Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (Spoilers blacked out)

[Hawk Thanatos]

@ Deadly Assassin *SPOILERS*
Voldemort's spells were ineffective I assume because Harry had willingly sacrificed himself to save them, either that or because Voldemort wasn't the true owner of the Elder Wand.

Voldemort could die without Harry being dead because Harry didn't have any of Voldemort's blood inside of him.

And I too found the epilogue a bit lackluster, I had no problem with the Albus Severus name but I was disappointed about not finding out what happened to some characters. We also never found out what James and Lily's jobs were, or what the main characters ended up doing, we didn't find out what Dudley's worst memory was and Ginny should of had a bigger role in the book I reckon.

[Deadly Assassin]

@ Hawk Thanatos MORE SPOILERS

That's just what I mean. The blood protection given to Harry by his mother which was then spread to Voldemort apparently doesn't work both ways, which is odd for magic because it tends to, at least in HP. Also, Voldemort successfully killed the Horcrux inside Harry, so his magic apparently worked at that point. His killing curse also managed to kill him.

As for the "he sacrificed himself for everyone else" explanation that JK provided, it seemed to come out of no-where. Sure, I can grasp that Lily's sacrifice saved Harry, but how can he affectively protect everyone that he knows? The book just doesn't explain it rationally enough. I think it was the absence of Dumbledore's rational summing up of mysteries at the end that I missed.
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Chief of Hot and Steamy Honeys Division, Devoted Protector of Lady Mitsuba + Godwin Avatars Unite- Sports

[Tonberry]

I went to a Borders Books shop in London at midnight. There weren't as many people dressed up as one would suspect. Some guy with a megaphone ran in and yelled out some spoilers, which made me mad, until I read the book and realized the guy was making the stuff up. Weird. Anyway, I finished the book yesterday and I guess I can give my opinions on it.



First of all, I must say that this is easily my favorite book in the series. My order of favorites, from worst to best, goes: 2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. They've essentially just been getting better, I think. I really enjoyed not having the characters restricted to Hogwarts. When I was younger, sometime around the release of the fourth book, I wanted Rowling to write Harry's seven years, and then to write an eighth book where he wasn't at Hogwarts. I got my wish here, kind of.

Rowling did an amazing job in making the heroes' chances of succeeding seem minimal. The Ministry of Magic and the Voldemort's Death Eaters against them? Wow. Of course, just like many things in her series, Rowling makes Harry and Friends rely heavily on luck. I'm glad that Harry was able to rely own his own skill at the end, though. I'm also glad that he and the other heroes never pulled out an Avada Kadavra spell. It would be too unlike any of them, so it was cool how they stuck to their Stupifies.

My main disappointment with the book was about Snape. His background was too disjointed for my taste. I had predicted that Snape was a good guy, but I had hoped that his role in this story would have been bigger and more complex. I was prepared to make him my favorite character, but sadly, he didn't really do anything cool.

I was also disappointed with some of the things that were left unexplained in the end. I wanted to know what happened to Luna, for example. I thought she was important enough to mention in the epilogue. I'm really surprised we didn't get more on Hagrid. He was kind of ignored through most of this story. Those were the two characters I particularly wanted to know more about, but there were many more that would have been cool to see.

Oh, and I was disappointed with the deaths of a lot of the villains. I thought that Fenrir Greyback was awesome in book six, and hoped to see some cool things out of him in book seven, but Rowling didn't even give him something cool in the final scenes. She mentioned his name once, I guess. Same with Umbridge. I wanted something really awesome to happen to her. I thought Bellatrix's death was really lame too. I mean ... Mrs. Weasley?! Wasn't Bellatrix the witch who killed Sirius Black and defeated both of Neville's parents at once? At least Voldemort had an awesome death.

