Voldemort didn’t put the tiara on the bust; Harry did when he was hiding his book to mark where it was.
Re the Sorting Hat: Harry tells little Albus in the epilogue that “The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account.” Which tells me that they’re still using it and it survived the flames.
Hentor, he was underage still. Wouldn’t using the cloak have activated the trace?
I was waiting for that salmon thing to be mentioned by the trio in a “why didn’t we think of that?” sort of way, but it didn’t come up.
I also thought that it would be revealed that the houses had been merged.
Re: the Deathly Hallows thing, I can’t really decide how I feel about it. I kept waiting for them to be significant in the final scene, him using them to help defeat Riddle or something. Dumbledore says he set it up for Harry to find out about them and go searching, but Harry’s the master of death already and anyway that’s probably just a story… so… what? We know the objects are useful to him, but other than revealing Harry’s birth line, I’m still not really sure what purpose they served, other than generic usefulness and maybe Dumbledore giving Harry information about what Riddle was going to try and do–go after the wand–and information about what the properties of the wand were.
Dumbledore does say he relied on Miss Granger to slow Harry up, so maybe that was the point all along?
It does seem a little odd to choose that particular story line as the book’s title, though.
Oh, and also, the random powers of the Put-Outer? Odd. “This thing is great! It puts out lights and turns them back on! Like a clapper without the clap! Oh also, it’s a magic radio. And GPS system.” Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Dumbledore to leave him a magic widget that no one knows the properties of than for him to leave him a lighter that’s by the way also a radio, friend-finder, and makes julienne fries?
But he’s not doing magic, the thing itself is magic. I’m sure if you wanted to fan your way out of the problem, that’s the easiest solution. (Although to me, the whole idea of the ability to detect underage magic and the ability to detect the Taboo word makes me wonder why it’s so very hard to find someone on the run. Surely if you can know when and where a certain word is spoken, you can find a person?)
Scarlett67, thanks for the reminder about the tiara.
NajaNivea, et al: It seems that the last two books have had titles that were played up in the book, but never really were important. JK’s fault, or was she intentionally trying to mislead us by making us think that they’d be important in the book?
One question: So, Stan Shunpike really was a Death Eater?
Well, it depends on how far you are willing to go to get good salmon.
My posit is that that was the concrete event fulfilled by the prophecy. I.e. Voldemort can’t kill Harry while he, himself, still lives. The killing curse only takes off the outer layer, so to speak, of Harry’s soul - the Horcrux part. A big fuss was made in the fourth book that the killing curse doesn’t do harm to the body to kill, it goes for the soul.
So basically, Voldemort was bonded three times with Harry, through Harry’s mother’s blood, their wands and the horcrux and he couldn’t really kill Harry any more than he could have killed just the right half of his own body and let the left go on. The killing curse burns off the Horcrux and mother’s blood parts of Harry, which is the third-to-last one (Horcrux, Snake and lastly the part still inside Voldemort’s body) leaving Harry with only the wand connection.
(I posit that it burns through both Horcrux and mother’s blood because the murder effectively shears over the connection between Harry and Voldemort, and as such they’re no longer physically bonded. I also posit that Voldemort’s collapse is due to the backlash from the mother’s blood protection and from severing the connection)
Just my ideas upon the first reading.
I was thinking that too.
Yes, Harry did suppose that Voldemort would choose that room thinking he was the only one to find it.
It would have made more sense for Voldemort to hide it in the Chamber of Secrets, I agree. But the way she wrote it, we have the use of a seemingly insignificant detail from a previous book, which is fun.
You could explain it by saying that Voldemort is full of pride, so, upon finding a hidden room, would be inclined to think that no one else besides himself can find it. The room is already full of stuff? The castle itself must be gathering unwanted items and storing it in there. It’s impossible that so many students would be as smart as me.
Or, conversely, he learns of the room from a house-elf (in the same way that Harry learns of the room from Dobby), assumes that house-elves use the room as part of their clean-up duties, and, being a proud wizard, Voldemort doesn’t worry about house-elves being privy to the knowledge of this secret room that he will use as a hiding place.
Draco Malfoy knew of the hiding room and was using it in book six, but it’s possible that he knew of the room only because Voldemort told him about it. In book five, as I remember, Professor Umbridge got into the room (to get the parchment entitled “Dumbledore’s Army”), but it is never said that the members of the inquisitorial squad (the students like Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy Parkinson) entered the room.
I finished it this morning at 2am. ( I stalled on Sunday) and haven’t read this thread at all.
I have to say it was an amazing end to the series. I didn’t have any preconceived ideas of who would live and who would die, I didn’t think about it, I didn’t want to ruin it all by over thinking it.
Jo Rowling outdid herself and really, I think she did an apology to the fans or learned from the fans whining about Dobby, Grawp or Hagrid and had them in just long enough to make an appearance without overstaying their welcome. Much like the Penguins in Madagascar. It left you wanting more of them.
I have to say I cried a few times during the final pages especially when he reappears at Hogwarts and Pansy tries to outhim and 3 houses stand in his defense. And when he walked into Dumbledore’s office and the portraits are all applauding him. who wouldn’t want a heroes welcome like that?
Snape’s backstory and Voldemort’s insanity-obession were well done.
The side story of Dumbledore and how he wasn’t trustworthy/perfect and what not were also lovely plot twists.
