RIP HP.

So, yeah, book 7.

Wasn't going to post about it. Because there are only so many words to describe "Meh." Also, because it's hardly worth the effort required to shout "HERE BE SPOILERS!!!!" to those threatening carnage.

And yet, here I go. What can I say? I need to amuse myself and -- if she can
stomach the (very few) details -- my poor dear lady_eonen, who shares my clearly unpopular feelings, but hasn't yet reached the stage of Mocking Zen.

One disclaimer: I do realize that there was no way J. K. Rowling could have not disappointed at least a part of her readership. The build-up took years. The allegiances, preferences, entrenchment and expectations were all firmly set. And generally speaking, in a group this enormous and this
diverse, it's not surprising to see a fan puking up disgust in a corner while another one jumps up and down alongside going "It's from happiness, right? You're sick on sheer joy, aren't you?!"

Whatever I think of her as a writer (I won’t go there), I do give her credit for the obvious: she created a world a lot of us at least liked to visit from time to time. Yes, she quilted most of it out of snippets of various sources. She knows her classics and her archetypes. And she can juggle with the best of them. It’s not uncommon in literature, and when done well, it's a tremendous work and a miracle to behold. Tolkien constructed his out of other -- Norse in particular -- mythologies. Though nowhere near Tolkien's caliber, JKR nonetheless did a very good job creating the HP Universe.

Too bad for those of us who, in the end, found ourselves looking for the next Hogwarts Express the hell out of there. More thoughts and pics under the cut below.

This is no profound analysis. I don't have it in me. This is completely random and not intended to offend anyone who genuine liked the book. This is for my own therapy. Mocking helps me process and move on.

What's In a Name?

It's 19 years later, and, clearly, premature senility has settled over our heroes. Because there's no other justification for naming your kid Albus Severus. There just isn't. So you've got three of them (like there aren't enough Weasley-offshoots running around already?!), and you name them James (fine), Lily (okay, though kind of icky, considering the first owners of those names in the Potter clan were married ... and I'm guessing I'm the only one disturbed enough to wonder about incestuous undertones), and ... Albus Severus? Poor Alby! It's always the middle kid who gets the short end of a wand. I get Albus: he was, in a way, Harry's kindly if distant grandpa. But Severus? Yeah, yeah, died on the right side of the street, so to speak, but come on! Harry, seriously, of all the people who died for you? Why didn't Sirius rate a name? Lupin? Hell, I would have had more respect for you if you named your kid Albus Dobby! (Though, if possible, felt even sorrier for the kid). Snape didn't even die for you so much as for your mother (which is a whole other source of creepy, deserving its own paragraph). Well, Harry, you better watch out: your middle child is already going to resent you for sticking him with a pompous-ass double name while giving a free pass to his brother and sister (honestly, how come they aren't, say, James Sirius and Lily Nimphadora? I'm just saying.). But this particular double name? And going into Hogwarts? I said it already, but it bears repeating: poor Alby!

Though it's possible he won't have to suffer alone. There's Scorpius Malfoy! (Count on Draco to provide one bright and hysterical moment!). Hey, maybe after little Albus Severus has the pompous-ass stuffing kicked out of him by Gryffindors -- for being named Albus Severus -- he can go and hang out with little Scorpius. Who, likewise, will be getting many beatings from Slytherins for having an overkill of a name. Seriously, no one is that much of a Slytherin!


You sexy thing! Here’s to hoping you’ll only need a cooling suit because you’ll grow up hot!

They'll bond and will spend all their free time hiding out in Myrtle's abandoned bathroom, making fun of all the pedestrian-named Weasleys. Especially Hugo. 'Cause Hugo Weasley is just asking for it. His name is practically Celtic for "I'm gayer than Gay Gordons!"


Wait, is this, maybe, Hugo? Family resemblance is a bitch!

As to adults... Aberforth? Grindelwald? Bathilda Bagshot sounds like something out of Marx Brothers. Xenophilius Lovegood would be a cool porn name if only “Xenophilius” didn’t smack so much of a disease. (And I thought Nimphadora could not be topped.).

"All was well."

Well...

Practically every character I was even mildly invested in ended up either dead, rendered powerless or irrelevant, or with a future that makes me gag. Figures. I have little luck when it comes to such things. My tastes and expectations are too off-the-wall, I suppose. And I’m too old. Or something.

So, RIP, the fallen I actually gave an owl’s hoot about:

Lupin, you wounded but loyal dog. Considering you managed to father a puppy, you
at least went out with a bang, not a whimper.

