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Over the last few days, I've been doing a lot of thinking along the lines of '7 days ago I was...'
So 7 days ago, as I write this (11:46 am - am finally posting several hours later), I was sitting in Room 101 at the Grafton, pushing bits of cold breakfast round my plate because I was too tense to eat it. I even ended up filling a drinks bottle with hot water as a makeshift hot water bottle in an attempt to relax. Meanwhile,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kennahijja lay on the bed next to mine, slowly catching up on me as we read in a silence punctuated by exclamations, hysterical laughter, tears, and trips to the loo.
And finally, a week later, here's my impression of the book. Boy, has it been hard returning to mundane office work with this (and a million breeding plotbunnies) whirling round my head!
Just had to get that off my chest.
During one of our tedious van journeys in central London,kennahijja and I agreed that, though we wanted to both see Lucius get some pagetime in the final book and for him to survive it, we'd be satisfied if he appeared and died, or didn't appear and didn't die. So long as he didn't die offscreen. I never dared hope that not only would he both feature in the book AND survive it, but that we'd get to see Malfoy Manor, find out what kind of wand had chosen him AND see a more nuanced view of the Malfoys. The last book only brought forth one small plot bunny; this one's given rise to a warren.
Though I'm curious about why they were in the drawing room. What was going on in the Hall, I wonder? Were Death Eaters billeted there?
I'll be very interested to know Jason Isaac's reaction to Book 7. In his interviews for GoF and OotP he has seemed to regard Lucius as little more then a pantomine villain, so I'm curious about how he'll get into a humiliated Lucius' head. I hope he'll find it a bit more satisfying.
And hah! He was wrong about Lucius being a 'terrible Dad'! So there!
Ahem.
Two things struck me about the Malfoys in DH. First off, kudos to JKR for showing us a strong family bond that wasn't rooted in Mollyesque mothering, for making her point about love even among non-idealised people like the Malfoys and the Dursleys. After all the debate about whether Lucius could be redeemed (and whether we'd want him to be), JKR has opened the way. We don't know what happened afterwards, of course, but ultimately he was made to realise that family was more important than power. Not that I'm saying for a moment that Lucius has redeemed in DH (he's clutching at straws if anything), but in most of my Luciusfic I've been putting him in a situation that challenges his blindly held notions of the world, and now (and this is the second thing that struck me) it's canon: Voldemort has thoroughly ripped apart his comfortable assumptions, has humiliated him in his own home, and I'm really looking forward to digging into that.
Malfoys aside, I was bowled over by this book. Any doubts I had about JKR's ability to write for adults have disapparated. Sure, she's not got the most literary style, but her writing is 100 times better than that of most bestsellers. I'll be really interested to see how she applies her plotting ability to a non-fantasy scenario.
And I hope everyone who was moaning about the title makes a public apology. I'm still racking my brains to figure out where exactly I'd seen that use of 'Hallows' before, but I remember when the title was revealed that it did make some sort of sense, even though I couldn't put my finger on it. So I was kicking myself when I saw the explanation of the Deathly Hallows (though I still can't remember where I've heard it before - I'm thinking the more esoteric reaches of Arthurian legend, or something in one of my Tarot decks).
What really surprised me was how quickly it got so dark - I'm not sure I'd have predicted the DE's takeover of the Ministry and Hogwarts at all (I've seen the scenario in fanfic, of course, but I didn't expect JKR to use it), but I certainly wouldn't have predicted it happening so quickly - or so intensely. Death Eater members of staff, torturing students? And Umbridge - wow. Now I *really* want to write about Lucius and Umbridge in OotP-era...
And what about the 'good guys'? Hermione modifying her parents' memories and sending them to Australia? Harry using Crucio without a second thought? Harry using Imperio with no training whatsoever? Hermione saying 'arse'? ;)
Seriously though, all this time darkfic writers have felt the need to have Harry and Hermione justify - if not agonise over - any use of Unforgiveables, and here JKR makes them masters without even questioning the morality of their actions. I really hope someone puts this to JKR in an interview.
That said, I get the impression that JKR is not really comfortable with darkfic. She's said that she'd originally planned for Arthur Weasley to die in Book 5. Can you imagine how that would have changed things? Harry's guilt about being inside the snake being magnified a hundred times, Ron wondering if Harry had somehow caused his father's death, and the collective fandom relaxing with the knowledge that we now knew who had died, so that Sirius' death would be even more of a sudden shock.
And in the first chapter of DH - why, oh why, couldn't the person above the table have been known to us? Surely a campaigning professor of Muggle Studies would have had a lot to say about the events of CoS? And Hermione could have mentioned her while she was taking Muggle Studies in PoA. And if JKR didn't see forward far enough to drop in some foreshadowing - well, what if the figure above the table had been that champion of Muggle rights, Arthur Weasley?
