EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #225: EBI IN THE LAND OF POTTER

[Blake Petit]

Well, friends, it’s Wednesday, and you’re reading Everything But Imaginary, and that means I’m supposed to be talking to you about comic books. I should talk about Countdown or The Initiative or that new Alex Ross/Jim Krueger Superpowers series. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in comic books right now, and it’s all worth talking about.

And yet, all I can get my mind around right now is a young man in glasses whose power comes not from a radioactive spider or his home on another planet, but from a mystic genealogy and an unparalleled heart. I don’t just love comics, guys, I love stories of all kinds, and this week I’m still in a place where all I can think about it Harry Potter. I finished reading the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the day after it came out, but I still find myself picking it up again, re-reading passages, re-reading whole chapters, and thinking about the incredible mind it took to craft this story and the wonder I felt in the story itself. People keep asking me what I thought about the book, and I’ve avoided discussing it too deeply because I’m still trying to organize my thoughts. So just this once, because I can, I’m going to lapse out of my usual comic book discussion and talk more about this book that I know an awful lot of you have read. If you’re not into Harry, well, this week’s More Than News column is hysterical. For those of you that stick around, there will be spoilers, and I’ll be freely comparing and contrasting Harry’s tale with any books, movies and – yeah – comic books that seem relevant. It’s going to be total stream-of-consciousness, and I honestly have no idea what will wind up spilling out of me into this column. But I’ll warn you before I ruin anything.

First off, the generalities. When last we left Harry, at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, his mentor had been slain by the teacher he hated more than any other, he broke up with his girlfriend in an effort to protect her (having seen the first Spider-Man movie one too many times), and he had a quest in front of him. Track down four Horcruxes – magical objects into which Voldemort had placed portions of his soul – and destroy them, because as long as the Horcruxes survived, Voldemort could not be killed.

The majority of the book is concerned with Harry, Ron and Hermione on their search for the Horcruxes, made all the more difficult because Dumbledore was unable to provide them with any real guide to finding them. In a lot of ways, these sections in the book reminded me very much of the final volume of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It had the same sense of encroaching danger, the same sense of total desperation, and that sense made the book truly stand out from the rest of the series.

That sense of desperation gets more and more intense as the pressure starts to take its toll on Harry and his friends, not to mention the reader. By the time the tension finally breaks, you find yourself caught in an avalanche of action scenes that don’t let up until the very end of the book. The final sequences are more energetic and action-packed than any seen yet in this series, and the conclusion, which I know upset some readers, was highly satisfying to me. In fact, looking back at recent epics across all media, I can’t remember any conclusion I found so completely satisfying in a very long time. And honestly, that’s all I can really say without getting specific about why I liked it. That means the spoilers start now, and that means those who don’t want to get spoiled should Click Here and download episodes of the greatest comic book podcast known to man to listen to until they finish reading the book.

There were a lot of specific things I loved about this book, especially the final battle scene. The Battle of Hogwarts is already going down in my personal hierarchy as one of the all-time great fictional battles – it’s up there with Helm’s Deep, the death of Superman and Anakin’s duel with Obi-Wan (right up until the “high ground” line). It was intense, scattered and completely chaotic – in short, it was war.

I loved what happened with Neville Longbottom in this book. Although we didn’t see him for most of it, when he reemerged, leading the Trio back – not just to Hogwarts, but to the still-fighting Dumbledore’s Army – that told us everything we needed. While his friends spent the year on their own quest, it was Neville who took command on the homefront and fought for his school and his friends for an entire year. When Harry was thought dead, it was Neville who found the courage to attack Voldemort. When Voldemort tried to torture Neville by putting a flaming Sorting Hat on his head, Neville whipped it off and pulled from it the Sword of Godric Griffindor. In my head, I was hearing those lines from Chamber of Secrets again: “only a true Griffindor could have pulled that sword from that hat.” Neville’s journey through these books has been dramatic – from the clumsy youth, to the determined but unskilled student with some talent for herbology, and finally to the loyal, courageous hero that the Hat saw in his heart from the very beginning. Yeah. When Neville pulled out that sword and beheaded Voldemort’s snake, destroying the final Horcrux, Harry’s trust in him was vindicated, and I personally cheered.

