Ending WAS : Compassionate hero

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 176032

> Alla:
> 
> I do not think I am having it both ways. I am saying that I see 
> **small** signs of change, while saying that not showing 
**bigger** 
> signs of change sounds realistic enough to me, not even saying 
that 
> they are not possible.
> 
> I do disagree with the lack of progress, yes, but am saying that 
> progress is going in baby steps.
> 
> As to why Teddy might have wanted to hide it – it is not like IMO 
> general public necessarily would like to watch the son of werewolf 
> with somebody, anybody.> Yes, I think WW was that bigoted to 
werewolves and their families. 

Magpie:
To me this one just doesn't show anything, since we've never seen 
any sons of werewolves to begin with. Teddy seems like just a normal 
metamorphagus who didn't know his parents and didn't inherit his 
father's sensitivity about this stuff. 

Now, I agree things have probably gotten better for werewolves 
compared to canon because things had gotten worse during canon. Are 
werewolves accepted now? I find that hard to believe. Presumably the 
Umbridge-years are over and her crueler laws have been repealed, but 
I don't know enough about their families at the start of the series 
to know how they were viewed. Teddy didn't grow up with a werewolf 
in the family. Nothing about him makes me think there's been a big 
step forward in how people react to werewolves.

My own reading is that Teddy's story is part of Harry's happy 
ending. Teddy is part of Harry's family, so he is shown happily 
being happy in the happiness of the train station. Harry's family is 
happy.

Alla:
> 

> And I totally think that Draco's curt nod IS a progress. When 
> exactly did he acknowledge Harry and his friends before without 
> screaming obscenities ( metaphorically) or throwing curses at them?

Magpie:
I see a definitely improvement in *Draco* himself, sure. Harry saved 
his life. (Heh--I of course could come up with two examples of Draco 
acknowleging Harry and his friends without screaming obscenities or 
throwing curses--the first two times they met!) He seems to have 
settled into a more acceptable Slytherin mode. I don't deny this 
conflict changing.

Alla:
> I would find Draco becoming **friends** with Trio for example, as 
> Lissyben suggested before to be extremely unrealistic and 
> saccharine. IMO of course. Seven years of animosity do not just go 
> away in my opinion and curt nod is the most I thought possible, 
you 
> know?

Magpie:
I wouldn't find it saccharine or unrealistic at all, actually, 
depending how it was done. Seven years of animosity certainly can 
change if the people have had 19 years and a big altering 
experience. They don't have to be friends, but sure I think you 
could hate somebody for 7 years starting when you were 11 and have a 
more normal relationship with them as an adult. I think Snape could 
have had a better relationship with the Marauders as well. I always 
took their inabilities to get over that relationship to be a bit 
strange on their part, especially Snape's. The idea that you spend 
your life stuck in the same relationships with people you knew in 
high school seems like one of the things I accept as a quirk of the 
series more than something that reflects real life. I noticed huge 
differences in the way high school people treated each other as a 
result of college in my own life.
 
 
> Alla:
> 
> Well, correct me if I am wrong, but aren't you talking about 
> **complete** healing of the rift as ending that you would find 
more 
> appealing, more satisfying?
> 
> If you are, then yes, it is pretty much reads to me as hearts and 
> flowers, meaning that everybody becomes friends, no?

Magpie:
No, I don't think everybody has to be friends, but a definite ending 
(pre-epilogue) where a real step has been made would have been fine--
and I think naturally led to more of a change 19 years later. (Some 
people are claiming this change anyway, saying that 19 years later 
the rivalry with Slytherin is just for fun anyway, like two rival 
ivy league schools. I don't see that.)

It certainly wouldn't be outside the realism as presented in canon. 
Harry and Ron can't stand Hermione early in PS, then they fight a 
troll together and we're literally told that "some experiences" just 
make you friends--from that moment on they're all three joined at 
the hip. That's not particularly realistic from my experience, but 
it works for me in this canon.

> Alla:
> 
> I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, who never 
goes 
> to Internet to read HP discussions, but is just obsessed as I am. 
> Oh, and I remember somebody mentioning "casual reader" recently ( 
> not you), so he is far from casual reader, he is let's put it this 
> way, very sophisticated reader. I think I mentioned his opinions 
> here once.
> 
> I was discussing DH with him and mentioned Slytherin issue and  
told 
> him that while it does not majorly bother me, it is strange that 
one 
> quarter of the school is allowed to go to Slytherin.
> 
> He looked at me as if I am crazy ( he does have a child by the way 
> to foresee questions, she is twelve now). He was like, are you 
> seriously telling me that you think that by the age of eleven you 
do 
> not find the character of the child to be completely formed? He 
was 
> like – well, I do and no, I do not find it strange that Sorting 
hat 
> seems to know who is who at the age of eleven. After all, it is 
not 
> like school does that, Hat is magical, it knows.

Magpie:
Having a formed personality by age 11 does not mean you are who you 
will be at 11. The hat knows where someone belongs because in this 
unvierse that works--how come James Potter can be a bully at 15 and 
we're just told hey, people are jerks when they're 15? In this canon 
obviously it's that James was "always" a good guy underneath and his 
bullying doesn't show his soul the way it does with somebody like 
Draco (Likewise I think James "I think I'd leave if I was in 
Slytherin" means something different from Draco's "I think I'd leave 
if I was in Hufflepuff"). So in this universe yeah, I see how it 
works.

