I read the books this year because I wanted to feel pain, basically, and I wanted to be justified in disliking Harry Potter. I was not disappointed. However, I still don't understand how the fuck the end of the book worked. It was so harebrained and convoluted and sloppy as fuck that I don't know what actually happened. Am I stupid or was it a bad ending? And what the fuck happened? How did they actually kill Voldemort?
Been a long time since I read but IIRC:
- The final reveal from the Pensieve and Snape's memories is that there are actually eight Horcruxes. When Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby, the murders of the Potter parents and love protection that caused the Killing Curse to backfire split Voldemort's soul again, and it latched onto infant Harry. Harry is himself a Horcrux. So Voldemort can't die until Harry himself is dead. So he goes to face Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest and is prepared to sacrifice himself. Voldemort "kills" him.
- Dumbledore actually lied again. Harry and Voldemort basically get stuck in limbo, where he has some kind of magical conversation with Dumbledore (I'm not sure this is ever explained). Voldemort's Killing Curse once again failed to kill Harry, and instead destroyed the portion of Voldemort's soul latched onto Harry (again I don't think a Killing Curse was originally able to destroy a Horcrux and this is also never really explained). Basically, just as Voldemort was unable to die while Harry lived, so too Harry cannot die while Voldemort lived. But now the last ties between them have been destroyed.
- Thing is, there's a problem: one more Horcrux still exists, the snake Nagini. Both Harry and Voldemort wake up. Harry continues to fake being dead. Voldemort parades Harry's "corpse" before the remaining defenders of Hogwarts to try and break their morale once and for all. Neville defies him, so Voldemort tries to torture him by making him wear the Sorting Hat and setting it on fire. While everyone is distracted Harry disappears, and once this is noticed all hell breaks loose. Neville suddenly draws the Sword of Godric Gryffindor from the burning Sorting Hat and fucking kills the snake, because he's the real hero of the entire series.
- Battle is joined (EDIT: I actually totally forgot about the "love protection" aspect of Harry's earlier sacrifice - because Harry sacrificed himself under the impression he was going to die, his non-death still conveys love protection to literally everyone on his side in the battle and they wipe the floor with the remaining Death Eaters) and Harry and Voldemort confront each other one last time in the Great Hall. Voldemort, all arrogance, intends to kill Harry once and for all. Harry tries to I guess "redeem" Voldemort one last time by warning him that the situation is not what he thinks it is and if he tries to kill Harry, the curse will backfire. Why is this?
- The language governing ownership of the Elder Wand is deliberately vague. The parable implies that you have to kill the previous owner of the Wand. We (and Voldemort) have thought the chain of ownership of the Wand went Dumbledore-Snape-Voldemort. Snape killed Dumbledore at the end of the last book. Voldemort killed Snape earlier and this allowed Harry to get Snape's memories, etc. But the truth is you only have to "defeat" the previous owner. This fundamentally changes the chain of ownership. At the end of book 6, when Harry and Dumbledore reappeared on the tower, the latter was confronted by Malfoy. Malfoy used the Disarming Spell on Dumbledore. In magical terms, this means Malfoy "defeated" Dumbledore. This actually screwed up an additional gambit by Dumbledore to destroy the power of the wand - he was already dying from the ring-Horcrux's curse, so he colluded with Snape to allow himself to be killed by the latter; if Dumbledore was "defeated" by his own design, he theorized it would break the cycle and destroy the power of the Wand for good. But Malfoy's actions threw a wrench into everything. Malfoy couldn't bring himself to kill Dumbledore, so Snape stepped in as planned. This fooled Voldemort on so many levels.
- Halfway through book 7, Harry and co are captured by the Malfoys. In their escape, Harry used the Disarming Spell on Malfoy, "defeating" him. This means the actual chain of ownership for the wand is Dumbledore-Malfoy-Harry. Harry is the current master of the Elder Wand. If Voldemort tries to kill Harry with the Wand, the Wand will refuse to kill its master and backfire on Voldemort. Voldemort, all arrogance, refuses to believe this. He tries to kill Harry, the curse backfires yet again, and it kills Voldemort instead.