Neville survived. A lot of people didn’t. Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, who only that year managed to find happiness together, died in battle and left behind an infant son whose life afterwards no doubt mirrored that of his godfather – Harry Potter. Fred Weasley died at the side of his newly-redeemed brother, Percy, leaving George without his twin. Mad-Eye Moody fell early, along with Harry’s pet Hedwig, and the oft-derided House Elf called Dobby fell valiantly to save Harry Potter’s life. In fact, one of the most moving scenes in the book was Dobby’s funeral, where Harry and his friends each took off an article of clothing – the symbol of freedom to a House Elf – and put it on his tiny body before laying him to rest.

The question has arisen from many – were the deaths necessary? In a story of this nature, the story of a war, it is inevitable that people will die. J.K. Rowling could either have slain a dozen Colin Creevys – little more than Star Trek red shirts – or she could show the true impact of a war by felling characters we cared about. Most readers will agree that the former would have been a cop-out, and that killing characters we loved was necessary to make the story and the danger realistic. Their complaints, instead, come from who specifically was killed. The question I pose to these people: who would you have preferred? Why would those deaths have been any more valid?

Severus Snape was another who died at Hogwarts. Ever since the release of Half-Blood Prince, after Snape killed Dumbledore, the readers have been asking the question – whose side is Snape really on? When I put down HBP after reading it for the first time, I had an intense hatred for Snape. I could have hit him with an Avada Kedavra myself, if I could have gotten away with it in the middle of Barnes and Noble without drawing some really strange looks from people. As I reread the book, though, I felt more and more that there was more to the story. I started to join the school of thought that Snape killed Dumbledore under Dumbledore’s own orders and that he, like Harry, was loyal to the fallen headmaster, through and through. I was right about that. What I didn’t realize was that Snape had the same motivation as Harry: love. After his death, Harry plunged once more into Snape’s memory and saw a boy… in love. With Lily Evans. She was his best friend as a child, but they started to grow apart when she was sorted into Griffindor and he into Slytherin. She was pursued by the arrogant young James Potter, but spurned his advances. Then came the day Snape went too far, embarrassed by Potter, and called her a “Mudblood.” Their friendship was severed and, some time after that, she fell in love with Potter. Snape never got over her, and when she was slain by Voldemort, Dumbledore persuaded him to swear that he would do whatever it took to protect her son, even as he swore Dumbledore never to tell anyone the truth. Snape fought against Voldemort, fought for Dumbledore… all for the sake of Lily Evans’ son, the only part of her left… the part that still had her eyes. Even at the cost of his own soul, he fought to the end out of love for her.

Then there’s Harry himself. I’m downright disturbed by the number of people who are upset that he didn’t die. On another board where I’ve been discussing the novel, a friend of mine asked if we’ve reached a point where we’re so cynical that anything less than the death of the hero is seen as a cop-out. Another simply admitted that he wants the youth of today to suffer emotional scarring the way he did when Optimus Prime died in TransFormers: The Movie. My feeling is this: yes, Rowling could have crafted a story that ended with the death of her hero, and she probably could have done a good one. But ultimately, this is a story about the triumph not just of good over evil, but of love over hatred. To end a story with that theme with the death of the hero, to me, would have gone too far. And it’s not like Harry didn’t suffer. He spent a year on the run, avoiding death at every turn. He watched his friends die to protect him. He nearly died himself – he was ready to die. Like his mother before him, he was prepared to sacrifice his life for his friends, and in so doing, protected them the same way.

