You All Knew It was Coming - Epic Potter Post

Mm, Internet. Tastes so good.

The seclusion was successful (totally unspoiled to the end), so I can't complain too much about 4 days without email. It was even vaguely liberating... but I don't plan on doing it again anytime soon.

I picked up the book first thing Saturday morning (pre-orders are for fools, yo. Target had enough copies to build a fort) and by 6:00 that afternoon I was done, stopping my reading only to get an additional Dr Pepper or go to the bathroom.

My full, crazy, and rambling review is below the cut (and chock-full of so many spoilers that your brain will explode). In general though: Tons of love. A brilliant end to the series that managed to be touching and awesome and ridiculous all at the same time. My hat goes off to Rowling, along with my full apologies for ever thinking that she couldn't pull the ending off without messing something up.

Okay, complete thoughts below. Seriously, don't click until you've read the book.


Firstly - check out my track record on predictions! I give myself 10 out of 17, allowing for a little leeway on exact wording. And check out the Snape line! Hot, right? I'm so impressed with myself, even if it was pretty obvious.

Anyways.

So I can properly gush in a second, let me get my annoyances out of the way first:

Lupin & Tonks, both dead?! Offscreen? No. No, no, fuck no. I was pretty sure Lupin was a goner from the second that he named Harry godfather (I mean come on, foreshadowing) but Tonks was just overkill. She got maybe one line in the whole book, never did a single thing, and then *boom* dead. That was really the only part of the entire book that I can't get behind.
My poor dead, Lupin. Nevar 4get!

Other, lesser annoyances:

• The ridiculous ret-con of Harry's invisibility cloak. Yeah, it makes you completely invisible, except when Moody's eye can see through it, when the Marauder's Map can still track you, and Mrs. Norris can sniff you out. *eyeroll*
• Halfway through the book, Hermione being all "Oh, I've never done a memory charm," when she's already sent her parents to Australia with completely new identities, not remembering they've ever had child. In-book continuity, much?
• Jesus Christ, that epilogue. That was the worst, worst, worst thing in the world. Fanfiction-y in a way that almost hurt. Let's not tell me what happened to Luna, or what Harry and Hermione decided to do after school. No, let's have Harry use his children as insane memorial devices. No pressure, child who is named after the two greatest heroes of the wizard world in the last 100 years. Gross. (Also - Scorpius? To borrow an apt line from the 90's - Gag me with a spoon.)

And really that's it, in terms of annoyances. Let the gushing commence!

• Neville! No, really, Neville! Takes over for Harry when there's no Harry in Hogwarts (with Luna and Ginny as his Ron and Hermione, respectively), gets the holy crap beat out of him, leads the revolution, and then kills Nagini by pulling the sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat, while his head is goddamn on fire. Sweet zombie Jesus, the wait was worth the payoff. I *heart* Neville so much. And he's the Herbology professor!
  
• Luna! Fulfilled my prediction down to the exact letter - "continues to be awesome." I'm not saying that you're a bad person if you don't love her, except that you totally are. Her speech at Dobby's funeral was the most perfect thing in the world...
  
• ...except for the epitaph that Harry put on his tombstone. Seriously, nothing in Harry Potter has ever made me cry (not Cedric, not Dumbledore, not even Sirius), but that entire Dobby scene had me weeping like a child. He dug the grave himself! And they gave him clothes! Christ, I'm misting up right now. I cannot believe it, I never even liked his character all that much.
  
• Just pretty much everything in the book once they make it back to Hogwarts (the Lupins excepted obviously): The teachers just going off (McGonaggal leading a charging pack of desks down the hall!), all the students (Oliver Wood!) coming back to kick some ass, Kreacher and the house-elf revolution, Percy and his reunion, Ron and Hermione and their wild make outs when he defends elf rights...the list could go on forever.
  
• She gets her own bullet point: Molly Weasley and her NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH! Just delightful. Quite possibly the only thing that could have been as satisfying as Neville finishing her off. And since Neville already got his moment, I'll easily give this one to her. Kick Ass.

Various other bits that aren't gushing, but things that I really liked:

• Lupin and his early-book breakdown. As I've said a million times in the past, I think Lupin is the most interesting and tragic figure in this whole mess of a universe. Check it: as a child, he becomes a werewolf and is totally shunned. He gets a break and gets into Hogwarts and gets four true friends. So he's happy for roughly 7 years. Almost immediately afterwards, has three of those friends killed and the fourth sentenced to life in prison for killing and betraying the others. Spends the rest of his life hating him and living again shunned by the world. 15 years later finds that 4th friend was innocent and is reunited with him... only to have him die less than a year later in a brand new war against the same foe.
  
  I mean, the guy is basically the living embodiment of the grief of the first war. And suddenly he starts going through it all again in the second war. After he loses Sirius, he is forced underground to work with the werewolves, and he's even more persecuted than before. Even his love interest is almost impossible for him, since he already knows what the potential costs of the war are.
  
  While they are waiting for everyone to come back to The Burrow after the early Death Eater attack, you get that he is finally losing it, and rightfully so. Then you get his complete breakdown with the announcement of the son. It was all incredibly well handled and truthful and in-character. Vicious, but real stuff.
  
  Then of course she goes and kills him and breaks my heart, but whatever. He got to come back with James, Lily, and Sirius in Harry's March to Death. That was at least comforting, since he's all reunited with them and whatnot.
  
  But really, doesn't his life just make you want to cry? Rowling really worked him over, I think harder than anyone.
  
• Man, Dumbledore is stone cold, isn't he? I mean, "Go ahead and betray Harry's departure date. I don't care if people die." All while all the while telling Snape "Why don't you whine some more about being a double agent, ya pansy! Just remember you're doing it for Lily and do your damn job." Top it off with "Oh yeah, so I totally knew Harry has to die to get rid of Voldemort, I'm aiming a human weapon right now so how's about you get off my back about it" and suddenly I'm less confident that Michael Gambon's crazy angry Dumbledore from the movies isn't so far from the mark. Harsh, yet awesome.
  
  (Aside, I love that Rowling was able to get in her usual 'Chapter where Dumbledore explains everything' even though he's already dead.)
  
• And just so I address it, the Snape thing was nicely drawn. That's a good use of foreshadowing for once, and his whole storyline is understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic. To a degree you just want to shake him and be all "She picked someone else, man, pull yourself together," but at the same time it's very 'Awww' too.
  
• While the early middle of the book did tend to drag, (we wander the countryside and don't have a clue what we're doing) I really liked the level of desperation that it started painting, and it carried well through the rest of the book. I always find tone to be the hardest part for Rowling to manage (you go from drama to comedy so fast most of the time it's hard to keep the curve) but she nailed it nicely in this one.
  
• And on that note, the Deathly Hallows business + Dumbledore and Grindlewald backstory should have been far too much extra stuff for the book to handle. And yet, I really think it fit together so well, I can't find anything to complain about. Maybe it's just the euphoria of the initial ending of it all, but I'm really impressed with the whole book.

Jesus, I'll stop there for now. Really I could just go on for days.

Final Words: A great series. Not literary, not groundbreaking, but great in its own right. I don't think I could be more pleased.

(Eww. What's with all this love? I feel kind of dirty.)
(I can't end on that. Seriously: Fuck that epilogue.)
(Okay, that's better.)