- Harry takes the Elder Wand, uses it to repair his old wand, and then basically sticks it in a secret vault in Dumbledore's office presumably to sit there forever. He hopes to end the cycle his own way by dying peacefully in his bed (this is incredibly at odds with him presumably pursuing a career as an Auror/Wizard Fed, but w/e)
This shit was gripping when you were younger but if you step back and view the series with a wider critical eye it has a lot of gaping problems. Rowling basically introduced several incredibly important McGuffins crucial for resolving the entire series in the last book and retroactively tied them in with earlier events and foreshadowing. Voldemort's final defeat was certainly thematically appropriate (he was so arrogant and unable to comprehend he was mortal he refused to listen to an honest attempt to warn him he was wrong) but Harry basically wins on a technicality. A better series, if it really wanted to end this way, would have spent a lot of time in the series setting up these McGuffins and the ambiguity of the language regarding ownership of the McGuffin. But it's thrown in at the last minute like an Ass Pull.
I actually totally forgot about the “love protection” aspect of Harry’s earlier sacrifice - because Harry sacrificed himself under the impression he was going to die, his non-death still conveys love protection to literally everyone on his side in the battle and they wipe the floor with the remaining Death Eaters
The love protection magic seeming like such a rare and little known about thing always made me think that the HP universe was full of unfeeling callous lizard people for whom the thought of sacrificing themselves for others would never even cross their minds. With all the evil wizards running around murdering innocent people you'd think there'd be way more cases of people having the instakill spell bounce off them just by sheer probability. Then again, the series is set in Britain
Right that seems like such a fucking gaping loophole. Out of the thousands that Voldemort killed not a single one actually loved their child until the Potters?
It’s this elitist fantasy where even love is a commodity able to be enjoyed by a select few “good and smart” people of the caliber of the Potters. Disgusting
Out of the thousands that Voldemort killed not a single one actually loved their child until the Potters?
To be far these are English people we're talking about.
On the other hand, Harry's self-sacrifice near the end of the last book makes all the good guys immune to Voldemort's goons, which shows it doesn't have to be a parent laying down their lives for their children and that the scope of the magical protection is quite large
I think your view of wizard sociopathy is well placed, and that in a better setting, they would all absolutely view non-wizards as lesser in the ways they view magical creatures. This is better done in the netflix Sabrina show IMO.
Wait so, holy shit, no wonder it didn't make any fucking sense to me. None of it was defined beforehand and it was revealed like all of her other sudden twists that explained everything but actually were held together with glue and spit in other plots of the other books too. The entire series is just fucking M. Night Shyamalan all the way the fuck down.
Alan Moore said that Rowling used ill-defined magical principles but you laid out precisely why he said that. He was written off as a crank for saying it, but he's absolutely correct.
The seventh book very obviously ran into the dilemma of "oh god oh fuck i have so many loose ends and my protagonists are in such deep shit there is no way i can tie this all together". AKA the Kojima/Lost dilemma. Deathly Hallows was an admirable effort but the cracks in foundation are extremely visible
Then all the people Voldemort’s wand has killed come out of it as ghosts and tell Harry how cool he is.
This happens when I jerk off a lot
This shit was gripping when you were younger but if you step back and view the series with a wider critical eye it has a lot of gaping problems.
Yes. After rewatching the fourth movie, it’s crazy that Voldemort and Barty Jr contrive this whole plan of kidnapping Harry that involves Barty directly kidnapping Moody, a trained Auror and defense against the dark arts professor, and then disguising himself as Moody for an entire year while taking over his professor job. Then over the course of the year cleverly manipulating people in order to get Harry to win the tournament and grab the cup which teleports him to Voldemort. That sounds like a Count Olaf plan and not a plan that comes from a dangerous wizard. If they could kidnap Moody, they could just kidnap Harry, who is just a kid and living with muggles. If they could turn the trophy into a portkey, they could turn lots of things into portkeys. Like his toothbrush. And in that case, he wouldn’t be carrying his wand with him which allows him to escape Voldemort. I love the series though so maybe I’m a lib.
