo will answer some of them eventually. And I feel so bad for the kids. James and Lily, I could expect, and Albus, but Albus Severus? Poor kid! Hugo? And don't forget Scorpius (who gives me bad mental images thanks to Farscape).

Knee jerk reaction: I loved this one.

Yes, I admit, I was crying at a few points. And cheering at a few others. And going, ah, hah! I thought so in others.

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I don't want to go through everything... but I will just say that I found it interesting that Harry, with his perfect soul, manages to get out of actively killing Voldemort, who was killed by his own rebounding killing curse.

I admit that I don't like the idea of Harry actually killing anyone, but isn't this a bit of a cop out? After all, Harry's killed fragments of soul. Where is the difference between killing fragments of soul and killing the body that part of the soul is housed in?

The epilogue: I'm a bit puzzled by that, to be honest. Like others, I thought it could have been better. I, too, wanted to know about Luna, and a few others, and I wanted to know what Harry and his friends had gone on to do as adults.

But I don't suppose that really matters; leaving matters open gives scope for readers to use their imaginations to fill in the gaps (and probably gives grist to the fanfic mill!). The epilogue just about does what it sets out to do, which is show that life goes on... or went back to the wizarding idea of normal, if you prefer. There is a balance to be achieved between rounding off a story quickly, so that the epilogue doesn't detract from the story's climax, and giving us the detail we want. That I think I would have liked a little more detail in this instance, or would have liked to see the epilogue set earlier than the nineteen years later that we got, seems churlish, given what goes before.

What puzzles me most about the epilogue, though, is that I thought I'd seen an interview on TV a few years ago wherein JKR revealed that there last chapter had been written, and that the last word was 'scar'. Well, the last word wasn't 'scar', so am I misremembering? Or has the epilogue been 'tweaked' at some point. And, if the epilogue was tweaked, why wasn't it tweaked to bring it up to the standard of the rest of the writing?

Also, one quick thing about Snape. Yes, he comes out of this as a hero. (I am delighted with the way that was ultimately handled.) But would Harry and Ginny really have called one of their kids after him? Really? I just can't see that, somehow.

I daresay this post isn't as desperately articulate or well reasoned as I would like. I think I'll have to give it a few more days for the details of the book to sink in to know what I really, really feel about it.

As for the series being over? Oddly, I don't feel terribly upset. I feel a little flat, I suppose, now that a few hours have past since I put the book down, but I don't feel the huge sense of emptiness or of loss I sometimes feel at the end of a really good tale.

Rather, on finishing The Deathly Hallows, my feeling was one of complete contentment and satisfaction. The book lived up to my hopes, and the entire saga came to a more than adequate conclusion.

And, really, can any reader ask for more than that?

Chris

Edited in light of Helga's post, below. My apologies to anyone who caught this post by accident. (Do you know, I don't think I even realised that there was an option for clicking on 'today's active topics'.)

Hey gang, I posted this in my LJ but Wendy let me know y'all are talking over here so I'm going to cross post this here:

My first thought: It's excellent. I really loved this book. I enjoyed it so much more than The Half Blood Prince. I laughed, I cried, and despite how it ends I think it all fit nicely. I do think the ending needed a bit more and it wasn't because I am disappointed with the couples. I'll explain more on that later.

To me Half Blood Prince felt more like a fanfiction with too many teenage hormones on the loose. It seemed rushed and I didn't get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I blamed it on the fact that I read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction and, yes, I am a Harry/Hermione shipper. (I still am!)

However, I do have to admit that it seemed to have fit in this book. The relationship between Ron and Hermione was gradual and Harry had time to reflect on why he loved Ginny. It probably helped immensely that Harry, Ron, and Hermione spent the major portion of the book on their own ... no other students, teachers, or parents with them.

Anyway, there's so much in this book I'm not even sure I can do a decent review that would do it justice.

There are a few key deaths but there were only two I cried over and that was Hedwig and Dobby. Hedwig was the first to go and I could just feel the anguish that Harry must have felt over her. She was the first being to give Harry unconditional love that he was able to appreciate (my opinion). Dobby's death was just not expected. Elves are supposed to have magic that other magical beings could only dream of and yet Doby lost his life to a simple knife. And it was the second time that Bellatrix took away someone Harry cared deeply for.