All of this comes back to one of the central themes of the story: it is our choices that determine who we are. Voldemort chose Harry over Neville to be his true adversary. Harry chose Griffindor House over Slytherin. He chose to join the fight against Voldemort, to protect Ginny by leaving her, to run and fight and seek out the Horcruxes… and in the end, he chose to abandon two of the three mystic artifacts that made up the Deathly Hallows, and in so choosing, became the true master of his fate. Percy Weasley, two books ago, chose the Ministry of Magic over his own family. In this book, he realized his mistake, and he chose not only to come back, but to fight alongside them, knowing full well that he could have died for his choice. Harry was a better man than even Dumbledore, because he didn’t make the same poor choices that Dumbledore did as a young man (one of the most surprising revelations in the book). If Snape hadn’t chosen to side with Malfoy, Macnair and the other children who would become Death Eaters, he may never have lost Lily, she may never have chosen James Potter over him. Just like in real life, making the right choice may sometimes cost you dearly – as Fred, Lupin and Tonks proved. But if enough people – like Harry and the others who fought the Battle of Hogwarts – make those right choices, then ultimately, good will win out.

Then there’s the epilogue, perhaps the most contentious part of the book among fans. We see an adult Harry, 19 years after the battle, and his wife Ginny taking their children off to the Hogwarts express. Some readers loved it, others hated it. There seem to be two main complaints about it, neither of which I agree with.

1: It was too sappy. Harry and his friends live “happily ever after,” and they name their kids after people who died. Is that sappy? I think it’s perfectly logical that Harry would have named his children after his parents and teachers. And as for “happily ever after”… really? We see one day out of their lives. Does that mean things are perfect, that they never had any problems, that things were golden for them? Of course not. What I saw were two families – the Potters and the Weasleys – on a happy day. We saw that Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione grew up and had a good life. Not a perfect life, a good one. And that, to me, is what they earned.

2: It didn’t tell enough. How did George react to his twin’s death? Who was the new headmaster at Hogwarts? What was Harry’s job as an adult? What happened to the Dursleys? All of these questions boil down to one thing: “I would have done it differently.” To me, that’s not a valid criticism. If you have a problem with how something happened – if you don’t think it fits the story or character as established, if you think it’s overdone, if you think it’s poorly written, those are legitimate problems. If the problem is that you wanted something else… well, to me, that’s not a fair judgment. Heck, I was quite disappointed that Fawkes didn’t appear in the book, but it’s not Rowling’s fault that I wanted it. When you get down to it, the three most important characters were Harry, Ron and Hermione. The series was about their struggle against Voldemort. After he fell, we learned that they managed to go on and have a normal life. Sure, I would have liked to know more about certain characters, but I don’t think we needed any more than we got.

Anyway, I’d think the fanfic writers would be ecstatic, because so much is left open. All the Luna/Neville shippers – your boat wasn’t sunk like the Harry/Hermione ones. For all we know, they wound up together. We don’t know the fates of most of the characters. There’s still a lot of room to speculate, and I love that. I’m no fanfic writer, but already, there are certain things that I like to believe happened in Harry’s world after Voldemort fell.

I believe that when Teddy Lupin went off to Hogwarts at age 11, he received a special gift from his godfather – an album of photographs of his parents, just like the one Hagrid once gave Harry.

I believe that George Weasley mourned for a long time – a loss like his, he may never really stop mourning – but eventually he found a way to move on. I believe he closed the joke shop (without Fred, it didn’t feel right anymore), but he was still successful as a businessman. And I believe that, if he ever had a son, that son’s name was Fred Weasley.

I believe that when Albus Severus Potter got off the Hogwarts Express, near Dumbledore’s tomb he found a monument to the fallen heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts, including his Uncle Fred, Teddy Lupin’s parents, and his namesake, Severus Snape.

I believe that Molly Weasley spends half the year making Weasley sweaters to give out at Christmas, not just to her children, but to her many, many grandchildren as well.

And I believe that Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, had their problems. Real people do. Ron and Hermione still bicker all the time, Ginny gets exasperated when Harry tries to do it all himself instead of letting anyone help him. But I believe that, in the long run, they had good lives. That’s what the epilogue said to me. That’s what the series as a whole was about. It was an epic adventure, ultimately, about defending peoples’ rights to live, to love, to exist. To have real lives.

