Harry Potter #7: (SPOILERS APLENTY): Now that you've read it...

Cafe Society
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And telling a much younger Harry that all he wanted was socks, was such a parental, paternal thing to do–I know when my kids were younger and they asked me about some issue or other, my priority was to be reassuring, not to burden them with stuff like “well, I may have killed my mentally deranged younger sister after she was attacked by boys, but I’ll never know who really did her in.”
I didn’t cry during any of this book (I did when AD died in book6). I think I’m still digesting it all, and will go back and reread it soon.
I thought the house elves would have done more in the battle–they just grab ankles and stuff–what happened to their powerful magic?

Also, I didn’t expect Norbert(a) to come back-dragons are wild, but Buckbeak has been tamed. I wish the ghosts had been more prominent.

Was it really AD that Harry was talking to in his purgatory like scene or was it just Harry, having internalized all of AD’s teachings? I like the way that scene is just another plane of conciousness. Fascinating.

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The whole Moody/invisibility cloak thing kept nagging at me during the book, but since they never showed what would happen if one person had all three Hallows at once, it’s not a big deal. Plus, Dumbledore himself said the story surrounding them probably wasn’t entirely truthful, so even though the Cloak was special, it may not have been that special.

Anyway, damn good book, a very satisfying conclusion. One part I really liked that no one pointed out was in McGonagall was talking to Slughorn and said “we duel to kill” and then added that it was “time for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties.” I smiled at that part and I’ve always liked it when we see the person behind the stern teacher stereotype that she is.

And I really did think she was going to kill Harry off (and got really sad when I did), but then I realized there were still 50 pages to go, so he’d probably pull through in the end.

Now I’m just sad it’s over. As some have said, I’ll probably re-read them all many more times, especially once I have kids.

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phew! exhausting. but mostly satisfying I suppose. I was really enjoying it up until they all got stuck in the woods and couldn’t figure out what to do. After that, it started to feel a little bit like a video game, with the finding the random objects, solving puzzles, battling with wands…I found the use of the replicating objects at the bank to be an amusing commentary on copyright issues, though the wording was cautious enough that I’m not sure which viewpoint Rowling was taking. With the rumors about Dumbledore’s past and Harry’s connection to Voldemort becoming more pronounced I was thinking that either Dumbledore or Harry might turn out to Voldemort in disguise. Certainly, Harry started acting a but like Voldemort towards the end, with “meaning” his curses and all the secrecy and pushing away of potential helpers and using the controlling people spell. I thought Rowling might find some sort of justification for putting Ron and Harry together romantically, but there wasn’t enough of a lead up to pull that off. There was a bit about Ron being worried Harry might try to get with Hermione. I’m not sure how I feel about all the violence. There were a couple points about carelessness in using the power of magic. Over all though, great though it was how brave every one was in being willing to fight, it was kind of disturbing to experience being in a wizarding war.

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Enjoyed the book. I’m pleased to see I was right about Snape’s motivations (even though I’d never expected that he knew Lily before they went to school.)

Overall, my one complaint is that some of the deaths seemed really unnecessary. Why kill Fred if you’re not even going to give us one word of George’s reaction? (Basically all we got was the family huddled around his body.) Why kill Lupin and Tonks if you’re only going to devote about a sentence to the fate of their son? And really, it wouldn’t have been enough for Harry to say, “Sorry Hedwig, I’ve got to leave you with the Weasleys”?

With regard to Rowling’s comment that one character she’d planned to kill got a reprieve, but two she planned to spare were killed: My guess is that she originally planned to kill Hagrid, but killed Lupin and Tonks instead.

The sword being pulled out of the hat didn’t bother me – that was set up back in book 2. Speaking of the sword, I was glad that both Ron and Neville had their chance to shine.

I also liked the twist that Harry was the master of the Elder Wand via his defeat of Draco. It seems fitting for Voldemort to make the mistake of assuming the wand served Dumbledore’s killer, not the one who disarmed him.

