HP 7.

In the longstanding tradition of my Harry Potter madness I am going to dump some thoughts on the new HP book in my LJ. In a break from tradition I won't do it while I'm delirious with sleep deprivation.

I'm in Germany and I found the book in a shop in Trier (population 101,000) where only one bookstore was planning on having it. We spotted the shop near the ancient town plaza the night before and I dragged poor Sam out of bed at 6AM the next morning ("But Sam, what if there's a line?"). We sat, all alone, by the front of the shop for almost an hour and a half. Others started showing up 15 minutes before the shop opened. Sam was none too amused and stayed awake by making fun of me and shivering in the cold. Needless to say I had the book at 8:03AM (paid in cash!) and Sam (who got a free muffin out of the deal) had to nearly tackle me to get me back to the hotel at all. I had the book open the moment we were out of the shop ("But I just wanted to see if the leaked Epilogue was real!"). I read while we ate breakfast ("I promise.. just one chapter"). Three chapters later we went back to the hotel room where we needed to pack to head to Stuttgart ("Sam, you look tired... maybe you should nap!"). After Chapter 8 I grudgingly put the book away so we could check out on time. I drove about 160km/hour all the way to Stuttgart. Sam noted that it was only my ardent desire to make it to a place I could read that got me over my fear of driving fast on the Autobahn. However, in my HP madness, I managed to leave 3 beautiful [and expensive] original lithographs of important German Doms (Köln, Aachen and Magdeburg) in the hotel room. They are lost and I am sad.

**WARNING. SERIOUS SPOILERS** - I'm not bothering to LJ cut this.













The book is wonderful. It's cluttered, but concise, and it leaves a lot of room open for further elaboration by fanfic authors although the canon is clearly laid out. She had to stick a lot of "tying up" in this book so it comes off as a bit rushed. For example she only dedicates a very small portion of the book to the break-in at Gringotts but you know that's a bigger deal than she was able to describe. Some things, as a result, while canon-consistent, seem incredible. How did the Dragon break through all that rubble? Why didn't they get knocked off and killed in the process?

I feel that her single chapter in a non-Harry context deprived us of some great Snape moments. There will be a lot of fanfiction in this area. While the penseive scenes she gave us with Snape and Lily were sufficient to tell the story, we miss out on so much. Did Snape ever tell her he loved her? Did he ever consider abandoning the Death Eaters? What happened when she fell in love with James? Did Lily ever know that Snape betrayed her? Did Petunia? I'm curious because I wrote a whole fanfic series right before book 5 on what you might see in Snape's penseive. I can't wait to see what others come up with now that we have solid canon.

Yet I found that Rowling weaved her 7 books so tightly together that I'm almost dizzy thinking about it. When Petunia lets it slip in book 5 that she knows what Dementors are, she uses the phrase "that awful boy" to refer to the boy that was talking with Lily about them. The fandom has always assumed it was James (I think Harry did too), but it turns out it was Snape. All along people have always said of Harry that he looks like his father, but has his mother's eyes, and that those eyes play an important role in the books. There's a pile of fanfic on emerald green eyes: that they tie him to Slytherin somehow, that they are a sign of the horcrux, etc. Then, all along Snape has an annoying habit of staring directly into Harry's eyes. We've always assumed this was mind-reading. Yet all along Snape's just been looking into those green eyes he loved. It was the last thing he wanted to see... this touched me immensely.

I am touched by Snape's ending. I love that he did what he did, yet I feel somewhat robbed by the lack of Snape in the rest of the story. I'm crushed there wasn't a formal understanding between Harry/Snape while Snape was alive. I had hoped for more Harry/Snape interaction. Why couldn't there have been a serious row when they ran into Snape under the Invisibility Cloak (with McGonagall)? Snape knew that he was there! I think Snape also knew he was there when he died in the shrieking shack. What Rowling did with his death was too subtle, yet I realize this is her sober way of telling us how it is. Snape did an awful thing and he paid dearly for it, even while he tried to make up for his mistake. I just wish Harry had known the price he paid earlier, that there'd been some discussion between the Trio, with Dumbledore, with anyone, that made that go deeper. I like that it was Harry that revealed the betrayal to Voldemort, and I liked that he emphasized that Snape loved Lily without hesitation or revulsion. The theme of love really spread through these books like wildfire and while Rowling had us completely diverted with Lily's love for Harry, Harry's love for Sirius, Dumbledore's love or Harry, it was Snape's love for Lily that saved Harry and the wizarding world. It was love that redeemed Snape in the end and that made him different from Voldemort. Regret and Remorse. I'm probably going to go and read all the Snape/Lily fanfic out there (there are a few).

I cried only when Dobby died. It seemed like this death touched Harry more deeply than the others. This might only be an effect of how quickly she wrote through the other deaths. She spent a great deal of time with Dobby's burial and Harry at Shell Cottage, while so little with the falling of Fred. But that is war, is it not? You kill, you watch people die, you move on or you die. They hardly had time to drag his body away.

Friends tell me they found the phenomenon of the Deathly Hallows came out of left field or was written in too rushed. Some reviews I've read say that Harry becomes unnecessarily obsessed with it. I find all these criticisms somehow lacking. Remember that Rowling wrote the cloak in at the beginning of the series in Book 1. Harry uses it consistently, Ron recognizes it's rare, and we've wondered for a very long time why Dumbledore had it and James didn't. The nature of Dumbledore's power hasn't been a secret, either (the Elder Wand). Why does he win all those battles? This explains it, but it's a sort of subtle point that we've missed. She perhaps could have put more clues to Dumbledore's past in the previous books but it wouldn't quite underscore the loss that Harry felt with never having inquired more about Dumbledore. And Dumbledore, as we find out, was very secretive. I saw this last-minute plot addition as a literary device to drive that point home.

She had a great character in Malfoy and underutilized him. (Or have I read too much of Cassandra Claire's fanfic?)

I wanted more Harry and Ginny. I wanted to see the reunion, not just the epilogue.

Someone mentioned to me a gay theme between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. I just don't see it. Dumbledore came off to me as the sort of character that yearned for more than love with a partner. Perhaps he married at some point and we just can't know that? Perhaps he became embroiled in the search for the Deathly Hallows and then in the fight with Voldemort and all was lost. He is like an eccentric British reclusive scholar. You know the type, eh?

This is a 5-star book in my rating. We won't see another series like this one for a very long time.