It's a magical world

So The Aurors was not accepted as a Yuletide fandom this year, which makes me and a few other people I know rather sad.

Would anyone be interested in putting together an Aurors fic fest or mini-exchange? Comment to this post if you're interested, no commitment implied! And please feel free to link!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Dir. David Yates, 2010.

As has become tradition, I went to see this with my dad and my sister on Christmas Eve. What a happy holiday movie! Or NOT.

I liked the movie, bleak though it was; I've enjoyed the later movies for the way they imbricate Harry and his friends in the Muggle world as thoroughly as they do in the magical, and the way the movies overlay those two worlds on each other much more closely than the books can or do. This movie isn't immune to the essential plotting problems that make the first half of the seventh book such a slog, but it does manage to move things along slightly quicker, which is good, because there's horrible things to see and favorite characters to be killed off, damn it! (As time goes on I get less reconciled to many of JKR's decisions in these last three books, I have to admit.)

I sort of found myself annoyed that, because of time constraints in earlier movies, a lot of characters whom we already know from way back had to be introduced for the first time at the beginning of this movie, but I was glad to see them, and I thought this movie did really well at conveying a strong emotional tone, strong enough to carry us across the six month gap until the next and final film. It ends at basically the lowest point possible, which is a good spot, because at least there's nowhere to go but up.

And, yeah, Harry and Ron wouldn't last two days without Hermione: Ron's always right when he's being sarcastic. Whoever called this movie Hermione Granger and the Two Boys She Saves Repeatedly was totally right. 

Happy Birthday to Harry Potter!

My mother loved Harry Potter. In fact, it's perhaps the one book (or rather, series of books) that my entire family read, enjoyed, and discussed together--and then we saw the movies and discussed some more.  So thank you, J.K. Rowling, for giving us those experiences. And here's to Harry, the Boy Who Lived!

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Harry is turned into a house plant by Gilderoy Lockhart after signing a massive advertising contract with McDonalds. Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

In other news, I saw HP5 again today with Mel, and I was thinking that the answer to Voldemort's telling Harry that "you will lose everything" is Luna saying, "Things we lose tend to come back to us eventually, though not in the way we expect them to." And I've generally found that to be true.

The sun has risen over New Jersey and I finished the seventh and final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, about ten minutes ago. I disagree with Michiko Kakutani about "clunky chunks of exposition," I thought this book slithered along with a fleetness and an inevitability probably not matched since Goblet of Fire, which is now dueling in my heart for the position of "my favorite of the lot" with this final entry of the saga.

Without revealing too much, I will say that all the little odd details that seemed telling and memorable throughout the first six volumes came home to roost in this seventh, although a disproportionate number seemed to be from Sorcerer's Stone, which seems only fitting. At several points I was laughing outloud at how bits of memorable verbiage from that first book were made real in this last. In the beginning was the word, indeed. I am pleased with the high number of guesses and wagers I had made with myself that turned out to be true, although on at least one I was completely wrong. And on at least one important question, everyone was right, and everyone was wrong.

I don't think I've ever read a book that has made me sob like this one did. Just--sob. I have wept at books, yes, but I have never sobbed like I did for this one: Sob at the thought of these characters' fates and of how they met them, and also because it is over and I have loved every minute of being a Harry Potter fan since I first bought that first book nine years ago because from the first words it was impossible not to love these characters, even the most broken and damaged among them. But then, the ones who love us never leave us, and nor do the ones we love. All is well.

P.S. After years of JKR saying she would never write about the Potterverse again, recently she's changed her tune and said, "Well, maybe," and in my opinion the pessimistic could take the end of this volume as leaving the door so wide open Hagrid could walk through it without bending. We'll see. I'm not sure what I think. Maybe I think what I thought after finishing Sorcerer's Stone: "Good ending. She could totally write another if she wanted to."