In the end, I think Harry had one.

In the end, that’s what I wanted.

More comic book stuff next week, honestly.

Favorite of the Week: July 18, 2007

I can sneak in at least a little comic book stuff this week, right? Before Deathly Hallows came out at midnight on Friday, I managed to read last week’s new comics, and handed out favorite honors to Mark Waid’s triumphant return to the scarlet speedster. In All Flash #1, Wally West set out to avenge the death of his cousin, Bart. His battle with Inertia was exciting as hell, and brought me back to the classic days of Waid’s old run – right up until the end where he put a neat little twist to show us that things this time won’t be exactly the same. I can’t wait to see where his new run takes us next.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the weekly “Think About It” humor column at Think About It Central. He’s also the co-host, with the inimitable Chase Bouzigard, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.

[JX141]

Should there maybe have been a spoiler warning here?

[Blake Petit]

You mean like the part where I wrote "That means the spoilers start now, and that means those who don’t want to get spoiled should Click Here and download episodes of the greatest comic book podcast known to man to listen to until they finish reading the book."?

[Ryan Read]

Nicely done review. I agree with almost everything you said. I also agree I don't think the jokeshop stayed over following Fred's death but George found a way to move on.

[Blake Petit]

Right. I just can't picture George continuing on with the shop by himself -- I think it'd hurt too much to be there without his twin.

[JX141]

Originally Posted by Blake Petit

You mean like the part where I wrote "That means the spoilers start now, and that means those who don’t want to get spoiled should Click Here and download episodes of the greatest comic book podcast known to man to listen to until they finish reading the book."?

Where is that?? I dont see it. Is it in the middle of the column or something? I am actually not trying to be sarcastic here either.

[JX141]

I see you are rolling your eyes as if it was clearly obvious but sorry I missed it, it certainly doesnt stand out.

I did an Edit-Find with my browser for the word "spoiler" and found it in the middle of the 2nd and 5th paragraphs.

It no big deal to me I don't let spoiling ruin things for me, if the story is good the story is good. I only caught a couple things as I was scanning anyway and then stopped reading but for others it should probably stand out a bit more or put as a disclaimer at the beginning.

[Captain Marvel]

I have to say that I was disappointed as well with the absence of Fawkes. However, what upset me the most was the death of Dobby. Perhaps Harry's most devoted admirer, he gave his life selflessly. Also of surprise was the change of heart of Kreacher. I didn't see that one coming at all.
I did like the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. Many times in fiction, (especially comic books), there is never any clear-cut winner of a battle. The hero may win, but not because of his skill or power. This time, the hero won outright. The way it should be, IMO.

[Blake Petit]

Saying it twice before I actually spoil anything isn't enough?

Brian, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

[RadioCleve]

My problems with the book came mainly from the feeling that everything had been done before. The scene with the Horcrux around Harry's neck read like it was simply a transcription of a scene from the Lord of the Rings movie. The self-sacrifice came directly from the last Matrix film (which is best left forgotten, let's be honest). Heck, the whole "I have a quest and must be the ringbearer... er... Horcrux-killer" was stolen, too. It just felt... lazy.

Plus the titular "Deathly Hallows" felt entirely superfluous, save to facilitate the tenuous connections that are the bane of any story.

Finally, the epilogue was not the only section of the book that left things unstated. There was never a discussion of what James and Lilly did, nor where their money came from (though the Snape memory on the train, describing James as one who had always lived in comfort did help) nor why Potter was selected as the boy of the prophesy.

I liked the book, sure, but ultimately felt unsatisfied.