Not that it bothered me much at the time - I was so relieved it wasn't Lucius.
But no, she couldn't bear to kill Arthur, so 'another father' - Remus - got it instead. Which strikes me as a cheap emotional device: there's little tragedy in little Teddy being an orphan when our PoV character hasn't met him him, or even seen Remus and Tonks as parents (the loving parents he never had). Yes, the fact that there's a loved orphan who has a better childhood than Harry's is neat, but she could have made that much more real.
And Remus and Tonks were too major to die offscreen, or - given that it would be tragically unrealistic for Harry to witness every death - for us not even to have retrospective details of their demise. I did like, though, that when Harry put on the ring, all the Marauders were with him, together.
I was glad we didn't have a major new character to deal with, though - we knew enough about Luna that Xenophilius was filling in detail rather than introducing a new concept, and we'd met Ollivander and Griphook before. I wish Yaxley and the Carrows had been mentioned at least by name in GoF or OotP, but at least we knew them from HBP and in any case they weren't as major as, say, Slughorn was in HBP.
Enough waffling. Here are my highlights:
What made me laugh
Ron: Midnight, our mum always told us... Sorry, I just think it's spookier it it's midnight.
Harry: Yeah, because we really need a bit more fear in our lives.
And of course:
... this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill with a single glance of his eyes. That's a Basilisk, listeners. One simple test: check whether the thing that's glaring at you has legs. If it has, it's safe to look into its eyes, though if it really is You-Know-Who, that's still likely to be the last thing you ever do.
What made me laugh hysterically (askennahijja can attest)
The main entrance to the Ministry.
Yeah, I have a Ronnish sense of humour. So sue me.
What made me cry
No, I didn't cry over Dobby; it was the Snape/Lily backstory that made me tear up. Not because I wasn't expecting it, but because it made Snape's life so tragic - he risks so much to protect Harry for Lily's sake, only to believe at the moment of death that all his work was in vain because Harry had to die anyway. And I loved the idea that Severus and Lily were childhood friends, that he wasn't alone and despised when he went to Hogwarts - and neither was she. I'd love to see some fanfic about childhood Severus and Lily, and Lily's relationship to the Gryffindor boys when she was still friends with Severus.
What made me feel smug
Guessing whose was the doe Patronus and the blue eye
What made my jaw drop
'The true Master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy'
What made me see earlier books in a different light
-The Taboo on Voldemort's name casts a completely different light on the characters' fear of using it in the first few books. If names can have that much power, not using the name becomes less of a fearful superstition and more a prudent precaution. No wonder Dumbledore was the only one who dared use it, if he was the only one who could reasonably be confident of beating Voldemort (in which possessing the Elder wand would help)
-Petunia wrote to Dumbledore asking if she could go to Hogwarts? So that means that she wasn't a complete stranger when he left Harry on her doorstep, and sent her the howler. I'll have to go back and re-read the start of HBP now.
And I had to laugh when I read that Snape had said 'there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of' letters to Hogwarts. The Royal Mail will be cursing JKR for that...
What I wasn't too keen on
-Harry's lack of reaction to the Snape/Lily background. (Yeah, he was kind of distracted by the whole having to die thing, but you'd think he'd have some reaction to having to completely reverse his opinion of someone he loathed, even if it was 'can I really believe what I've seen?'. I'm not into refusing to believe dead characters are dead, but I'd love to see an AU fanfic in which Snape survives and he and Harry have to come to terms with each other).
- That the Slytherins didn't join the other Houses for the final battle. I can't believe they all still thought that Voldemort was a better option, or that he was holding all their families hostage.
-Ron's reaction to the Elder Wand. In character, perhaps, but given Ron's weaknesses it left too much dangling potential for later trouble.
-So many character stories resolved - even the Bloody Baron - but no mention of Moaning Myrtle! Does that mean she's doomed to haunt the toilets forever?
And finally...
I didn't hate the epilogue.
I had two reactions to it - one was irritation at all the new names we had to take in and having to figure out whose kids were whose, particularly as so many names were duplicated - while I liked seeing the dead characters immortalised in that way, it wasn't easy to take in, especially having had minimal sleep.
My main feeling, though, was that Jo was handing the story over to us, drawing a line through any hint that she'd write a sequel and providing us with a common set of names to use for the adventures of the next generation. And 'All was well' has a satisfying Julian of Norwich feel to it, which resonates with me.
I'm not saying I loved it, or that I don't feel it could have been better written. It didn't occur to me until Wednesday mentioned it that this was the chapter she's had written for years, and I think that explains a lot: the style reads much more like PS or CoS. Which is no excuse for not re-writing it. That said, I liked the moment when Harry told Albus about being offered the choice of Slytherin, and the glimpse of Draco's son (and his attitude).
Right, that's way too much rambling for one day. Now at last I can feel free to go see what everyone else is saying!
