“The religious person may blame it on original sin. The historian may cite the force of trends such as population growth and industrialization. The sociologist offers reasons rooted in the peculiarities of human associations. Reformers blame it all on ‘the system,’ and propose new systems that would, they assert, guarantee a brave new world of justice, peace, and abundance. Everyone, it seems, has his own idea of what the problem is and how it can be corrected. But all agree on one point—that their own system would work very well if only it were universally adopted.

The point of view espoused in this essay is more radical and at the same time more pessimistic. Stated as succinctly as possible: the fundamental problem does not lie in any particular system but rather in systems as such. Salvation, if it is attainable at all, even partially, is to be sought in a deeper understanding of the ways of systems, not simply in a criticism of the errors of a particular system.”

Other references to Systemantics include excerpts of the 3rd edition (renamed The System Bible) via Amazon’s Online Reader—for example, you can browse the entire “Index of Horrible Examples” from Czar Alexander to Three Mile Island and the Titanic—and collected references via del.icio.us. Regrettably Amazon does not actually sell any of the 3 editions, but another company called General Systemantics advertises copies for sale (via a default MS FrontPage theme, itself fodder for a whole article on system failure) along with the brilliantly epigrammatic praise by William Safire that “Work books gall, but Gall’s book works.”

More contemporary parallels to Gall’s work include Donella Meadows’ Twelve Leverage Points which describe a scale of effective places “to intervene in a system,” alternately thought of as levers by which you can affect the workings of a complex system; Edward Tenner’s book Why Things Bite Back on the ‘revenge effects’ or unintended consequences of technology; Jared Diamond’s book Collapse on possible causes of failed societies; and Anti-patterns, an outgrowth of Design Patterns that have been utilized in fields like architecture and software design to find well-solved problems and re-use them. Most anyone who’s held a job can probably relate to one or more organization or management anti-patterns, which also includes longstanding concepts such as “moral hazard” from economics and “scope creep” from project management.

[EB: Systems Engineering]

His response is noteworthy for encapsulating many of the issues facing creators who wish (or face pressure) to distribute their works online, especially unfettered by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and preferably free. In the giveaway economy, as with the dotcom bubble before it, how exactly does that lead to sustainable income? Not all doom and gloom, Poole notes the promotional upsides in terms of wider distribution and thus ’seeding the market’ for possible hard-copy sales and future endeavors. However, the Paypal tip jar approach as attempted by many donation-supported software projects, Stephen King’s abortive The Plant, and Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows bears out the online form of tragedy of the commons where free access to a resource cannibalizes paid support for it. Without adequate volunteered funds as recompense, Poole summarizes the stark options remaining:

“If the breathless advocates of “the free distribution of ideas” are serious, they need either a) to come up with a realistic proposal as to how I am to keep feeding myself while giving the fruits of my labours away for free; or b) come out and say honestly that they don’t think any such thing as a “professional writer” ought to exist, and that I should just get a job like anyone else.”

He goes on to describe the common rejoinder (termed the “Slashdot argument”) that free content can be subsidized by correlative sales, like live shows, T-shirts, and service contracts. While his reaction to this position is somewhat kneejerk (essentially “you try working for free!”) it does underscore the difficult proposition facing anyone who sees the future purely as online free distribution: just how do you offset the production of an album, a book, a videogame if the audience demands that the primary work be free while you try to make up the difference in low attach-rate items like T-shirts and strategy guides? He also outlines the difficulty facing anyone trying to follow in the footsteps of the Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails offerings, namely that both earned their fanbase “through the nasty old music-industry business model” while the possibility of an unknown band reaping the same rewards still begs the question on opt-in payment. Plus, how many other bands will garner the same level of press coverage that in turn drives the traffic once the novelty wears off?

Fortunately for Poole, the book is not yet as mercurial as the album which has been transformed almost completely into pure digitality. Unlike the digital song, the digital book still trails its earthbound progenitor due to the benefits of a book’s physicality – here Poole echoes my own suspicions that the Kindle, despite its early sales, still has a ways to go to supplant the paper tome. The parallel in other fields include the music industry’s push towards DualDisc and CD/DVD sets, which marries a standard music disc with a weight of additional content such as videos, documentaries, and surround sound mixes which effectively slow their pirating due to sheer volume of data; and per Reason’s report on ‘pirate capitalism,’ the fashion industry’s innate “induced obsolescence” enabling it to stay ahead of style knockoffs (a logo can be trademarked, but design elements less so) simply by declaring that last season’s fashions are no longer fashionable.

