"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth..."

Let me start with the niggles.

There was quite a lot that struck me as being inconsistant with previous canon or slightly incongruous with the structure or plot or whatevs but in a series as grand as sprawling as Harry Potter, that's inevitable and I can overlook it because the emotions that were at the heart of the book were so strong and pure that it didn't matter after a while.

I sometimes felt that there wasn't enough character development.  For example, Kreacher's turnaround came pretty quick and the fact that not a single Slytherin stood and fought for the side of good.  It kind of went against the grain of what JKR's been telling us, that there is no pure evil, no pure good, that the houses need to unite, that Slytherin and Gryffindor were once friends etc etc, but again, in the final analysis, it pales into insignificance beside all the good things.

The other thing that confused me was the Elder Wand.  If Draco became master of it by disarming Dumbledore, and then Harry became master of it by disarming Draco's other wand, then why wasn't some other randomer master of it by the time we had the big Harry/Voldemort showdown, because I'm sure Harry was disarmed at some point between those two times?  On a side note, I found Voldemort's actual death a little anti-climactic as well.  There just wasn't enough description of him being actually dead, for me, Dumbledore's death in HBP was more impactive.

One final thing that dissapointed me: the Epilogue.  Why ninteen years later?  It's just so random, so far removed from the rest of the events, I found I didn't care all that much.  Once it was established that Harry and Co all survive, then yes, obviously,they were always going to move on and have lives and jobs and probably get married and have children- I didn't need to see that, especially not put down in such a saccharine way.  It reminded me of fluffy fanfic.  I would have preferred an Epilogue that was set maybe a year later, I wanted to see a young Harry finally at peace with hiomself and others, I wanted to see the childhood and adolescence that was denied to Harry and, to a certain extent, Ron and Hermione, being granted to them.

But I thought about it some more, and I remembered her saying how she'd written the Epilogue before the rest of the book, and suddenly I felt a lot better about it.  This bit wasn't for us, it was for her, as a grown-ip, she'd written that Epilogue because she knew that it was the only way she could get through these seven books of seemingly endless torment for one teenage wizard, that at the end of the tunnel, there lay an adulthood of peace and safety, and I respect her incredibly for that.

And now, onto the general good things.

My favourite concept of the book was the way in which she dealt with the idea of love being the great conquerer of evil.  She and Dumbledore have been telling us over and over again that love is the answer and, like Harry, we've been going, "Well, yeah, but in the Final Battle, how's that exactly going to help?" And in the end, it is not Harry's redemptive love that counts, it is Snape's.  I'm going to give him a section all to himself.

Severus Snape
By far, one of my favourite characters in this book, despite the great lack of him.  I'd always dismissed the idea of him being in love with Lily, it seemed far too cliched but JKR made it ok.  I felt so sorry for him, that bitter, lonely, jealous boy with ill-fitting clothes and badly-cut hair, unloved at home, desperately seeking some kind of attention, some kind of love; the parallels with eleven-year-old Harry are strikng.  And for both characters, my heart wept for them.  The phrase that I will always remember about Snape is the description of him at ten years old:"an oddly impressive figure, even in his ill-fitting clothes, so sure of his destiny", because in the end, he wasn't sure of his destiny at all.

And JKR said, in her webchat, that if he hadn't been so infatuated with the Dark Arts, then Lily could have grown to love him back, romantically, not just as a friend, and things would have been so different, just as if Merope Gaunt had chosen to live, and love and care for her son, things would have been different again.  And so it all hinges on fate and chance, and love, which is perhaps the most flighty and easily influenced of all.  And this is a complete turnaround from my pre-HBP thoughts of Lily-Snape, which I can recall being, "Ew, no."  JK, I take my hat off to you.

Snape, to me, is a hero, a flawed hero, but the best ones are.  I predicted his death, but only because I couldn't see him carrying on afterwards, and I have mourned him just as much, if not more, than the others.  I cried over Harry's son being called "Albus Severus", after "one of the bravest men he ever knew", just one of the points at which a particular line or word made me well up.


Perhaps it would be prudent now to talk about Dumbledore, sweeing as the two really seem to go together.

Albus Dumbledore
I don't believe an idol has ever fallen quite as completely as Albus Dumbledore did.  I find myself strangely relieved by his spurious past, knowing, as we all did, that he could not have started life as a wise old man.  I have little to say about him, other than that I now respect and like him even more than I did before, because a hero who goes into the darkness and comes out the other side will always be my favourite kind.