I was prepared to have Rowling have a death or two in this book, as has been her pattern more recently, but I'm so glad that she killed off many of her characters. It seemed so much more real that way. It's a war against a more powerful opponent. Deaths are bound to occur. Hedwig's death wasn't too sad, and made sense, since Harry couldn't carry his owl around through the whole book. I didn't predict it to happen, though. I was really sad that Mad-Eye died, because I had just decided that he was one of my favorite characters. Dobby's death was truly tragic. Of all of the characters, he definitely didn't deserve it. Dobby was a humble, helpful, and caring character. Poor little guy. I thought that Lupin would die, but didn't expect Tonks to go too. I wish that their deaths had been in the story itself, but it's okay that they weren't. Fred's death was extremely unexpected. I thought that the twins were untouchable, since they were the best source of comedy that the series had to offer. Especially after George joked about losing his ear, I figured that they were both there to stay. Colin's death made me surprisingly sad as as well. Even though he had grown, in my mind's eye, I can't help but picture him as a joyful little boy. As for villain character deaths and minor character deaths, I don't really care.

I just want to say that I predicted that Harry was the unknown horcrux when reading the sixth book. Also, I predicted that Dumbledore had owned the Elder Wand when the wand was mentioned. Other than that, I didn't predict anything too important before it happened.

I've got books 1-4 down pretty well, and the fifth movie helped bring back my memories of that book, but book six is fuzzy in my mind. I don't know if I'll pick up the books again for a while, but I'd eventually want to have read all seven books three times through.

Though I know there's a lot of disappointment with the epilogue, I must say that I loved it. It was a great way to end the series, I think. I loved how Harry had named his children after his parents and one of his best mentors. It really seemed appropriate. I would have liked to have seen what had happened to some of the other characters, but it would have been bad to make the ending long or list-like, so I suppose I'll let it slide. The very final words of the book were great and I wouldn't change them. I'm sad that the series is ending, but it was ended the right way.

I hope Rowling picks up the pen again and writes a new series.

[Gil-galad]

@ Deadly Assassin


It doesn't work both ways for the reasons that Hawk said. It wouldn't affect Harry because he's got none of Voldemort's blood in him. The blood protection that Harry's mother gave him wasn't really important. Voldemort's magic could still affect Harry, even at the end of the book, Harry just beat him, by deflecting the weakened (because he was not the true owner of the wand) killing curse before it hit him.

The protection that Harry speaks about at the end of the book, is the protection that Harry himself granted to the entire group fighting at Hogwarts. He died to protect them, there for his love protected them from Voldemorts magic. His love, however did not protect himself, of course.

I agree that Harry's love protecting EVERYBODY is kind of far fetched, though. A little more than far fetch-- but hey, Harry's got a lot of love in 'im! ^^

@ Hawk


As for the lack of information regarding other characters in the epilogue-- While J.K. Rowling has stated that she is writing no more books about Harry Potter, she has not stated that she will not write books about the other characters, or in that universe.

I have heard several rumors about a possible Dumbledore (auto?)biography. That would be quite interesting-- however, I don't think we can place too much truth in that, no. It would be interesting, though-- that's for sure.
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[Tonberry]

[Gil-galad]

[Tony Stark]

I got the book when it came out and I had it read in two days, it was a smashing book, but I did not really care for most of the ending. . .



First off, I felt that this book is probably my second favorite of the series. The sixth one being my favorite. Not to say I am a fan of sad endings, but just so much happened in it, and Dumbledore's death was a good way to put the icing on the cake. His death was pretty awesome too, as well as his funeral. I felt it was sort of clear that Snape was good though, even in that book.

I, like Ton-y, was upset at Snape's fairly miniscule role in this book. I also sort of hated how Harry threw away almost 7 years of hatred toward Snape, and ended up naming his son after him. Snape was still sort of a bastard most of the time, even if he did like protecting Harry, he certainly vied for his expulsion a whole hell of a lot. The duel he had with McGonnagall was pretty damn sweet though, I have to say. I loved that. His death though, I felt was way too insignificant, and I felt he should have put up much more of a fight against Voldemort or his snake or whatever.

