Hpforgrownups - unforgivables and epilogue

[Angel Lima]

No: HPFGUIDX 173408

elfundeb <elfundeb at ...> wrote:
> Too many Unforgivables were cast by Harry and co.

Eggplant: 

I profoundly disagree, I think it shows JKR at her full brilliance.  For the first time in his life Harry was able to cast a full power nononsense over the top Cruciatus Curse. Why? Because he enjoyed it.  Does this mean Harry has become a bit corrupted? Yes, but no human
being, not anything made of flesh and blood could go through what
Harry has and not become a bit corrupted. Harry is still a VERY good person, but he's no longer a innocent eleven year old boy getting on the Hogwarts Express for the first time, he's a slightly cynical battle scared veteran who's seen things no man should ever see. 
   
Angel:

I think the words of Sirius and Minerva can shed light on this dilemma and why readers such as myself are so perturbed by Harry's use of the Unforgiveables.  It is not just that these are curses, or Death Eater curses.  These curses are named the Unforgivables for a reason, all intrinsically linked in my opinion to the kinds of people who would use them.  A certain "mindset" after all had to be utilised to carry them out successfully.  

When Sirius spoke of Moody (GOF) he said he was an Auror, one of the best.  Forgive me am paraphrasing because I do not have any of the books at hand, but the allusion was made to Moody being a good "good guy", because he avoided the Unforgiveables if he could.  It was a measure of the kind of man he was and why his body was so torn up - he suffered to avoid the UNNECCESSARY suffering of others.  Though his death was expected it was callously done especially for a man holding true to such honourable values even in the time of war - WWVW1 (Wizarding World Voldemort War 1)

And Minerva's reply to Harry in DF was, 'chivalric but .'

Minerva was not in any harm.  Harry's own immediate reaction was to quote Bellatrix "you had to mean it," jest-like.  He enjoyed the result.

Why Minerva Imperioed Alecta was befuddling also.  Voldemort was on his way already, all she had to do was tie them up which she could have done without resorting to use of Imperio.  It was Rowling's way of showing war was at hand in my opinion but unnecessarily so.

 
Epilogue

I won't quote anyone here as there are so many varied views and increasing animosity towards those who are refuting the trite offering.

Austenesque?  Maybe.  I honestly thought JKR let her daughter write the epilogue.  That isn't me being nasty (I do not and cannot write fanfic) - it was an honest thought assuming her daughter is in her early teens and I thought she wanted to share the profundity of it with her.

Yes it was saccharine but it felt wrong.  It didn't feel like anything had been accomplished other than Voldemort was gone and I couldn't shake the feeling that a pall hung over the scene...or maybe the darkness that saturated the previous pages seeped through. Whilst I understand the argument that she portrayed real life after the fall of Hitler, not so entirely.  Sure we continue to battle evil as evil continues to arise but the implements that allowed for a dictator such as Hitler to rise and conquer have been crushed, whatever new evil arises does so through loopholes or other means unforeseen or plain human weakness.  Not so in the wizarding world.  Cold dungeons and perceptions continue to await the Slytherins and we are left without hope of them rising above the stigma.

The children's names were also bizarre.  Rowling has irreparably damaged Severus for me and I have loved him since first laying eyes on Rickman through the cheery disposition of Columbus.  Throughout everything, I stuck by Severus and wondered just how much more Rowling could make him "look" evil.  

Then the Prince's secret was outed and I felt sorry that I had ever hoped for "good" in anyone other than her heroes.  I defy anyone to prove that what Snape felt for Lily was love.  From stalking, lusting to betrayal.  I had deluded myself to believe there was a reason for his mistreatment of Harry. There was even hope dangling there - he appeared to rupture a spleen when told by Dumbledore Harry had to die yet when asked if he had begun to care for the boy, his reply was incredulity!  "For him?" He asks and casts the doe to refute any good he has ever done was for any reason other than "for Lily" under Dumbledore's orders. Lily, whose husband and child he happily led Voldemort to.

Yes we read the same words, understand them differently and take from them lesson or folly.  I had hoped so much for Severus and tried my very best to disbelieve he had loved Lily fearing sweetness unbearable <g>. In hindsight I would take that sweetness gladly instead of the twisted man Snape was.

But I digress, my point about the names was - to have both his parents given precedence in their children's names felt awkward - not only selfish of Harry but docile of Ginny whose character transformations, was already discombobulating to keep up with prior to the epilogue. Then to have Severus in the middle, middle.  I guess Harry like Dumbledore thought he was sorted "too soon" which was completely barf-able much like naming my child after my mother's lusting stalker and my father's indirect murderer.

Beleaguered.  The way Rowling wrote Severus was not one of a man seeking and finding redemption but a man arriving to honourable ends by despicable means.  Much like any morsel of goodness portrayed by a Slytherin was later resoundingly rescinded i.e. Draco refusing to confirm it was the trio in his house only to later reaffirm his allegiance to a Death Eater, smack in the middle of fighting and the after being rescued from the fiendfyre by the honourable heroic trio.

 
The Deathly Hallows

If I may be presumptuous enough to ask, what on earth was the point of this unnecessary mishandled contrivance?  

An invisibility cloak that truly renders the wearer invisible?  How daft was I to miss Barty Crouch Jnr in the top box at the Quidditch World Cup with Harry's wand then!  How were we to have distinguished the difference between Harry's and the others in GoF and OotP?  I was under the impression Harry's IC was impenetrable unlike others, why then did Nagini see them outside Harry's parents place in GH?

Apparently Dumbledore's majesty was not all of his own ability too with the Elder wand but his portrait still ran the school as Snape ran his errands!

Then to suggest that Voldemort would not have been interested much in the Hallows had he even known?  A guy who would split his soul into destructible sevenths turn down the one indestructible means of conquering Death?  Well, as he proved in the end, intelligence was not his strong point was it?  Four failed Avada Kedavras and he couldn't suffer another means of killing Harry!

Sadly after much deliberation on my part, I have come to the conclusion misguided, wrong or utterly ridiculous it may be, that Rowling was inspired!

This boy struck her as she has said.  She then wrote his story which was rejected time and time again.  Once it had been published she was struck with an epiphany more endearing, more powerful than her original premise.  The story took a life of its own, then in the end she pulled on the reins and injected her original ending.

The writer she was then is not a tenth of the writer she is now.  Quite the reverse.  The earlier books told stories enthralling though Rowling's storytelling amateur, all the more fresh and exciting.  Deathly Hallows was brilliantly told but the story itself was rather disturbing.

All in all, I have read Deathly Hallows maybe four times.  After the first I forced myself to reread it in hope of gauging some overlooked message of hope, forgiveness. Nada.  After that it was the sheer memory and fondness of the previous years and how much I as a fan had invested in Harry's journey that made me kept picking up my book, but as time continues to pass, Deathly Hallows rears uglier than at first reading, so much so that if Deathly Hallows with its pulsating rush, sloppy sleuthing and unforgiving flaws was the first book of Rowling's I had ever picked up - I do not think I would have read a second.

Angel