This was going to continue being a comment to the earlier post, but it got so long I figured I'd turn it into a new thread. Here goes...
Sorry to steal Kat's thunder... I guess it wasn't so much that Harry-as-Horcrux was patently obvious... but if you went on the Intarwebs and read the speculation after HBP, the idea had spread like wildfire by the time I got around to reading the book. So I still give you credit for coming up with the idea on your own before reading other people's conjectures.
I would have liked to see either 1) Neville kill Voldemort, 2) Neville kill Bellatrix (as k mentioned), OR (as I have mentioned to Dani) 3) Prof. McGonagall kill Bellatrix. The latter being because I think she is the female second-in-command foil to Dumbledore as Bellatrix is to Voldemort, and though the scene with Mrs. Weasley is nice enough, I think in terms of literary structure it would be better poetic justice if either McG or Neville did her in.
I did think the action was great starting around page 500 with the beginning of the Battle of Hogwarts, and that had better look awesome in the movie or I'm demanding my money back. I was less enthralled with the 300 pages of camping scenes. Those will be sharply reduced in my remix edition of the books. (Somewhere in here there is a joke about parallels between the Harry Potter books and the Ernest movies... Prisoner of Azkaban = Ernest Goes to Jail, this one = Ernest Goes to Camp... I'm sure there are more.)
I'm OK with Tonks and Lupin dying, but I don't think it was really necessary either way. As Dani noted, it would probably be too big a blow to the Weasley clan if both Arthur and Fred (I think it was Fred who died and George who lost an ear, right?) died. So if Arthur died, I think we'd have to get back Fred... and literarily I kind of like the idea of having the twins get split up (I can't really express why) and Teddy (who even in the phonetic similarity of his name, I think is pretty intentionally supposed to mirror Harry) orphaned. One nice thing about the latter is that it provides nice parallels/resolutions to the fact that Harry was orphaned in the first place, and that his own godfather was killed, simultaneously by virtue of having him become the godfather to the orphaned Teddy.
Re: Dani's question as to Snape: I agree with Cassie Clare that IF the only two choices are really 1) Snape was always good or 2) Snape was always bad, then you have to have it be #1. No question. However, again I would have preferred something with a little more surprise/subtlety, such as 1) Snape was always bad, but redeems himself at the last second (a la Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi) or 2) Snape was always good, but nearly ruins it all in a moment of temptation. (Example imagined scene: He temporarily gets ahold of the Resurrection Stone somehow, perhaps through Voldemort, and is given the opportunity to bring Lily back [just like the character in the legend] if he kills Harry or acts as accessory to such. He turns the stone over and sees her, and nearly gives in, but seeing her causes him to remember her sacrifice and allows him to overcome temptation at the last second. THEN Voldemort kills him.) Or some sort of trickery such as when Snape killed Dumbledore, they really had their roles reversed via Polyjuice Potion or some crap like that, although maybe that would be hokey unless you could figure out a really great way of pulling it off.
BTW, enjoyed Cassie's review... I particularly agreed with her that the quest for the Horcruxes and Hallows should have been folded into the narrative much earlier, even if it wasn't revealed until book 6 or so what the full story was behind these objects. And it would have been much better structurally... as they are now, books 1 through all but the end of 4 are basically like, "Hey, kids! It's another wacky year at Magic Camp!" and the real myth/epic is all crammed into (mostly the last 100 pages of each of) books 5-7.
And in answer to Cassie's question about why it was that Lily's sacrifice was the only one to protect from the A-K curse, when certainly other people had died for their loved ones before... I always assumed it was something like the light side of the Horcrux creation (i.e. a kind of magic that can only be invoked when you voluntarily sacrifice your life), in the same vein as the deeper, older magic of which the White Witch was unaware in Lion/Witch/Wardrobe, that which allowed Aslan to return to life. Is this in keeping with others' thoughts? But it would have been nice if there had been something in HP7 that explicitly revealed that she used this magic or knew about it.
Finally, for those who didn't get it the first time, I'll recopy my complaints and revisions of the finishing-off of Voldemort for your consideration:
"I had forgotten this, but Wikipedia has thoughtfully reminded me that Harry didn't really kill Voldemort... the A-K curse rebounded on him b/c the Elder Wand was loyal to Harry. Now, even if we are accepting the fact that Harry came back from the dead [which I still think is a cop-out, though I think it would sit better with me if it were presented in a dreamier, fuzzier, more out-of-body-experience-was-that-even-real? sort of way that cut out some of those pages of dialogue], this does not satisfy me.
"Anyway, this is what I propose. Harry comes in, more or less as written, except that he has managed to grab the ring with the Resurrection Stone back as he comes out of the forest, thereby tying up that plot hole (as anyone familiar with the Lord of the Rings or Wagner's Ring Cycle knows, a powerful ring, if lost but not destroyed, will always be found again). Voldemort still has the Elder Wand at this point. So Harry gets it somehow... let's say Voldemort points the wand at him and tries the A-K curse, but instead of the way it's written in the book (hits Harry's spell, bounces back, and kills him), the spell just fizzles. He refuses to believe Harry was right (in the needlessly long number of pages of dialogue between him and Harry that have just transpired), and tries again. Again, the curse refuses to fly out of the wand. Harry (with Draco's wand) then casts an Expelliarmus (so we still get this, which happened in the book, and I think is a nice touch as we mentioned). The Elder Wand flies out of V's hand and goes directly to Harry, smashing the wand he won from Draco in the process (I think this is kind of nice as it has symmetry -- Harry became the master of the wand by disarming Draco but did not actually get the Elder Wand, and now as it returns to him it destroys the wand he actually got from Malfoy) (also nice as if you assume Malfoy to be an evil foil to Harry, it parallels the damage to Harry's own wand earlier in the book).