Severus Snape. I liked you more in fan fiction than in real books, but you did interest me (inexplicable petty abuse of Harry not withstanding). Too bad you turned out to be irredeemably pathetic. Oh, well, screw your dubious motives: your actions were always entertaining and that’s a lot more than I can say for plenty of other characters.

Fred Weasley. Along with George -- though I could never tell you two apart -- you were the only interesting members of the clan. (Well, Ginny attempted intriguing and complex there
for a while, mainly when she was Tom Riddle’s tool, but that went nowhere fast. Between book 2 and 3 she was replaced by a Date-A-Lot-Bot with an attitude, which wasn’t even remotely appealing.). So, Fred, I hope there’s room for mischief in the wizarding heaven.

Is there an owl heaven? Why kill a mail carrier, I ask you (or why stuff her in a cage when she can fly)? Poor Hedwig, I’ll miss you. Never said a word, yet still had more personality than some of the humans in these books.

And here’s not quite a RIP but a Eulogy non-the-less:

Hermione Granger. My favorite girl, the one who felt fully-fledged and real to me consistently, the one who tugged at my heart for all the right reasons. For all you’ve done, for every impossible thing you’ve accomplished, for bravery, intelligence, foresight and perseverance. Is this really your reward? Ron-The-Yawn-Weasley and two brats? Look, I don’t mind the prosaic and the pedestrian of it. And maybe domestic bliss is all you want these days. But, Merlin, what kind of a bliss can be provided by Ron? What kind of intellectual, emotional -- I won’t even touch the physical -- or spiritual stimulation can he possibly give? Face it, my dear, you’ve adopted a child and, in fact, have three of them to cope with now. And while you were always a cross between a nurturing mother and a dominatrix to both of your boys, and it was clear from the start you’d end up disciplining one of them for the rest of your life, did it really have to be the dippy one?



(I understand that wizarding is a small world and that they all go to the same three schools on the continent. So it follows they all end up marrying each other. Which explains those clear symptoms of inbreeding observed in Weasleys. Or the Blacks. Or name your own pure-blood clan with sprawling progeny. Which is yet another reason Hermione should have stayed the hell away.). :)



Somehow being Mrs. Weasley just seems like such a come-down and a waste. At the very least, if being a Mrs. Weasley was what you truly wanted, couldn’t you have opted for Mrs. George Weasley? That boy needs extra mothering, too. And he is much more fun than his little – very little – brother. You’d have never gotten bored with George, and I guarantee you, your son would not have been named flipping Hugo!


“Is this remorse, Severus?”

Thus ends the huge debate over Snape’s motivations. He is evil. He is not. He is a double agent. He is a triple agent. He is double-triple-something-crossing-Harry-guard. He is misunderstood... He is a bore, after all. More’s the pity.

In the end all that potential complexity comes down to this: he is a pathetic junky whose only reason for switching allegiances is guilt and fury over the death of the source of his addiction. It’s not the conscience talking, it’s not regret over unthinkable actions, it’s not the loss as such but of something he wanted for himself and never had. Does his single-minded obsession with Lily make him any less evil? Or any less guilty of what befell the Potters? Would he have resigned his Death Eater season tickets had Voldemort spared Lily? Would he have felt a moment’s pang for James, baby Harry or the untold numbers of muggles, mudbloods, witches and wizards killed? I suppose it is a resolution of sorts: his true allegiances to Voldemort’s theoretical ideals changed but little. It’s just that his single-minded obsession was stronger. It led him into Dumbledor’s circle and under his influence, which rubbed off somewhat over the years, I suppose. Snape now is not as quick to dismiss random lives as Snape of old would have. Still doesn’t reach the status of humanity. Even by the time of his death he has yet to give a real damn about anyone alive. What looked like affection for, say, Draco, turned out to be just a strategy and a habit. And so did pretty much every supposed emotion except that of utter disdain and visceral revulsion toward Harry. That were genuine. And it might be interesting to someone. To me, it’s a cop-out of a motive and a wipe-out of many things I used to find intriguing about him.

Oddly enough, I liked what happened with the Malfoys. Their motivations I understood and could sympathize with. It’s funny how explicitly JKR stated -- through Harry -- that the one weapon Voldemort discounted always was love, and that’s why he never suspected Snape. And that Snape was driven by love. Love? I wonder Voldemort missed this particular example of blinding obsession. After all, he’s so, so familiar with that emotion. I see love in Malfoys more than I see it in Snape, though there’s no specific focus on it except in their actions. Lucius is broken, but his one remaining drive is his love for his son. Narsissa doesn’t care who wins, she just wants to keep loved once alive and together. And Draco is discovering things about himself that he -- and we -- didn’t know he was capable of. He realized at the end of last book he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He clutches a friend in a flaming room, refusing to leave him to die. He is driven by fear, but not just for himself. For his parents and his friends. Ideologically, socially, personality-wise he is Draco to the core, but there is love there, capable of risking the self for the sake of a loved one. Snape appears to do the same, but it’s a fundamentally different thing. His sacrifice, his bravery, his loyalty -- a singular quest for retroactive self-justification.).

