Deathly Hallows
Jul. 22nd, 2007 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logicbuttonI'm sorry, there were two names in this book that I just couldn't get past; they were too weird, even for J.K. Rowling. Those names were "Thicknesse" and "Xenophilius".
I want to go on record as saying that I think the two characters who weren't originally supposed to die were Lupin and Tonks. Maybe this has already been cleared up somewhere on the internet, but I haven't touched a computer since Wednesday and I'm posting this before I do anything else, so if it's already up on JKR's website or in an interview transcript or something, I don't know about it. Back when she first made the announcement, it sounded to me from her wording that she was thinking of the two dead characters as a unit, so I thought they might be a married couple, or close in some other way. (Like the Weasley twins--maybe George was the one who got the reprieve, amirite?) Actually, the first thing I thought when I read in chapter 1 that they had gotten married was, "oh, crap. Now they can DIE." And then, I swear to God, the second Tonks was described as "radiant" I thought, "oh, okay, she's pregnant, which means they are (or, at least, she is) safe until the baby is born...at which point they can DIE." Note to everybody: no matter how subtle you're not trying to be, or how dense the narrating character supposedly is, the character's description of someone as "radiant" that is not immediately followed by the character concluding that that someone is pregnant is very silly.
Actually, I really am more interested in which character was originally supposed to die, but didn't. Really, it could have been anybody. Except Harry, I guess. And Ron and Hermione and Ginny. And Neville.
OH AND. One more thing about deaths. She said it wasn't going to be a bloodbath! She LIED! Fifty people dead in the battle at Hogwarts, and three dead in the first eighty pages! The whole damn Order, wiped out! Well, okay, so I guess Kingsley is alive. And Hagrid. And most of the Weasleys. EVERYBODY that showed up at the Department of Mysteries to save the kids in OotP was dead by the end of book 7, although all the kids actually survived. Wait, no, Kingsley was there, too. Hmm. Maybe he was the one who was originally supposed to die.
So what is the deal with Stan Shunpike, I wonder? I mean, yeah, he's supposed to be under the Imperius Curse, but wouldn't it be terrific irony if he really were a Death Eater?
I want to know what happened to Luna's dad (was he okay?) and whether anybody really gave a damn afterwards that Harry and Ron and Hermione had totally robbed a bank.
That's all I have to say right at the moment, but now I have to get ready for work, and I'm sure I'll think of more later today, so: ETAs to follow.
ETA: Seriously, guys, I loved this book. I don't think I can read it again for a little while, though. My emotions wouldn't thank me.
Okay, this epilogue business. There is no excuse for Harry and Ginny's baby-naming habits. It was, indeed, very much like a fanfic. I won't say it was like a bad fanfic, because there are plenty of good fics that do that too, but at any rate, I can't believe they named their kid Albus Severus. The other two are probably James Harry and Lily Ginevra. Scorpius, on the other hand, is an adorable name and one that I totally plan to give my firstborn. I also approve of Teddy Lupin's name, because naming a boy after his father and maternal grandfather is a terrific way to honor both sides of the family. Like Voldemort's mother did! And, of course, the way Ron and Hermione totally dispense with the idea that their kids must be named after other people is really pretty refreshing. Which I guess is what Draco Malfoy did too.
Awww, Scorpius. ♥
There was no shortage of events in this book that choked me up a bit, but the only one that actually made me cry was the one where Harry raised the dead. I mean, I think I cried, I could feel tears on my eyelashes and my nose started to run a bit. Of course, this was at the point where Harry had just accepted that he was going to have to die, and Lupin had only just died himself, and as I was reading I wondered whether Harry would ever tell Lupin's son what he had said about him (assuming, of course, that Harry lived long enough to do so), and all four of them came back barely older than Harry was, and then, and then, they walked with him toward Voldemort, and they were with him until the end, like they said they would be.
Regulus Black's death was sad. I didn't expect it to be, you know? I guess I expected it to be like the theories, and of course it was, in that he was RAB and Kreacher was involved. But I never saw anybody say that they thought Regulus had actually been killed by Inferi, dragged under the water while his devoted house-elf watched.
Snape's death was sad. Still, I knew it was going to happen, and definitely preferred it to the alternative (as we all know, Snape got himself into such hot water at the end of book 4 that the only way he could have survived the series was if EVERYONE ELSE died. Hence, Severus Snape and the Graveyard at Hogwarts). Those memories stuck with me more than I realized when I read them, though. Today at work, the scenes where Snape was trying and failing to impress Lily by telling her she was a witch, where Lily was asking Snape whether it would matter at Hogwarts that her parents were Muggles, where she was telling him that they were friends, but she didn't like the people he was hanging out with, were the things that kept coming back to me whenever I would think about the book. That was when I made the connection that Snape was "that awful boy" that Petunia mentioned in OotP. And the fact that "Snape's Worst Memory" wasn't that way because he had been horribly humiliated, but because that was when he had lost her forever.