The charge of planned obsolescence has long been leveled at manufacturers, but it probably plays a much greater role today where the rapid evolution of products like the PC and iPod condition us to view even expensive products as having a short lifecycle. Appliance repair has likewise become less common compared to outright replacement as product complexity has increased (compare with the travails of the independent mechanic dealing with cars tuned by custom microprocessors) and new features accumulate so that the cost/benefit considerations of fixing your old TV instead of picking up a new model sway you towards the latter. As lampooned in Palahniuk’s Fight Club (fittingly itself a rejection of commercial consumerism) where a product-recall specialist outlines the cynical process of assessing automobile defects, companies make calculations about how much durability to build into a product—raising its quality comes at the cost of potential repeat sales. Media obsolescence, meanwhile, appears in the form of format transitions – tape to CD, VHS to DVD, and most recently DVD to Blu-Ray (RIP, HD-DVD) – and more pernicious forms of DRM that lock content to specific devices (e.g. Kindle) and the lamentable return of disposable DVDs which one hopes goes the way of the original DIVX.

Still, the ebook eventually eclipsing physical books is not inconceivable, so Poole outlines a few possibilities of how writers will survive in the post-paper world – an iTunes Store for books, perhaps, or less favorably, a return to patronage. Although he takes a dim view of the latter, prescribed as a throwback to writing being subsidized only by the sufferance of a rich benefactor or as a sideline avocation, alternatives have already begun to appear in the more rapidly gestating post-label musical sphere with examples like CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders) which offers sponsorships for artists like Kristin Hersh, and fan-supported efforts like Subconscious Studios’ “From the Vault” series. This idea is also explored in Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” (with The Register offering counterpoint) and in an interview with Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson:

“The only places it seems anymore that you really need to sell CDs are: at your shows and through your website. In the past, it always took so much effort and [money] to get a band into record stores across the country. That was one of the main things you needed a record company for—so that you could be in every Tower Records. But, obviously, Tower Records is gone.”

Naturally the Gin Blossoms—like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and R.E.M.—benefitted from the label system in order to amass their 30,000 MySpace friends which gives them the potential for greater autonomy. But building a sustainable base directly as a band through online distribution is at least a possibility, whereas the path for writers is not yet clear—they lack similar marketplaces, and the ubiquity of free text on the web devalues the very notion of paying for prose.

(For more perspectives on the free future, see also WIRED’s cover story on “Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” which argues that the trend towards free has as much to do with falling costs of production as aforementioned examples of cross-subsidies and the longstanding tradition of the ‘loss leader.’)

Rowling is also quoted as saying that success by RDR in their position would create a chilling effect online, whereby “authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.” This seems a bit of a stretch, since what remains essentially at issue is whether someone is able to profit from a concordance of a copyrighted fictional realm – whether that activity is itself a legitimate creative activity – and less whether, say, slash fan fiction should be driven underground (because it will never die!). Coverage at other sources like Ars Technica (whose article’s title – “Fairuse obliteratus” – pretty much sums up their position) have pointed out that equivalent works have been published about comparable realms like Middle Earth without comparable kerfuffle, so long as they are adequately identified as by a third-party (hence the common “Official”/”Unofficial” delineation in the guidebook aisle). The matter of law is still whether, under the four-fold test, the proposed HP Lexicon publication shows sufficient scholarly or transformative properties as to deserve protection from infringement.

The case also reminds us of the ongoing conflict over the purposes of copyright protection, and whether copyright owners – which are today often not the same as the creators – have nigh-unlimited reach and control over their works. With the public domain threshold effectively frozen at 1923 due to recurring term extensions such as the Sonny Bono Act, and ‘fair use’ provisions under constant attack by the efforts of the RIAA and related lobbying efforts to restrict all media access under narrower terms, our culture is being kept locked away in corporate vaults so that we are forced to rent access to it ad infinitum. Jack Valenti infamously remarked that if keeping copyright intact forever would violate the Constitution, we should consider “forever minus one day.” Whether even the current 70 years extension after the death of the artist truly serves the stated goal of promoting the Constitution’s stated intent to promote “progress of science and useful arts” is a question well worth examining in the public square.