Dumbledore actually lied again. Harry and Voldemort basically get stuck in limbo, where he has some kind of magical conversation with Dumbledore (I’m not sure this is ever explained). Voldemort’s Killing Curse once again failed to kill Harry, and instead destroyed the portion of Voldemort’s soul latched onto Harry (again I don’t think a Killing Curse was originally able to destroy a Horcrux and this is also never really explained). Basically, just as Voldemort was unable to die while Harry lived, so too Harry cannot die while Voldemort lived. But now the last ties between them have been destroyed.
In order to destroy a horcrux, it has to be obliterated in such a way that it could never be brought back. If the horcrux is a living thing, you can just kill it by any method because magic can't bring the dead back to life. So if Voldemort had killed Harry, he would have destroyed the unintentional horcrux he created.
I think technically speaking he did kill Harry, but the remnant of Lily's protection saved him from dying all the way, and that's what caused him to meet Dumbledore in limbo or wherever.
I think it's fair to say that this plot point was kind of contrived and not really set up in universe, and although the specific magic that allowed it wasn't set up, it was a recurring plot point throughout the entire series that Harry never asked to be the chosen one and didn't like it, so the moment with Dumbledore represented him being "reborn" as a hero by choice rather than by random chance.
Honestly I don't get why every leftist wants me to hate the Harry Potter books. JK Rowling may be a piece of shit, but that has literally nothing to do with the content of the books. It doesn't matter if you're the most despicable Nazi ever to Hitler, if you write a book that captures the imagination of millions of kids and doesn't contain your ideology in it, you've written a good book. Hating everything associated with someone doesn't mean you hate them more.
edit: ok, I don't mean the book has to "not contain your ideology," that's impossible. What I mean is it has to not serve as a vehicle for your ideology, and it has to not contain so many problematic themes as to set it apart from other media in the same cultural context, which I believe applies to the HP series. I acknowledge the serious flaws in the books, but I think they should be looked at completely ignoring Rowling's stated political views, which people clearly are not doing.
if you write a book that captures the imagination of millions of kids and doesn’t contain your ideology in it
You're not wrong about a lot of the hatred of the books being overblown, but they ABSOLUTELY contain Rowling's ideology in them
Well, every work of art contains some of the ideology of the artist. That was an overstatement.
But if you ignore Rowling's real world actions, the books aren't that problematic as media from that time period goes. It's more in hindsight that we can make connections between some of the casual stereotyping in the books and the political views of the author.
It's not just the stereotypes. Voldemort defeating himself because he Broke The Rules is peak liberal ideology
Not to mention that supporting her books helps to fund her ideology-pushing and gives her a louder voice.
Oh hey, someone named for a children's book series I really enjoyed as a kid.
Just now realizing I never actually finished Keys to the Kingdom. Or Pendragon, now that I think about it
if you write a book that captures the imagination of millions of kids and doesn’t contain your ideology in it, you’ve written a good book.
Her book is neoliberal as fuck though
Sure, but so is most media. The Lion King is pro absolutist monarchy, and it's still a good movie.
Well yes, but that wasn't the point you were making, at least I thought. You said that what made the book good was that it captured the imagination of millions of kids and it doesn't contain your ideology. I was saying it does contain her ideology, which is why there was no real revolution or anything in it, and Voldemort lost on a technicality.
Yeah I kinda put my point wrong in that comment, I put an edit at the end since then.
I think Harry survived because the elder wand refused to kill him. The point of the deathly hallows was to allow their owners to cheat death after all.
Battle is joined (EDIT: I actually totally forgot about the “love protection” aspect of Harry’s earlier sacrifice - because Harry sacrificed himself under the impression he was going to die, his non-death still conveys love protection to literally everyone on his side in the battle and they wipe the floor with the remaining Death Eaters) and Harry and Voldemort confront each other one last time in the Great Hall. Voldemort, all arrogance, intends to kill Harry once and for all. Harry tries to I guess “redeem” Voldemort one last time by warning him that the situation is not what he thinks it is and if he tries to kill Harry, the curse will backfire. Why is this?