I should now talk about the trio themselves so i can indulge in some heavy squeeing and maudlin moaning.

Hermione Granger
Hermione was my least favourite of the trio in this book, which is strange because she was my favourite in HBP, and the one I have always associated myself with most closely (although I never thought I was as uptight about rules or as straight-laced).  Something about the extremity of her actions scared me a little, the same extremism as we saw in OotP when she scarred Marietta.  Actions such as actually messing around with the psychology of her parents made me extremely uncomfortable; my image of Hermioen has always been as someone who cares for everyone, indiscriminately, someone who sees both sides of every story, the voice of calm and logic and reason.  In Deathly Hallows, she was just as skilled, just as logical, but there was a kind of fanatical devotion to Harry's quest that scared me a little.  The focus of these energies was being poured into this high-intensity quest, and she was keeping no reserves of intelligence or thought-power for herself, she had no room to step back and view the situation objectively, and this was a change so far removed from what i think of as my Hermione that I didn't altogether like it.

And I know this is going to sound ridiculous and petty but her appearance has changed.  Great Aunt Muriel says she has "skinny ankles".  No, she doesn't.  You can't have it both ways, if you're going to have a character that scorns sports and chooses to read all day instead, then she can't be skinny, because that's just not fair.  I always imagined Elizabeth Bennet with a bit of meat on her bones, and I imagine Hermione as the same, hidden under her usually voluminous robes.  And men whistled at her in the street.  Men don't whistle at Hermione!  And I don't think she'd wear lilac either, or have a beaded bag; it's a bit of a silly time for her to be growing a fashion sense.  But rant aside, there we go.  I think I'll just ignore those bits and carry on imagining her as I did before: pretty, but not stunning, wild, frizzy hair, a little dumpy and with bad posture.  At least JKR got that bit right :P

But she wasn't all bad.  Hermione's growing up took place in HBP, so in this one she had only really to wait for the other two to catch up with her, and she did so admirable.  Hermione Granger never abanoned her principles, she stuck with them, and who would have guessed that S.P.E.W. and her defense of all non-human creatures would be so important?  Who would have gussed that a schoolgirl's first pricklings of her social conscience would be so important in so many ways?  The Final Battle, with Kreacher leading the charge, the negotations with Griphook, getting Kreacher on their side at Grimmauld Place and of course, page 502, the bringing together of six and a half years of unresolved feelings. JKR said in her webchat that Hermione goes to work for the MoM, starting off with reforms for house-elves and then moving onto Magical Law Enforcement, where I imagine she'll pretty much kick arse.  I'm proud of her.  The first time I cried was when she said, "Mudblood and proud".  The thing I have always loved about Hermione is her understanding of how things work, and her final understandong of the nuances of the world was widened so much in this book that I felt she really had matured beyond textbooks and I was so proud of her for it.

Ron Weasley
Ron has always been my favourite character, righ from the start.  Out of the three, he's the most real to me, the most vividly sketched, and in this book, after my petulant annoyance with him in HBP, I fell right back in love with him.  I cannot actually describe how proud of him, or how pleased with JKR I was.  The chapter "The Silver Doe" may well be my favourite chapter in all of HP lore.  I knew that he was long-overdue his moment of heroism and JKR delivered more wonderfully than I could have hoped for.  He walked out on the whole quest and then came back.  As I've said, the characters who learn are my favourite.  And after he left, he was out there, by himself, and he coped, he survived on his own because all he needed was a little guidance and he found his way back to them, at the exact right moment.  He saved harry's life, he weilded the sword of Gryffindor, he destroyed a horcrux that put up possibly the most scarring fight that we saw any of the horcruxes put up, and he was a general, all-round hero.  Ron, it is cool, what you did.  The description of Voldemort!Harry and Voldemort!Hermione taunting him really brought home all the insecurities and doubts that have plagued him, not just about Harry and his brothers overshadowing him, but about his mother not loving him as much because he was a boy, about Hermione falling for Harrry instead of him, about all the burdens that he's borne pretty much silently over the years, and my heart just ached for him.