[Blake Petit]

Originally Posted by RadioCleve

Finally, the epilogue was not the only section of the book that left things unstated. There was never a discussion of what James and Lilly did, nor where their money came from (though the Snape memory on the train, describing James as one who had always lived in comfort did help) nor why Potter was selected as the boy of the prophesy,

But you see, none of that is what we needed to know. James and Lilly's occupations weren't relevant to the story. James inherited his money, which is all we needed to know. And we know why Potter was selected, that was revealed back in book 5 -- two boys could have fit the prophecy, but Voldemort chose the one whose background more closely mirrored his own. That's why Harry was marked.

[Blake Petit]

For those who want to know...

JK Rowling did an interview with MSNBC where she revealed some of the details she left out of the epilogue, including the future occupations of Harry, Ron and Hermione, among other things. If you wanna know: read it here.

[Captain Marvel]

Originally Posted by Blake Petit

For those who want to know...

JK Rowling did an interview with MSNBC where she revealed some of the details she left out of the epilogue, including the future occupations of Harry, Ron and Hermione, among other things. If you wanna know: read it here.

Very interesting. Thanks Blake!

[Blake Petit]

I aim to please.

[Dirge]

I agree with most of the things you said. I am huge HP fan and the last book was fantastic.

As to the comments about people being dissapointed by not getting things they wanted, I had the opposite experience. One of my hopes since book five was that Harry would be on good terms with at least one of his personal enemies (Snape, Malfoy, or Dudley) by the end of the series. It turns out he was on some level of good terms with all three. That thrilled me to no end.

I can't wait to go back through all the other books and look for clues. I found one thumbing throught OOTP last night: in the Hog's Head, Harry thinks the barman looks familiar.

[Blake Petit]

Yeah, I have no doubt that the next time I re-read the series, I'll pick up on even more things I missed before.

(That's another reason I'm glad Harry survived -- I don't know if I would have WANTED to read the series again knowing he died at the end of it.)

[PinchyWearO]

I think what JX means in terms of spoilers is having the disclaimer visible either at the top or in bold. There's a lot of stuff to read over the net and often people scan through articles and having the disclaimer imbeded in the text makes it easy to miss for these types of readers. Didn't bother me as I've avoided the internet altogether until I finished the book (I heard about the leak), but it's easy for me to see how someone speed reading through could've missed it.

As for Harry dying, it really didn't matter to me either way. What made it effective was that I truly didn't know whether he would live or not. Normally, I never fear that Spider-Man or Indiana Jones are going to make it through. After reading "The Prince's Story" I was convinced Harry was going to die...well, almost (there were many pages left)... It was that sense of not knowing that made it exciting. I wasn't as upset as you after Half-Blood Prince because it was blatantly obvious to me not everything was what it seemed regarding Snape and Dumbledore's trust in him...too many unanswered questions. In regards to Harry's death, however, I truly did not know...and it was great.

[Captain Marvel]

You know, I'm sure that Harry and everyone else who fought the Battle of Hogwarts would have been awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class. They probably came up with a special award just for Harry since he defeated Voldemort and literally saved the world.

[Dalarsco]

I have to disagree about George. I think that he closed the joke shop for a while, but he eventually realized that Fred would have wanted him to keep the laughter going.
But great article. Ya, I hate how people say that something is poorly written when really they mean that they would have preferred a different way. I think Magneto isn't supposed to be a genocidal maniac, but that doesn't mean that Planet X wasn't an amazingly crafted piece of comic.

[Eric Barrett]

So just getting around to reading this...

I think Colin Creevys death was one of the most tragic in the book. Almost everyone else who died in the book had some kind of close personal tie with Harry. They had a personal bond with him, and most of them loved him. But Harry was particularly cold towards Colin Creevy (understandably so). And yet when it mattered most, Creevy sacrificed his life to help Harry. To me that's more moving than many of the other deaths.

As for the ending, I personally enjoyed the epilogue. I think it gave a nice closure to the story. I also think it answered most of the "big" questions like "what happened?", "did life move on?" and "who got married?" Certainly I would have liked more details, but it wouldn't have really worked in a book. But reading JK's interview and a reader chat she did, she answered a lot of the questions regarding Harry's job, Luna/Neville, and why Fawkes wasn't in the story.