Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows SPOILER THREAD

Bulletbrain said:
The true master of death accepts death. If Harry believed he would not die, the deathly hallows would not have worked, he would have died along with the part of Voldermort. That's why Dumbledore didn't give too much info about the Hallows. The self-sacrifice must be done whole heartedly.

What I don't understand is what Dumbledore originally intended for the Deathstick. It wasn't meant to go to Draco's possesion....
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Correct. Voldemort does not accept death because he thinks he is the best because of horcruxes. Getting the deathstick proves it more so. Voldmorts greatest fear is death and his greatest weakness is being souless and ignorant. Draco truly is the owner of the wand though. In book 6 Draco disarmed the owner (Dumbledore) and took his wand. Took me a while to figure that one out too. ;)
 
No Hool what I meant to ask was how did Dumbledore originally plan to get the Deathstick to Harry? Surely he did not intend Draco to have it! I'm pretty sure it was meant to pass on the Snape.... but "letting" Snape defeat Dumbledore would be considered as cheating by the Deathstick. They would have to have a "real" fight. I don't get how that could happen.
 
Not too sure on that one either, actually. At first I thought he wished to negate the Deathstick at that point, but then Harry still needs it to unite the Deathly Hallows or whatever.
 
Does he really? I thought Dumbledore simply intended its power to die with him. After all, Snape hadn't taken it from him against his will; he was just going to pass away with it.
 
But didn't Harry need the Eldar Wand with t3h full p0w3rz so that he could become the master of death when he went willing to his fate... or something?
 
Oh, I don't know. :p

Isn't it still part of the set even if it doesn't work?

Anyway, my opinions:

Why do we use spoiler tags in a thread marked 'SPOILER THREAD'?]
Oh yeah, because this post also contains vague spoilers regarding Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines.
More death would have been nice, especially just smashing Hagrid at the start (although I thought George's death - it was George, right? - was handled really well).

The epilogue was also shit, partly because it felt a little silly and surreal but mostly, I thin, because it broke the frame of the story - it jetisoned the first-third-person perspective that has been so successful. The books are technically third person but almost everything is written as percieved by Harry himself, but Rowling clearly doesn't feel confident showing us the thoughts of a Harry nineteen years older. So we get a kind of outsiders-eye view of the situation which, being disassociated AND being very far removed, temporally, from what we know, removes all the joy of seeing the familiar world we know react to its liberation; we don't get the satisfaction of seeing the restoration of wizarding society because what we DO see is too far removed. Might as well have just cut to some seals in Norway having a chat about death and God.

Otherwise, after a bit of a bog-standard start, I thought the book was great. Before reading I went back and read the two books that had come before, and having them so close at hand really emphasised the massive difference that the absence of the Hogwarts term structure makes. In the early books it was a good stabilising arc, but it begins to drag hugely by 5 and especially 6. Without it, everything opens up.

Never has a Potter book felt so actually dangerous; with Hogwarts gone, Dumbledore dead, and the plot blown wide open there is no safe haven, no figure of calm and shelter in the storm; once the Ministry fell the book got suddenly brilliant. It always felt like Fudge's "we are at war" at the opening of Book 5 was hyperbole, never felt like it was real, but now I see that's because Rowling was saving it for now. Oppression, fascism, death, collaboration, resistance, Radio Free Wizards - it's all gone awesome. At points I was reminded a little of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines - not because Harry and his chums get to ride around on gigantic mechanical cities that eat each other but just because sometimes Rowling thankfully came a little closer to Reeve's almost callous disregard for the lives of his characters (about half of Reeve's cast die unexpectedly and without a chance to finish their business; near the end, a main character just gets twatted by a gigantic piece of falling debris).

The final battle packed a punch, as did Snape's memories - a character so hateable suddenly becomes sympathetic, and it's fairly touching. There was a hint of this with that bullying memory in the previous books but here I think Snape was handled really well; his sudden death effective.

A final note: Harry's been a difficult character post-puberty because sometimes in later books he's just a bit of a shit. This shows up a lot in 5 where he just bawls at his friends and is a complete **** to Cho and you're sort of mentally screaming "JUST TALK TO THEM" or something. This happened less in 7 - exception is Harry being a **** to Lupin at Grimmauld Place. Also, both covers look like shit.

All in all though, I loved it.

Taxman said:
EDIT:
(from wiki)
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That's better.
 
Well if you have not read the book by now, tough luck! :p While stupid, I like Hagrid and I'm glad he made it. It was Fred who died (IMO the funniest). She achieved her effect on the epilogue on you Sulkdodds. She wanted you to give you that vague feeling just like in Raising Arizona when the guy dreams about the baby growing up. Book 5 kicked ass majorly and book 6 too. It introduced the war and left the adolescence of Harry Potter behind. Harry acts just like his father and is partly due to why Snape hates him. I also feel his entire attitude is partly due to him having a piece of evil inside him. He bosses his friends around, gets really pissed off, seeks more power through the Deathly Hollows (none of the rest wanted it as much as him, they wanted the horcruxes), etc. I have always wondered why he acts very similar to the way Voldemort acts. When I read that Harry was a horcrux a year before the book, all the wheels started turning. Both covers don't look like shit but that's your opinion. :cool:
 
Yeah, I agree with Sulk, the book was truly awesome following the "The Minister is dead, the Ministry has fallen." I felt a real kind of "Oh shit lol", and it really helped drive the book from there.
 
