The Inevitable Deathly Hallows Post

[amari_z]

As much as I was anticipating this book, I was also dreading it. How could one book live up to all the expectations, manage to tie up so many ends and answer so many questions? No pressure, JK. But while there are inevitably things not to love, I think she did beautifully.

Some of the things I loved (not by any means all inclusive):

• The house elves. Dobby’s death made me cry, and I’m not a crier. I loved what she did with Kreacher—it bore out the idea that kindness and understanding (even to those who seem not to deserve it) can do amazing things. I love that he made Harry treacle tart. And the scene where Kreacher leads the house elves into battle is sheer GLEE.
  
  
• The battle at Hogwarts. It had to happen there—missing the school was one of the things that was like an uneasy ache through most of the book. I love that that all the characters who should have been there were and everyone got at least a moment. Everyone from Oliver Wood to Grawp. And more GLEE over Professor Trelawney.
  
  
• Molly Weasley being made of awesome
  
  
• That saying Voldemort's You Know Who's name became not a good thing to do.
  
  
• The giant spiders fighting for the bad guy, and not just because I hate spiders. I liked, that as much as there’s this idea that compassion and kindness can pay off (first bullet), it’s not a one-to-one ratio. Hagrid may have cared for their mother (and for them), but the spiders could care less.
  
  
• Having Narcissa Malfoy save Harry and lie to Voldemort for her son.
  
  
• Hermione's handbag. And just how smart that girl is.
  
  
• Dudley, who has been fun to hate and mock, getting to be more than a one-note character.
  
  
• Neville and his vulture-hat wearing grandmother.
  
  
• That Volemort can (could) fly. I love this image.
  
  
• Ron. Ron finally overcoming his inferiority complexes, and standing on his own feet.
  
  
• That Harry came to lose all the trappings of boyhood/school. Poor Hedwig, his broom and even his wand.
  
  
• Dumbledore. I liked his back-story. Not just the benevolent, purely saintly, twinkly eyed figure, but not just a manipulative, cold-blooded calculator either. A man with flaws.
  
  
• All the references back, tie-ins and small rewards for readers who've been paying attention (having not paid huge attention, I'm sure I've missed some of these). From Dumbledore's lie about the socks to "Are you a witch/wizard or what?" to the tent from the Quidditch World Cup--to name only a very few.
  
  

A few other things:

• I find I’m rather opinion-less about how she handled Harry’s fate. She didn’t kill him, but he had his underworld/train station moment. I didn’t mind, but I didn’t love. I did like the tie back of his “death” acting like his mother’s to provide protection, but he didn’t really die, so it almost seemed like a cheat. His willingness to die was shown to be the key, so I guess JK got to have both ways, although I'm not really sure of the logic of it. I didn’t really believe she’d actually kill Harry off.
  
  
• One thing I’m kind of disappointed about not bearing fruit is the veil in the Department of Mysteries and Sirius’s “death” by falling through the veil. I wasn’t really expecting her to bring Sirius back—it would undermine the central concept of dead is dead and don’t try to mess with it—but I had hoped it would go somewhere.
  
  
• The twins. I was unprepared for Fred’s death. I was anticipating that the twins’ recklessness would have some consequences—but that didn’t happen at all the way I was thinking. I found Fred’s death shocking—just as it should have been. It was written well, I thought, especially timing it for just after the moment of reconciliation with Percy. But because she did well with this one, it made me dislike Lupin and Tonks’ death even more (see below).
  
  
• The Hallows. I nearly put this in the next category, but I don’t hate it. I do wish there had been the barest hint (but perhaps I missed it) about the Hallows in any of the previous books. It feels like she might have readjusted her story at some point (maybe she was going to kill Harry, but then didn't have the guts and so had to come up with away out?). And I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the invisibility cloak didn’t protect against spells before this book (doesn’t Draco stun Harry when he’s wearing it?).
  

And, finally, some things I didn’t like.

• The Epilogue. The more I think about it, the less I like it. I can understand why she included it, I think. I helps her avoid being pressured for more books. It shows that the story is really over. It illustrates that life goes full circle. But I really didn’t like it and the reasons are many.
  
  
  
  • It read more like bad fanfic to me than anything else. O, look, everyone’s married each other, they’ve named their numerous offspring after dearly departed friends and relatives, and we’re all happily domestic now.
    
    (I do appreciate her not telling us what the characters had done with their lives (except marriage and children) with the exception of Neville. This, I did like. Neville was made of awesome in the book, but he was a changed Neville—not necessarily OOC, but hardened by what he was experiencing off screen. If she had to do the epilogue, I liked that JK threw in that he was the herbology professor at Hogwarts—it shows that however he changed, he still remained Neville.)
    