Aberforth’s bitterness was spot on as someone who has never moved on from something happening years ago.
Questions from a Exhausted Brain:
Was I the only one who lived in fear of any of the characters mentioning He Who Must Not Be Named again after it was blurted once? What a brilliant way to explain how and why it was done before. However why didn’t Voldemort just place a trace spell on the words *He Who Must Not Be Named? * Yanno, to keep things fresh.
I could have lived without the Resurrection Stone Exposition scene with Dumbledore when Harry just goes and says everything all over again with Voldemort. That was a bit to slog through, but I suppose it needed to be done.
Why couldn’t Percy die? Or even Mr. Weasley? The scene with Mrs. Weasley Vs. Belletrix was awesome, though.
The epilog was a bit ehhh. Confusing with the kids’ names and no word of what the Big Three did now for a living or where they lived. It felt rushed in writing and not in depth. The comfort that Harry, ( and the rest) have settled into Domesticana after 7 harrowing years is a comfort. I do, however, smell another series that could be tapped into with the kids.
I’m going to shut up and read this thread now.
So that anytime a person said the word he, or who, or must, or not, or be, or named, the Death Eaters would have to show up and investigate? Yes, that would have been a lot of fun - for the readers! Not for Voldemort or his followers!
Bellatrix: The Dark Lord will conquer his enemies in the end! He … (20 Death Eaters apparate, wands raised) Oh will you stop that!
So after Harry separated from Voldemort’s soul: is Harry still a parselmouth?
Well, the reason he put the trace on “Voldemort” was b/c pretty much only those who didn’t truly fear him used his real name. Like Dumbledore and Harry. He was using it as a way to find those who were truly a threat, not just everyday people on the good side.
If he’d put a trace on “He Who Must Not Be Named”, he’d be getting hits for people using it constantly. Since that’s what pretty much everyone calls him, unless they’re calling him “Lord Voldemort”.
There’s one thing about the books that irritates me the most: Hagrid. Sorry, people, but he irritates me more and more as the books go on. I reread the last couple in the last few days before getting this one, and he flat-out pissed me off, even though he certainly doesn’t deserve some of the treatment he gets from Ministry sorts.
So why on Earth, right at the beginning, would they send the real harry off with HIM??? In so many ways he’s a blundering incompetent. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Re: The Room of Requirement
Quite a few people know the room exists, but not everyone actually knows what it does. I thinks it’s Neville that says you have to be really specific when you’re thinking about what you want the room to do for you. Otherwise it might not be everything you need.
So until someone was actually looking for Voldemort’s other horcruxe, AND they knew where he was likely to have hidden it, AND what it likely was, could they have been able to find it?
Oh, and I also thought the tiara was hidden in plain sight on the Rowena Ravenclaw statue.
Re: The protection of a sacrificed parent.
In order for the protection to be put on the child it seems the parent would need to not defend himself at all. Not only does Lily CHOOSE to die for her son, she doesn’t even attempt to defend herself.
This is mirrored in Harry’s sacrifice for the wizarding world. He walked in there, chose to die for these people, and didn’t raise a finger to defend himself.
It makes sense to me. The defensive magic that you WOULD have used to defend yourself gets passed on to the person you are defending.
So yes, PLENTY of parents have died protecting their child. But I’d be willing to bet that almost all of them at least tried to defend themselves in the process.
Does anyone suspect Ron may be ever so slightly possessed by V. after his battle with the locket Horcrux? Harry does see a gleam of red in his eyes right before he destroys it with the sword. The thing that really worries me though, is he was able to get into the Chamber of Secrets by speaking Parseltongue. He claims he just listened to Harry tell the locket to open and imitated him, but it seems that if all you have to do is imitate the sounds that a true Parselmouth makes, there should be a series of “Parseltongue for Dummies” tapes by now.
Did anyone notice that Harry actually blew up Hedwig?..after she was already dead of course…
On page 55 it’s mentioned that Harry’s leg are jammed into the sidecar of Sirius’ motorcycle because of Hedwig’s cage and his rucksack.
On page 56 it states that Harry rams Hedwig’s cage on the floor.
On page 58 Hagrid breaks the sidecar off the motorbike while trying to repair it, Harry jumps out of the sidecar and onto the bike and makes the sidecar levitate for a bit. Then when Harry shot a different spell the sidecar started to fall again.
On page 59 it says that Harry pointed his wand at the falling sidecar and yelled Confringo! and the sidecar exploded. (presumably with Hedwig still in it) Poor Hedwig, not only did she die…but she got blown up too. :0(
I have to agree with Sampiro’s original discussion about Hagrid and the giants being slightly to moderately retarded.
So he could have drunk polyjuice potion too? The creation is magic, not the drinking. Nah. I think the internal consistency is that using a magical object counts as doing magic.
(And I’m no huge fan. I’m glad that this was a quick read with less wasted verbage like much of the last two and glad that it is over. The deaths did seem rather perfunctory and casual. Harry’s eagerness to try to weasel the sword from the goblin for a while weems inconsistent when he could have bargined its use on loan for a while longer in service of defeating Voldemort, which the goblin wanted too. I would have loved to see Snape dieing a bit more heroically saving Harry but clearly telling him that he still dislikes him and would let him die if it wasn’t for the good of the world … or the service of his revenge against Voldemort at least. Lots of quibbles. But this was a good enough end with enough twists and enough consistency to satisfy me.)