Man, this is getting depressing.
Awww, Scorpius. :)
And now, to mine my comments to other people's entries.
To![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scottique, on Neville: It's like Harry and Ron and Hermione didn't come back to Hogwarts and he thought, "Welp, these shoes won't fill themselves. [The level of awesome Neville reached in this book sort of may have eaten my brain. I am brainless, bereft of brain, and it is entirely Neville's fault.]
Toclodia_risa: Am I seriously the only one (okay, so I probably am) who didn't realize Victoire was Bill and Fleur's daughter? It was actually pretty silly, to the point that I would blame it on reading the epilogue at 5 a.m. if I didn't think that would be a completely bullshit excuse. What's weird is that I kept wondering if Bill and Fleur were going to have kids soon after the book ended, and yet never made the connection. But whatever.
Augh, I'm tired. Okay, more edits later.
ETA: You know, if I could ask JKR just one question about the seventh book, I think I would preface it by saying that I understand that Lupin is a guy with complex emotions, and that's cool, and then I would tell her that even so, I would very much like to hear her comments regarding his behavior in this book. Reading that chapter (you know the one), I was struck by the profound depths of his self-loathing. It was masterful. Truly impressive; I bow to you, sir.
I was kind of thinking about making a list of badass things that were done here, but the idea was frankly overwhelming. This is the first time I've ever been reading a book and said out loud to myself, multiple times, "whoa, that was badass." The largest chunk of continuous badassitude, however, was definitely all of "The Battle of Hogwarts," especially everything involving McGonagall and Neville. Particularly, though, the part where McGonagall brings all the inanimate objects in Hogwarts to life and calls them to fight for the school. Okay, I realize that this paragraph has kind of been a waste of space, since I haven't said anything here that anyone else hasn't said, but it's just for the record.
One thing I noticed was that JKR brought back the term "Stunned" to describe what happens to a person when they're hit with a Stunning Spell. That's the word she used in GoF, but in HBP, she kept saying that people had been "Stupefied". I'm glad she changed it back. She never did change "Apparition" back to "Apparation", but that one doesn't bother me as much.
I want to go on record as saying that I think the two characters who weren't originally supposed to die were Lupin and Tonks. Maybe this has already been cleared up somewhere on the internet, but I haven't touched a computer since Wednesday and I'm posting this before I do anything else, so if it's already up on JKR's website or in an interview transcript or something, I don't know about it. Back when she first made the announcement, it sounded to me from her wording that she was thinking of the two dead characters as a unit, so I thought they might be a married couple, or close in some other way. (Like the Weasley twins--maybe George was the one who got the reprieve, amirite?) Actually, the first thing I thought when I read in chapter 1 that they had gotten married was, "oh, crap. Now they can DIE." And then, I swear to God, the second Tonks was described as "radiant" I thought, "oh, okay, she's pregnant, which means they are (or, at least, she is) safe until the baby is born...at which point they can DIE." Note to everybody: no matter how subtle you're not trying to be, or how dense the narrating character supposedly is, the character's description of someone as "radiant" that is not immediately followed by the character concluding that that someone is pregnant is very silly.
Actually, I really am more interested in which character was originally supposed to die, but didn't. Really, it could have been anybody. Except Harry, I guess. And Ron and Hermione and Ginny. And Neville.
OH AND. One more thing about deaths. She said it wasn't going to be a bloodbath! She LIED! Fifty people dead in the battle at Hogwarts, and three dead in the first eighty pages! The whole damn Order, wiped out! Well, okay, so I guess Kingsley is alive. And Hagrid. And most of the Weasleys. EVERYBODY that showed up at the Department of Mysteries to save the kids in OotP was dead by the end of book 7, although all the kids actually survived. Wait, no, Kingsley was there, too. Hmm. Maybe he was the one who was originally supposed to die.
So what is the deal with Stan Shunpike, I wonder? I mean, yeah, he's supposed to be under the Imperius Curse, but wouldn't it be terrific irony if he really were a Death Eater?
I want to know what happened to Luna's dad (was he okay?) and whether anybody really gave a damn afterwards that Harry and Ron and Hermione had totally robbed a bank.
That's all I have to say right at the moment, but now I have to get ready for work, and I'm sure I'll think of more later today, so: ETAs to follow.
