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

Cafe Society
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JKR tied up most of the loose ends quite well. Mugglenet.com had put together a list that was almost entirely covered.

A few that remain:
Who will lead the Order now that Dumbledore is dead?

What lies beyond the veil in the Department of Mysteries?

Where did Fawkes go at the end of Half-Blood Prince?

How exactly did the Potters and the Longbottoms “thrice defy Voldemort”?

What’s behind the locked door in the Department of Mysteries?

JKR said that someone will manage magic very late in life in Book 7: who will it be?

And a few about Godric’s Hollow:
[INDENT]How did Volemort get his wand back?
How did Dumbledore know what happened there?
How was Harry found with Wormtail as secret keeper?[/INDENT]Anyone else have loose ends that I missed?

There will be/are a bunch of loose ends now about various people (I believe we only have glimpses from the epilogue about, Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Nevill, Hagrid and Mr. Weasley,) and there is very little about them.

I imagine that Rowling will be continued to be asked (hounded?) by curious fans. She may choose to put out a bit more ‘canon’ material that covers this. Personally I hope not—she created the universe and should get the chance to determine exactly where the coverage stops. But she seems so nice to fans that I doubt that she will ever them to ‘shove off, I’m DONE.’ Someday, maybe she will authorize a ‘behind the scenes’ look at the HP universe (sort of like Tolkien’s History of Middle Earth and letters).

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I’d love to see her start a new series-maybe set in the Harry Potter world, but with different characters-or maybe some wizards in the past we’ve never heard of.

Or start a completely new universe.

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But Harry doesn’t keep the Elder Wand. He states that he plans to put it back in Dumbledore’s grave. That’s the whole point of the last few paragraphs prior to the epilogue.

As to the epilogue, it was fine. It doesn’t matter if Harry is an Auror. What matters is that he now has what he had always sought; his journey is complete.

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My husband and I just finished it a couple hours ago. We read the entire thing out loud to each other, in turns. Did the same thing for Books 5 and 6. And man, is my voice tired!

Too tired to make many interesting comments right now, but I too am a little disappointed in the shortness of the epilogue. I like to imagine that Harry’s like, a stay-at-home dad, Hermione does something important for Wizarding Relations (improving things between wizards and house-elves and…everyone else), Ron took over for Fred and works with George (sob), and Ginny’s an Auror. Because I need closure, dammit!

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In the epilogue we learn that Neville is now a professor at Hogwarts. I was wondering who the groundskeeper would be. After all, Hagrid would be pretty old by then, in his early eighties I figure.

Rowling is richer than God now, I imagine, with all the book and movie rights. But one can never have too much money. Anyone want to take bets on whether or not, some years down the line, we’ll see Hogwarts-The Next Generation?

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Understood, but the point about the wand’s “ownership” is that Draco became the rightful possessor by disarming/defeating Dumbledore, even if he didn’t take the Elder Wand. Harry then became the rightful possessor by disarming/defeating Draco. Even though he didn’t want to keep the wand, it doesn’t change that the wand is still, effectively, Harry’s to wield now. Harry doesn’t choose the wand, but the wand has chosen him.

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Part of the confusion over the protection is because Moody is saying all the protection Lily put on Harry would expire when he turns 17. I don’t know if Rowling made an error or if it was supposed to show that the characters were confused or unknowing of all the protective charms, since only the protection from the place he called home expired when he turned 17. And I thought Dumbledore put that protection into place.

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Diceman, you’re my daddy.

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I actually liked the way they handled Snape. Seeing it through Snape’s own eyes was quite satisfying. At the release party I wore the sticker that said “Snape is loyal” and JKR almost had me thinking I was wrong. For me she managed to turn it into a surprise even though I have NEVER doubted that Snape was a good guy.

I love that Lily called Snape “Sev.”

I would have liked to have known what everybody’s job turned out to be since so much was mentioned about Harry wanting to be an Auror and all that, but I don’t think that was the point of the epilogue. The point was to show that Harry got what he always wanted: a real family.

Not to be the pervy one, or anything, but there was some seemingly risque sex stuff going on here for a "kids book. Little Bird and I both noticed it:

Was Ginny about to offer her virginity for Harry’s 17th birthday before Ron totally cockblocked him?

Also a bit of a commentary on Ron and Hermione’s sex life or lack thereof:

Ron pissed her off so much that he isn’t getting ANY for a long damn time.

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I’m guessing Harry got hit with some serious service charges :slight_smile:

Obvious to me. He and Charlie were leading the reinforcements, but he was old and out-of-shape, so Charlie was pulling ahead of him. I wish he had stayed to fight in the first battle, but frankly I have a hard time imagining him surviving the fight.

I wish we’d seen a couple of Slytherins stay to fight on the side of Good. Just a couple who staid behind and declared that they thought Voldemeort was a malignant evil, and they wanted to help restore the honor of Slytherin House.

Also, I like the name of Luna’s father, Xenophilius Lovegood. The perfect name for a man who loves strange and unusual things.

Why wasn’t Ron and Hermione’s son named Fred? I can easily imagine George claiming “dibs” on the name, and giving it to his first son, but if that’s the case, we should have seen little Freddie Weasely on the platform, along with George and his wife.

