Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Before I begin with my thoughts on the final Harry Potter book, I thought some of you might want to hear about a nice wipe-out that I had yesterday. At one of our long-term grids, there is a creek that needs to be crossed. I did not cross at my usual place. I had managed to get all the way across with no difficulty, but on the last rock, which was wet, I slipped and fell on my knee. I tried to balance myself to pull myself up, and I managed to fall sideways into the creek. Half of me was soaking, while the other half was dry. The water wasn’t too cold and was actually rather refreshing after the exertion of setting a grid and a half of traps. I got up with my dripping bag of seeds and set the trap nearby. When I saw a bewildered Nikhil soon after, I started giggling hysterically. Afterwards I realized that I did in fact hurt myself; I scraped myself on the arm and the knee, pulling a small muscle in my forearm and bruising my knee. My biggest injury is the knee, which is swollen; I will be limping for a few days. Someone always seems to get injured when there are only two people to do all the work (Crisia is with Yeen Ten in Kootenay).

Now for some Harry Potter. I will indicate where you should stop in order not to read any spoilers about the book. Edith and I had pre-ordered our books at an independent bookstore in Canmore. Their release party began at 10:30pm on the 20^th. After searching for a while for some coffee (everything closes before 10pm in Canmore), as both of us had long days (Edith had driven in to Canmore earlier in the day, which is about an hour and a half from Kootenay, and had to go back to do some work before driving in again, and I had gone on a 3-4 hour hike up a mountain just prior to leaving for Canmore), we made our way to the bookstore, which was already packed. The small bookstore had over 200 pre-orders.

To keep people occupied, they had a quiz/scavenger hunt with questions for kids and adults. We answered both, and they were, for the most part, rather difficult. They also had free punch, chocolate frogs, and candy. Half the people there were dressed up in some kind of costume. My favourites were Draco Malfoy, a very little Harry Potter, and a Hagrid, complete with fur coat (It was hot, so I considered that person to be very dedicated). There was a good mixture of age groups, with 8 year olds and their parents, teenagers, people my age, and adults who were there for themselves.

We counted down to 12:01am, and then went to separate tables where books were given out alphabetically. I had my book (and Yeen Ten’s) in my hands by 12:05am. I was very excited and couldn’t wait to go back to the trailer to read. At the trailer, I stayed up reading until around 4:30am. I woke up again at 8am to continue. I was reading pretty much the entire day with small breaks to do a little bit of essential work. I was done the book by 5pm.

I’m a little sad that I didn’t get to savour it a bit, and after Tracy is done with my book, I think that’s what I’m going to do. I was too anxious to find out what happens before anything was spoiled for me. On that note, anything below this paragraph will contain SPOILERS for anyone who has read the books.

To begin, I was very satisfied with the ending of this series. It flowed very quickly even though it was complex, and it was not bogged down by the need to explain or learn anything basic, which was common but necessary in the previous books. I felt vindicated that my major predictions were indeed correct: Harry was a Horcrux, and Snape is good and was in love with Lily Potter.

A lot of people died in this book, the most poignant of which for me were Dobby, Tonks and Lupin, Fred, and Snape. I think the chapter in which everything is revealed about Snape was my favourite. If I was not so dazed from reading the entire day, I think I would have been weeping while reading the last 100 pages or so. The only times where I actually felt my self tearing up a slight little bit were when Harry was digging the grave for Dobby and at the very end, where you see all the major characters 19 years later. I guess it was the Happily Ever After factor that got to me and that I was finally coming to the realization, that, yes, it was finally over; there will never be another book to wait eagerly with anticipation for, in line with hundreds of people anxiously awaiting the same thing. This was it. This was the end.

I would give more thought here to some of the major ideas in the series that make it so great, but I would definitely need to reread this last book at a more leisurely pace and possibly the entire series again in order to do so adequately. For now I must simply say thank you to J.K. Rowling for creating this world and these characters and for finally giving us the conclusion that has been 10 years in the making.