ETA: Seriously, guys, I loved this book. I don't think I can read it again for a little while, though. My emotions wouldn't thank me.
Okay, this epilogue business. There is no excuse for Harry and Ginny's baby-naming habits. It was, indeed, very much like a fanfic. I won't say it was like a bad fanfic, because there are plenty of good fics that do that too, but at any rate, I can't believe they named their kid Albus Severus. The other two are probably James Harry and Lily Ginevra. Scorpius, on the other hand, is an adorable name and one that I totally plan to give my firstborn. I also approve of Teddy Lupin's name, because naming a boy after his father and maternal grandfather is a terrific way to honor both sides of the family. Like Voldemort's mother did! And, of course, the way Ron and Hermione totally dispense with the idea that their kids must be named after other people is really pretty refreshing. Which I guess is what Draco Malfoy did too.
Awww, Scorpius. ♥
There was no shortage of events in this book that choked me up a bit, but the only one that actually made me cry was the one where Harry raised the dead. I mean, I think I cried, I could feel tears on my eyelashes and my nose started to run a bit. Of course, this was at the point where Harry had just accepted that he was going to have to die, and Lupin had only just died himself, and as I was reading I wondered whether Harry would ever tell Lupin's son what he had said about him (assuming, of course, that Harry lived long enough to do so), and all four of them came back barely older than Harry was, and then, and then, they walked with him toward Voldemort, and they were with him until the end, like they said they would be.
Regulus Black's death was sad. I didn't expect it to be, you know? I guess I expected it to be like the theories, and of course it was, in that he was RAB and Kreacher was involved. But I never saw anybody say that they thought Regulus had actually been killed by Inferi, dragged under the water while his devoted house-elf watched.
Snape's death was sad. Still, I knew it was going to happen, and definitely preferred it to the alternative (as we all know, Snape got himself into such hot water at the end of book 4 that the only way he could have survived the series was if EVERYONE ELSE died. Hence, Severus Snape and the Graveyard at Hogwarts). Those memories stuck with me more than I realized when I read them, though. Today at work, the scenes where Snape was trying and failing to impress Lily by telling her she was a witch, where Lily was asking Snape whether it would matter at Hogwarts that her parents were Muggles, where she was telling him that they were friends, but she didn't like the people he was hanging out with, were the things that kept coming back to me whenever I would think about the book. That was when I made the connection that Snape was "that awful boy" that Petunia mentioned in OotP. And the fact that "Snape's Worst Memory" wasn't that way because he had been horribly humiliated, but because that was when he had lost her forever.
Man, this is getting depressing.
Awww, Scorpius. :)
And now, to mine my comments to other people's entries.
To
scottique, on Neville: It's like Harry and Ron and Hermione didn't come back to Hogwarts and he thought, "Welp, these shoes won't fill themselves. [The level of awesome Neville reached in this book sort of may have eaten my brain. I am brainless, bereft of brain, and it is entirely Neville's fault.]To
clodia_risa: Am I seriously the only one (okay, so I probably am) who didn't realize Victoire was Bill and Fleur's daughter? It was actually pretty silly, to the point that I would blame it on reading the epilogue at 5 a.m. if I didn't think that would be a completely bullshit excuse. What's weird is that I kept wondering if Bill and Fleur were going to have kids soon after the book ended, and yet never made the connection. But whatever.Augh, I'm tired. Okay, more edits later.
ETA: You know, if I could ask JKR just one question about the seventh book, I think I would preface it by saying that I understand that Lupin is a guy with complex emotions, and that's cool, and then I would tell her that even so, I would very much like to hear her comments regarding his behavior in this book. Reading that chapter (you know the one), I was struck by the profound depths of his self-loathing. It was masterful. Truly impressive; I bow to you, sir.
I was kind of thinking about making a list of badass things that were done here, but the idea was frankly overwhelming. This is the first time I've ever been reading a book and said out loud to myself, multiple times, "whoa, that was badass." The largest chunk of continuous badassitude, however, was definitely all of "The Battle of Hogwarts," especially everything involving McGonagall and Neville. Particularly, though, the part where McGonagall brings all the inanimate objects in Hogwarts to life and calls them to fight for the school. Okay, I realize that this paragraph has kind of been a waste of space, since I haven't said anything here that anyone else hasn't said, but it's just for the record.
One thing I noticed was that JKR brought back the term "Stunned" to describe what happens to a person when they're hit with a Stunning Spell. That's the word she used in GoF, but in HBP, she kept saying that people had been "Stupefied". I'm glad she changed it back. She never did change "Apparition" back to "Apparation", but that one doesn't bother me as much.
