fahye: ([other] helena - all in your head)
Fahye ([personal profile] fahye) wrote2007-07-21 10:32 pm
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Deathly Hallows!

Amazing: only two reaction posts have appeared on my flist prior to my posting this! Last time 'round I didn't read HBP for almost a week because my family got their paws on it first, but this time I dodged ahead in the queue because my sister had Gang Show all this afternoon and evening and I only needed four hours or so.

This is a complete mishmash of unconnected dot points rather than any kind of well-thought-out reaction.

- First of all: Snape loving Lily AND Dumbledore asking Snape to kill him AND Harry being the seventh Horcrux? I bet most of fandom is feeling rather smugly predictive right now.

- Okay, uh, I actually was incredibly 'meh' for the majority of the book (okay, except for the bit where they ROBBED A BANK and ESCAPED ON A FUCKING DRAGON because Rowling pulled that off with such ballsy flair), and the magnitude of the whole thing only really hit me when all the DA people and the Order started pouring through Aberforth's tunnel into the Room and the reader got to realise slowly, along with Harry, that this was how it would end. 'We're fighting.' Hogwarts had to be the location of the final showdown; it could never have been anywhere else.

- Teddy Remus Lupin. D'AWWWWW. I was all 'eh, pregnancy, how...inconvenient' but Harry being asked to be godfather melted my cold little heart. Although I didn't really have any kind of significant reaction to the death of his parents, I'm sorry to say, especially since it allowed Remus to show up in the SAME PLANE OF EXISTENCE AS SIRIUS later on. Maybe if it had actually happened on the page rather than Rowling just kind of waving their corpses shiftily under our noses.

- I remembered the location of the diadem about three pages before Harry did, though only because I reread HBP so recently

- Luna telling Harry to think of something happy was wonderful.

- I'll tell you this about the Malfoys: no matter how despicable they are, every single thing they did was in the interest of keeping their family safe. Maybe SPN has given me a new appreciation of this, I don't know, but I felt awful for them the whole way through and I'm glad they got to survive. Their life afterwards would have been punishment enough, and at least they had each other.

- Ron/Hermione omg. Their first kiss made me grin madly, and Hermione's Are you a wizard, or what? was such a perfect, perfect bookend to Ron yelling Hermione, are you a witch or not? in the very first book when they're trapped by the plant that's afraid of fire.

- Freeeeeed ;_; I'll admit that I was expecting a Weasley to die (let's face it, considering the body count, there was a rather high statistical probability), but I was hoping that it wouldn't be a twin, you know?

- 'I sometimes think that we Sort too soon' <-- Interestingly, this was the one line of Dumbledore's that really stayed with me, for what it said about the ability of people to change.

- OH MARAUDERS AND LILY. Young and dead and happy. And Harry asking his mother to stay close to him as he went to his death. That was so, so, beautifully done.

- 'This is, as they say, your party.' <-- I think I started grinning right about THERE and then didn't stop. Molly Weasley killing Bellatrix. The house elves and the centaurs fighting. NEVILLE KILLING NAGINI WITH THE SWORD. And the protective magic that arose from Harry dying for all of humanity!!! everyone that was fighting was a nice twist.

- HAHAHAHAH GRATUITOUS AND-THEY-ALL-HAVE-BABIES!!!!! EPILOGUE. Oh man. Fandom will be partying for years on ficcing out all of those children (anyone taking bets yet on Albus/Scorpius becoming the new Harry/Draco?) and it was really, really kind of unnecessary and corny, but I forgive it for two things: Albus Severus Potter and PROFESSOR NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM.

On the whole, the last ten or so chapters more than made up for both the surprisingly tedious extended camping trip that was the entire first two-thirds of the book and the horrible Hallmark moment that was the epilogue, and nobody can say that it wasn't as exciting and dramatic an ending as the series deserved.

The movie is going to KICK ASS.

[identity profile] tammaiya.livejournal.com 2007-07-21 02:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I HEART YOU because you just said many of the things I was totally thinking. ♥ Albus Severus Potter was wonderful beyond the telling of words, even if the epilogue was kind of pasted-on-yey.

Speaking of fandom's new favouritest ships ever: Dumbledore/Grindelwald. IT HAS ALREADY BEGUN. (and I was so already thinking it while I was reading. XD)
ext_21673: ([ff] inara - for the beauty of each hour)

[identity profile] fahye.livejournal.com 2007-07-21 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Dumbledore/Grindelwald, God, I know, they're all young and brilliant and full of self-contained ambition.

Ooh, I also really liked that Harry used Expelliarmus! in the end, especially with what was said about it at the beginning. Signature spell. Hee.

[identity profile] tammaiya.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
That last battle was so brilliant all I can do is flail at it. Flail!

Also, Snape = <3, and I really liked how there's kind of a four-way parallel between Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape and Harry. They all started the same way, they all started going down the path of ambition, but only Voldemort was the one that chose it. I really liked the fact that we got to see a morally ambiguous side to Dumbledore because it made him more... real. More likeable as a result.
ext_21673: ([buffy] sign me up to sell me out)

[identity profile] fahye.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
You should read [livejournal.com profile] pogrebin's meta (http://pogrebin.livejournal.com/58911.html?style=mine) because she talks about the 'lost boys' immorality parallels a hundred times more intelligently than I ever could. We are our choices.

[identity profile] miscellanny.livejournal.com 2007-07-21 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Pretty much, yes, I agree with all of that. :D

And just. Seriously. REMUS/SIRIUS 4EVA! *cracks up* She can't not be doing it deliberately, can she?

XD
ext_21673: ([ncis] boom-chicka boom)

[identity profile] fahye.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 01:56 am (UTC)(link)
Seriously, I expect the entire first half of the book was Lupin going I'VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE and slash fangirls everywhere going WE COULD HAVE TOLD YOU THAT.

[identity profile] ryokophoenix.livejournal.com 2007-07-24 12:55 am (UTC)(link)
NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!

ALSO, it already exists! Meet ASS, the ship of the new canon (I kid you not).

That said, it was generally agreed that the epilogue should be ripped out and burnt. XD

PS. I'M HOME!
ext_21673: ([tw] draw a hard line)

[identity profile] fahye.livejournal.com 2007-07-24 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
ASS?

...I was going to pretend to be surprised, but really, it's HP fandom.

YOU ARE INDEED. When are you free tomorrow? We should meet up and you should tell me everything.