But I never had to pity him because despite everything, Ron pulled through, and if anyone ever calls him a coward, or unecessary, ever again, I shall simply point to this chapter and go, "O RLY?"  Ron was by far my favourite in this book, because he was the one with the understanding and the clarity of vision.  he was the one keeping the whole thing together: when he left Harry and Hermione barely spoke to each other.  In many ways Ron has always been the core of the trio and when he left, it was empty.  Ron was the one who kept them going when things seemed most dire, and Ron's instincts were nearly always right, even when he thought he was joking.  Most of all, it was Ron's action that convinced me that Ron/Hermione wasn't just one of the best ships ever to sail, it was also love, true love, mature love and deep and lasting love.  Before DH I had my doubts, I thought that just because they liked each other, they didn't have to grow up and get married, but now I realise, it's meant to last forever.  It's real.

Ron's slightly clumsy attempts to make up for his pitiful attitude last year paved the way for Hermione's thawing, her relenting of her slightly frosty attitude towards him, and Ron's understanding of the way she works, the way she sees things, made her understand in turn that she would never need anyone else.  At least, that's the way i see it.  When i reached page 502, I actually jumped up fro  my kneeling position (my speed-reading posture of choice), sobbed with joy, shouted "YES!" and ounched the air, half laughing, half-crying.  An excessive reaction?  Perhaps, but I'd been waiting for so long, and so had they.  I cannot imagine it being any more perfect.  The way that Ron covers all that emotional distance, the way he genuinely says, "we can't ask them to die for us", and then Hermione sees that it is her duty to cover that last bit of ground, both metaphorically and physically, and flings herself into his arms.  The whole thing just seemed to be an expression of, "You're wonderful." And Ron's "now or never" was just so right, so fantastically spot on that I felt elated because in that moment, nothing could hurt them, because they were Ron and Hermione, together at last, and it felt just like coming home.

And then there's Harry.

Harry Potter
My relationship with Harry Potter is an odd one.  I have known him for ten years of my life, I have cried with him, laughed with him and loved him as a brother, as a best friend.  I have fallen out of love with him many times.  I have been annoyed by him, angered by him, irritated and dismissive of him, but as i sat reading the last book, I was wrenchingly, achingly proud of him.  What else could I be?   He was grown-up.  he is a man now.  he is Harry Potter, mature and posessing a kind of wisdom that no seventeen year old should have to have, but it makes him who he is: a truly extraordinary wizard.  It emphasises what Hermione said to him when they were eleven years old: that he is a much greater wizard than she will ever be.  It emphasises what Dumbledore said: that he is truly special.  It emphasises what J.K. Rowling was telling us all along, that I used to find hard to believe: that Harry Potter is a hero, and i feel priviledged to have grown-up alongside him.

When i tell my children to read these books, and they complain and I nag and force them to and then they secretly enjoy them, just like my mother and I with Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, I'll know that they don't truly understand because they weren't there, and they won't know what it was like.  Our generation alone will know what it was like, the waiting, the not knowing what would happen to one of your dearest companions and friends, and again i feel proud to be part of that generation.  I am seventeen.  I am going into my final year, not at Hogwarts, but of education, and after that I will be making my way in the world.  I am the same age as Harry is at the start of Deathly Hallows, and although I know how silly it sounds, I can't help but feel that this year will be my battle, but after that, it'll be alright.  This summer already is gloomy and rainy, and full of Dementors, it seems, but next summer will be full of peace and new starts and new adventures, and I look forward to it.


On a purely fandom-based level, I am gripped with the desire to write fanfic about a future romance between Rosie Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy, and I have no doubt others have already done so.  There are many icons to be made, not least Ron's "Don't let it bother you.  It's me.  I'm extremely famous." , a line I love for both its humour and its significance in showing that Harry's fame no longer bothers Ron.  JKR has said in a webchat that Luna becomes a naturalist and discovers many new species (althougn not, alas, the Crumple-Horned Snorkack), eventually marrying Ralph Scamander, a fellow naturalist, great-grandson of the celebrated Newt Scamander.  I am sure I shall have great fun imaging him up as a quiet, dreamy, dark-haired man, with unusually penetrative perception of the world, who treasures Luna as much as she deserves to be treasured.

There is still so much to be said about Potterworld, about my undying love for Draco Malfoy and Narcissa's redemption, about my rage at Remus Lupin's death (he wasn't supposed to die, he just wasn't), about my grief for George Weasley, my glee at the amount of swearing there was, and my shock at the scenes of torture and murder.  I feel that my forays into J.K. Rowling's world are far from over but for now, I need a rest, and so do you, I imagine, after reading through all this highly emotional and maudlin rambling.

In the final analysis, I can never ben anything but proud that I have been there since the start, and I will never do anything but wonder at the world that has been created here, before my very eyes, as if for my express pleasure, but beloved of so many millions.