Epilogue (was More random jottings)

[davewitley]

Lyn wrote:

> Such a comfort for me in the wake of the DH plot disappointments, and
> the utter pap of that extended epilogue she provides in the Today Show
> interview.

As to pap and disappointments, I dn't have anything to add, but I see she mentions one 
aspect of the epilogue I'd been intendig to comment on: the pervasive mist.

Presumably this is the steam from the engine, but of course no normal engine smoke and 
steam can cover such a space.   The effect is to make the whole scene slightly unreal, as well 
as to evoke the earlier dream sequence with Dumbledore.  On the one hand, the characters 
are in heaven, having passed through their suffering and seeing only dimly the next 
generation aking up the baton; on the other, the scene is removed from the reader; it 
becomes 'long ago and far away'.  At long last we are made to feel that the conceit of a 
parallel world intermingled with ours is just that, and the 'real world' of Kings Cross and 
Muggles is just as much a fantasy in the series as that of Hogwarts and Azkaban.

Encyclopedias, whatever, it's over. Over.

David