Incidentally, it was reported that “Rowling’s lawyers did not want Vander Ark in the courtroom while Rowling testifies.” One wonders why she would feel this way, and quite honestly, what difference it makes whether the lawyers want that or not. Coverage of today’s appearance gives at least one hint – whereas before the suit (when the Lexicon only operated as a site) Rowling lauded Vander Ark’s efforts and reported using it as a reference site herself to check details, in testimony today she described the material as ’sloppy’ and ’shoddy’ and cited errors in translation and interpretation. She further described the toll the lawsuit had taken upon her creative endeavors, jeopardizing her interest in doing an official encyclopedic work with proceeds to go to charity. As to the meat of the matter, she argues that in contrast with other published works on the Potterverse, the Lexicon provides too little analysis and commentary and essentially only catalogues the names of people, places, spells and creatures (in essence, an encyclopedia). In a nice turn of phrase, she declares, “It takes far too much and it offers precious little in return.” And on that assessment the judge’s decision will hang.

Curiously, Harry Potter also makes an unusual appearance in an unrelated property rights case between Universal and a reseller of promotional recordings that tackles the doctrine of “first sale” vs licensed property – to wit, who owns the promotional discs. Harry’s discussion in Deathly Hallows with Bill Weasley about how goblins view rights of goblin-made objects leads off the EFF’s amicus brief. I wonder if Harry Potter quotations have already supplanted Alice in Wonderland for academic pop references? (Try finding a modern paper on philosophy of language without an Alice quotation.)

Next, while J.K. Rowling herself states “we all know I’ve made enough money,” it appears that the largesse is at least partially shared by Daniel Radcliffe, who is reported to have earned $26 million last year. The blurb mentions that he earned $16 million for Order of the Phoenix, but not whether that contributed to the year’s total. With Deathly Hallows now officially split into two films (oh why couldn’t they have saved Goblet of Fire?), he stands to earn quite a bit more by the time the series finishes up.

Finally, on a more rah-rah note, Amazon is holding a contest to let you spend a weekend with their copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard. The original tome was instrumental in Deathly Hallows, and as a charity bit, Rowling hand-wrote and illustrated 7 copies for auction. The contest winner takes a trip to London (the one in England is specified) where Amazon will let you, under guard, interact with the copy they won at auction. It is not clear whether gloves are provided, or whether the cost for same would be taken out of your expense allowance should you not bring a proper pair. The contest itself is 100 words or less on any of three topics:

1. What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
2. What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
3. What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

If this were a thriving community of avid readers, I might suggest something like “what other questions do you think they should ask?” Lacking that, I will point out that submissions are in two age groups (13-17, 18+), must be submitted by April 22nd, and after being whittled down by Amazon to 20 semi-finalists, two finalists and the ultimate winner will be selected by the public (so, just like American Idol, we can trust that the truly best will make it to the final round, where they will lose out to their lesser counterparts.) Reading the FAQ, it’s not made especially clear, but it does sound like only one grand prize is shared between both age categories. In another spot of confusion, a separate link is offered to “submit your own knock-knock joke, pun, tongue twister, haiku or other whimsical witticism based on Harry Potter or the Tales of Beedle the Bard” but you have to drill down into the product forum to join in. Be warned: low standards are advised.

Absurd Entries in the OED

One example is a tautological pair that reads like a lexicographical snigger -

The entry for unpoetic gives no definition, but there is a note that tells the reader to ‘cf. next.’ The reader dutifully looks ahead to the next entry which is unpoetical, the definition of which reads ‘cf. prev.’

Others might be considered circumlocutive obfuscation, such as trondhjemite (“Any leucocratic tonalite, esp. one in which the plagioclase is oligoclase“) and disghibelline (“To distinguish, as a Guelph from a Ghibelline“). Yet ironically, when I posed the latter to my friend SW as a joke, she immediately started describing the differences between those terms – for as it happens, they are two warring factions from 12th and 13th century Italy…and she is a doctoral student specializing in art of the Italian renaissance. So maybe KA’s geology class will have covered trondhjemite (aka plagiogranite). For my part, I fondly remember getting Yggdrasil as a selection in a game of Balderdash and casting it as some kind of Yiddish, while of course knowing it as the World Tree from Norse mythology where Odin hung for nine days (cf. Gaiman’s American Gods).

