[HPforGrownups] Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 183371

Lynda Cordova:
Well, we can start with the statements concerning wands and move on to
Harry's invisiblility cloak that does not deteriorate like others do. These
statements are found throughout the series, not just in the last book.

CJ:
There are *lots* of statements about wands (this *is* a wizarding 
series, after all :-) ). Which ones, specifically, were Hallowed hints?
And the closest my (increasingly fallible) memory can come to statements 
about "Harry's invisiblility cloak that does not deteriorate like others 
do" prior to DH is Ron's initial reaction which ran something like, 
"Wow, and it's in really good condition, too!" There were certainly many 
more obvious plot lines that were dropped than such clues-in-hindsight.

Lynda:
There has been a lot of discussion on this list about how JKR did not
deliver what some people expected....What she did give us is a seven part
story filled with amateur detectives who put clues together and many times
come up with incorrect conclusions because they allowed their predisposing
sets of ideas to lead them.

CJ:
Now I think you're being unfairly judgmental toward those of us who find 
her work less than perfect. The fact that we stayed with the series 
through seven books is, I think, testimony to the fact that we *were* 
willing to allow her to lead us where she wanted to go. And in almost 
every case, I found where JKR wanted to go much more entertaining than 
my own expectations.

Go back four or five years through the archives of HPFG and you'll find 
lots of people making wrong prognostications about what future books 
would bring. What you won't find is a lot of complaining that we didn't 
get what we were expecting.

Personally, I found the series really rocked my world through the first 
five books before it began deteriorating. My criticism of the DH plot 
line has nothing to do with my expectations; it has everything to do 
with finding it a major distraction with very little payoff.

Shelley:
if she had just ... dealt with resolving all the Horcruxes, that no one 
would have noticed anything "missing" from the last book. Instead, we 
might have gotten a full resolution on all the plot elements that we did 
love

CJ:
There are *many* things that could have been resolved (or been resolved 
more satisfactorily) in the pages occupied by the DH plot line. I think 
a *lot* of folk would have liked to see a better, or fuller, revelation 
of the Snape backstory, as you mentioned. She could have greatly 
expanded the epilogue. And certainly the whole horcrux chase was highly 
unsatisfactory.

Lynda:
Mine is that the horcruxes were destroyed. Every single one of them!!!!

CJ:
But of course they were. JKR had already established they had to be. It 
was, as I said, the pacing that suffered. After setting their discovery 
and destruction up as such a major plot point in HBP, Harry spends so 
much of DH vacillating on whether to pursue horcruxes or Hallows,
JKR just simply runs out of time (plotwise) and pages to deal with it. 
In the end, she had to locate half the horcruxes *at Hogwarts* (???), 
and even then at least two (or was it three? I've forgotten) were 
destroyed *off page*. Further, after establishing in HBP how utterly 
difficult they were to locate and destroy (finding and destroying *one* 
horcrux took Dumbledore an entire book and all but cost him his life), 
in DH half the horcruxes just dropped into our heroes laps, all but 
dropping dead of their own accord to boot. Pacing, once again.

Lynda:
It is a
common plot in fantasy literature for the questors to camp in the 
wilderness on their journey ... It is also common in fantasy literature 
for the questors to hunt various objects.

CJ:
Camping(?) in the wilderness. Well, perhaps. Not spinning their wheels. 
And it wasn't that Harry & Co. didn't have objects a-plenty to hunt 
already. It was that they spent half the book not hunting them.

Lynda:
And I still don't see how the DH plotline goes nowhere--seems to me that 
it works nicely into the rest of the series.

CJ:
"Works nicely into" and "contributes meaningfully" are horses of an 
entirely different color. The whole DH plotline goes nowhere because it 
makes no meaningful contribution to the advancement of the main plot, 
which ultimately does turn out exactly as we were led to expect: the 
destruction of the horcruxes and a final Harry/LV showdown. And to 
*that*, the Hallows contributed in no meaningful way; red herrings, by 
any other name.

CJ