"At any rate, however it plays out, Harry is now carrying all three of the Hallows -- thus he is presumably truly the master of death now if you buy the legend and/or if you assume he deserves this from sacrificing his life previously (I think this is also a nice touch -- that SOMEONE gets all three Hallows at some point). Voldemort, now desperate, either gets another wand from somewhere or uses his own original wand (I forget if he still has it at this point) and tries one more time (a third time, which I think is a nice magical number) with the A-K curse. Now the curse rebounds (I like the idea that the Elder Wand acts half on its own and Harry casts an unknown protective charm without actually speaking, but this point is negotiable), and Voldemort is knocked down, disarmed, and weakened, but not killed. Thus, to some extent it mirrors their first encounter -- but this time V is defenseless and Harry is at the height of his power. Harry expresses regret that it has to be this way, but knows that neither can live while the other survives, etc. He raises the Elder Wand and says "Avada-" (I think this would be the only time Harry uses the killing curse, right?) -- but before he finishes, the wand again acts on its own and completes the curse for him. I sort of like this b/c it adds some ambiguity to Harry's character -- i.e., he is willing to use the A-K curse (which is nice with all the symbolism of part of him being in Voldemort and vice versa) -- and he is more active in killing Voldemort than is written, but in some sense he is not fully responsible, as he never actually completes the curse, thus symbolizing how fate has to some extent forced his hand in this regard.
"Subsequently, Harry uses the Elder Wand to destroy the Resurrection Stone (I think this is allowed according to the rest of the myth in the book), and as already written, he also uses it to fix his own wand, then re-buries the Elder Wand with Dumbledore and keeps only the Invisibility Cloak. Thus (wow, I only just realized this parallel and have officially just blown myself away), just as at the end of the very first book where he got the Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone from the mirror (i.e., he got the stone because he needed it but had no desire to use it), he proves himself to be the worthy master of all three Deathly Hallows solely by virtue of his willingness to give up the title.
"Much tidier, I think..."
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3 comments:
I would just like to comment that though Matt came most lately to the books, he really knows his stuff. He would have done a better job concluding than JK, I think!
hey, remember when, like, a year ago matt wasn't particularly interested in reading these books? wow.
I'm going to have to reread the last couple of chapters before I can fully jump into this conversation, but I agree with the general sentiments that (1) ms. rowling wasted an awful lot of pages in books 1-4 (and the camping scenes in book 7 which, yes, held the threat of a significant death, but still involved entirely too much adolescent whining) which could have been spent setting up more of the backstory, and (2) how could she have not done more with the harry vs. neville ambiguity? I really expected a bit more tension around that point, but instead all we got was some drivel about how "the prophecy was only about harry because voldemort *made* it so" or whatever, and while I'm happy that neville is flourishing (heh) as an herbology professor and had some key moments in book 7, there was room for more awesomeness...or at least a little somethin'-somethin' with luna. rowr.
oh, but as I've told dani at least, I like that none of the kid characters actually killed anyone, which can be seen as a copout *or* a nice moral for kid readers (just because evil characters die doesn't mean that children need to be the ones who do it). discuss.
First thought, before I forget--I wonder if the fact that I didn't mind the camping stems from the fact that I read the first 300 pages in a go, then set the book down for 3 weeks before finishing the last 400 (which I read in two nights, basically). If I were reading it all at once, in one day, it might've dragged a bit more, but as it was I didn't really notice any excessive lull in the action. I will say that I didn't feel any drop in tension when seeing the Snape stuff in the pensieve despite it being at the height of the battle--I thought that was fairly well done.
I also like your suggestions, Matt. I was really troubled by the fact that Harry just left the stone in the woods, and Dumbledore was all, "Yes, good boy." WTF? Go retrieve that thing! If there are any future Potter books, it will certainly turn up--and I imagine the fanfic writers having a field day with it.
As an aside, and it may have already been said by someone elsewhere, but I would enjoy a prequel with more of the Lily story. Prequels can be done well--Anne McCaffrey is one author who's done it, and I suppose the Hobbit was a prequel, but I don't know if it came first or after the LOTR trilogy--but I wonder if JKR just wants to put it all to bed, period.
Anyway, bravo, Matt--very well thought out ending, and more satisfying than the way it played out, with excessive amounts of Dumbledore-explains-it-all-esque commentary from Harry. I've been reading a lot of stuff wherein people wanted to see more from Draco, which I also agree was kind of a wasted build-up post-HBP and the position his character was facing there. Most people agree that he chose not to choose, but it's hard to write a compelling character in such a situation.
So in addition to wanting more Neville, I'd want more of that... and more freaking GINNY. In hindsight, I'm rather annoyed at JKR at keeping her hidden away for practically all of the book. The camping scenes were particularly problematic in this sense, but even at the end fight, she's supposed to be so awesome, right? Bat-bogey hex extraordinaire and all? Let the girl get out and kick some ass! It would help make her love story with Harry feel more organic rather than forced. But as so many have already said, JKR has a problem with romance, so it might've been easier not to write it than to write it poorly.
Finally, Snape... I think having Snape be tempted by the Resurrection Stone would have been *awesome*. If Harry saw Snape bringing his mom back from the dead, we might not have needed the pensieve stuff (though I suppose that was how Harry learned he was the last horcrux). And on that topic, I tend to avoid a lot of online fanwanking stuff, so that's why I didn't know it was already presumed a given in the "community." I'm still pleased with myself. nyeah. :D
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