I think I would have been disappointed less if Snape was revealed as indeed devoted to the cause and playing Dumbledor all these years. His hatred of James (and I can’t blame him for it; heck, I can’t stand the dull prick, either!), his desire for position, his elitist stance were all ideological, and, as such, rather more interesting to examine than painfully contrived struggle between his beliefs and the calling of his dick. As it is, this “bravest of men” appears to me singularly petty, his bravery -- an off-shoot of some clinical fixation, and his motivations -- inexplicable.

It’s the snake venom talking!

He was in love with Lily? Really? No! Shocker! In a twist that surprised pretty much no one at all, Snape turned out to have harbored tender loving feelings for Lily Evans (Because nothing says "I love you" like ratting out your beloved to someone who would kill her entire family, followed by emotional and verbal abuse of your now dead beloved’s progeny six years running.). How very ... fanfiction. Bad one. Through the whole prolonged explanation of the Lily/Sev past I kept hearing Logan’s voice in my head: “It's very Wonder Years. (Logan, get out of my head! LOL.).

It’s kind of morbidly funny to me that Harry named his son after Snape. His internal reasoning must have gone something like this:

“So, Sev, you betrayed the prophesy to Voldemort, thus causing my parents to be killed. You hate my breathing guts (as well as all other parts of my body except for my eyes; which is not at all creepy, btw.). You made my school life as much of a struggle as you possibly could. You showed nothing but contempt for me and my friends. You encouraged my enemies. You made me doubt myself, my father, my calling in life and my humanity. All in the name of teaching me how to be strong and to protect myself. You did go out of your way to make sure I don’t actually physically die. Because you loved my mom... You embraced the dark, you thought nothing of mass killings, and the only senseless death you regretted was that of my mom. Because you loved my mom... You still despise muggle-borns. You didn’t bulk at a petty vendetta against a pre-pubescent orphan, whose only crime was being the progeny of some prick you hated in school and the girl you wanted for yourself. You see nothing wrong with abusing your position. You couldn’t care any less if you tried whether I lived or died, except that you loved my mom... I’m not The-Boy-Who-Lived to you so much as I’m The-Boy-Who-Just-Bloody-Wouldn’t-Die-When-He-Was-Supposed-To-The-Stupid-Git. I’m a burden you had to carry all these years in penance for what happened to my mom. (Because you loved my mom). And the rest of the dead can go fuck themselves into the after-life. But, hey, professor! You loved my mom! And you think I have pretty eyes! And you are about to shove off this mortal coil. And look how brave you are! So, naturally, bygones! I think I’ll name a kid after you. Not the first-born, you understand, just a middle child (he’s a mistake anyway: we wanted a girl but had to try for another one). Once again, professor, you’ll be second to a James Potter. But still, it's something: there will be a Severus Potter for you to think about while you roll in your grave like a wheel-spinning ferret, you bravest man alive ... oops, dead, you!”

And I don’t think I’ll soon get over the whole “look at me with your mother’s eyes” thing. That’s just wrong on so many levels. “Ahm, sir, those are not my mother’s eyes! Those are contact lenses. That’s the snake venom talking, sir.”



I think I really am too old for these books. They are, ultimately, intended for children. Their sensibilities, the use of language, structure, the depth of character development and exploration are inherently limited. The themes are universal and worthy, to be sure. They dabble in complex. But the impulse that always wins is simplification. As it probably should in such a format. And no, I am not putting them down. I do think JKR did an amazing job introducing the world, ideas, even people that stir something in so many.

But oh, I miss Cassandra Claire and her “Draco Veritas” trilogy. Yeah, yeah, the use of (credited properly, btw) quotes from other sources -- don’t care! She took these characters from 2-dimensional archetypal samples that they mostly stayed in JKR’s books and made them into people. It’s the same Harry Potter Universe, and the first one of the trilogy is written simply enough to resemble the books’ style, but so much deeper, funnier, more intricate and satisfying. And the third one is an amazing fit on its very own. A fanfiction that spawned other fanfiction. They are my books 6 and 7. I take them with as I’m fleeing “The Deathly Hallows.”