The bit about the protection in Harry’s blood confused me at first. My immediate thought was didn’t the protection expire when he was 17? But as near as I can figure out, Harry had a double protection: first, Voldemort couldn’t physically touch him (as seen in the first book), and second Voldemort and his followers couldn’t even attack him when he was at the residence of a blood relative, assuming he still called the place “home”. The latter protection expired when Harry turned 17 – but the former was altered by Voldemort when he recreated his body, so now he could touch Harry, but unbeknownst to him he couldn’t kill Harry so long as his own body existed. Sound about right?

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Huh?

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Well, her next thrown crystal ball broke a window and let the spiders in, so I don’t know she was all that good, but at least she got in the game.

I too am a little disappointed that not one single Slytherin stayed to fight. That shows me the whole lot are evil, and the house should be banned from Hogwarts forever. It would have been nice to see someone, anyone, even Pansy Parkinson hesitate, if not even say, “Screw this mess” and start going after the Death Eaters.

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The Onion AV Blog brought up a good point on Slytherin redemption:

Maybe it’s a drop of water in the ocean or somesuch, but occasionally Slytherins do manage to get their heads out of their asses and do the good thing. Same with Snape, though that was still pretty self-centered to the end. It would have helped to have a Slytherin or two with wand out, fighting for the school.

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Enjoyed the book primarily because I had a bit of a lowered expectation and it could have been a very bad book indeed. But Jo was able to tie off the loose ends quite neatly and even when most of us have guessed some of the plot elements, enough were really unexpected that it was still very interesting. Some of the deaths were kind of unnecessary and I would love to get a list of the Death Eaters who died. Loved the last few chapters and the battles that followed. It showed how much stronger the Hogwarts professors were than was shown in Book 6.

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On the subject of Regulus Black, that reminds me of something I wasn’t sure about when I read it. Kreacher goes to the locket’s hiding place, drinks the potion and survives, albeit painfully. RAB has no chance of surviving the same feat, but Kreacher could do it and survive again right? It does seem a remarkable level of altruism to drink the potion yourself, and if it was part of a plan to destabilise You-Know-Who quite a bad decision, as alive he could do more harm to Tommy’s regime.

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I take it that RAB knew he’d be killed the instant he defected, so he decided to drink the potion himself and take care of the horcrux and his death simultaneously.

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I liked how one crucial difference between Harry and Voldemort contributed to the Dark Lord’s downfall:

Harry is wracked by self-doubt, questions his own and his closest friends’ motives, and ultimately trusts his instincts, supported as they are by his long hard wrangling with all the contradictions and complexities that make up human beings. He’s been outcast, isolated, bullied, yet he can grow past that to embrace others, in full knowledge and willing acceptance of their flaws.

Voldemort, utterly convinced of his superiority, never doubts himself and never looks beyond the obvious in how his underlings relate to him. He learned nothing from his long years of powerless exile, never grew beyond the infantile selfish villainy he had from the start. Infantile, yeh – notice what’s left of him at the end is a flayed baby? Strip away all his powers, all his defenses, and at the core that’s what he is.

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My bad. Looks like that was linked from another community. Thought it came from here, so I didn’t bother with linkage.

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Well, for one thing, to avoid spoilers. I took 8 hours, some would probably accuse me of speeding through it. But in all honesty, as much as I like these books, the prose isn’t very dense and it’s easy to fast forward to the decisive action, the meaningful conversations, supporting backstories, etc. without missing anything important. Probably 50% of the content is nothing but time-killing fluff, meaningful glances, physical maneuvering, broom chases, etc. This stuff is better left to the screenwriters 3-4 years down the road who will inevitably be able to render it better with cinematic description.

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Close. “And with a movement like a tennis serve, she heaved another enormous crystal sphere from her bag, waved her wand through the air, and caused the ball to speed across the hall and smash through a window. At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst open, and more of the gigantic spiders forced their way into the entrance hall.” (p. 646 of my copy) :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hi! It’s so exciting to imagine huge portions of the country reading and thinking about the same book over this weekend.

My take was that the first part of the book is just thrilling writing, but it sort of takes a dive around when they hit the forest: Rowling is really in top form when she’s distracting characters from learning the crucial information that the readers are screaming for, but things began to get just too contrived to keep the story moving and the action too bogged down in the plausibility of their plight (Harry and friends need to be updated on things going on in the world) and we’ve just had too much of grumpy whiny characters to spend even more time on that (not to mention the rather out of the blue power of the delighter).