The only other point in the book that I cried was when Harry realized that he would have to die. I had to put the book down for a few minutes before I could return to it.

My favorite chapter was 33 - the Prince's Tale. This is the chapter that explains *everything* about Snape and why Dumbledoor had so much trust in him. Chapter 35 - King's Cross also has a lot of explanations but this time from Dumbledoor himself.

When I read through each of these chapters I thought that JKR was actually paying attention to what the fans were speculating about after book 6. (Though she did miss the key point about how much we thought Hermione would be a much better fit for Harry than Ginny but I'm not going to dwell on that ... much.)

The whole thing surrounding Draco was interesting; however, we are left to guess what happens to him and his family. After how evil Lucius Malfoy was in the last six books it came down to him actually loving his son more than serving the Dark Lord.

Ignoring the epilogue, I don't think we could have asked for a better ending than what we were given.

My thoughts on the epilogue are that we are left to guess how the wizarding world rebuilt itself after the down fall of Tom Riddle. I would have like to have read about how things had changed for the better after the war, even if it was just done in a few pages. We know that Ginny, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are happy but what became of them other than raising a family. Did they finish school? What kind of careers did they choose? I think a few more sentences here and there could have us given a clue.

At least it wasn't a black screen ending.

And in response to an earlier poster .. Us Pumpkin Shippers (H/HR) knew this was coming. After all it was us that JKR called delusional after book 6 if we thought she'd ever pair Harry and Hermione. <G>

Umm yeah, it would be good if you could add a little bit of spoiler noise at the start of you post, not just space, but words, like people do for the Kerth Quizes.

I can't be the only one who follows the boards by clicking on the » Today\'s Active Topics « link on the front page. That page also gives you the first few sentences of the post, so if you launch straight into OMG!! Voldermot was Dumbledore all long!!! It will show up there.

Me, I don't care about spoilers. Not since my friend told me the twist in the Wasp Factory when I was halfway through reading it. Now, no spoiler can beat that for ruining my enjoyment.

Helga

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Jo said sometime in the past 6 months that she re-wrote the ending slightly, and the last word was no longer scar.

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Hey, no offence meant to ALL H/Hr shippers! Just to those few who are going to plague the Fictionally forums with flames very soon. Knowing something is coming doesn't mean that people like it any better when it does.

Actually, although I am partial to some ships, the HP ship wars over the years have left me rather wary of ALL hardcore shippers. I remember the brou-ha-ha in the forums after HPB. I had to stop reading them altogether. Hey, flame a book all you want if you didn't like it, just don't flame it for the ships.

Btw, Jo never called the Harmonies delusional, it was Emerson Spartz who did. Although the "anvil-sized hints" crack of hers was a bit thoughtless.

Anelli and Spartz also dissed the Snape redeemers the same way, during the interview. Although Anelli did refer to "Snape's strong pattern of redemption" that seemed to tickle Jo vastly. But Emerson was quite sure the Snape-redeemers were all "desperate-hopers". Haha! NOW who will have to hide his head in the sand, Spartz?

But you know what REALLY freaked me out? In a really good way? Well, I started reading HP when I was 13 and the first fanfic I ever came up with featured Ron and Hermione's daughter Rose and Draco's son, Dexter. Harry and Ginny had three children in it, James, Sirius and Lily (who was the same age as Rose). Ron and Hermione had had one other son, Chris, who died. Draco had never truly been 'redeemed', but had turned double agent for the Light side during another war (that had come ten years after Voldie's fall), in exchange for the promise that Harry wuld keep his wife Maria (a sweet Italian woman of a prominent pureblood family) and son Dexter, safe.

However, a mistake on Draco's part results in Maria's death, despite Harry's best efforts. Still he blames Harry for her death and once the war is over, takes Dexter out of Harry's care and leaves the country. Dexter, who is five or six at the time, deeply resents this move, as he is forced to leave the only family he had ever known by a father he barely remembered.

Draco marries again while abroad, to please his parents, and has a son and daughter with his new wife. This further alienates Dexter, although he is Draco's favourite child. Dexter has never fully accepted Draco as his father. Later on, they come back to Britain, when Dex is 12. He, Rose and Lily all start Hogwarts together. He and Lily are sorted into Slytherin, while Rose is sorted into Gryffindor, although this does not impede their friendship.