I thought the death of Lupin was not significant enough to show the true magnitude of this fight. Given, Lupin and Hermione were probably my two favorite characters left, Lupin just was not prominent enough to really get me to believe it. Though, Fred's death did come as a huge surprise to me. I thought that one of the main characters should have died, preferably Ron. It could have added a lot more drama.

I also thought the end scene was very vivid, and for the most part, very cool. I felt Harry's "death" was awesome, as well. I did not like his rebirth and his new-found confidence and zest. It kind of pissed me off that he ended up being so strong and smart in the end, when he hadn't really displayed that in any of the other books. I had confidence in Harry, but him like owning Voldemort with words wasn't precisely something I liked.

The Deathly Hallows were awesome too, I thought that was probably one of the neatest ideas that Rowling has ever presented, the only rival of which is probably the Horcruxes. I didn't think I would really like the title part of the book, but it ended up being really awesome

I didn't like Rita Skeeter's role in the beginning, or the whole "Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore" thing very much, but i did like how they fleshed out his past and stuff, but I had wished Rowling could have done that a different way, but I cannot think of precisely how.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.
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[Deadly Assassin]

[Aurelien]

I'm pretty surprised that Tonberry Stark didn't like Snape's part in the book. I actually loved it. He got a whole chapter dedicated to his memory and everything explained well. The main angle about Snape has always been "Is he a good guy or a bad guy?" and this book clearly showed that he was actually arguably the one that did the most to help Harry in the end, and also the one who was the most loyal to Dumbledore.

I'm actually very impressed with Snape. After Dumbledore's death, he could've actually jumped side to Voldemort. But his love for Lily made him stay on Dumbledore's side.

Regarding his death mentioned by Stark, it was clear enough in the book that Snape could not fight back in any way. When Voldemort called him in, Snape was playing a part as Voldemort's follower so he had to play dumb and avoid conflict. Then Voldemort said that he'd kill Snape so that the wand would recognize the Dark Lord as the true master. Snape might've wanted to fight back, but he thought that him being the one that is trusted the most by Voldemort would play a part. When Voldemort didn't raise his wand, of course Snape thought that he might've been forgiven and Voldemort changed his mind. Everything looked like it was alright. But then Nagini showed up and pretty much encased Snape so that he could not do anything but yell. After that, Snape was bitten. Pretty much the end of his life there.

So it's not a matter of Snape not wanting to fight back. If it were a duel, then I'm sure Snape would've fought back and gave Voldemort a run for his money. But it was a different situation in which Snape was put in. It was a situation where he could not fight back. Of course it was quite a letdown for a death scene, but it was very realistic considering Voldemort's nature. He's the kind of evil man that would kill his own best follower for his own gain.


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~City-States of Jowston and Tinto Republic~
06.06.2004 - 20.01.2008

[Archy]

I actually liked that chapter the best out of the book. Along with King's Cross, these two chapters explain ALOT of holes, and the book would suck without them. I liked seeing through most of Snape's life, that was actually pretty neat, and I was a bit surprised to find out that he knew Lily even before Hogwarts. Afterwards, he loved her despite Lily going off with James, and you can see that in his Patronus, to be honest I was pretty shocked to learn that your Patronus can not be an animal.

The deaths were alright, I guess. Mad-Eye was a disappointment as I always thought he'd be there in the last battle, to take out most of them side by side with Kingsley. I like how they showed that you can use the eye even though its owner is dead now, and Harry burying the eye as some sort of tribute was a nice touch.

Hedwig was a bit of a shock, but nothing too surprising. After all, they really can't bring her through their journey with her, as it would seem to give away where they were if one were to find it. Plus, owls can be intercepted.

Dobby was sad, I guess. I always thought Kreacher would die first (seriously, how old is he?), but it turns out Kreacher lives on and leads the House-Elves against the Death Eaters! Dobby, on the other hand, dies. It was a sad death, but he at least aided Harry and co. before he died.

Fred was a shock. I always thought that the first Weasley that'd die would be Percy, pretty much imagine a scenario wherein he hasn't made up with his family yet and gets killed. That's how I've always imagined Percy to die. Yet it doesn't happen, and Fred had to die... just when you could actually tell him and George apart.

