Deathly Hallows Observations- Part 1

Been putting off starting this post, 'cause I just don't feel I have that much clever to say that probably hasn't been said somewhere else and better already. Still, I'm going to look back on this highlight at the end of the year and I'm probably going to be glad I put down some impressions :).

My favorite book review so far is nelladarren's. She simply said, "I liked it. Shut up.". :D It so made me laugh and I completely appreciate the sentiment.

I liked the book and I found it satisfying. No, it wasn't perfect and, again, it was too long and the epilogue was cringe-worthy and it would be easy to write a litany of stylistic problems or inconsistencies but I find I so don't want to go there right now. I think Rowling has achieved something quite wonderful, she's touched my heart and I've shed a lot of tears, she's made me laugh with delight, she's made me agonize and care for characters on a printed page, she's inspired me to line up at midnight to pick up her last four books and she's engaged the imagination and creativity of several classrooms of my students. Thank you, J.K. Rowling. I've enjoyed every minute of this phenomenon.

So let's just get on to some very random thoughts:

- The series ended the way I wanted it to- Harry, Ron and Hermione all survive, Voldemort does not. And despite my quibbles with the epilogue (more to come) the trio comes out of war and loss and tragedy to find lives of belonging and happiness. And that's what I've wanted for the three of them since I met them in the first book, so it's all good.

- As for the final pairings, Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny are just fine with me. Harry is officially part of the family he's longed for throughout the whole series (the Mirror of Erised chapter from Book 1 is still one of my favorite scenes in the series) and the Trio all end up related. Call me sentimental- it made me happy.

- So JKR teases us for a year with two deaths in DH and then gives us a bloodbath. Given all the important characters who die, who exactly were the two characters she was referring to? And any theories on the character she says she gave the last-minute reprieve to?

- Ah, Hedwig! That pierced to the heart, especially after losing a pet of my own last week.

- The saddest death on the page (not the death that was closest to my heart, but the saddest death) was Fred Weasley. Ah, JK, you didn't listen to me. I've always said that if you set your gun on one of the twins spare them both or kill them both. Killing one was just, just cruel. Haunting, too, that we then are not shown how George dealt with the loss of his twin. Of all the characters in the entire series he's the one I would have most liked to have seen mentioned in the epilogue. Did he continue with the shop? Did someone else partner with him? Did he ever have a family? Poor George...

- Rowling also managed to wipe out two of my three favorite characters in the series. Sigh. One was expected and one was not. (My third favorite character is Ron and for all you Ron haters out there, see Nelladarren's quote above :))

- And we finally solve some of the mysteries of Severus Snape. Of course, there was no way Snape was going to get out of this book alive, so his death was no shock, though the rather haphazard way he died perhaps was. Heck, Voldemort didn't even stick around 'til he was dead. And we finally get to see what made Snape tick, his love for Lily Evans, a sense of atonement and character that carries him through to the end. And we have it confirmed that Snape was still on the side of the light despite killing Dumbledore and that really was important to me :). And Snape's dying wish is to see Lily's eyes once more in her son and, yeah, that touched me. Such a complex and tragic character- wish we had had more of a chance to get into his psyche beyond Harry's point-of-view.

- Have to laugh that there is a theory floating around right now that since Snape's HeadMaster portrait didn't show up in the HeadMaster's office right away, like Dumbledore's did in HBP, maybe it means that SNAPE'S NOT DEAD. We never do see his body after Harry leaves him, though Harry naming a kid after him seems a pretty convincing memorial (how did Ginny ever go along with THAT? :)). Any port in a storm, Snape gals :).

- Also makes me wonder who took over as HeadMaster of Hogwarts once Snape was dead. I'm guessing McGonigal. I totally thought she was great in the final battle :).

- One last Snape comment- there simply wasn't enough Snape in the book. Really. Maybe JK didn't want to reveal too much too soon, but along with Neville, Snape was one of the characters I impatiently waited for until he showed up near the end of the book. Alan Rickman isn't going to have nearly enough to do in the last movie.

- And to go from one extreme to the other, the unexpected character death that struck the closest to my heart? Remus Lupin. Ah, Remus, *sniff*. I've loved him dearly since Book 3, though his character was a bit of a mess in this last book. JK just wasn't going to be happy until she took out all of the Marauders (good-bye, Peter, too, in a scene of redemption that if you blinked you might have missed it). But, really, what with his late series romance with Tonks I thought Rowling would give Lupin his happily ever after. It -never- occurred to me that she might kill both Remus and Tonks! They don't even get a death scene, just two bodies Harry discovers after the fact. Nooo, Remus... Still, the scene with James, Sirius and Remus reunited in the forest was nice.

- And little Teddy Lupin was left orphaned by war just the way his godfather little Harry Potter was left orphaned a generation before. A nice parallel relationship to the one between Harry and Sirius. I notice fan ficcers are already having a field day with Harry and Teddy.

- So, so, so glad Neville and Luna survived the final battle- I was really worried for them. I totally LOVED Neville in the last section of the book- leading the student rebellion, defying Voltemort, killing Nagini... and then settling down to live a life teaching kids about plants at Hogwarts. That's just so great :).

- Seemed quite appropriate that the answer to the question, "Will Harry live or die in the last book?" ended up being "Yes.". The scene where Harry walks through the forest to sacrifice himself to Voltemort for the sake of his world was powerfully fragile and sad. It raised shades of Aslan and the White Witch, Frodo's last hopeless strike for Mount Doom and, of course, the Christian source material that inspired them all. The final showdown between Harry and Voltemort worked well, too, once you were able to untangle who exactly had control of the Eldar Wand (though it did kind of negate Snape's death since he died on the false notion that he'd been master of the wand after Dumbledore).

Whoa, it's late. Well, I managed to sift through most of the deaths here. Maybe we'll get into some cheerier observations tomorrow.