I think that Tonks and Hedwig were the two new deaths. Tonks, because she wasn’t going to fall in love with Remus in the original plan, and Hedwig, for additional emotional impact.
They used Imperius whenever they felt it necessary-and that is an “unforgiveable” curse, isn’t it? Molly killed Bellatrix.
The trouble with those spells is what Bellatrix states to Harry in Book 5 after he runs after her screaming crucio-you really have to mean it, ergo, they can only really effectively be used by those with extremely cruel minds (otherwise difficult to sustain).
Plus, malicious killing rips the soul apart so if fatal magic is used I guess it had better be damn near necessary.
And, still a book that started out as a children’s series so her message is likely to be positive. 
Hmm. It’s kinda bothering me that Snape isn’t mentioned as having a portrait in the headmaster’s office…but Harry does acknowledge Snape as a headmaster in the epilogue (Albus Severus – how sweet!), so I guess he just didn’t see it?
They only put former headmasters’ portraits in the office, so the only time Snape’s portrait would be likely to be hanging there would be in the epilogue, and the head’s office isn’t seen in the epilogue.
“Vot is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken.”
Funny stuff…I sure hope Krum makes another appearance before the end(no need to answer the question, I’m just thinking out loud).
I’m going to depart from everyone here. I hate Snape. I’ve always hated Snape, and when he died, I thought to myself “Oh, good, she didn’t give him some stupid redemption scene”. Snape is a bad guy and deserves to stay a bad guy, and to get a bad guy’s death. The funny thing is, even after finding out from the pensive his back story, he STILL seemed like a bad guy, and Harry’s son being named after him in the coda was a shock. Knowing that, and given Harry calling him “The bravest man I ever met”, I suppose I’ll have to admit that all the Snape supporters are right, but I didn’t see it that way at all. (The two things that argue for him being good are his trying to stop the Death Eater attacking George’s ear (or was it Fred, I don’t have the book handy) as the seven Harry Potters escaped and his giving Harry his memories as he was dying) Absent that, here’s the way I see Snape (or at lest the way I want to see him):
He comes over to Dumbledore after Lilly is killed because of his unrequited love for her. It’s a spur of the moment decision. I have no problem with that, but once he’s done that, he’s stuck. He CAN’T go back to Voldy after betraying him, and Voldy seems to be dead, so he plays the role he’s chosen for himself. Even as Voldy starts to return, he’s still stuck (Thus he has to do things like trying to save Harry during the quiddich match), and he resents it. Voldy doesn’t demonstrate a lot of patience with Death Eaters who offer excuses for what they did to survive while he was gone. He could have so much power on the dark side, and if Harry does eliminate Voldy, he’s in the best position, except perhaps for Bellatrix, to take over. He agrees to kill Dumbledore with a feeling of relief, because after Dumbledore is dead, he’s fulfilled his vow to Dumbledore, he saves a future Death Eater (Draco) and most of all, he’s FREE. All he has to do is convince Voldy of his loyalty, and he had no problems doing that. And that’s exactly how it worked out. In this book, Snape gets everything he ever wanted; a position of trust and power with the Dark Lord, the headmaster position at Hogwarts and the fear and respect of wizzards everywhere. Hell, he only dies because Voldemort thinks he has the wand’s loyalty, his death is an afterthought, a thing necessary for Voldemort to gain great power, it has nothing to do with anything Snape has or hasn’t done, it’s simply a consequence of following an evil master. Voldy din’t kill him because he was Snape, he killed him because Voldy thinks he has to to get the wand. I wish Rowling had played it this way instead of giving him the noble death, THAT would have been a great twist (because almost everyone wanted and expected him to be redeemed), and would have been totally in character with the theme in this book of Dumbledore’s mistakes.
Ah, well, I was wrong. Damn it.
Oh, I agree totally, and I have thought this for the entire series. Curses are scary and deadly and all, but they are essentially single shot weapons. The SAS could clear out the Death Eaters in a weekend without breaking a sweat.
Death Eater: "Avada…BOOM!
SAS: “grenade”
Kill lots of Death Eaters real fast that way.
IAWTC also. Restraint is nice and all, but when you opponent starts trying to, no shit, actually kill you, the gloves are off. At that point I pull out the UZI and don’t look back.
