My thoughts on Harry Potter*

*This post is the same as the one I posted on my blog. Just a warning.

So. Harry Potter is over, huh? Never thought this day would come, gotta tell ya. I remember how I got into the series. I was in a bookstore in Chicago, probably over Christmas because I don't remember reading HP until after I moved to California, and we saw it sitting on one of those tables. I picked it up and asked my sister (probably nine or ten at the time) if she'd read it. She said she'd borrowed it from school but hadn't finished it. My mother, wet rag that she is, started harping on how "horrible" it was: "They make the little boy live under the stairs!" I was like, This I gotta read.

I joined the HP fandom while we were still three books from the finale; perhaps it's not coincidence that Goblet of Fire is my favorite. I can also give you an 85 page thesis about why it's the absolute best of the series--take that Steve Jones/Dwight Schrute!--but I won't. Not here. Not now. I guess what I mean to say by this is that, although I feel like Deathly Hallows, by virtue of being the end of the series and therefore kind of outside of the other books in terms of importance, I don't like it nearly as much as I did Goblet. So, whatever. Take that for what you will. I believe, if I were to pin down an order of the books from my favorite to my least favorite, it would go something like: Gof, DH, CoS, PoA, PS/SS, HBP, and finally OoP. Wow, Half-Blood Prince at number six, huh? Yeah, I guess that concurs.

I definitely liked Deathly Hallows better than almost all the other books. So why, when I think about what I have to say about it, can I only focus on the negative? I can think of a billion things I didn't like about it, but nothing I really LIKED about it the way I can think of many things I LOVED about Goblet. In fact, I think in terms of flaws I noticed, this one has the most. Because, besides being too many years long, most of what happens in Order of the Phoenix I can pretty much get behind. I understand why Harry has to be a pissed-off teenager, I'm just not so up for dealing with it for nine hundred pages, you know?

But here's a qualm I had with Deathly Hallows--why wouldn't anyone let Ginny fight during the Battle of Hogwarts at first? Rowling built her up to be this fantastic, strong witch--possibly the strongest among the main teenaged characters--and it seemed like this was going to be important, but then she was stuck in the Room of Requirement while everybody else got to join the fight? I mean, eventually she got involved anyway, but still. I couldn't believe that Harry, of all people, would ask her to stay out of the fray. He knows how strong and talented she is, she's proven twice before that she's perfectly capable of holding her own in battle, and I mean come on, if Neville fights and nobody bats an eyelash--love the kid, great in Herbology, but damn if he's not sort of a, let's say unpredictable, wizard at times--then Ginny ought to be able to. Is it because she's a GIRL?!?!?! (Wow, apparently the soapbox does come with the ovaries--who knew?)

And I also was confused by the Deluminator. I mean, the great thing about the world Rowling created is that she gave it this huge set of rules. Magic can and cannot do certain things, and I think that goes for magical objects created by witches and wizards as much as it does for the witches and wizards themselves. So when an object called the Deluminator is supposed to turn off all the lights in a given area, I assume that that's all it does. But suddenly, it also creates orbs of light that transport people places? Will it only work this way for Ron? Does it only work this way for people who have turned their backs on their friends and now want to return? I mean, that's a pretty specific use. What the hell would Dumbledore ever need that for? Is it also a vacuum? Can it make me a cappucino? I mean, if it can do two such disparate and highly unconnected things, what can't it do? The Deluminator: Deluminates, transports traitors, AND gets stubborn stains out of industrial linoleum! What?

This is neither a flaw or a triumph of the novel, but I totally called it on Snape! I knew he was the person who cast the doe patronus [Did I forget to mention that this post is full of spoilers? Sorry!] that lead Harry to the pond with Gryffindor's sword. I didn't quite understand why the pond had to be frozen, and also didn't really get how Snape knew where they were (this might be a failure of memory rather than of the book), but it's a good callback to the fact that Harry didn't hear anybody say Expecto patronum but that Snape was the one who kept digging at them to learn silent spells. Also, how did the doe patronus still exist when Snape had already apparently apparated out of there (again, might be failure of my memory here)? In Order of the Phoenix we learned that you had to really concentrate hard to produce a full patronus, and to keep it going. If Snape had already left, how did his patronus remain? But I did catch on fairly quickly that Snape's patronus was a doe because he was in love with Lily Potter--we kind of got a bit of that in Order with her protecting him. I figured, whose patronus would be a doe? Well, Harry's and his father's are stags, so if you think that Lily was pretty plugged in with her family then hers would probably be complimentary to theirs, and we know that patronuses can change because of strong emotion (Tonks' patronus proved that to us in Half-Blood Prince), and who else besides James was in love with Lily? Snape. There you go. I also knew that he was going to turn out good. I just didn't believe Dumbledore could be that wrong about somebody, and furthermore I didn't believe that Harry, Ron and Hermione could be that right about him. Throughout the entire series we've been getting scenarios where it looks like Snape is bad and the kids think that and then it turns out he's not only good, he's kind of being a hero. And all to protect a kid he doesn't even like! Snape has been one looooooooong lesson to the trio, teaching them how appearances can be deceiving and how good and evil are not mutually exclusive--that there's a huge gray area when it comes to morality. If he turned out to be bad, and they were right about him all along, well then there wouldn't be much of a lesson in that, would there?