Pro:

- Andy Ihnatko lauds the Kindle in the Chicago Sun-Times for its role as a new information device, the always-connected browser of the world akin to a first-generation Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He does compare it unfavorably with reading text on the higher-resolution and backlit iPhone screen, and mentions the annoying flash between pages, but otherwise seems well-impressed.

- OnMoneyMaking put together a “10 Lessons in Innovation” feature rather than a straight review, although it mostly skews to the positive. (DaringFireball takes particular exception to #6, “You can be pretty later” and responds by quoting Steve Jobs:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

- Tim O’Reilly backs Steven Levy’s uptake from the previously mentioned Newsweek interview (which I saw decried in one instance as being ‘hagiographic‘), while noting that Amazon doesn’t need the Kindle to succeed on its own so long as it advances the industry in the e-book direction while keeping them as a primary gatekeeper – sort of the reverse of the relationship the iTunes Store has with Apple in extending the market for the iPod.

Con:

- DaringFireball questions the merit of buying its DRM content – “You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion.”

- The Register calls it a folly at first blush, and later examines the implications of Whispernet for delivery (revisions, collaboration, etc.) which are still raising the hackles of any established publisher (check out the prophetic quotation from Ben Bova).

- Thibault Sally (Thsy) takes on the device’s awkward ergonomics and questions its bookishness.

- Craig Hunter also remarks on the ergonomics, particularly the physical keyboard, and wonders why Amazon did not learn from the design lessons of the iPhone.

- Chip Kidd, rock star of book design, comments on the effect the Kindle will have on his trade. In short: “None.”

- Jon Stokes in Ars Technica on books versus documents, and how the ‘e-book’ is an awkward compromise, again trading on the design benefits of the book (facing pages, direct interaction) over a reader device.

The larger question that will have to be answered in time is clearly not whether the Kindle and its equivalent will replace the book, any more than with past media generations (e.g. television did not eliminate radio). Rather, will it develop enough of a niche of its own to sustain itself, accomplishing tasks that the book cannot (self-updating periodicals, interactive crosswords, cross-referencing journals) and maybe supplant some of the role the book currently plays.

First, a brief overview. The Kindle is an electronic book (e-book) reader just announced by Amazon. It uses the same E-Ink® technology as in the iRex iLiad and Sony Reader, which allows for very high contrast, low glare, low power display of text and greyscale illustrations. The screen is formed from magnetically charged ‘pixel’ balls that can be flipped between black and white when a page is displayed, at which point no further charge is needed to maintain the image – which means that power is needed only to change a page, while the proportionately dominant time spent actually reading takes none. The high contrast and high resolution image produced closely mimics the output of ink printing typeset on paper. No backlight is necessary to view the image as compared to a computer screen, which reduces eyestrain and makes the page visible in bright sunlight. Pages are turned via side-mounted buttons, plus the Kindle includes a full (slightly split) QWERTY keyboard for typing in annotations, search terms, etc.

The Kindle differs from previous e-book readers such as the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook, iRex iLiad, and Sony Reader notably in its advantageous position with the content ecosystem. The Rocket, one of the earliest attempts at a reader, began with its own proprietary document format sold through exclusive partners; both the reader and RocketEdition format have since been discontinued. Sony began with the same approach, with its own brand of DRM via files in BBeB format and sold through a dedicated Sony Connect online store, but has since opened up the device to also read PDFs and other unprotected formats. The iLiad has been open from the start, supporting “anything you can print from your PC,” and like the Kindle also includes a wireless link (albeit Wi-Fi) to access new material. The Kindle is more closed, in that it primarily draws from content sold through the companion Kindle Store run by Amazon, but with the obvious advantage over a startup like Nuvomedia or a tech-first company like Sony that Amazon already has the publishing relationships to back up its launch. Just as Apple’s iTunes Store has helped make the iPod a dominant round-trip destination for new music, podcasts, videos, etc., Amazon is pushing the back-end depth of its device. Wireless access is through free-with-purchase 3G (cellular) instead of Wi-Fi, providing more ubiquitous coverage. Access to the Kindle Store is built into the device, akin to the recent joint effort between Apple and Starbucks, so you can purchase new books or subscriptions without syncing through a computer. To keep the Kindle autonomous, all of your purchased content is mirrored at Amazon in case you lose or need to replace your device.