But in real life? No, not at all. I've talked to people in fandom 
who identified with the Slytherins *because* they were like that as 
kids and were not anymore. Lots of people do change as they grow up--
maybe fundamentally their personality is the same, but it doesn't 
always have to manifest the same way. Draco seems to start the 
series making a point of enjoying others' suffering (JKR says in an 
interview he "shuts down" the better parts of himself, so that 
wasn't his whole personality). He doesn't seem that way when he gets 
older. In different circumstances different parts of the personality 
might come out. Certainly a person can learn different values. I 
don't seem to have all the same values as my parents do in ways I 
did when I was a kid.

 
> Magpie:
> <SNIP>
> > I'm also suspicious of the "usual" epilogue idea since I don't 
> know 
> > exactly what epilogues refered to. It makes it seem like every 
> other 
> > fantasy or children's writer was writing pablum until JKR 
> introduced 
> > the idea of an ambiguous ending, when a) plenty of other writers 
> have 
> > had endings that allowed that evil could still return and b) I 
> don't 
> > know that JKR necessarily considers this ending ambiguous. Maybe 
> she 
> > just fixed all the problems she thought needed to be fixed. It 
> reads 
> > to me like a happy ending, not an ambiguous one.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> It reads to me as happy ending for the characters, but with plenty 
> of room for change left in the society level.

Magpie:
Sure, there's a lot of room for change--there was at the beginning 
as well. But the book is over, and that wasn't part of the story. A 
future change doesn't seem like something set up, specifically. 
After all, that epilogue is 19 years later, so obviously the events 
of the story didn't lead to the change much happening. Our heroes 
seem perfectly happy with the life they do have, which solves the 
problems they were trying to solve--they can raise their families 
and go to Hogwarts without anybody trying to kill Harry or his 
friends.

It would, I agree, be unrealistic to suggest all prejudice was 
eradicated, if only because as humans I don't think we even know 
what this world would look like. Prejudice isn't something you just 
get rid of like a bad wizard. But just as I don't think it's that's 
simple, I don't think it's so simple as every society always being 
one bad leader away from Fascism, and I do think there are things 
that can be done in a society to address the problem and keep it in 
check. The fact that it's part of human nature doesn't mean there 
aren't real things to be done about it. If I were going to come up 
with what this universe says can be done about it, it seems like the 
answer is that the good people just need to be in charge to keep the 
bad people down.

Alla:
> 
> As to the endings, I was definitely talking about fantasy endings 
> only, there are of course plenty realistic endings in the non- 
> fantasy fiction books.
> 
> But yes, I stand by the assertion that majority of fantasy endings 
> leave pretty much everything resolved and they lived happily ever 
> after, all problems in society done.

Magpie:
You're talking about two different things now. An ending being 
ambiguous is not, imo, the same thing as an ending where the 
characters are happy but the society still has some of its problems.

The problems of the story in question are usually resolved--that's 
what stories do. The problem of HP is resolved by unambiguously 
killing Voldemort. Since Harry's happiness has always been the 
central problem, his being happy seems to solve the central story 
problem. A story that set out to solve the problem of a certain rift 
would solve that rift for a happy ending. Inequalities in the WW 
have always been an aside for Harry, something he notices when it 
interferes with his friends.

Certainly in this story it would be unrealistic to solve all sorts 
of things I see as a problem without actually doing anything about 
them--if we'd seen House-Elves were freed, Slytherins were angels, 
all prejudice ended etc., that would be unrealistic, of course, 
because it wasn't earned. It also would be beside the point of what 
Harry was ever trying to do to begin with. The author would just be 
waving a wand. (Ironically, didn't JKR pretty much do that in 
interviews when she said the Trio just went in and reformed the 
entire Ministry after Hogwarts with their awesomeness?) 

But showing a change that was earned in the story wouldn't be a 
problem for me, because I'd see how it happened. Some of these 
changes that didn't happen *did* seem to be raised as actual story 
problems for me, which is why I expected they'd be addressed. It 
turned out they were more just world-bulding. (This is why if you 
naturally saw Slytherin as Harry's Shadow the ending seems like a 
failure even though it's obviously not presented as such.)

I haven't read Mercedes Lackey so I don't know how she ends her 
books. I would not say that Tolkien's ending was ambiguous, but 
neither is JKR's. Voldemort is defeated as surely as Sauron and I 
didn't read Harry's "all was well" as ironic--Tolkien's ending is 
actually the far more bittersweet and less absolute: "I'm back." 
We're not talking about ambiguity but solving all the problems of 
the world, which Tolkien doesn't. The Ring is destroyed, which was 
the problem. That itself causes other things to be destroyed. The 
elves leave Middle Earth. And what about Frodo's ending--is that 
happy? He's never healed and can't reintegrate into his society ever 
again. Actually in general I'd say people tend to get much more 
mixed feelings about Tolkien in this way. His characters carry the 
scars and cares of fighting a war in ways JKR's characters don't, 
imo. I suspect Tolkien's own experiences in that regard come through.


BetsyHP:
I've read several articles in the New Yorker lately on certain
philosophers, scientists, artists who had one world view as children
(the world view their parents taught them) and then left home and
either at college or while traveling in a foreign culture or going to
a big city, met up with a completely different world view, had their
preconceptions shaken up, and went on to become geniuses in their
field. 

Magpie:
I think we've been reading the same articles.:-) But yeah, I can 
even think of people I went to high school with and knew since they 
were 11 who had a complete turnaround in their thinking that way. 
One's personality not changing says very little about whether a 
person will seem the same to others.

BetsyHP:
Harry and co. are the definition of content (OBHWF, after all). 

Magpie:
That's how it read to me--and interviews (not that they're canon) 
seem to indicate they're content with the world they've fixed to 
their liking as well as themselves. As I said above, the last 
sentence does not read as ironic to me--Harry's scar still isn't 
hurting him, so all is well. (It's a really well-chosen last 
sentence!)

-m