[the_old_crowd] HBP Spoilers - Tonks

[Aberforths Goat / Mike Gray]

Barry'll 
     BE
         GLAD
                 WHEN
                             WE
                                 DON'T
                                             NEED
                                                         TO
                                                                 DO
                                                              
           
  THIS
                                                              
           
          ANYMORE ...

... but the more perverse among us will howl at the moon.

* * * * *

> Hell's teeth. What more do you want?
> T'ain't Tonks. Though the one at the funeral probably is.

Nnngh. Don't buy. I'm following your Pippin here.

They say that all things are fair in love and war, but with Jo, all bets
are off in love and death. No, I can't prove it, but I just have this
feeling, that that's the way she runs her show. She'll do anything she
can to bamboozle us otherwise, but in matters of mortality and amour,
she's not going to fake us out. 

With death, I think it's because she takes it too seriously -
particuarly, the finality of death. Deus ex style resurrections seem
like the sort of thing that would cross the line. (Which is why I can't
imagine any way that Dumbledore is still alive.) 

With love, I'm not so sure, but it just doesn't sound right. I think it
was important to her to show Tonks pining away for love - to some degree
to show a more serious kind of love than the teenagers understand yet.
It seemed like a counterbalance of sorts.

It also touches on some other issues that are important to her, like
racial stuff (here connected to Lupin's werewolfism).

Finally: She used Tonk's odd behavior to wave red herrings at us all
book long. When she ended it all by identifying Lupin as the true source
of Tonks troubles - well, I'd like to put it this way: she cashed in her
narrative chips. I think that game is over now, and to drdge up the
thing with a whole new interpretation would be tiresome - or at least
just doesn't feel to me like the way Jo writes.

Just my two Knuts - and it's mostly a touchy-feely-instinctive thing
that has a lot to do with my intuitions about the way Jo plays her
narrative hand than good, hard argument.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) 
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, 
so that may not have been bravery...."