The "love protection spell" at the end was Harry Potter bluffing. If I remember correctly, after Neville showed his badassedness, Harry slipped on the invisibility cloak and ran through the battlefield casting shielding/reflecting spells while he went looking for Voldemorte and Ron and Hemione.
I'm pretty sure you're not remembering correctly, the love protection thing was real.
There's what he said when he faced up against voldemort....
‘– I meant to, and that’s what did it. I’ve done what my mother did. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?’
and then there's what he did.
Hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, Harry cast a Shield Charm between Neville and Voldemort before the latter could raise his wand. (DH, page 733)
Voldemort raised his wand and directed it at Molly Weasley. “Protego!” roared Harry, and the Shield Charm expanded in the middle of the Hall, and Voldemort stared around for the source as Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak at last. (DH, page 737)
And that's just from some quick googling. Pretty sure there were a couple more shield charms in between the two. Harry may have been protected by the Love spell, like during the crucio stuff, but the thing protecting his friends at the end was him.
I thought it was both, like he was protecting them AND they were shielded from all the Death Eaters, but maybe he didn't realize in the moment that he didn't need top protect them. Because why would Harry lie there? To psych Voldemort out? He's about to die anyway because of the Elder Wand owner thing. IDK, it's sloppy writing on Rowling's part, some editor needed to tell her that it wasn't clear at that part.
IDK, it’s sloppy writing on Rowling’s part, some editor needed to tell her that it wasn’t clear at that part.
lmao, no argument there.
I actually defend the Harry Potter series a lot because it was very much a kind of formative literary experience you grew up with. Like, a cultural phenomenon you had to experience in person to really understand its immense popularity. And not only that, but the books matured with you. When you were hitting puberty and experiencing things like death, depression, and sexual tension for the first time, the later books were addressing those themes in detail. That's the reason the series' quality tends to be overblown - peoples' connections to it aren't that it was incredible genre fiction but that it forms an intense emotional connection to them in their memories. For a lot of people, the Harry Potter series was what got them into reading as a kid.
My grandmother and aunt gifted me the first four books when I was like 8. I kind of ignored them for a while (I was more of a Civil War history nerd then like Matt) but my dad started reading them to my sister and I aloud before bed. Those are probably the most intimate emotional memories I have of my father. We did that for six books, even up to when we were in high school. It basically became a ritual. When the seventh book came out we were on vacation in the boonies but still made a special trip to town to buy a copy day of. I proceeded to lock myself in my room for three straight days in order to read it cover to cover. This was basically the culmination of a decade of anticipation and it really did pay off at the time.
There's a lot of positive and quality aspects to those books. But they are nowhere near perfect.
Also the setting of a school where all the students know each other and their teachers over seven years is super nostalgic because I went to a small school for seven years and all the friendly/funny/mean interactions between characters reminds me of times I had with the people at my school. My university is way too big to get the same sense of community. I hope when the revolution comes we can find a way to build small communities again instead of everyone being isolated in their suburban homes and only making connections with family and a few friends.
They're kids books. The worst thing that ever happened to the Harry Potter series was becoming a phenomenon and the people who read it as kids continuing to latch onto it as a neotonous soother as adults. I read plenty of kids books as a kid that don't "hold up" as an adult reader (like Maniac Magee or Holes or stuff like that). They don't hold up because they're meant for children. It's hard to completely blame all these adult fans of Harry Potter because between JK Rowling and Hollywood they were never given a second of breathing time away from this kids series to mature and reflect, Harry Potter kept releasing new films, a play, a different film series, and so on.
Oh wait I just forgot you left off how Harry's able to fake being dead. His coded-as-Nazi nemesis' parents are there, and the mom comes over to check that he's REALLY dead. She asks Harry if her son is alive and when he says yes, she lies to Voldemort.
Edit: also also, in her fucking shitty Cursed Child play where someone tries to revive Voldemort, she accidentally makes the case why reconciliation doesn't necessarily work and why it's important to destroy a monarchy to the root but in her neoliberal imagination it's just a whoopsie daisy, that ain't too good kinda thing.
Gahhh.