I see. I never realized that the Deathly Hallows had anything to do with Harry's survival, I thought it was just Lily's spell in Voldemort's blood that did its trick.

What I don't understand is what Dumbledore originally intended for the Deathstick. It wasn't meant to go to Draco's possesion....
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He meant for Snape to disarm him, and then Snape would die a natual death, thus removing the power of the wand.
 
Okay so Voldemort's all over a teenage wizard...

He keeps vanishing and reappearing...

He's got no nose...

He's the Michael Jackson of the wizarding world!
 
Taxman said:
He meant for Snape to disarm him, and then Snape would die a natual death, thus removing the power of the wand.
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No, he meant for Snape to kill him without having defeated him because the death was already planned. The power of the wand would have died there.
 
Taxman said:
I see. I never realized that the Deathly Hallows had anything to do with Harry's survival, I thought it was just Lily's spell in Voldemort's blood that did its trick.


He meant for Snape to disarm him, and then Snape would die a natual death, thus removing the power of the wand.
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Well, as Sulk (or is it Samon?) says, the power of the wand would've been lost because of Snape arranging with Dumbledore to kill him, not to defeat him etc. I thought that the Deathly Hallows was why he came back from the dead after Voldemort whacked Harry into King's Cross Station, but it could've been his mother's blood protection spell thingy - I'm still not too sure.
 
It was because Voldemort took Lily's protection into himself, which meant that Harry could not die as long as Voldemort was alive (I think). Thus, killing him with Avada wasn't possible, although killing the bit of himself that was in Harry was easy enough.

It's all a bit convoluted D:
 
Sulkdodds said:
It was because Voldemort took Lily's protection into himself, which meant that Harry could not die as long as Voldemort was alive (I think). Thus, killing him with Avada wasn't possible, although killing the bit of himself that was in Harry was easy enough.

It's all a bit convoluted D:
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Yeah, of course the best way to show this is have an ugly screaming baby in Kings Cross.

Good one JK.
 
Does anyone else think that the wizards really underrate muggles (I'm talking about warfare here, I could talk about science and crap too, but I can't be arsed right now)? Sure wizards can undermine them with Imperius and hide themselves very well, but in an open warfare you're going to have alot more men with machineguns than wizards capable of casting an Avada Kadavra spell.

BTW, did anyone else think originally when they read Levi Corpus that it meant to create infiri? Ie, raising dead bodies.
 
riomhaire said:
Does anyone else think that the wizards really underrate muggles (I'm talking about warfare here, I could talk about science and crap too, but I can't be arsed right now)? Sure wizards can undermine them with Imperius and hide themselves very well, but in an open warfare you're going to have alot more men with machineguns than wizards capable of casting an Avada Kadavra spell.

BTW, did anyone else think originally when they read Levi Corpus that it meant to create infiri? Ie, raising dead bodies.
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You do realize magic is a deus ex machina in the HP world right?

/EDIT Literal latin translation of Levicorpus would be "Lift (Levi) the physical body (Corpus)... I think. Also, my friend thought 'Expecto Patronum' was actually a really lame pun spell relating to Harry 'expecting' to find his father ('pater' -> 'patronum'). > >
 
Yes it was. Apparently many people are too dumb to realise that :p
 
Wut.

I thought he went into his own mind. And the screaming baby thing was like the splinter of Voldie's soul writhing in agony or something.
 
No, I read some question thing from JK recently and she said when he died he'd end up like the screaming baby.
 
Samon said:
No, I read some question thing from JK recently and she said when he died he'd end up like the screaming baby.
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Zomg dream sequence is in the fuuuuuutttuuuurrreee!
 
riomhaire said:
It is? I don't really see how it's a deus ex machina. Did you mean handwaving by any chance?
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Both. Or rather, it could be a Deus Ex Machina, but JK tends to avoid using it as such throughout the series - like in the Half-Blood Prince, I thought that sequence with the Muggle PM was part of JK's statment on magic.

Muggle PM: But you can do magic! You can do - well - anything!
Fudge: The trouble is, so can the other side.
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According to wiki, there're 3000 magic people in Britain. Of them, max 300 are supporters of Voldemort. If the Muggleworld waged was against then they wouldn't stand a chance.
 
3000?

And how many people work at the Ministery? 300? That makes sense.
 
Here it is:

Population

The terms wizard and witch are used in magical society more or less the same way the terms boy/man and girl/woman are used in the Muggle world. Mage and similar words are rare and usually only seen in titles or such.

There is no completely definitive knowledge about the demography of the Wizarding world. We do know that on the year Harry Potter entered Hogwarts, there were 39 students that started school with him - Rowling having produced a list to this effect. This seems to indicate a very low birth rate, or a very low number of witches and wizards in Great Britain and Ireland, or a combination of both.