Well, I would say the larger theme of the book was redemption. It would have been weird (in terms of how the books have been so far) to have Snape die unredeemed when he was, after all, capable of love - although I don’t know if I agree with the general idea that love makes someone worthy of redemption (but that’s a whole other debate).
Who used magic late in life?
I’m seriously annoyed that the goblin could steal the sword, but unexplained mystery magic brought it back. It cheapened the whole plot line of the sword being stolen in the first place. Who the fuck cares if the goblins have it, if you can just pull it out of a fucking hat when you need it?
The rest of the book was immensely satisfying, though. There were no real surprises, but you can’t expect a human being to write something surprising under those circumstances (hundreds of millions of people all speculating at the same time? no way you’re gonna be able to fool all of them). Anyway, I’m just happy that I finally get to get some sleep.
Only works if you have the type of character that can actually pull the trigger. Shouting “avada kedavra!” and waving a wand is about as effective as shouting “bang! bang!” and waving a pistol. Could you seriously pull the trigger?
Thanks! I called it in the predictions thread (though I attributed it to Godric). When I read HBP again last week it just jumped out at me.
I think JKR does grief exceptionally well.
This was presaged in Chamber of Secrets when Harry did it. Note too that when Voldemort tries to burn Neville alive, the prophecy now applies to Neville too, because he’s now been marked.
For the longest time I thought that the Resurrection Stone was actually the Philosopher’s Stone from Book 1.
I thought the chase scene in the beginning was a fun read, but the bad planning was kind of pitiful; along with their failure to do something with the evil brain-contaminatey-locket other than wear it all day, I think the initial flight was one of the only moments where the plan could’ve been a lot more solid, kids book or no.
First off, let’s assume for the moment that you’re stuck with the concept of 7 teams leaving in seven different directions. Furthermore, just for the heck of it, let’s say that there’s a good reason not to give every team member a cheap invisibility cloak, potion, or personal spell. If freakin’ Crabbe can learn to make himself invisible, there’s no reason anyone in that group couldn’t. But anyway, we’ll assume they had a reason not to.
Now it’s obvious they had some time to think about this, and presumably brew and prepare as much polyjuice potion as they needed. This being the case, why on earth didn’t they:
a) Have all 14 team members change into the same person; the 7/7 split only helped the bad guys knock half the order off their list of suspects.
b) Prepare 14 potions, have each member seed a potion with their own hair, pass the potion to the right, and drink someone else’s? By scrambling the team’s identities, in addition to confusing the hell out of anyone who tried to sort things out you’d avoid tipping your pursuers off to the fact that a substitution had occured for at least a couple of minutes.
c) Heavily enchant the area around harry potter’s house in the same way that made the nearby safehouses safe to portkey from. Or, alternatively, enchant a house across the street. The entire team could charge across at once, and make it to safety before their observers could’ve identified and waxed Harry.
d) Hire a savvy team of goblin sappers to dig an underground tunnel from Harry’s house to one of the enchanted bases and just walk the bastard to safety, while the death eaters waited for him to leave his house.
e) Hire a large number of mercenaries and use ample wages to obtain each guy’s permission to imperio the crap out of him, with the understanding that the curse would be lifted after his job was finished. Now confident in the fact that your mercenaries are very hard to corrupt, instruct them to gather somewhere innocuous for a portkey to an undisclosed location, which will bring them to the potter house right when you make a run for it. Your mercenaries are incapable of betraying your plans, and you get a lot of help what with the running and shooting business.
f) Magic up a rainstorm and seed the clouds with shampoo; if there’s one thing evil wizards can’t stand, it’s clean hair.
At the very least, I thought they were going to make Harry look like someone who wasn’t Harry… it seems as this never occured to the death eaters.