    
  • It was completely, utterly unnecessary. I would have been happy if she’d just ended it with the chapter before. It ended on a perfect note, we’d seen pretty much everything we’d needed to see, and what happened next was up to us to imagine. How much better the book would have been if she just ended with Harry thinking of bed and maybe a sandwich.
    
    
  • It—and this is one of the things I’ve been crossing my fingers against—was literally a happily ever after. I hate that. I do understand the full circle thing—seeing the children off to school so they can live their own lives in turn—but this wasn’t really the full circle I was envisioning. One of the themes I thought I had picked up from the books is the idea that evil is never entirely defeated, and I’m not talking about Voldemort refusing to die. I’d always liked what seemed like the throw away reference (up until this book anyway) to Dumbledore’s duel with a pre-Voldemort evil wizard. It seemed to reinforce the idea that each generation, or each cycle or age or whatever, has to face up to their own challenges, evils and choices. (Constant vigilance!). The cloying last line of the book therefore did not please me.
    
    
  • Although I admire JK’s ability to pick such great names, Scorpius Malfoy really just had to be meant for a laugh, doesn’t it?
    
    
  • And the thing that I actually disliked the most about the epilogue is the Snape reference. HATED. Overall, I liked how JK handled Snape. I liked that we found out more about what drove him (it was pretty obvious, but I thought the scenes of his memories were well done). I liked that, although Snape was ultimately shown to be working for the good, he was not necessarily a good guy. He’s literally and metaphorically the middle example. Of the three who JK points out made Hogwarts their home, Voldemort went bad and died bad, on one end, and Harry didn’t go bad, on the other. And then there’s Snape. Snape went bad but then regretted it. Or, more accurately, it doesn’t seem to be going bad that he regrets, but one particular consequence of his actions—Lily’s death. That, to my mind, doesn’t make him good. It doesn’t change that it’s all about Lily—something that doesn’t alter from the time he’s in school and willing to join the Death Eaters and make her an exception, to the time that he’s willing to protect Harry only because he’s her son—not because, for example, he’s an innocent kid and protecting him would be the right thing to do. His regret doesn’t change his essential nature—he’s still cruel to the children he teaches (think back to how he treats eleven-year-old Neville and Hermione in the first book). Nor does he grow up past his hatred of James to see Harry as a separate person. His regret does result in his attempt to make it up by protecting Lily’s son and helping Dumbledore—and so ultimately, you can say, he got the redemption he was seeking—but that doesn’t make him a nice, cuddly or even particularly decent guy. And although he’s arguably redeemed, he doesn’t actually overcome any of his flaws. (Compare, i.e., with Dumbledore, who’s seemed to have recognized his flaws and tried to overcome them with varying success—and at least seems to have learned something from his past regrets.) You could argue, in fact, that all Snape's actions are purely selfish, since it all comes down to Lily—there doesn’t seem to be any real compassion or empathy at work. Of course, it’s all up for debate. So, revel in his flawed complexity! I was actually rather dreading that JK might diminish his character (a saccharine reconciliation between him and Harry was one of my worst fears), but I thought she handled it well. But then the epilogue. Harry giving his kid Severus as a middle name and then calling Snape one of the bravest men he ever knew is actually kind of sickening. Maybe I’m making too much out of it, and it’s purely Harry’s retcon perspective, true, but still, it rather negates everything I liked about how I thought JK was handling Snape.
    
  
  
• And related to the last point—the more I think about it the more I dislike Dumbledore’s comment to Snape about sorting too early. I don’t like that it suggests that Slytherins will inevitably go bad, something I had thought the books were resisting as being more complex than that, and I also don’t like that it undermines the central idea of individual choice.
  
  
• Lupin and Tonks' death. I’m guessing that there are fangirls out there moaning about this one—but I’m not moaning. I’m just not really sure it worked. Why did she do it? Was it to show that death can be senseless? I think we got that message already. Is it to give Harry that extra push to go out and die—thinking that Teddy has been orphaned just as he was? I think so, but I didn’t find it particularly effective, because does Harry legitimately need an extra push at this point? Was it to show that the decision for them to get married despite Lupin’s reluctance was the right one, because life is uncertain and at least they had some time together? Maybe, but if so, not really set up to make this point well. Is it to enable JK to show that orphaned children don’t have to have miserable lives, as Harry and Tom Riddle do—and thus the epilogue? Not really convinced. I’m not sure what she was aiming for here. It certainly didn’t have any emotional impact on me. It was off screen, and coming across their bodies as Harry does was really just a WTF moment. Even Moody’s death, which was also off screen, had a lot more resonance. I almost think that she felt she needed a higher death toll among the known characters and picked them by default.
  

Whew. Well, despite my complaining at the last, I enjoyed the book and I’m not at all disappointed. I could pick plot holes but I don’t want to do that. I loved these books for the adventures they were, and while I’m sad it’s over, I’m glad to have seen it through to the end.