Specifically considering the device itself, a few limitations are worth noting. Two current negatives of the E-Ink technology are that, first, it can only produce greyscale images, not color since that requires combining varying shades of primaries (the Red/Green/Blue of TV and monitors) which is not yet possible with the two-polarity black/white charged dots. Second, changing pages requires a ‘reset’ of all dots back to black before the next page is rendered, which appears as a ‘black flash’ before each page turn; you can see this in the demo videos on Amazon’s site. As for content, pricing is somewhat discounted with new releases costing $9.99 and classics at $1.99. That may sound attractive at first, but it falls prey to the same offsets as other digital purchases. As noted in the Newsweek review, due to the DRM protections you lose the ability to lend out, give away, or resell any titles – or in fact to view them anywhere except on your registered Kindle. You lose any color content (cover art, illustrations). And you lose the literally-hardcopy backup, relying on Amazon to keep that title ‘on the shelf’ forever. As for the low cost classic pricing, the title quoted in the article (Dickens’ Bleak House) is in the public domain and available in numerous free electronic formats. On top of these restrictions, the publisher is saved the costs of materials, printing, binding, shipping, and remaindering but currently resists the idea that any of those savings should be factored into the cost of a limited e-book edition (Amazon is evidently subsidizing some bestsellers to act as loss leaders). Ultimately you are paying for the convenience of access and formatting for a specific device.

Clearly these will not appeal to the book-lover, the collector, or the thrify shopper who trawls used bookstores for baskets of cheap paperback mysteries. Who are the likely target audiences, then? First, the availability of subscriptions to top-line newspapers and select for-pay blogs with automatic updates make this attractive to the periodical reader on the go. The emphasis on discounted bestsellers and the initial gee-whiz factor may draw in the trendy reader, who buys strictly off the NYTimes Books list and reads things exactly once. As supported titles expand beyond new releases and bestsellers to current textbooks and reference works – added to the existing integration of Wikipedia, annotations and dictionary lookups – the student and researcher may find this a convenient alternative to bulging backpacks and satchels. With some expanded support for technical manuals and ruggedizing, it could find purchase in manual-heavy verticals like maintenance and engineering. And the always-online (within 3G territories) access to new titles makes it a possible replacement for the airport bookstore for the regular traveler (a scenario enthusiastically described by Neil Gaiman in Amazon’s “Reactions From Bestselling Authors” section).

Whether this presages the ‘end of the book’ is likely premature, although calling the device ‘Kindle’ is somewhat provocative to anyone sensitive to Fahrenheit 451 parallels. The Newsweek article does go into some speculation on the possible changes the wide adoption of this kind of delivery model could bring to book publishing, mirroring those already underway in other media further along the digital conversion curve. The more positive aspects are already seen with the advent of Amazon in its current form – the “Long Tail” of sales afforded by providing a deep catalog plus on-demand printing to maintain books effectively in print indefinitely. As a purely online storefront with no physical goods becomes more accepted, the barriers to entry for authors drop, since all you really need is a manuscript and a seller plus whatever online promotion you pursue, such as on some literary equivalent to Facebook yet to come. The environmental benefits of not creating paper books without a guaranteed owner are straightforward. And just as the per-track pricing model at the iTunes Store started to break songs free of the album sales model, undermining the pressure to create ‘filler’ tracks just to pad out a standard album length, so online publishing could revitalize other approaches to writing in less than novel form like the essay or serialized novel. Experimental forms such as the hypertext narrative could return, previously hamstrung by the impossibility of instantiation in a physical form. The digital book with an always-on wireless connection also provides for more of a community to develop around a title, building on what Amazon comments and IMDB forums already provide.

The potential downsides of these developments also get an airing in Newsweek. Although the author presents both advertising-supported books and updated editions as advantages, the prospect of getting interrupted by an advertisement between chapters of a novel is hardly attractive. Likewise, the flipside of allowing authors to update their books after publication – which ceases to have the finality it once had – opens up the potential for devaluing proofreading and editing, and creating the sort of ‘permanent beta’ endemic in projects like online games and Google applications. The lack of a true finish line has a psychological toll on the author, who no longer commits to completing a work but only to ‘getting something out there’ – and if most authors are anything like me, that will diminish the final product by reducing the stakes of perfecting it. It also opens up the idea of post-release censorship, creative backpedaling (cf. George Lucas), or even content hacking that has previously been restricted to blog comments and Wikipedia articles. While there is certainly room for experimentation and innovation around the act of writing much as music and art have been expanded by the collaboration enabled by online communities, the product of a single intelligence generated by individual contemplation should not be discarded in the process. The hyperlinking process could aid the Joyce scholar trying to untangle the many extratextual references, but “getting rid of the idea that a book is a [closed] container” as a goal has its own costs.

