fishpatrol

I finished HP&tDH last night, a week after everyone else. XD I was going to drag it out even longer, but after I got up to around chapter 25, I couldn't stop anymore. So I finished the rest of the book in one go and also finished a box of Kleenex in one go (though, granted, the Kleenex box was almost empty anyway. I just sped up the process a bit.) And now I feel that it's my duty, after being an HP fan for eight years (though the amount of fannish activity varied throughout the years), to at least throw out some Omg This Is The Last HP Book Ever comments (I was originally planning to, y'know, let the hype pass, but now that I've finished reading, I am positively itching to say something).

First off, I must say, spoiling myself thoroughly before reading the book wasn't the best idea ever. XD I love spoilers even though they do tamper with my enjoyment with reading the actual text. I never learn! Knowing what was going to happen dampened the amount of emotion I felt in certain "heartfelt" scenes, and they also built up expectation for certain parts that felt rather disappointing when I actually got to them.

The first half of the book leaned heavily on the dull side. Kind of like OotP. Scenes just dragged on and on and on. The redeeming parts though? 1. Six naked Harry Potters. 2. The twins' banter, after George's unfortunate loss of an ear. 3. Dudley. Tea. :x♥

After getting to the part with Snape's memory (all the Snape/Lily parts really read like scenes out of a fanfic, but they were still sad!) started the waterworks and lasted right up until Harry's (somewhat) anticlimactic non-death. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still felt a surge of sadness at Snape's devotion toward Lily and Harry's walk toward imminent death. All criticism toward JKR's writing aside, I must say, the part where Harry makes up his mind about going to Voldemort was really well handled. And the scene where the Marauders+Lily show up, I just bawled.

The last battle was quite entertaining to read -- so epic! And all the teachers gathering to protect Hogwarts! I loved all the magic use in this book! All the new spells! And the wandlore was interesting too (and I'm sure many were entertained by all those wand jokes ;)). I can't believe all the Slytherins chose to leave. Not a single one of them wanted to fight against Voldemort?

Many other have already commented on JK's treatment of Slytherins and the whole House division issue, and I do agree with them. Even nineteen years after the war, a quarter of the Hogwarts student population is still being ostracized. That's a great message to send to your younger readers, Jo: ambition makes you evil, kiddies!

In terms of individual characters:
-Neville wasn't half bad (never was a big fan of his character in the earlier books), but after seeing all the hype about how cool he was in DH...sorry, but I still don't see the appeal of Neville. X3;;

-Luna, on the other hand, was awesome as ever. At the end where she understood how Harry needed some privacy was just wonderful. I don't ship Luna/Harry, but I would love to see more interaction between them, since Luna really understands a lot of what Harry went through.

-I think Ginny had a lot of potential to be an interesting character, especially after what she went through in the second book. But we don't get to see her develop at all. She simply goes from shy and lonely to super popular. It's not impossible for someone to change so much, but it would have been easier for the reader to accept if we'd at least seen the progress of this change.

-I must admit, I didn't like Ron in several of the books. But in DH, I thought his actions were more realistic and believable. I liked the fact he walked out on Harry because it showed he didn't simply follow Harry blindly; he has his own fears and misgivings about the whole thing, but him coming back to Harry showed how much Harry's friendship meant to him.

-Tonks was so cool in OotP...and then she nosedived in HBP and crash landed in DH.

-I read in someone else's commentary that Viktor Krum really changed attitudes from GoF to DH. In GoF, he chose plain Hermione over the pretty girls, possibly for her smarts, for her conversation skills. But in DH, Krum is all, "Oh woe, all the pretty girls are taken D:" and "I will be a jackass to anyone who looks at me funny." What happened, Krum??

-I liked that Dumbledore wasn't the saint he seemed. It was too bad his dad wasn't really a Muggle-hater and his mother a Squib-hider. It was a let-down that the Dumbledores were all Good People, and that Dumbledore was only Slightly Led Astray.

-It makes me sad that Crabbe and Goyle would go against Draco like that, especially since we see how much Draco actually cares for them. :(

-And speaking of Draco...well, his wand got more action than he did. But that's okay. I'll always love him most. :D And I love his Mummy too (omg, Narcissa<3).
(Is it sad that I got all *fangirlsquee* every time I came across Harry gripping Draco's wand? And I like how it was Draco's wand, not "Malfoy's wand" -- it was probably to differentiate between Lucius and Draco, but still. [/fangirl mentality])

Pairings! Because what is an HP commentary without pairing talk??
-Snape/Lily: At first I was like, Lily would call Snape "Sev"? But I thought that was a fandom thing! Then I thought, wait, Lily calls her own sister "Tuney", so maybe "Sev" isn't so farfetched after all. Anyway, pet names aside, I thought they were kind of cute. They seem to have far more in common than Lily and James did -- we never got read about what Lily saw in James, did we? So the whole Patronus thing...did Lily's become a doe because James was a stag? And was Snape's Patronus something else before he knew Lily's was a doe? I dunno, I don't really get that whole Patronus-doe thing. (Snape's doe Patronus amuses the HP/SS shipper in me though. ;D)

-Remus/Tonks: I don't get it. No, really. The marriage thing? Remus acted as if Tonks Imperio'd him! Or maybe she changed into Sirius and got him to sign a marriage contract and by the time Remus realized it wasn't really Sirius, it was already too late. Remus didn't seem truly happy at all in the book (other than the very brief, "omg, I have a son" part) until he rejoined James and Sirius.