The last section of the book was the most uneven. I think it unfolded pretty much exactly as expected, and the fact that it was all explained in breathless exposition rather than being peiced together by the characters made it just that much less enjoyable. Abelforth having the mirror was just sort of random.

The epilogue was a real waste, and the last line just sort of bland. All of these wonderful characters finally reach the conclusion we’ve anticipated for them, complete with all it cost them… and then we get pretty much nothing except for the main characters basically rather weakly explaining a few key details about their kids to each other. There just wasn’t enough of a goodbye to this world, of piecing things back together, and a sense that things were going to continue, better, but not perfectly. I also sorely missed any last REAL scenes with Snape: his death was brutual and 100% quality Voldemort, but I just wished that there had been more time for Harry and Snape to face off one last time as characters, rather than Harry putting it all together after Snape was already gone.

There’s also the issue of speaking with characters after their deaths. It’s played as a big deal that they’ve died and are beyond anyone speaking to… but then through deus ex machina, they can be spoken to… and aside from Dumbledore, master of exposition, they don’t really even have much of interest to say.

And yet… it still all worked as a ride. There are a million criticisms one could lob at Rowling’s plausibility, her prose, and all the rest, but the story was still just rolicking good fun overall.

I’m confused about the horcruzes though. Did Voldemort make 7 in all, and then plus his own body soul? Or was it 7 (counting his own body) and THEN an extra eigth piece was blown into Harry.

I count 8 soul bits no matter how you figure it: I had always expected that Harry would be a Horcrux of sorts, but my guess was that Dumbledore was simply mistaken about Nagini.

  1. the one in his body
  2. diary
  3. ring
  4. locket
  5. cup
  6. Diadem
  7. Nagini
  8. Harry
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Actually, whether or not the Goblins owned it because they made it doesn’t really matter. Harry inherited it by human law from Dumbledore and then agreed to give it in payment for assistance in retriving the horcrux. They still own it. I think Godric spelled it to be in the hat to assist a Gryffedor in need but it still oges back to the goblins who are likely to be quite upset anyway. (Harry tore up Gringots, violated their standards of practise and then their payment disappears a few days later. I am thinking Harry’
s account would be closed.

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The book tells us that Valdemort was unaware that the rebound of his curse caused Harry to become a horcrux. So yes, there were 8 soul-bits (V + 7), but only 7 (V + 6) were known to Voldemort. Dumbledore, however, suspected it.

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I think Dumbledore gave the count of 7 because he wasn’t counting Harry, either to avoid helping Harry reach the conclusion that he would have to die to kill Volde or simply because Dumbledore was only mentioning those Horocrux that Volde created on purpose.

I agree with your post though. It was a fun read, but too much of it seemed to be the characters stumbling around for 100 pages wasting time before they decide to visit the next character who will explain to them the next plot point, most of which were deduced by fans after book 6, and then the process would repeat. Also could’ve done without Harry randomly ascending to heaven to have Dumbledore spell things out for him.

Liked Dolby’s death, Dumbledore’s backstory, the chase scene in the beginning and the uber-wizard battle at the end, so it was worth the price of admission, in anycase.

Also I hearby declare Voldemort the hardest to defeat super-villian in history. Killing him was like a 35 step process.

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Which leads to the question: how did Dumbledore originally plan to destroy the Horcrux in Harry? He clearly suspected that Harry was a Horcrux before Voldemort had been resurrected. Did he expect that Harry would have to die in due course?

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Other question: why did Voldemort think that it was necessary to kill a holder of the Elder Wand in order to pass its power on? I mean, he met and spoke with a LIVING former weilder of the wand, who very obviously had survived having had it took from him. Why would he then be so certain that he needed to actually kill Snape?

And how did he get beat in any case? I thought the whole point was it was unstoppable in a duel. I can see Dumbledore tricking him and getting the wand away from him, but supposedly he defeated Grindelwald in a one-on-one face off.