As for myself, I have followed the development of E-Ink and electronic books in general with great interest but have yet to feel the compulsion to buy into any of the closed environments they predominantly represent. The iLiad, with its open structure and tablet screen, has the least restrictions, but at the greatest upfront cost. The Kindle is a first-generation product with no recurring charge for wireless usage, so it will take time for it to create a market base and begin to earn back its keep via the margins on captive content sold through the associated store. We can expect that, like Microsoft with its Xbox and Zune initiatives, Amazon is around for the long-haul, and is willing to take a loss on the first generation if it means building the momentum and working knowledge to improve for the second. Indeed, Microsoft has shown tremendous gains between generations of both of its hardware ventures, so perhaps once we see the Kindle 2, it will have sloughed off some of its only-a-librarian-could-love case design and balanced its feature set in a way that is more affordable, compelling, and expandable to use with content from other sources.* Or we can wait and see what Apple can produce to compete, should the market prove worth entering – perhaps the rumors of a flash-based tablet have some credence after all.

* The product details that you can add Word and image files to your Kindle via email for $0.10 per file, but it is unclear whether you can use the USB and SD card support to load your own documents, e.g. PDFs.

• In mid-August, under the heading of “Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement” (an idea which will appear again), the NY Times reported on a series of Harry Potter knock-offs released in China. They detail eight titles and their publisher summaries. Even compared to “sour and sweet rain,” excessive body hair, demons named Little Fatty Fortune, Voldemort’s brother, and an endless menagerie of dragons, the true challenge begins in Harry Potter and the Showdown: “Now what will Harry do about his two girlfriends?”
• During an October stop on her Open Book Tour, JK Rowling answered a number of questions – some of them purely logistical (how does she manage autographs and balance work with home life), a few motivational (why Dobbie [sic - boo NY Post!] dies and Dumbledore confesses his failings), and a couple on the controversy the books have created. On the religious outcry about witchcraft:
  

  “I go to church myself. I don’t take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion…I was raised in a Christian tradition. To me, it’s [Christian overtones] always been obvious but I never wanted to talk that openly about it because I thought it might show people just what is the story, where we were going. They’re very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was bound to find biblical quotations on tombstones. Those two particular quotations that he finds on the tombstones of Godric’s Hollow, they almost epitomize the whole series. I think they sum up all the themes in the whole series. But of course, Hogwarts is a multi-faith school.”

  This is notable in that Rowling both declares her own faith while distancing herself from the detractors among them, and emphasizing religious tolerance even within the walls of Hogwarts. The faith of students is never raised in the series, so the notion that the school is not an incidental seminary as is sometimes the heritage of British boarding schools (Latin, Greek, and Bible study) but purely focused on magickal education is laudable.

• The controversy-as-promotion also gets an airing:
  

  “I’ve always taken my annual inclusion on the most banned books list as a massive compliment. You look at the writers on that list, what can I say? There is a place for debate about issues and there’s certainly a place for debate about what we show our children and what we read to our children, but attempts to ban things are always counterproductive. I met more than one child whose parents didn’t want them to read Harry Potter and of course it became the one and only thing they wanted to read and they read it. In a way, it’s great advertising.”

  Other recent examples of this include Bill O’Reilly’s demonizing of the anti-war Redacted, which has drawn thanks from backer Mark Cuban (“anti-American”) and director Brian de Palma (“a true villain in our country”) for raising its profile and piquing interest in a wider audience; and the Catholic League’s condemnation of The Golden Compass, urging that parents not bring their children to the film, because they might then want to read the book, and then reject Catholicism once they realize the Vatican is secretly responsible for stripping the souls from children in order to protect them from discovering sex.

• In another report on the tour (many of the same quotations appear in different order), Rowling spoke more at length about the role of religion in the overall story arc, particularly the significance of the two opening epigraphs:
  

  “Deathly Hallows itself begins with two religiously themed epigraphs, one from “The Libation Bearers” by Aeschylus, which calls on the gods to “bless the children”; and one from William Penn’s “More Fruits of Solitude,” which speaks of death as but “crossing the world, as friends do the seas.” No other book in the series begins with epigraphs — a curious fact, perhaps, but one that Rowling insists served as a guiding light.