Additionally, J.K. Rowling has stated that she imagines the Wizarding population of the UK to be around 3,000. This estimate, although to muggle eyes amazingly small, is understandable: a larger population would be far harder to hide from Muggle knowledge. Rowling has also said that there are about 1000 Hogwarts students then later changed it to 600. Both of these numbers wouldn't fit into a UK with a wizarding population of around 3,000.

However, the following points regarding population have been raised:

* There are a large number of governmental departments (even Arthur Weasley's Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office is staffed by two people), and Harry observes "hundreds" of witches and wizards in the Ministry's Atrium alone - although Harry is admittedly a rather poor judge of numbers (having once seen 200 Slytherin students). This would appear rather too large for such a small population.

* The Quidditch World Cup stadium could hold 100,000 and was built by a "Ministry task force of five hundred." It seems unlikely that a sixth of the entire country worked for a full year on one project. Having said that, the task might have been outsourced to the wizarding populations of other countries (which do exist; the final contenders in the 1994 Quidditch World Cup were Ireland and Bulgaria).

Also, it could be noted that not every creature in the magical community is a witch or wizard. Below exists a list of beasts, beings and spirits - many of which co-exist and co-work with the wizarding community. Examples are Ghosts, Squibs, werewolves, Goblins and house elves. This would create more wizarding citizens to account for.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizarding_world#Population
 
Numbers are not an issue, though. You cannot fight an enemy you cannot find. If a wizard wanted to hide, he could do so for as long as he wanted. The same applies to fighting. A muggle army cannot stop someone from creating a hurricane in a crowded city.

Wizards pwn
 
Samon said:
No, I read some question thing from JK recently and she said when he died he'd end up like the screaming baby.
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That was the fragment of soul that was in Harry (which is what would remain of a person after they die). Harry tells Voldemort to have one last try for remorse because he saw the condition and suffering Vold's soul would be in when he died.
 
Effectively, he would end up like that.

He only had 1/8th of his soul left, plus another 1/8th in the form of the baby. He didn't have much going for him :p
 
Anyone else notice how Deathly Hallows takes place in the year 1997?

Harry's parents died on 31st October 1981. And Harry was one at the time. He was probably born in 1980, so if he is 17 in book 7...
 
Isn't that obvious though? :p

I re-read the last few chapters today. I only just clicked that Harry cast the same charm on everyone in Hogwarts that his mother cast on him as baby.

It all kind of fits in as well now that I've read through the Dumbledore conversation more carefully. The main focus for me this time, was the blood tie Harry and Riddle had, which made the prophecy all the more prominent.

Also, the horrible baby in Harry's head (death/heaven, whatever) WAS Voldemort. When he recovers, Voldemort wakes just as he did. My theory is that they both travelled, basically, into death (See Dumbledore - "You will move... on"). Although not dead, they were both on the brink of it (Harry having been hit again with Avada Kedavra, LV having lost his most prominent horcrux). Obviously Riddle, in death, is in essence, nothing, so he had no idea where he had been or who was there.
 
Cormeh said:
Also, the horrible baby in Harry's head (death/heaven, whatever) WAS Voldemort. When he recovers, Voldemort wakes just as he did. My theory is that they both travelled, basically, into death (See Dumbledore - "You will move... on"). Although not dead, they were both on the brink of it (Harry having been hit again with Avada Kedavra, LV having lost his most prominent horcrux). Obviously Riddle, in death, is in essence, nothing, so he had no idea where he had been or who was there.
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Hmm, I thought it was a much more personal thing, the "limbo" or whatever, which is why it was King's Cross for Harry.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Anyone else notice how Deathly Hallows takes place in the year 1997?

Harry's parents died on 31st October 1981. And Harry was one at the time. He was probably born in 1980, so if he is 17 in book 7...
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I noticed this immediately...when I went over it I thought it was an inconsistency in the story, but JK Rowling started work on The Sorcerer's Stone in 1990 so it fits.
 
Actually, we've known about the correct date since book 2, when Nick celebrated his 500th death day. And he died in 1492.
 
Llama said:
Numbers are not an issue, though. You cannot fight an enemy you cannot find. If a wizard wanted to hide, he could do so for as long as he wanted. The same applies to fighting. A muggle army cannot stop someone from creating a hurricane in a crowded city.

Wizards pwn
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If you shot everyone wearing nothing but a poncho in public, I'd say you could get a third of them. And the rest, well.... I'm sure that science will come up with a way, because magic is still energy, and energy can be detected. And then you have the tanks.
 
15357 said:
If you shot everyone wearing nothing but a poncho in public, I'd say you could get a third of them. And the rest, well.... I'm sure that science will come up with a way, because magic is still energy, and energy can be detected. And then you have the tanks.
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Only numbers...
 
Solaris said:
Only numbers...
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*thinks harder*


Oh, oh, and ther could be a MDA, Magic Detection Agency, or whatever, and they could have mobile strike teams that attack as soon as magic is... detected. By law, using magic would entail summary execution by any law enforcement or military officer. But a few cooperative individuals could be used for military purposes (Or not, just wipe them all out).... and...


:D :D :D
 
Wizards can't defend themselves against tacticle nukes.
 
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