So 7 days ago, as I write this (11:46 am - am finally posting several hours later), I was sitting in Room 101 at the Grafton, pushing bits of cold breakfast round my plate because I was too tense to eat it. I even ended up filling a drinks bottle with hot water as a makeshift hot water bottle in an attempt to relax. Meanwhile,
kennahijja lay on the bed next to mine, slowly catching up on me as we read in a silence punctuated by exclamations, hysterical laughter, tears, and trips to the loo.And finally, a week later, here's my impression of the book. Boy, has it been hard returning to mundane office work with this (and a million breeding plotbunnies) whirling round my head!
Just had to get that off my chest.
During one of our tedious van journeys in central London,
kennahijja and I agreed that, though we wanted to both see Lucius get some pagetime in the final book and for him to survive it, we'd be satisfied if he appeared and died, or didn't appear and didn't die. So long as he didn't die offscreen. I never dared hope that not only would he both feature in the book AND survive it, but that we'd get to see Malfoy Manor, find out what kind of wand had chosen him AND see a more nuanced view of the Malfoys. The last book only brought forth one small plot bunny; this one's given rise to a warren.Though I'm curious about why they were in the drawing room. What was going on in the Hall, I wonder? Were Death Eaters billeted there?
I'll be very interested to know Jason Isaac's reaction to Book 7. In his interviews for GoF and OotP he has seemed to regard Lucius as little more then a pantomine villain, so I'm curious about how he'll get into a humiliated Lucius' head. I hope he'll find it a bit more satisfying.
And hah! He was wrong about Lucius being a 'terrible Dad'! So there!
Ahem.
Two things struck me about the Malfoys in DH. First off, kudos to JKR for showing us a strong family bond that wasn't rooted in Mollyesque mothering, for making her point about love even among non-idealised people like the Malfoys and the Dursleys. After all the debate about whether Lucius could be redeemed (and whether we'd want him to be), JKR has opened the way. We don't know what happened afterwards, of course, but ultimately he was made to realise that family was more important than power. Not that I'm saying for a moment that Lucius has redeemed in DH (he's clutching at straws if anything), but in most of my Luciusfic I've been putting him in a situation that challenges his blindly held notions of the world, and now (and this is the second thing that struck me) it's canon: Voldemort has thoroughly ripped apart his comfortable assumptions, has humiliated him in his own home, and I'm really looking forward to digging into that.
Malfoys aside, I was bowled over by this book. Any doubts I had about JKR's ability to write for adults have disapparated. Sure, she's not got the most literary style, but her writing is 100 times better than that of most bestsellers. I'll be really interested to see how she applies her plotting ability to a non-fantasy scenario.
And I hope everyone who was moaning about the title makes a public apology. I'm still racking my brains to figure out where exactly I'd seen that use of 'Hallows' before, but I remember when the title was revealed that it did make some sort of sense, even though I couldn't put my finger on it. So I was kicking myself when I saw the explanation of the Deathly Hallows (though I still can't remember where I've heard it before - I'm thinking the more esoteric reaches of Arthurian legend, or something in one of my Tarot decks).
What really surprised me was how quickly it got so dark - I'm not sure I'd have predicted the DE's takeover of the Ministry and Hogwarts at all (I've seen the scenario in fanfic, of course, but I didn't expect JKR to use it), but I certainly wouldn't have predicted it happening so quickly - or so intensely. Death Eater members of staff, torturing students? And Umbridge - wow. Now I *really* want to write about Lucius and Umbridge in OotP-era...
And what about the 'good guys'? Hermione modifying her parents' memories and sending them to Australia? Harry using Crucio without a second thought? Harry using Imperio with no training whatsoever? Hermione saying 'arse'? ;)
Seriously though, all this time darkfic writers have felt the need to have Harry and Hermione justify - if not agonise over - any use of Unforgiveables, and here JKR makes them masters without even questioning the morality of their actions. I really hope someone puts this to JKR in an interview.
That said, I get the impression that JKR is not really comfortable with darkfic. She's said that she'd originally planned for Arthur Weasley to die in Book 5. Can you imagine how that would have changed things? Harry's guilt about being inside the snake being magnified a hundred times, Ron wondering if Harry had somehow caused his father's death, and the collective fandom relaxing with the knowledge that we now knew who had died, so that Sirius' death would be even more of a sudden shock.
And in the first chapter of DH - why, oh why, couldn't the person above the table have been known to us? Surely a campaigning professor of Muggle Studies would have had a lot to say about the events of CoS? And Hermione could have mentioned her while she was taking Muggle Studies in PoA. And if JKR didn't see forward far enough to drop in some foreshadowing - well, what if the figure above the table had been that champion of Muggle rights, Arthur Weasley?
Not that it bothered me much at the time - I was so relieved it wasn't Lucius.
