Disarming spell/ Character's choices

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 185489

> Annemehr:
> 
> For my part, since the graveyard scene of GoF, I expected Harry to 
> defeat Voldemort by having and AK cast at him by LV.  I spent a lot 
> of time trying to guess how that would play out, and *why,* because 
> that moment was going to encapsulate the raison d'etre for the entire 
> series.

Montavilla47:
I agree with you.  I always thought that Harry would eventually
destroy Voldemort and that it would be done in a way that kept
Harry's hands clean.   As others have said, it's a tried and true
way to resolve the protagonist/antagonist relationship.

What I didn't anticipate was that I'd end up feeling so annoyed
with Harry before we got there. :)

Or that I'd feel so cool about what Harry was protecting;  the school,
his friends, and the wizarding world.  By the time the big battle began,
I barely cared that the older students were in deadly danger.  I was just 
impatient for Harry to stop dawdling and find the darn tiara!

Annemehr:
> What she actually did was to mirror *both* of the Godric's Hollow 
> AKs, which I didn't expect, and I think that in itself is rather 
> neat. In the Forest we have the image of Lily's death and creation of 
> the extra soul-bit, in the sacrifice and "death" of Harry, where that 
> soul-bit was destroyed.  Shortly afterward, we have the AK in the 
> Great Hall which is the echo of LV's attempt to kill Harry as an 
> infant, and which likewise rebounded on its caster.
> 
> Of the two, the Forest one grew more organically from the rest of the 
> story, depending as it did on the soul-bit and the drop of Harry's 
> blood.  But it wasted the opportunity to examine what it might *mean* 
> to have carried a bit of LV's soul (i.e., "evil") inside of one.  
> Apparently, Harry was completely untouched, except for a handy extra-
> sensory ability in LV's direction.

Montavilla47:
You're right, though.  Although I didn't find the forest chapter 
as moving as most people, I did find it a lot more moving than the 
second A.K.  That was the real climax of the series.

The second A.K., the build-up to that, the monologuing by Harry,
the offer to let Voldemort seek redemption (in the few seconds left
before Harry finished him off), all of that seemed to me to just
drag things out.


Annemehr:
> Mechanically, the Great Hall AK is unsatisfying because it depends on 
> what to me is a deus-ex-machina of that Elder Wand business.  And 
> with that comes the fact that Harry already knew about the Elder Wand 
> and so knew he was not facing a potent AK.  Even though Harry's 
> Expelliarmus there was meant to recall the graveyard scene, it lacked 
> the teeth of real risk, and the depth of emotion, of GoF, for that 
> reason.

Yes.  And it made it more awkward for me because the Elder Wand
deus-ex-mechanics are so arbitrary.  In order for that to really
work, it needs to make sense to the reader.  But we're still trying
to figure it out more than a year later.  It doesn't really do for JKR
to basically say, "It's magic--that's why it worked."

And you're reminding me of how really terrific that GoF moment
was when Harry, believing himself about to die, fought back with
the one of the few spells he knew, and prevailed through the support
of his dead parents (or the ghosts of Voldemort's murders), and his
own will, just long enough to get away with Cedric's body.

That was a lot more moving to me than anything that happened 
in DH.  I don't even know why it touched me so much.  But there's 
something about Cedric's ghost last thought being for his parents'
feelings, and Harry's determination to fulfill that wish seems to me
truly original, organic to the characters, and universal.

Sometimes I feel like I'm being unbearably negative all the time
about the series.  But it's really only the last book that disappointed
me.  I was terrifically excited when HBP came out.  It's good to 
reminded of the parts of the book that were wonderful.  The last
few chapters of GoF were among the best parts of the whole series.


Ammemehr:
> And, what exactly *is* the "good" of Harry and the "evil" of LV?  She 
> crafted a Tom Riddle with no capacity for empathy. Recall especially 
> DD's interview with Mrs. Cole in HBP - the baby who never cried; the 
> young child who killed animals and tortured children - not to mention 
> the times DD described LV as someone who doesn't *know* love, at 
> all.  And then JKR sent LV to eternal punishment for being who he was 
> created to be.  So, in the AK of the Great Hall, we get 
> the "unrepentant" (as if he could) LV succumbing to his own nature.  
> 
> [I know - it's the old debate again: many readers see LV making a 
> choice there in the Great Hall, but I just can't.]

Montavilla47:
Plus, all it really did (for me) was to make Voldemort pretty darn
boring.  I mean, you can't even get excited by Bellatrix's overheated
adoration of him, because we find out in HBP that he's incapable
of returning it.  So, she ends up looking idiotic, instead of powerful
and obsessed, as she seemed in GoF.

If he's incapable of redemption, there's no point in keeping him 
alive--no dramatic tension.  Harry might as well be facing a 
robot.  

Annemehr:
> What Harry's goodness is supposed to consist in, is by contrast very 
> muddy in the final books.  DD says his soul is "pure," but it seems 
> to me "pure" is a word like "unique" - it's all or nothing.  So what 
> is Harry's soul pure *of?*  His behavior is very mixed.  He is 
> resolved to actively kill LV in HBP, so it's not as though his 
> decisions in PoA not to kill Sirius or to let Peter be killed, have 
> turned him against killing absolutely.
> 
> Well, okay.  So, Harry seems to be a completely normal person of 
> goodwill, and was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, just as 
> many others in the story did.  The only thing that made his 
> sacrifices more potent was mere circumstance: being an accidental 
> Horcrux and the master of the Elder Wand.  Neither of which were 
> choices of his, or even foreseen by the people whose actions caused 
> them.

Montavilla47:
Exactly.  I have no problem with a hero who is "ordinary."  I'm reminded
of one of my favorite childhood series, the Prydain Cycle, in which
the hero, Taran, starts out as a very ordinary assistant pig keeper and,
although he has extraordinary adventures, remains essentially ordinary.
When, for example, he tries to use a magical sword, he nearly kills himself
getting it out of the scabbard.  

But he grows into a hero over five books, with each adventure teaching
him a bit more about the world and about himself.  

And, of course, there's the proto-plebian hero, Frodo.

I like the *idea* that Harry is more or less an ordinary boy (which is 
very fun when it's juxtaposed with the unwanted celebrity status he's
given as a baby).  What mucks it all up is Dumbledore telling him how
extraordinary he is all the time.   It's especially rich when Dumbledore
praises him for not following the guy who killed Harry's parents.  Or
beams at Harry's extraordinarily loving desire to kill as many Death 
Eaters as possible on the way to ridding the world of Voldemort.