wednes | Harry Potter and the frantic dash to Kroger

It started out pretty relentless, with one awful thing after another happening. Mad-Eye and Hedwig bite it almost immediately, though not before the Dursley's move to safety and Big D actually thanks Harry for saving his life.

Because everybody and their brother Thicknesse is confunded, Snape takes over Hogwarts instead of Minerva, which came as quite a shock to me. The whole book is like that, a total roller coaster than each time you think we're done getting pummled, something else terrible happens. Dobby's death was horrible and sad, but Dobby surely would have wanted to die saving Harry Potter.

Of course Voldie is defeated, we learn that Snape has been good all along, and also in love with Lily Evans. This was widely speculated among the fans, as was the fate of Lupin. He and Tonks died rather unceremoniously during the final battle. And even though I said this during the speculation time, killing off just one of the Weasley twins was horrible and wrong. Killing Colin Creevey was almost as bad. Such a good kid, that one.

I was surprised at who finished who off. I was hoping for a little more pointed Nevill killing Bella, Lupin killing Greyback, etc. Although Molly with the harsh language and stunning spells was awesome. I hope she calls Bella a bitch in the movie. I hoped Severus would have a more...important death, that he would die fighting or saving someone.

The last chapter left me wanting to know a whole lot more. We know who married who to some extent, and that they didn't think up a single original name for their kids. But we don't know what jobs they ended up having--except for Neville who does not seem to have married Luna despite my wishes to the contrary. And why make it 19 years instead of 20? I'll tell you, because something bad will happen on the 20th anniv of Voldie's second downfall. But I guess we'll have to wait a few days for the fanfic on that.

Alright, I'm really tired since I was up all night reading.

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I'm intrigued by your reactions (and punchy, tired and beset with aching sinuses) and I don't disagree at all, but I am struck by the brilliance of the plotting and the ruthless (in this case the word "ruthless" means tight and remorseless) manipulation of the reader's desires and expectations. Many many chapters go by without many our favorite characters appearing. And (as someone who never went to college) I must say I was struck by how skillfully she played off of the previous books routine structure and made the reader actually long for Hogwarts.

And if you doubt that achievement, look at the previous 5 words in the context of the real world. Simply hilarious! But I digress...

In/at the end, I am deeply impressed with what she chose to show and what was omitted. Room for speculation but...

And I think/hope that Riddle is done. If there ARE more tales, I'd hope we get new and larger ones. I for one am a tad surprised she didn't blow the whole wizarding world open to the normal people. Still plenty of places to go.

Also, wish we'd seen Trelawny at her prophecy's end. But I could not have done it, or anything really, better.
Bravo to her for focusing less on made-up magic and more on real magic.

There is plenty of speculation that she will allow schoolastic to hire other writers to write back stories for people. That's all fine, but just not the same as if Rowling were writing them.

I do agree that the book made me "long for Hogwarts," the reader thinks they'll go there much sooner than they do.

Snape's turnaround was particularly interesting, as was Dumbledore's back story. I like the idea that flawed people can still do tremendous things.

I also agree that it would have been nice to see Sybil, but since she doesn't even know she made the prophesy, I almost think it doesn't matter.

The only death I really felt was justified was Scrimgeour, that prick. Even Voldie's death was less satisfying than his.

I definitely had Snape completely taped out.
I had thought she might have had the potions master and 1/2blood prince whip up a love potion that went wrong (snaring James for Lily instead) - oh the pathos!
But her answer was much better for its humanity and restraint.

Yeah, that was all good. I feel bad for severus.

The voldie death was kind of anticlimactic. I was reading through it like, could we PLEASE get to this please, thank you. :)

Snape did die saving someone: Draco Malfoy. Because Voldie wasn't very smart after all and killed the wrong dude.

I'm just a little confused as to why he went so gungho crazy with the school stuff if he was on the "good side" unless he did because he just couldn't handle the whole having to kill Dumbledore stuff. I totally knew he had a thing for Lily which was why he hated James even more than he would have for being mean to him.

I LOVED the memory backstory part. I was glad to see that he was redeemed. I couldn't bear to think that "Alan Rickman" was really all bad. :)

Wednes? Any particular reason this didn't get marked with a "spoiler warning" or put behind an lj-cut? As soon as I realized you were mentioning specific things I scrolled down to get to the next message, but even with fast scrolling, since I had to kind of watch the screen to know when it was done, I ended up finding out more than I wanted to about the book, which I won't have for about another week.

I'm not mad, just really disappointed.

But it was cut, with a "spoilery review" in the heading. I was very careful.

Ok, that's really weird then, because I got the whole thing, not just the intro. I'm sorry - obviously something wrong either with LJ or on my end. :(

That sucks.

I'd be really pissed if I got spoiled.

I guess that's true. And Draco did get saved in every possible sense.

Yeah, most of the Snape/Lily stuff turned out just as fans had predicted, so that was cool. I knew Snape had to be good just because Dumbledore couldn't possibly fuck up that badly.

Hey, Wednes, I wanted to let you know I figured out what happened. I've been reading my friends journals though an RSS reader, and apparently it doesn't pull from the journal main page, but from each of the individual entry pages, so that not only does it not include the text in the lj-cut line, but it pulls the complete text of every post.

So, I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about that yesterday - the problem was on my end, and I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.

Kriselda

No worries, though you had me afraid I'd committed a major faux pas for a minute there. ;-]

I hope you still find lots to enjoy when you get your book!

Oh, I'm sure I will :)

Harry Potter and the frantic dash to Kroger

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The spoiler warning thingy

Re: The spoiler warning thingy

Re: The spoiler warning thingy