But no, she couldn't bear to kill Arthur, so 'another father' - Remus - got it instead. Which strikes me as a cheap emotional device: there's little tragedy in little Teddy being an orphan when our PoV character hasn't met him him, or even seen Remus and Tonks as parents (the loving parents he never had). Yes, the fact that there's a loved orphan who has a better childhood than Harry's is neat, but she could have made that much more real.
And Remus and Tonks were too major to die offscreen, or - given that it would be tragically unrealistic for Harry to witness every death - for us not even to have retrospective details of their demise. I did like, though, that when Harry put on the ring, all the Marauders were with him, together.
I was glad we didn't have a major new character to deal with, though - we knew enough about Luna that Xenophilius was filling in detail rather than introducing a new concept, and we'd met Ollivander and Griphook before. I wish Yaxley and the Carrows had been mentioned at least by name in GoF or OotP, but at least we knew them from HBP and in any case they weren't as major as, say, Slughorn was in HBP.
Enough waffling. Here are my highlights:
What made me laugh
Ron: Midnight, our mum always told us... Sorry, I just think it's spookier it it's midnight.
Harry: Yeah, because we really need a bit more fear in our lives.
And of course:
... this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill with a single glance of his eyes. That's a Basilisk, listeners. One simple test: check whether the thing that's glaring at you has legs. If it has, it's safe to look into its eyes, though if it really is You-Know-Who, that's still likely to be the last thing you ever do.
What made me laugh hysterically (as
kennahijja can attest)The main entrance to the Ministry.
Yeah, I have a Ronnish sense of humour. So sue me.
What made me cry
No, I didn't cry over Dobby; it was the Snape/Lily backstory that made me tear up. Not because I wasn't expecting it, but because it made Snape's life so tragic - he risks so much to protect Harry for Lily's sake, only to believe at the moment of death that all his work was in vain because Harry had to die anyway. And I loved the idea that Severus and Lily were childhood friends, that he wasn't alone and despised when he went to Hogwarts - and neither was she. I'd love to see some fanfic about childhood Severus and Lily, and Lily's relationship to the Gryffindor boys when she was still friends with Severus.
What made me feel smug
Guessing whose was the doe Patronus and the blue eye
What made my jaw drop
'The true Master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy'
What made me see earlier books in a different light
-The Taboo on Voldemort's name casts a completely different light on the characters' fear of using it in the first few books. If names can have that much power, not using the name becomes less of a fearful superstition and more a prudent precaution. No wonder Dumbledore was the only one who dared use it, if he was the only one who could reasonably be confident of beating Voldemort (in which possessing the Elder wand would help)
-Petunia wrote to Dumbledore asking if she could go to Hogwarts? So that means that she wasn't a complete stranger when he left Harry on her doorstep, and sent her the howler. I'll have to go back and re-read the start of HBP now.
And I had to laugh when I read that Snape had said 'there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of' letters to Hogwarts. The Royal Mail will be cursing JKR for that...
What I wasn't too keen on
-Harry's lack of reaction to the Snape/Lily background. (Yeah, he was kind of distracted by the whole having to die thing, but you'd think he'd have some reaction to having to completely reverse his opinion of someone he loathed, even if it was 'can I really believe what I've seen?'. I'm not into refusing to believe dead characters are dead, but I'd love to see an AU fanfic in which Snape survives and he and Harry have to come to terms with each other).
- That the Slytherins didn't join the other Houses for the final battle. I can't believe they all still thought that Voldemort was a better option, or that he was holding all their families hostage.
-Ron's reaction to the Elder Wand. In character, perhaps, but given Ron's weaknesses it left too much dangling potential for later trouble.
-So many character stories resolved - even the Bloody Baron - but no mention of Moaning Myrtle! Does that mean she's doomed to haunt the toilets forever?
And finally...
I didn't hate the epilogue.
I had two reactions to it - one was irritation at all the new names we had to take in and having to figure out whose kids were whose, particularly as so many names were duplicated - while I liked seeing the dead characters immortalised in that way, it wasn't easy to take in, especially having had minimal sleep.
My main feeling, though, was that Jo was handing the story over to us, drawing a line through any hint that she'd write a sequel and providing us with a common set of names to use for the adventures of the next generation. And 'All was well' has a satisfying Julian of Norwich feel to it, which resonates with me.
I'm not saying I loved it, or that I don't feel it could have been better written. It didn't occur to me until Wednesday mentioned it that this was the chapter she's had written for years, and I think that explains a lot: the style reads much more like PS or CoS. Which is no excuse for not re-writing it. That said, I liked the moment when Harry told Albus about being offered the choice of Slytherin, and the glimpse of Draco's son (and his attitude).
Right, that's way too much rambling for one day. Now at last I can feel free to go see what everyone else is saying!
