I mean look how cool that is.

The downside to the Tale of the Three Brothers is that it gives Harry such a being-right buzz that he forgets not to say Voldemort’s name and gets them all captured by villains.

Hey, man, nobody understands more than I do how exciting and awesome it is to be right. Especially if your rightness has just been proved in front of somebody who is right much often than you are right, in the grand scheme of things. That is like my favorite feeling ever. It is better than gin. It’s better than queso from the queso place near me, which like, that queso is ridiculous. BUT you gotta be sensible about it. You cannot just be running around saying Voldemort’s name out loud. For the time being, that’s a great name to think about angrily in your head while keeping your lips buttoned.

And what is the consequence? Just about the creepiest damn sequence ever! By which I refer to Greyback being all

at Hermione.

Okay, yeah, he doesn’t say “clever”. Or “witch”. But you know when Frollo says “such a clever witch” he means “I want to bite pieces off you to completion” and that’s the gist of Fenrir’s creepiness at Hermione in this sequence. Poor little Hermione! That must have been super scary for her. Harry doesn’t register it as much because he’s off in Voldemort hallucination la la land, but I feel awful for poor Hermione (and to a lesser degree Ron, since Ron loses all of his shit when the Death Eaters harass and then torture poor little Hermione).

Speaking of Voldemort hallucination la la land, this is nice:

“So you have come. I thought you would…one day. But your journey was pointless. I never had it.”

To be honest, I’m not sure why Voldemort bothered going all the way out to see Grindelwald when he didn’t believe what Grindelwald told him anyway. But never mind. The main point is: Aw. That is a good way to finish out a life as a terrible person. I like that JK Rowling put that bit in. Like maybe she thinks even the worst person in the world (Wizard Hitler), if he sits around and thinks about stuff for a long enough time, can stop being the worst person in the world and figure out that he wants to do something good.

Then some other stuff happens. I forget. I’ve blocked it out.

What with one thing and another, our stalwart trio end up at Bill and Fleur’s cottage, all feeling really sad, and then Lupin comes visit and makes them feel happier. I am still in a fight with that dude, but I love this scene. Rowling’s said she wanted the parallel between Harry and baby Teddy Lupin, because it says a lot about the wizarding world Harry and Ron and Hermione helped build, versus the one Harry was born into; and that made me think about James being equally happy and equally in hiding when Harry was born, and running all around telling his favorite people what was going on. That must have been touching too.

The Gringotts theft scene is another of the set pieces in this book that happens, I get why JK Rowling set it up that way, I like a lot of the elements that go into it, but it’s not quite my thing. They did completely deserve to have the sword stolen, however. That was a shitty thing for Harry to try to pull when he knows perfectly well about all the centuries of wizards oppressing goblins. When they made the deal with Griphook, couldn’t they have taken a beat to discuss amongst themselves other things that would destroy a Horcrux and where to get those things? Like, what are the options with the scary monster fire? Could Hermione possibly set that up in a controlled environment? Like could they head to the beach and Hermione could toss a Horcrux into her magic purse, throw some monster fire after it, and levitate the whole thing over the ocean for a bit before letting it fall in? Some fish would die, but so would Voldemort!

This discussion never takes place. Should? But doesn’t.

All in all, this bit is not my favorite section of Deathly Hallows. Except that it ends with Neville showing up, and me screaming NEVILLE NEVILLE NEVILLE (out loud), and now I am super duper ready for the final segment of this readalong.

The Adulting of Harry Potter

I always like it when Harry gets his shit together and quits being so impulsive. That is difficult for an impulsive person to do, especially when he is seventeen. I like it how he gets up from what happened at Malfoy Manor with new thoughts about what he observed there and what needs to happen next.

He’s got a plan and he’s executing the plan. That is the story of the rest of this book.

Another small moment that really, really pleases me is this exchange:

“Maybe he’s lying,” Harry said, opening his eyes again. “Griphook. Maybe Gryffindor didn’t take the sword. How do we know the goblin version of history’s right?”

“Does it make a difference?” asked Hermione.

“Changes how I feel about it,” said Harry.

Me too, dude.

Thanks as ever to Alice for hosting, and I will see y’all next Friday for the blood-and-tears-fest that is the concluding section of this book.

The post Revisiting Harry Potter: Can someone remind me who gets Fenrir Greyback in the end? appeared first on Reading the End.

Like this? It is both scary and awesome.

