Friday, June 14, 2013

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love

This is it. The final Deathly Hallows post. I am out of tears. I've used them all up. Rowling, you have given me hours of entertainment and I Love the whole series, but right now, I hate you. This post is going to be a mess. Just an absolute train wreck. It's just going to be a lot of sobbing and yelling and pictures of hot Neville to help offset all of the sobbing. You've been warned.

Alice, you kick ass for hosting this readalong and there will be spoilers. And tears.
I'm so glad we've started this section with Neville being Neville and hugging people and so happy to see H/R/Hr. And we find out he's been raising hell at Hogwarts and is regularly getting tortured, but he's still so up beat, because he is the best, and I love him.

"'Thank you, Pomona,' said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a grim look of understanding." And this is my new couple to ship, now that a Sirius/Lupin love would be awkward, given that Sirius is dead and all. Oh right, and Lupin is married with a kid. But it's mostly the dead thing.

Speaking of Lupin being married and all, we do not get nearly enough Tonks in the series. We get the slightest hints about her. She's so happy and cheerful when we first meet her. Then we have her anguish between being at Hogwarts to fight or staying at her mother's with her son. How the hell could she make that choice? Both of them suck. I addition to the whole Maurauder's prequel, I'd also like to request the events of the current story but told from the other characters' POVs.

DAMMIT, ROWLING, I TOLD YOU DON'T MAKE ME CRY ON THE TRAIN. Why did you have to kill Fred? Were there just too many Weasley's about? We could spare a few? I HATE YOU RIGHT NOW.

"That's right Harry...come on, think of something happy...."
"Something happy?" he said, his voice cracked.
"We're all still here," [Luna] whispered, "we're still fighting. Come on, now...."
Luna and Neville constantly make me tear up because they are both so brave and so amazing and UGH, they are the best. I fully agree that Luna could have talked Voldie out of his genocidal plans and into a career as a rare artifacts curator or something equally benign.

Harry is going to the Shrieking Shack to kill Nagini and Voldie is waiting for him, and then we find out Snape is there and that is it. That's the point that I quit listening to the book during my commute. I'm sorry, I can't be sobbing on the train, even if it would likely creep someone out enough that I'd get to sit down.

We see the dead lying in the Great Hall and I lose it, especially when we see both Tonks AND Lupin are dead and THAT'S NOT FAIR, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THAT?

And then I cried all of the tears I had left while reading The Prince's Tale. Thanks for the dehydration, Rowling.

(Remember when we thought Snape was all super badass for being able to curse George's ear off, enough so that everyone thought he was still evil, but not enough to mortally injure the boy? Yeah, turns out Snape actually has lousy aim and George is just lucky he didn't get hit dead on.)

So I drank some water to, you know, re-hydrate, and Rowling ruined it all again when Harry pulls out the resurrection stone and asks his parents and Sirius and Lupin if it hurts to die and I CAN'T EVEN

Voldemort comes back to the castle with an apparently dead Harry and what does Neville do? He charges at him. He charges at him and yells his allegiance to Dumbledore's Army in the Dark Lord's face. Then immediately after being tortured by having his head lit on fire, he kills Nagini. Holy shit, Neville is the biggest badass.
pocket watch & everything
What to say about everything that happens after this? Apparently Harry did have all 3 Hallows for a little while, though someone else is going to have to explain the whole wand switching thing cos I missed it (I think diagrams will need to be involved). Then Harry beats Voldemort because OF COURSE he does, it would have been a lousy series if he didn't. Then we get the epilogue and just, I guess it was nice to see everyone happy, but I'm so sorry Albus Severus. I'm sure you can change your name when you get older. Maybe your mom will even get a say in what to call you this time around.

So until next week when we have our final Harry Potter readalong wrap-up post, wherein we'll gush about how this was the best readalong ever (because Siriusly), how sad we are that it's over, and I'll share all of the GIFs I collected specifically for this but didn't get a chance to use.

Side note, I decided to Google "death count for Harry Potter" to see what the totals are for the series and when I type in "death count" Google said "Oh do you mean WWII? 9/11? Some other actual tragedy?" and then I felt bad. STOP JUDGING ME, GOOGLE.

Title quote from page 722

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Scholastic, 2007