Lupin wasn't a shock to me, actually. After hearing that Pettigrew had died, I just felt then that Lupin would die too - I mean, it makes sense, all 4 Marauders fall, yeah? Now Tonks was a bit unexpected, I always thought that she'd live to take care of her own son.

Now that I've had more time, I think I've never been more amazed at Hogwarts than now. It's really amazing to see the castle go to arms - you can feel the battles everywhere. The statues will charge, and everything is used - from the various plants of the Herbology gardens, the army of neverending house-elves, hell even the freaking Poltergeist does something. That's really nice.

Another thing I liked was... Griphook. It really is hard to deal with a Goblin.
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[Aurelien]

Archy,

Do correct me if I'm wrong (I read sometimes when I'm already very sleepy, so I could misunderstand the book), but I thought Snape's patronus is a silver doe (doe is an animal) and I took it that the patronus is the same as ever which is the sign of Snape's pure love to her.

I think that way because of 2 reasons:
1. Patronus can change as shown by Tonks' in sixth book.
Because Tonks' changed to four-legged animal that is supposed to represent Lupin, I'm assuming that patronus can change depending on what you consider as happiest moment to create the patronus itself. If your happiest moment changes, then your patronus changes as well. That's what I thought. When Snape showed his patronus to Dumbledore, I'd assume that the it was still the same as long ago which showed that Snape still loved Lily Potter and did everything for Lily.

2. Doe is a female deer. Stag (Harry's patronus) is a male deer. I'd assume Harry's patronus to be caused of his memory of James. James' female is Lily. So I assume Snape's silver doe patronus represents Lily. >.>

Of course I could be very wrong, but that's what I thought when I read that part.


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~City-States of Jowston and Tinto Republic~
06.06.2004 - 20.01.2008

[Tony Stark]

Aurelien,


The chapter with Snape was one of my favorite in the book, I loved almost every part with Snape. I just did not like his death, and especially after finding out that he was the good guy, I thought it was a shame that he just died. It was a good way to find out that he was a good guy, but I felt he could have perhaps helped Harry with his potions skills (which in the last book were incredible), or maybe he could have died in some way that was more dramatic than the whole snake thing. I felt that his relative silence in that scene underplayed him there as a character, and probably as Voldemort's most useful (and now maybe most trusted, after Bellatrix failed him twice) resource. I understand it expresses Voldemort's true evil or whatever, but it really is just sad. I don't know, I just wanted to see more of him, I think. He was one of my favorite characters.

Slughorn is too, and was underused, but I do not really mind that.

Oh, and Dobby's death was really dramatic and really a great scene. I was really sad when he died -- probably the best death in the book.
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[Aurelien]

Tony Stark,

I agree with you that I too want Snape's death to be more dramatic (or hell, keep him ALIVE lol), but that's the fanboy part of me. What made this seventh book to be the one I like the most is that the deaths in this book are all realistic. This is the final war, this is the one. Many people will die, and some of them weren't even showed how they died. I would've wanted to be shown how they died, but I could totally understand that they weren't shown because it's realistic for Harry to not witness Tonks and Lupin died. It's not like Harry could be everywhere at the same time anyways.

Now of course Harry was actually there when Snape died. But the way Snape was killed was a very realistic scene as well. As much as it sucked (being bitten by a snake wtf?), it's something that is realistic. Snape wouldn't have won if he fought back anyways due to the situation (Voldemort PLUS Nagini, and also the other Death Eaters outside and whatnot against lonely Snape). So I think J.K. Rowling did the right thing by not making Snape fight back. After all, Snape was the one who was very dedicated in this whole thing. One of his part is to be an insider and pretended to be on Voldemort's side. If that resulted in his death, I'm sure he was fully prepared for such thing. And he did die, as a hero.

Personally speaking, I expected Snape to die before I read the book, but I expected him to die protecting Harry in a duel or something. But yeah, the whole Pensieve thing is worth it anyways to compensate for his lack of action death.