Harry could see the tiny outline of Fang, attempting to defend Hagrid, leaping at the wizards surrounding him until a Stunning Spell caught him and he fell to the ground. Hagrid gave a howl of fury, lifted the culprit bodily from the ground, and threw him: The man flew what looked like ten feet and did not get up again.

RAWR. HAGRID. Really, as much as I hate the overarching Hagrid plotline in this book, it nevertheless shows everything that is good about Hagrid. How he is so loyal to his brother, even though it sucks for him, and how he is tough and scary in defense of the people he loves, and also at the end how good and kind and gentle and supportive he is with Harry over losing Sirius. Y’all, real talk, before the seventh book came out, I made a list of four people who absolutely must not die, and three of the four died, but the fourth was Hagrid, and if I’d had to choose only one of the people on my list to survive I’d have chosen Hagrid.

Exceptionally wonderfully, this section of the book brings up Harry’s “saving-people-thing”. Hermione, our emotional insight machine and frequent authorial voice, makes us all take a beat and address the fact that Harry, whom we love and admire for his heroism, is sometimes being heroic because he is very, very damaged.

“You…This isn’t a criticism, Harry! But you do…sort of…I mean — don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a — a — saving-people-thing?” she said.

What’s fantastic about this is that the books have never made you think about this — Harry’s been the archetypal hero, struggling along trying to do the right thing whenever he can — but once Hermione says it, you immediately recognize it as true. He exactly has a saving-people-thing. He lost his parents, he doesn’t want to lose anyone else — the kid’s got a saving-people thing. Everything Hermione says is right, and in this book, for the first time, it’s not serving Harry well. His saving-people thing is, cruelly, the reason Sirius dies. WHY, J.K. Rowling? WHY?

Anyway, this reread may have the record for how early on I started crying. Ordinarily I start crying when Harry’s facing the Death Eaters and he’s all alone, and Neville comes running down the aisle, all beat up and screaming that he’s still there to fight with Harry. (No lie, just writing that made me start crying.) But this time I started crying way sooner, viz., when:

“We were all in the D.A. together,” said Neville quietly. “It was all supposed to be about fighting You-Know-Who, wasn’t it? And this is the first chance we’ve had to do something real — or was that all just a game or something?”

Dammit Neville.

And look, I know y’all are maybe going to be angry at Harry for taking everyone to the Ministry and putting them in danger, but he had to — I mean, he had to, forget having a saving-people-thing, which he does, he had to go. He couldn’t not go. And once he’s there, and everything’s awful, I think he does a really good job of handling his shit. He figures out the leverage he has, and then he figures out a plan for getting them past all the Death Eaters, and he just does a really really good job with a shit hand of cards. I don’t care what you say, I AM PROUD OF HIM.

Oh how many tears did I cry? Many tears, friends.

But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before…Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him…If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back.

GODDAMMIT. I don’t care about Ron! I wish Mr. Weasley had died and Sirius had lived and I do not care what you say! Ron has like sixteen thousand family members, and Harry has only exactly one. He needs his one family member, dammit! I wish Mr. Weasley had died! I wish it to infinity! I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!

In case you couldn’t tell, I am writing this post approximately two seconds after finishing the book, and I haven’t yet cycled all the way through the stages of grief over Sirius’s death. I cried all the way through Dumbledore telling Harry how it was his fault what happened (and like, yes, Snape had to pretend not to take Harry seriously, but don’t you feel like any other person, i.e., anyone with a scrap of mercy for Harry’s feelings, would have figured out a way to indicate to Harry that he was going to take care of it? The kid is fifteen years old and you’re talking about the death of his only family member), and I cried when Harry found the mirror and when he talked to Nearly Headless Nick and then I cried extra when he talked to Luna, and I cried when the members of the Order came and threatened the Dursleys for him. Oh Harry.

My favorite moment of the fifth movie: When Sirius has come to save Harry at the Ministry, and Harry’s saying he wants to stay and fight, and Sirius says, “You’ve done beautifully. Now let me take it from here.” Totally destroys me. I don’t love those movies, but each of them has moments that make them worthwhile — and weirdly, it’s usually moments they haven’t pulled from the books.

The moral of the fifth Harry Potter book is: Good intentions will lead you to misery and awfulness. Excuse me while I throw away a handful of snotty Kleenex and proceed onward to the sixth book, wherein good intentions frequently produce good outcomes.

Thanks as ever to Alice for hosting this readalong!

The post Revisiting Harry Potter: Crying early and often appeared first on Reading the End.