He and Rose are often at loggerheads with each other, often because of Ron's enmity toward anyone with the name Malfoy, which influences Rose and aggravates Dexter, who does not want to BE a Malfoy. He is closest to Lily, remembering her from their childhood days. However, Lily cannot see him as another brother, she falls in love with him just as surely as Rose and Dexter fall for each other.

Well, things get a little sticky fromt hen onward, especially once the adults get dragged into it. Cheesy, I know, but then, what is fanfic for?

Anyway, let's just say I was whooping at the epilogue.

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Well, I've started my post-Hallows HP / Buffyverse crossover, have the first part up on Livejournal. I'm taking the epilogue as canon, so the second chapter will see some Harry / Ginny domestic bliss before he has to go off on a routine mission that is going to go very very silly...

I'll link to it once I've posted it to an archive.

Posted here

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Harry and I

I read the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, because there was so much hoopla and hype surrounding it. So I read it and... well. Okay. It felt good to have read it and know what it was about. Then I saw the movie, and I really liked it, and so I read the book again, and liked it better than the first time. So I bought the second book. Okay. Not bad. For some reason I didn't see the second movie. Don't know why really. But I read the third book. Now, people, was that the book where this boy Cedric died? Was this the book where they had some sort of wizardry competition, some sort of wizardry school games, and Harry won, and this guy Cedric died? You know, there is a Swedish saying from the time when we were a peasant society, so young people don't know it, but it goes like this:

That's a lot of screaming for very little wool, said the old woman as she was shearing the pig.

Well, I was thinking about the copious screaming and the diminutive amount of wool after I'd read the book where Cedric died. J.K. Rowling kills a kid just so that Harry can win some stupid wizardry games and go another round against Voldemort? That's when I gave up on Harry Potter.

My problem with Harry is that the boy doesn't fascinate me. Oh, I kind of like him, don't get me wrong, and I always rooted for him in the books I read. But he never fascinated me. I've never had any Harry fantasies, believe me.

So anyway, I've never read book five and six and maybe not book four - depends on which book Cedric
was killed in - so there's a lot of stuff that I don't know about Harry. But when I heard that J.K. Rowling had brought her Harry epos to an end, I just had to read the last book. And now I have, and I liked it. Sure there were many deaths in it, and too many for my taste, but at least it felt as if Harry and his friends were fighting for something hugely important, and not for some stupid wizardy games.

Severus Snape: The Spock factor

Only one character in the Potter universe has really and truly fascinated me, and that is Snape. There was something about him that reminded me of my one big fictional idol apart from Lois and Clark, namely Spock from the original Star Trek. In the Kirk and Spock version of Star Trek, Spock was the absolutely only one on the spaceship Enterprise who was not a hundred per cent human. The ship was packed with four hundred ordinary human beings plus Spock. Imagine how lonely he must have felt. And he was lonely. Spock was never seen chumming about with the other people on the Enterprise. He was never seen hanging around with other people in some kind of bar, and he was never laughing and joking with a bunch of other people from the ship.

Spock really only had one friend, but that was the most important person on the ship: Captain Kirk. Popular, personable, radiating confidence, Captain Kirk was everybody's favorite, and Spock was the one that Kirk himself held in the highest esteem. But Captain Kirk had so many others who liked him and wanted to spend time with him, whereas Spock only had Kirk.

During the first season of the first version of Star Trek, Spock was mistrusted by several crew members of the Enterprise. Well, you know, Spock was the one and only alien, the oddity, the freak. And imagine him being Kirk's right-hand man, too, how that galled some people. They thought he was an arrogant, supercilious jerk, who fancied himself better than regular people.... During that first season of the first version of Star Trek, Spock wordlessly radiated a deep, unexpressed loneliness and pain. And I was incredibly moved by him, and I wanted him to prove himself to the others, and I wanted them to like him and accept him.

If you think about it, Snape is a bit like Spock. He fairly radiates loneliness and pain. He has no friends, or at least none that I am aware of. People are suspicious of him, and not without reason. But he is the right-hand man of everybody's favorite, beloved headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

Snape even looks a little bit like Spock. For all his professed reason and logic, Spock often seemed to be brooding a bit. Snape looks excessively brooding. Both Snape and Spock are tall, thin and dark, with rather narrow faces and very distinctive hairstyles. Both Snape and Spock have strange skills and powers, too.

