Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Spoilers)

[Scott]

This is a thread for the people who have finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book. (If you have not read it, please do not read further as this thread will include spoilers.)

What did you think of the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? What surprised you most in the final book?

What do you think of the series as a whole?

Please post any questions you have for other people who read the whole series.

Feel free to discuss the book in whole, as this thread is for people who have read it.

[clmascolo]

I'm the first in my family to have finished the book and its driving me crazy having to make sure not to say ANYTHING about it.

I don't quite know how I feel about the ending. I thought she came up with a clever way to have him die and not die at the same time. I definitely didn't care for the very last chapter though (the "19 years later"), it made it seem too neatly "wrapped up" to me. But perhaps that was to prevent anyone else from trying to continue the series?

[boaz]

the book was great until the end. I didnt like that harry was a horcrux and that all along dumbledore had kept that a secret from him. Also in the final battle between harry and voldemort i thought there should have been a little more then both casting a spell and having voldemort's spell backfire. especially since JK Rowling had already used that twice earlier in the series. Also the nineteen years later was just put there and didnt really explain what happened. It left out many important characters.

I really liked the fact that snape ended up being on the good side though it did become obvious at the beginning. JK Rowling made too much of a point that he casted sectumsiempra on fred to cut off his ear. Which wouldn't have been as obvious if in the previous book there hadnt been arguments for both sides making it impossible to tell.

There were a couple of inconsistencies throughout the books. For example the bank was supposed to be the safest place to put anything but yet twice in the series very valuble objects were stolen from high security vaults.

I never expected mad eye to die though he always seemed almost invincible. plus, tonks and lupin surprised me becuase they just had their kid so i thought they had to survive (who looks after him now because harry was his godfather but he is so young and without a job and he had kids of his own).

[lizabello]

I'm not a harry Potter fan myself, so to be honest with you I couldn't help you. If you want my honest opinion? I think the whole series is overrated.

[haylesd]

i love the harry potter series and i finished hollows of sunday night. i loved the book (it made me cry soo much) but there are too many questions left at the end like what happened after the battle, who is headmaster at hogwarts, what job does harry and everyone else have and what happened to everyone lese like luna.
maybe we are s'posed to imagine it for oursleves, jk would not have published it if she was not happy with it.

[clmascolo]

I actually thought it was always obvious that Snape would turn out to be good. I read book 6 a second time before this new one, and when I re-read it, the fact that Dumbledore had a plan that involved Snape killing him was pretty clear.

I did, however, think that whatever the plan was would end up turning out to mean Dumbledore wasn't really dead, so I was wrong about that part. I actually really liked that Dumbledore's character turned out to be a lot less "perfect" than he'd always appeared as, and what a hard time Harry had coming to see his idol as more of a regular person. (dont' we all go through that at some point, when you finally realize your parents/teachers/etc dont' actaully know everything and do make mistakes!)

As far as Lupin and Tonks leaving behind their orphaned kid, (and all the others that died) I think it just showed that even though the good guys won in the end, how many lives were affected by the battle. It would make the connection with Harry that much stronger too. As to what happened to the kid...didn't Tonks still have some living relatives, who were watching the baby while they were fighting? Since they mention that the kid spent a lot of time at Harry and Ginny's but hadn't yet moved in with them, I assumed that Tonks relatives raised the baby.

Personally, I thought that Harry using his trademark disarming spell was appropriate, his was too "good" of a soul to be tarnished by actually killing someone, even Voldemort. The backfired spell was a little repetitive, but I'm not sure how else you could have it happen?

[boaz]

See my thinking on whether or not snape was good, was this there was an argument for both sides and i thought that it was actually almost obvious that he was good so i thought maybe JK Rowling was trying to mislead us.

I had actually thought the same thing that if Snape was good maybe somehow they had tricked everyone into thinking dumbledore was dead, but sadly that didnt happen. The fact about dumbledore not being perfect makes a lot of sense. No one is perfect and too much of a good thing. At an early age he was too intelligent causing him to think that he was superior to others especially muggles.

As far as tonks and her baby i think she still had one grandparent left, but i thought it was on lupin's side, lupin himself was almost fifty now so his parent was probably in the young seventies which is kind of old to be looking after a toddler, who would perform tricks like no hands on a slide.