A better series, if it really wanted to end this way, would have spent a lot of time in the series setting up these McGuffins and the ambiguity of the language regarding ownership of the McGuffin.
Basically, go read Wheel of Time instead. Got it.
Pratchett is legitimately one of the best authors of the modern era IMO. The sheer amount of fucking layers, both in the plots, characterizations, and puns that he managed to weave together into a coherent whole is just ridiculous.
Jordan wrote most of the prophecies the series is built around in the first 3-4 books. There were plot twists that happened after he died that he had come up with twenty years earlier. I'm not sure there's a better architect when it comes to world building in the genre, possibly except Brandon Sanderson.
Yeah all that I got, but literally how did Harry NOT die, and then how did he manage to kill Voldemort anyway? It was something about like a wand remembering something or some stupid shit like that.
Weird that libs stuck it out for that, they usually HATE shit like that.
Yeah, it felt earned even though reading it, even as a ~14 year old it was corny as shit.
I like to tell myself that Avada Kedavra is just a
end spiritcommand, since it doesn't mar the body, and it only hit the outer shell of spirit in Harry's body, which was that piece of Voldy's that was pasted over top when Harry was accidentally made into a Horcux by that same spell. Though ya, it's never explained haha. Could also just be residual love magic from the first time Voldy tried to Kadaver Harry
On reflection the first four books were clearly planned intricately well in advance and are very coherent. But the last three, even if they become more mature in their themes, I think were clearly done one at a time, with only certain very important aspects planned out before (ie Snape being a double reverse quadruple agent who killed Dumbledore; Dumbledore being terribly flawed and also dying before the finale; Voldemort's entire character and ultimate ironic fate). The later books start seriously pulling shit out of their asses that were barely or never foreshadowed in earlier books (the prophecy, Occlumancy, the Deathly Hallows, why the "Half-Blood Prince" subplot was even remotely important enough to warrant a book title) and retroactively made more important.
I feel Rowling has a very good grasp of how to write complex, compelling characters but when she's improvising on plot details her talent comes up short.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Harry and Potter.
i only saw the movie and i barely remember it but let me explain with complete confidence.
voldemort storms the hogwarts place to kill everyone but everyone mounts a defense and a bunch of people die but then harry potter goes into a dream sequence and voldemort is a fetus and dumbledore is there and then cut to harry potter is 40 years old. hope that helps.
"If I had a Horcrux, I would drop it in the bottom of the ocean or I would put it in a pyramid with King Tut and all of his jewels. Or I would blast it into space with a monkey who knew nothing about Horcruxes."
why the monkey? just bribe some muggles to put it on the voyager or something
Nu-Atheist Harry Potter rewrite is basically one of the most nightmarish abominations you can possibly conceptualize
A Very Potter Musical, one of the best things to come out of Harry Potter, probably second only to Wizard People, Dear Reader.
It's legit fantastic. It's an audiobook narrative retelling of the first movie, synced up to the first movie. Pokes a lot of fun at the monomyth, but also has some really poetic lines. The main one on Youtube is the first version, but I highly recommend looking for the second recording, it's got a lot more polish.
Harry Potter is definitely a story where the world building can be intriguing and brings up more questions than answers, but it’s 100% plot first world building, which means everything is built to drive the story forward.
Which is why you end up with the seventh book adding huge new layers of important plot devices (the three items that make you master of death), and massive plot holes and problems that result if you try to stray conceptually from the main plot (such as, wtf are the other wizard nations doing about Voldemort? Why doesn’t the love Protection magic constantly come up in crimes of passion, and why does it not effect muggles if it’s some deep magic that doesn’t stem from a wizard? Or, why do books cost money? Why is there poverty in a more or less post scarcity world? Time travel magic basically breaks the whole story)
In other words, the world is built to fit the story, rather than the story being born out of a developed world or lore (people will have different opinions on well developed worlds, but book Westeros as an example is a well developed world that the main story is cradled in).
It's the dumbest pile of bullshit ever. I cant even remember what stupid shit actually happened but at one point bumblebee was like 'if these things happen harry will die' and then they happened and he didn't die because I dont fucking know I hate Harry Potter and anyone who likes it.