**Who will lead the Order now that Dumbledore is dead? **
They never did say. My guess would be Kingsly Shackelbot. He was tapped to be acting-Minister of Magic, so it’s fair to say he probably has some leadership skills.

**What lies beyond the veil in the Department of Mysteries? **
My theory has always been that this is an old execution device. In times past, when Britain still used capital punishment, condemned wizards and witches were pushed thru the veil. No suffering, no mess; you just toss them directly into the afterlife and that’s that. The veil hasn’t been used in years, but it’s still around. For proof of my theory, note that the room is almost identical to the old courtroom where Harry was tried, and is even on the same level of the building.

Where did Fawkes go at the end of Half-Blood Prince?
I think he flew off to die, for the last time. He loved Dumbledore, and the grief he felt at losing him made his life unbearable.

JKR said that someone will manage magic very late in life in Book 7: who will it be?
Hmmm… That never did happen, did it? Must have been a storyline that got cut out. I suspect it was going to be Filtch. I can see him standing around in the aftermath of the battle, fretting about how long it’s going to take to mop up all that blood, and to everybody’s complete surprise he manages to cast a cleaning charm.

And a few about Godric’s Hollow:
How did Volemort get his wand back?
How did Dumbledore know what happened there?
How was Harry found with Wormtail as secret keeper?Anyone else have loose ends that I missed?
Unless I misunderstand your question, Harry was found because Wormtail betrayed them, as we learned back in Book 3. Presumably, some sort of magic charm alerted Dumbledore to the fact that Dark Magic was being used at the Potter House. As for Voldy’s wand, I’m guessing Bellatrix retrieved it. She was one of the few who did not immediately forsake Voldemort when he was defeated the first time.

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This book will make it hard to get a PG-13 rating when the movie comes out, won’t it? So much on screen death and gore.

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As for the curtain in the Dept of Mysteries, I think Dumbledore even refers to the room as the room of execution or somesort at some point.

One thing that sort of surprised me is that exactly what kills Sirius is ambiguous in the book: it doesn’t say what color spell hit him, and it’s not clear exactly what kills him: the spell or the fall through the curtain (leaving it ambiguous to Harry and us as to what exactly happened to him and what his status really is). In the movie though, it was 100% clear: she says the curse, it hits him, that’s that. And now that Book 7 is over done, that really WAS all there was to that.

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It’s how El Perro Fumando and I understood it. And Hermione was trying to act as pimp, facilitating the meeting.

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I can’t find the link right now, but I’m pretty sure I read, written or said by JK, that the veil in the Department of Mysteries was for research purposes only.

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Just as an aside, I have to know if anyone else is collecting the Chocolate Frog cards? We have Flitwick, Ollivander, and some Wizard Band Drummer. :smiley:

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But there WAS a Slytherin who fought for good–Severus Snape, and he did so in a very Slytherinish way.
I don’t know about Ginny going that far with Harry; I think there might have been some heavy petting (hey, I’m old, that’s what we used to call it), with some avowing of love and pleas to join him. JKR doesn’t strike me as someone who would write soft porn. Then again, she does like to tease readers, so read into it what you will… :cool:
It’s my understanding that the Veil is the threshold to death. Luna and Harry could hear the voices, because they were intimately acquainted with death–just like the thestral seeing.
IMO, the Order would disband at this point, due to the bad guys being scattered and weak. It was formed to fight Voldemort, then reformed when HWMNBN came back. He is gone, gone, gone-so is the need there? No doubt if Lucius Malfoy decides to go for it, the Order will resume.
where does this someone will do magic late in life come from? I never heard about that one.

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Some things I forgot to mention.

I thought the first third and last third of the book were page-turners but the middle third draaaaaged…ooooooon.

“I want to go here!”

“No, I don’t think so. I think we should go here!”

“Well I think you’re wrong.”

“Well I think YOU’RE wrong.”

“Well then I guess we’ll just wander around this forest for a few months.”

“Fine.”

For this reason I could have done with a little MORE angsty Potter. Angsty Potter would have said, “Well it’s MY damn quest. You’ll can go where I decide or you can piss off.”

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J.K. Rowling said it in an interview. If I had to make a guess, and assume that J.K. Rowling didn’t change her mind or edit it out, I would think Trelawney - we never see her actually perform magic until she starts throwing crystal balls around in the final battle.

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That’s who I thought of, too.

I did think that the way Ron left was lame, and the way he came back lamer still, but the response of Hermione to his return was priceless.

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The sword-out-of-the-hat thing makes sense to me. I’m sure Godric Gryffindor knew the goblin definition of ownership. If he wanted to make sure that his sword would always be available to future Gryffindor’s in need it makes sense that he would set up some magical mechanism that would enable them to get it even if retrieved by the goblins after he died. It’s a pretty handy anti-theft device in general. It’s a well-crafted (masterwork and therefore automatically a +1, tee hee), magical item. If somebody managed to steal it from Gryffindor he could just take off his hat and get it back.

For a while I thought that somehow the Elder Wand would be the sword and he would ironically go on a wild goose chase for three items that he already had. I thought the wand would be inside the hilt or something. Thank you, JKR, for not doing that to me. The wasted time camping out in the forest for months pissed me off enough.