It did make sense that Harry used the disarming spell as the final spell to destroy voldemort, but still i tihnk there could have been a better battle scene then everyone is fighting, suddenly it stops, harry and voldemort taunt eachother and fire off one spell each.

I've been looking at the harry coming back to life part and the more i look at it the less i like it. my major problem with it is that in the last month i have read 2 other books that have the same thing, the only difference being how they die. The last book i read before this was Nightrise a third book in a series by Anthony Horowitz and it had a character dieing and coming back to life later and surprising the very dark evil villian which helps finish him off, just the same as with voldemort.

I did like how the wand fell into harry's hand rather thaan voldemorts. Though if the wand was supposedly unbeatable how did Dumbledore beat Grindelwald who was a rightful owner of the first hallow.

[cmh2140]

Overall, I was much happier with this book that the last two (5 and 6). While I was also a little dissappointed at the loose ends - like what happened to the characters not in the epilogue and to harry, ron and hermione (since they didn't complete their 7th year at school).

As far as Harry being the 7th horcrux - my friend and I in Israel had predicted that sometime during the first reading of the 6th book. While I would have liked dumbledore to not be dead, it seems to have been better that way as harry realized that he didnt know him as well. The chapter where harry is "dead" i was unhappy with, but it was rather necessary and im not sure that there was a better way to bring that information out when it needed to be brought out (perhaps she could have kept Snape alive long enough for him to share some of it? i can't remember everything that dumbledore said during that conversation at the moment). Also, harry does ask at the end of the chapter "is this in my head" and dumbledore says yes. That made me happier because he wasn't being brought back from the dead, but pissed me off because how on earth would harry be hallucinating that information?

As far as the epilogue - i think that it was a way of not allowing someone to carry on with harry, ron and hermione as kids, and a way of setting up a new series with the new first-years for JKR or someone else to write. I think it would be really cool for someone to pick up with those kids and do the same increasing-reading-level type series for kids that are now in 2nd/3rd grade.

oh yes - and snape being good/bad was going back and forth in my head the whole time (from book 1).

[Dori]

Ugh...it is currently 1:23 AM where I live and I just finished the book. I whole-heartedly agree with lizabello in saying the series is overated. I wan't too much of a fan of the epilogue either. Tolkien is better.

[6Anna9]

I like the last book although I was disappointed about a couple of things. Snape being part of the 'good side' was really obvious although I kept laughing everytime they mentioned how in love he was with Lilly. I found that ridiculous. Voldemorts spell backfiring upon him was really pathetic. I thought Harry was suppose to destroy him? I wasn't happy that Lupin and Tonks died although I understand why Rowling did it>(irony). I was most disappointed with Draco. I think he should have either done something 'good' for Harry or become pure evil. But other than that...it was okay.
Anna
P.S. the 19th chapter was a waste of space.

[comfortablynumb]

I thought overall it was pretty good, but I felt certain parts of the book could of been chopped down and other areas extended. The whole on the run, hiding in the forest bit went on way to long. Some of the characters that where killed off didn't really make to much sense, poor Hedwig

Fast forward to the "epic" battle I felt that was pretty cheesy too, he used his signature expelliarmus spell and that's that. Then we jump ahead 19 years and where left with "all is well".

To me it just seems the ending was rushed with no thought or effort, just to have an end to the series. In an interview online J.K Rowling said the original ending was going to be "Only the people that truly loved Harry could now see his scar" I don't honestly know which ending is cheesier.

[part-time reader]

In my opinion JK wrote a 'perfect' final book. I admired that she visited in the book almost all previously visited places. Please correct me if I am wrong. Tied up lose ends etc oh poor Doby - the tears!!!

I actually really dont like writters that leave the ending open expecting us to imagine what happens - in truth if I wanted to do that I would never read...odd opinion I know but I like people to create worlds and end them I want their idea not mine anyway

It was good! I would have written it somewhat differently but I am not JK.

[lady_carrie]

P.S. the 19th chapter was a waste of space.

Have to agree with you there.

[babypinkcandygirl]

wow i cant believe what im reading.... call me childish but when i finished the final chapter i just smiled and smiled and smiled some more i wish one of those guys from men in black would come and zap my memory just so i could read it fresh all over again!

[NSUSA]

It's hard for me to judge the last book rather than the whole series. Even if the last book wasn't as good as it could have been, I would have loved it because it completed the whole series.