There were also things I hated but I sort of accept. I hated that Harry and that snake were Horcruxes. I was so sure that they weren't. I accept the snake, but I hesitate to even call Harry a Horcrux, because a Horcrux is made on purpose, and Voldemort had no idea that a piece of his soul was in Harry. The curse that rebounded on Voldemort just sort of blasted a piece of his soul off and Harry accidentally swallowed it or something? Uh, I don't think so. Also, how could Voldemort not know? He's possessed Harry before--did he not get some kind of tingle? He couldn't tell at all that he was near a piece of his soul? This whole issue has sort of made me reevaluate exactly how plausible I think this whole Horcrux deal is in the first place, but whatever. Sometimes you've gotta give a little.

I liked the scene in the faux King's Cross Station where Dumbledore explained everything--I was wondering how anybody but Dumbledore could tie it all up for us in the end. I also liked that you end up seeing that Dumbledore is not as perfect as he seems, that there are flaws in him just as there are flaws in everybody else. I wish we could've gotten that earlier in the series, but I guess we did with the way that Dumbledore treated Harry in Order. I like how he can sometimes be wrong, and I think there's even a line somewhere in the series where he says that because he's so much more intelligent and talented than most wizards, he's usually right, but when he's wrong it's disastrous. Case in point right there.

I did not see Grindelwald coming--thought he was just background noise, never thought he'd actually be an important character. I don't know why, but that bothered me a little. I guess because if it randomly shows up in Book 7 I'm sort of going to have expected a trail of breadcrumbs. Mentioning something in Book 1 (like Sirius, for example) and then not touching it again for two or three books is all right to me, but keeping quiet for five whole books and then busting it out without any warning seems a little evasive, potentially manipulative, and far too coy to work as well as you'd like. Again, I accept it, but I did have misgivings. The Dumbledore infodump was a bit frustrating.

This is much the same way I felt about the Deathly Hallows--I like how the invisibility cloak is important in the end, but then suddenly it's ELDER WAND! and RESURRECTION STONE! (or whatever that thing's called) and you're like, "Who in the what now? Deathly Hallows? WTF?" I liked the new stuff, but I feel like it was just too much from all sides: DUMBLEDORE WAS BFF WITH GRINDELWALD! *WHOMP!* DEATHLY HALLOWS! *WHOMP* THE SNAKE CAN PRETEND TO BE A PERSON! *WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!* Suddenly you're all bruised and you have no idea where it all came from. And I SO do not buy the explanation of why Harry ended up being master of the Elder Wand. It makes, quite literally, no fucking sense. I'm with her up to the point where Draco Malfoy is the master of the Elder Wand--after all, he did defeat Dumbledore by Disarming him, and that's all you have to do to get possession of the Elder Wand (I like how that harkens back to the fact that Harry's signature spell is Expelliarmas and how Disarming Voldemort saved his life in the graveyard). But the fact that, by Disarming Draco when the wand Draco was using wasn't even the Elder Wand, Harry became the master of the Elder Wand is pretty ridiculous. I mean, you're really broadening the definition of "defeat" there.

And I hated the epilogue. I know that she didn't want to do a Victorian novel finale where you find out what happened to every single person in the world, but I kind of would've preferred it. The epilogue talked mostly about their kids--I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less about their kids. It is not their kids that I've lived through this experience with. I want to know what's up with Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna, George (sob!), Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and Draco Malfoy. I do not care about Albus Severus (btw, Worst. Name. Ever. And half the kids in my first child's preschool class are gonna have it, bet your bottom dollar) and his siblings and friends. I'm glad they're there, nice to see them, but that's it. I want to know what everybody's doing for a living, who's the Headmaster of Hogwarts, who's married to who, etc. I want to know how Draco is not in Azkaban. The wizarding culture has dementors who suck the souls out of people guarding their prisons--it's not like they're all into turn the other cheek. I don't buy that Narcissa Malfoy's "saving of Harry's life" (since he couldn't die until Voldemort did, that wasn't really that big of a deal) absolved her entire family from paying the price for their Death Eater-yness. Also, wouldn't it have been funny if he ended up marrying a Muggle? But what's up with George? Who's helping him run Weasley's Wizard Wheezes now that Fred's gone? I thought Ron would, but Rowling said that Ron and Harry are both Aurors**. What happened to Percy long-term? Wouldn't it be great if he helped take over Weasley's Wizard Wheezes with George? UH, WHERE WAS CHARLIE IN THIS ENTIRE BOOK, YO? Did he die and I missed it?

I'll tell you one thing I did really love, though. I loved that scene in the forest where Harry resurrected his parents, Sirius and Lupin and asked them to walk with him to his death. Nice touch. I cried, first time in this book. I liked it because it's sweet and because Harry has learned so much and fought so hard and because he finally got to ask something of his parents, which he'd never been able to do before. But I also like it because it think it's quite a deft piece of writing--it mirrors the scene in the first book where Harry has to look in the Mirror of Erised to get the sorcerer's stone. It's got that same theme--selflessness--and it's closely tied to Harry "seeing" his parents. I don't think it's ridiculous for Dumbledore to have commended Harry for being a better man than he is--after all, Harry is constantly thinking of other people; he's very selfless, always has been, especially when it comes to his fate.

**Actually, according to this webchat J.K. Rowling did at the Leaky Cauldron, Ron did end up joining George at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. Earlier, she said that Ron and Harry were both Aurors. Interesting, huh?