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~City-States of Jowston and Tinto Republic~
06.06.2004 - 20.01.2008

[RedCydranth]

I read the book in 2 extremely long sittings and was very satisfied by the book in its whole.

To comment on the Snape's death scene. Snape could not fight back simply because it was not what he was supposed to do. We see in the chapter about Snape's life that Dumbledore instructed Snape to find Harry and tell him that he has to die in order to defeat Voldemort. Snape, loyal to Dumbledore, couldn't fight him because he knew that Harry was a horcrux and needed to die before Voldemort could be defeated and had to fulfill Dumbledore's equest.

I found the book to be very well paced. I didn't quite understand the whole Ron leaving only to come back and save him when he finds the sword thing. Like, I get that Snape led Harry to the sword, but why did it have to be at the bottom of a frigid deadly lake? Snape couldn't have known that Ron would be there to whisk him out to safety and find them using the Deluminator. That part of the story was a tad fishy. Also, this book, like most others relied on great amounts of luck. The whole breaking out of Gringott's thing was bull. Just hop on a quasi-blind dragon... yes.

The deaths weren't that bad. At the time I felt Hedwig's death was a bit unneccessary, but in hindsight she needed to die. Like mentioned before, lugging her about would have been unneccessary and leaving her at the Tonks' or at the Burrow would have been evidence Harry was there. There was no true safehouse for the bird and releasing her doesn't make sense because of her loyalty to Harry and could be used by a Death Eater to possibly track his location.

Mad-Eye was a bit sad, I always liked him. I just wished there was more done with his character in the book. We don't fully find out what happened to his body, just his mechanical mad-eye. I assume it was whisked away by the Death Eaters and used as some sort of trophy.

Truly the saddest death in the book was Dobby's. I really felt a lot of remorse for little Dobby. I'm actually glad that Kreacher turned out to be good and Harry can have a loyal and good house elf. Dobby's funeral scene was very well done and I think if it weren't for Dobby's death, Griphook wouldn't have agreed to the Gringott's invasion. Griphook I think felt that Harry was different from most humans, but he still didn't trust him fully.

One of my favorite parts in the whole book though was the scene where Harry, Ron and Hermione go into the Room of Requirement and they face off against Crabbe, Goyle and Draco. Almost as much as I've wanted the duel with Voldemort, I wanted a final standoff between these three. I knew that Draco would cowardly try and run too, like he always does. I'm really glad Harry rescues him and Goyle. A shame Crabbe died in the inferno though. I thought it was very well done.

All in all I liked it. I loved how they included a snippet of just about every decent character in the entire series. They even squeezed in Viktor Krum at the wedding. I'm glad they got him in if only for just that scene. I was wondering where Colin was during the entrance to Hogwarts through the secret passage. I thought for sure he'd have been there. I was shocked that he ended up dying in the whole fracas. They breifly mentioned Cho, sadly. I wanted her to have a bigger role. At least they gave a bigger role to Luna there near the end. I really like Luna. If Harry didn't end up boning Ginny, I'd want him to nail Luna up.

The Epilogue was pretty cool. It shows that life went on after the big showdown and Hogwats repaired itself in some way. I was disappointed that we never found out exactly who Draco shacked up with. No doubt it was a pure-blood. Even though the Malfoy name was smeared through the mud after the whole thing no doubt.

Favorite unexpected moment of the book: Trelawney dropping the crystal ball on Fenrir Greyback's head. That was quite awesome.
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[Archy]

Aurelien,

Apparently, my mind was under the impression that his Patronus was some woman. Sorry. But yeah, you're on the right track.

Tony Stark,

Yes, I was thinking the same about Slughorn. I was expecting him to drop dead at the battle with Voldemort - I mean, he's old, and definitely slow... must've been simple for Voldemory. Then again, he did have McGonagall and Kingsley too, so maybe he couldn't simply focus on Slughorn alone since McGonagall and Kingsley would've taken the advantage.
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