-Ron/Hermione: Right from the very beginning, I disliked this pairing. I was a Harry/Hermione shipper for a while and then a Draco/Hermione shipper (which I still partially am). But Ron and Hermione just don't appeal to me at all. A lot of people said that R/Hr was well-written in DH (compared to the H/G? Yeah, I'd have to say so too), and while I could understand why they think so, I would still prefer a ten foot pole between me and R/Hr. I'd like to see Hermione with someone at her own intellectual level and for Ron...I thought Ron and Luna had some potential in OotP and HBP. But, alas, the OBHWF was inevitable.

-Harry/Ginny: Harry would always leave Ginny behind, in every single book! He just went from, "It's none of your business, Ginny" to "I am leaving you out of my inner-most circle because I want to keep you safe." Yeah, whatever you say, Harry. It would have been nice if there was more build up (*ahemRemus/Tonks*) -- to me, it seemed as if, in HBP, Harry just woke up one day and thought, "Hey, Ron's sister, whatshername, is all of a sudden super hot -- how come I didn't notice for the past five years??" H/G feels so forced and gratuitous. :\

-Grindelwald/Dumbledore: Yep, so canon. <3

-AS/S: And then I remembered why I love fandom.

It was nice to see former character reappear, but one quibble I had was that they appeared and disappeared out of the story too quickly. Maybe it was because I was completely spoiled for all the deaths, but I just didn't feel the impact of some of the characters' deaths. Like Dobby, Hedwig, Tonks, and so on. But maybe it's also because they played such a small role in the book and their death was so quickly dealt with (okay, Dobby's went on a little longer, but he didn't last very long during the scene where he was still alive) that there wasn't enough time to feel anything for the character. I mean, look at Hedwig -- she was by Harry's side for six years and it took less than a paragraph to kill her. She doesn't even get mentioned again in the second half of the book.

Along the same vein, for a book that's nearly 800 pages long, I felt that some of the scenes were really too short. Hermione's parents for example. Can you imagine what it would be like to erase your parents' memories of you? After explaining why she did so, the topic comes up, what, once or twice more? And that's it. Compared to the omg-family!angsting that Harry did, Hermione was practically reactionless. I also wish Percy's return wasn't so short. It just seemed like there was so much more going on other than Harry's "Hallows? Horcuxes? OMGWTF?" going on and we as readers miss out on a lot of action -- we simply see little glimpses and get told what happened.

The whole end with Harry and Voldemort's "duel" seemed like JK's way to try to tie up a few loose ends. It made some sense, but somehow, the whole Elder Wand technically belonging to Harry thing seemed like a cop-out. :\

The epilogue was the first part of DH that I read (well, I skimmed it the first go) because I thought the leak was probably fake and what's the harm? I was completely disgusted by it and decided that I would probably hate DH. I was glad to be proven wrong. I did enjoy reading DH, all of its faults aside. I loved seeing all of the characters again, short as their appearance may have been. I loved the references to the previous books (Harry swallowing the Snitch!). I loved watching Harry make the choice about his own sacrifice. Upon second (a more thorough) read of the epilogue, I still don't like it, but no longer feel like ripping the part out and stomping on it. I'm sure there will be a whole slew of epilogue-non-compliant fics being written.

Speaking of the epilogue, whose child is Victoire? Bill and Fleur's? Did it say somewhere and I just missed it? (I love how people immediately start shipping Teddy/James Jr XDD)

And also, this is possibly a very idiotic question, but who was the baby at King's Cross? (I blame fatigue! I was too sleepy to concentrate on Dumbledore and Harry's very informative discussion on wands. ~__~)

I enjoyed DH more than I thought I would, but my favourite will always be PoA. I think the first three books were better than the last four, but DH certainly did surpass GoF and OotP (and maybe HBP too, but my memories of that books is rather foggy. And I'm not sure why. Maybe Harry's chest monster blocked everything out).

It was good. And all was well. ;)

I fell out of the fandom about three years ago and never regained interest, not even with the release of HBP. But now, I have this huge craving for fanfics and fanart. X3 *attempts to resist*

And for those of you who have finished reading DH, you simply must read these Post-DH fics. They will pull at your heartstrings (unless you have no heart, in which case you may feel a slight pain where a heart should have been) and make you want to laugh and cry all at once. ♥
End of the Line and Mischief Managed by