Snape is, of course, a much darker character than Spock ever was. Spock could never, ever in any way be compared to a Death Eater.

What was so lovely about this last book was that it revealed that almost all his life, Snape had been driven and motivated by love - love for Lily Evans, Harry Potter's mother. Of course Snape could never have Lily. A neglected, unattractive boy, unloved even by his parents, destined to be sorted into the house of Slytherin - what could he really offer Lily, the happy, good and sweet Gryffindor girl?

But the amazing thing is that Snape, who himself was unloved all his life, faithfully loved Lily Evans all his life and took horrible risks to keep her son Harry safe. And Harry, like everybody else, reciprocated by disliking Snape. Snape had to prove his love by doing horrible things, too - by killing Dumbledore, for example.

I think the thing I liked best about this whole new book was that Snape had a lovely, silvery, graceful and oh-so-feminine doe as his Patronus. In fact, Snape had the same Patronus as Lily. Of course the doe was perfect for Lily in every way, but you'd think it was as wrong for Snape as anything could be. Imagine - this dark, brooding, ominous man with his lanky, unkempt hair - his Patronus was this lovely image of feminine innocence and grace. And yet the doe was perfect for him. I think of it as Snape's love for Lily taking ethereal shape in his Patronus, identical to the Patronus of Lily.

I think my second favorite thing about this book is that Harry honored Snape by naming his son after him.

Harry's taste in girls

What I like least in this book may actually be Harry's taste in girls. Why isn't he the least bit interested in Hermione? Come on, people, Hermione has been Harry's faithful sidekick (along with Ron) for seven books, risking her life for him again and again, tirelessly helping him prevail against him enemy. And he isn't interested in her, not at all? He prefers a younger girl who has done so much less to save Harry and to prove her mettle, and who has shared so few fights with him? (Okay, okay, I haven't read books five and six. It's quite possible that if I had, I would think much more favorably of Ginny.)

A depressing possibility is that J.K. Rowling herself doesn't like Hermione very much. Maybe she thinks that Hermione is bookish and arrogant and has far too high-falutin thoughts about herself. Maybe Rowling thinks that girls and women don't make very good heroes, and they should really leave the hero stuff to the guys and to the housewives like Mrs Weasley. Just consider the way Mrs Weasly beat Bellatrix, when Hermione was definitely unable to do so. Maybe Rowling thinks that Ginny will prove to be her mother's daughter, a girl who will be happy to stay at home and raise her family, except during those incredibly rare and horrible emergencies when she will prove herself to be a better witch than anyone else.

So anyway, I felt sorry for Hermione in this book, so unappreciated and taken for granted by Harry. But I loved Ron's love for her. She and Ron made an adorable couple.

Harry's shining hour: Saying no to the Elder Wand

It was great to see that Harry was so mature and, well, wise in this book that he wouldn't go chasing after power and might like so many others would have done, if they had been in his shoes. Like Dumbledore himself had done. I loved how Harry declined the Elder Wand and only used it to repair his own wand.

I think you can compare Harry in this book with Aragorn in the last part of Tolkien's Ring Trilogy. In Rowling's book, Harry has to embrace death to defeat the evil that would consume England, and possibly the Earth. Int Tolkien's book, Aragaorn had to enter the realm of Death to summon dead people to fight at his side against the forces of darkness.

But in the end, Harry's and Aragorn's fates are very different. Aragorn becomes King of Middle Earth. He becomes a real royal, kingly King, the kind of King that his old friends and brothers-in-arms have to kneel before when they come visiting him. I hated it. Harry, by comparison, declines the Elder Wand that would have made him invincible, and slips off with his closest friends to sit down and have a sandwich.

So... all in all, this was a very satisfactory end to the Potter epos. And I'm sure that we all found different things in the book that we loved best and least!

Ann

Okay, I've never read any of the Harry Potter books. Know very little about them. But just answer me one question please.

Does Harry Potter die in the last book?

There was so much hype about it before the book came out and with everyone talking about everything in the book - none of which means anything to me - I'm still not entirely certain of the answer to that one simple question.

So... please put me out of my mysery and answer that one simple question.

ML