By and large, very good. A lot of stuff I didn’t see coming, despite my best efforts! Looked like it had been somewhere near an editor as well, unlike some of its predecessors…
I have one major gripe, alas. I had always found it unsatisfying that Harry had ‘beaten’ V on several occasions on technicalities. There was always some fiddly reason why H survived. The whole linked wand business was overplayed even in GoF. I’d always found it implausible that Harry would overcome V in a straight fight - they both being gifted, but H being an undisciplined brat and V having many years of diligent study behind him (imagine a promising but lazy teenager taking on Stephen Hawking in a theoretical physics competition). JKR set up the possibility of H genuinely having the means to best V - the Hallows, but when it came to the final showdown, the Hallows counted for nought and H won on a technicality again! Deus Ex Machina, wand-style.
I was really looking forward to Harry disarming V for the uber-wand, uniting the trinity, and then killing V properly. That H would need to taint himself in order to rid the world of V was, to my mind, satisfying - he sacrifices his purity for the greater good. Alas, twiddly wand contrivances save the day again.
JKR fell at the final hurdle. Damnit!
A few more minor gripes:
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Sword + sorting hat. Hated this. Pulling the rabbit…ahem…sword out of the hat was (barely) plausible in CoS, because at least the sword was in Hogwarts and owned by Dumbledore. Here, the sword has returned to its rightful owner, and yet the hat magicked it back apropos of nothing.
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Mad-eye. Killing him early on I had no problem with, but dangling the possibility that he may live, and never tying it up was annoying. What was the point of Umbridge having the eye? Was it the same eye, or just a similar one? What did having this in the story achieve?
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Minor mis-edit, but Hermione at one point says she has never done a memory charm, even though she did exactly that on her parents. Maybe she forgot…
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Over-hearing the goblins? Way too convenient.
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People talking to Harry cried. Often. Almost invariably. Hermione especially, who spent most of the book in tears.
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Draco was a non-entity, and didn’t add anything. I was hoping at least for him giving some tiny help, even if only by deliberate inaction, to H; he was clearly uncomfortable with his role as a Death Eater (lame name btw) and having H save his life would have been a nice setup to some gesture of remorse (which, after all, is something of a running theme).
I had a Classics geek attack when I saw the opening from Libation Bearers. Then grinned when I saw Cadmus Peverell.
taps foot impatiently for detailed family trees
Overall, quite a good read. I agree with many of the comments here.
One thing I was hoping for was a return to the muggle world, or more interactions with the muggle world. When Harry and Hermione and Ron were on the run, why didn’t they just pick some random Motel 6 somewhere and check in?
And given that one of Voldemort’s big things was his hatred for, and dismissing of, muggles, I think someone just shooting him once the horcruxes were gone, and once he was busily concentrating on Harry, would have been quite satisfying. (My pet theory was that the muggle prime minister would reappear and send in a squad of snipers or something.)
So why did the centaurs attack at the end?
Finished in nine hours and a huge debt to the wife.
I was shocked that they let Mundungus back into things with the OotP—I guess he made a good traitor.
I’m also surprised that Lupin would let Harry talk him out of going with them. I’m amazed he didn’t shoot back with a “I do care for my child. Helping Harry Potter is the best way to do just that.” With his experience, friendship, and leadership they could have shaved off quite a bit of blundering around. But the books have always had a high level of adult exclusion so no big surprise.
The exposition part was quite different than the rest of the book, but wasn’t that the chapter that was written quite a while ago? Rowling has come a long way as an author since then. I personally would have liked a paragraph or so on everybody. Luna? Cho? McGonaglle? I have heard rumors that JKR would write a “history of Magic” or something. She will probably have to write in endings for all the characters or be hounded to death by press/fans.
Final question, what do they leave out to make the movie?
I’m in the camp of wanting more and better closure with Umbridge and Skeeter. Mostly Umbridge. All of the things she did, and we don’t get to see her taken down? Disappointing.
I think Snape’s love for Lily was so strong because he wasn’t just in love with her, but they had a deep bond from almost the very beginning. He had someone to talk to who didn’t look down on him and she had someone to introduce her to the wizarding world. It wasn’t a tiny schoolboy crush, she gave him happiness while he was a sad, lonely child as well. I love the part where she asked if it made a difference being Muggle born and hesitates, then says no. And where he told Phineas not to call Hermione mudblood.
One thing I wondered about. Did the sword come back because it was stolen, and therefore not rightly the goblins? Or does it just always come back to Hogwarts because that is where Godric left it? And it will appear through the hat when a true Gryffindor has need?