  “I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition,” Rowling said of their inclusion. “I’d known it was going to be those two passages since ‘Chamber’ was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I’d cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.”

• And then at the Carnegie Hall appearance on the book tour, where Rowling did a reading and answered questions for the 1000 grand prize winners, she mentioned that other slightly controversial matter – “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” What I expected after this revelation made the headline circuit was a simple progression:
  1. Initial shock, some support from GLAAD and others.
  2. Some fans complain of being ‘betrayed’ by the revelation.
  3. Public outcry from social conservatives.
  4. A scurrilous assertion that Grindelwald is evil for embracing his sexuality, while Dumbledore can only be honorable for having remained closeted.
  5. A deliberate smear campaign suggesting Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry was unwholesome (given that, paralogically, gay = pederast).

  That I have only really run across #1 and #2 to date is either a credit to the overarching popularity of the series, with dissent largely constrained to the usual bywaters, or a willful act on the part of the mainstream press to not seek out the agitators for a condemning pullquote. What I find even more interesting than the revelation itself is the way in which Rowling couched it, and its sole implication on the plot.

  First, she says “I always thought of…” rather than the simple declarative “D = Gay” assignment. This token ambiguity allows us to consider Rowling as perhaps only a more privileged observer of the events in Harry’s world, not the final arbiter, now that the series is finished. This ‘canon view’ would posit that anything not explicitly enumerated in the text of the seven books is left open to each reader’s imagination – including Rowling’s. Contrast this with the ‘revisionist view’ a la George Lucas, where the story is never fixed by past artifact and the author can continue to revise and alter and edit indefinitely, e.g. Han no longer shoots first; or the ‘outline view’ a la Brian Herbert, where a box of unfinished story ideas is tantamount to a final work and the story arc of a series can be definitively concluded by other (arguably lesser) craftsmen. In the canon view, we can read Dumbledore as gay, straight or even asexual, since the text makes no declarations. So when Rowling goes on to elaborate:

  “… Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him.”

  …this adds a new dimension to Dumbledore’s interaction with Grindelwald, putting a new spin on his reluctance to face him in a final duel (although we must still wonder how Grindelwald could have been defeated while wielding the Elder Wand). But, strictly speaking, it is not necessary to understand the plot or even the basic dynamic between the two eventual adversaries – even as kindred minds, equally alive with the prospects of a boundless future available to their joint talents, the betrayal must have been a deep wound for Dumbledore. At the very least, Rowling recognizes the most dire implications of her introspection – “Oh, my god, the fan fiction now, eh?”

  As for the wider response, the most positive reaction is “a gay character in the most popular series in the world is a big step for Jo Rowling and for gay rights.” The polar opposite is sadly predictable, with some complaining that their view of Dumbledore is now “stained” at the least. One woman has campaigned against the series as indoctrinating children into Wicca (having presumably never studied anything about that faith) and holding “an anti-Christian agenda” (for irony, see above). With this new revelation, she warns we must now further caution parents because, “A homosexual lifestyle is a harmful one…that’s proven, medically.” And here, perhaps, is where Rowling’s announcement has the most significance. She has declared her series, in line with critics’ assertions, to have a subversive meaning, with “the Potter books in general … a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that’s it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.” And there is no question that tolerance and independent, critical thought are two trends which most definitely should not be taught to children, lest we imperil our perfect social order. The aforementioned woman who has sued her school district to ban the books asks, albeit rhetorically, “Is this really what we want for our children? Is this really what we want in our schools?” And yet, is that not precisely what we do want for our children to learn in schools – how to flourish in a pluralistic society and think for themselves?

  [And just to show that the Christian Coalition of America was right to worry that Potter fans will all now want to go gay, you can order your Dumbledore Pride shirts. Will "Dumbledore's Army" be the new "Friends of Dorothy"?]

• Perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the above was Rowling dealing out a few more tidbits, such as Neville marrying Hannah Abbott, who takes over the Leaky Cauldron; Hagrid remains a bachelor; some backstory on the early days of the original Order of the Phoenix; and bits on portrait lore and life debts. More of interest to the canon is her discussion of why Molly Weasley faces off with Bellatrix, how things might have been different if she had gone with her earlier plan to kill off Arthur in book 5, and why Harry just doesn’t get the whole story at the beginning from Dumbledore’s portrait (other than the obvious “because then there’s no plot” answer).
• Adding further ammunition to the ‘Harry Potter is a menace to the conservative faction’ argument is French philosopher Jean-Claude Milner’s assertion that Harry Potter is not only politically liberal, but specifically “a diatribe against Thatcherite Britain.” Painted in neo-Marxist colours, Hogwarts becomes a den of unrest against the Muggle middle-class, blowing up Aunt Marge in HP3 is a satire on Thatcher, and (bizarrely) learning pidgin Latin is a defense against American-exported materialism. Conversely, Milner notes that Voldemort represents the opposite extreme of abandoning things for power over people (read: Sino-Soviet communism?), subverting the rise to power of an apparent ‘underclass’ into an elitist tyranny. Of course, this might be easier to accept were Hogwarts more of a Dickensian workhouse where the suffering children of dirt-poor proletariat parents learn to unionize against the moneyed classes, but the themes of class conflict and blood purity, plus the rather nice accommodations and mostly-ready acceptance of ‘middle-class’ Muggle-borns into their midst does tend to muddy the analogy.
• In the more prosaic vein, we have recently learned of a publishing spat between Warner Bros and then JK Rowling vs HP Lexicon maintainer Steve Vander Ark over the prospect of releasing the site as a compiled book. Why is Warner Bros is seeking an injuction against this unofficial tome with so many other Potter-support volumes already in circulation? From Rowling’s perspective, it is a distinction between commentary (“what happens in book 7?”) and compilation of copyrighted details. The HPL’s perspective is that the book deal was in response to requests from fans, not an attempt to cheat them or WB/Rowling out of due compensation; that all appropriate copyrights were discussed with WB and other contributors and approved; and that the lawsuit only appeared after they questioned the uncredited use of their own material in WB-produced DVDs of the Harry Potter movies, which incorporated timelines verbatim from the site, even including mistakes. This makes this a more complex (and for me, interesting) case because the law gets more vague as you involve questions of approved use and compilations rather than appropriation of copyrighted content.A database of facts cannot be copyrighted, nor can “ideas, themes and facts” on their own, yet events in fictional works can be. Precedents on restricting unofficial ‘companion’ books as violating Fair Use include The Seinfeld Aptitude Test (which was ruled infringing) and The Wind Done Gone (which was ruled a protected parody). From a strictly IANAL reading of the decisions, the critical issues for the Lexicon effort are (a) does the proposed book offer substantive commentary, criticism, etc. in addition to re-statement of characters and events from the series?; and (b) how extensive were the permissions granted by the copyright holders to the site owners? Most of the previously released Harry Potter addenda fall into pretty safe territory under (a), with most either engaging in speculation, analyzing themes, or using the texts in a ‘transformative’ manner, e.g. to act as as a lead-in to teaching other subjects such as physics or philosophy. In other cases where (a) is weak but (b) is not secured by a publisher, an ‘unofficial’ companion guide may exist solely at the forebearance of the copyright holder insofar as it’s non-competitive. That is, if the owner prefers to let the unofficial works act as unpaid advertising for the original works, there is no perceived conflict of interest.Here, Warner Bros has at least a couple potential conflicts. First, any claim by the Lexicon to infringement on the part of WB by including material from the HPL site without attribution can open them to potential damages levied against the DVD profits, which one can reasonably assume are considerable. Second, Rowling has publically stated an interest in pursuing a Harry Potter Encyclopedia project at some future stage, and the publication of the HPL could impact the buyer’s market for that type of resource (in some cases, fan-passion-driven documentation can exceed that of an official nature by orders of magnitude – need to compare the Death Star, Unicron and the HALO ringworld?).More perspectives around the Seinfeld book case are provided by trivia polymath Ken Jennings, who approaches it from the perspective of “who owns the trivia?”
• One of the only real concerns I’ve had about the Half-Blood Prince movie has been partly assuaged with the casting of Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn. Ron’s snogging partner Lavender Brown has also been named as Summerhill actress Jessie Cave, dashing the hopes of thousands of girls who turned out for open casting for the chance to mack on Rupert Grint. Now I just have to wonder how disgusting the Gaunt household will appear, and how Bonnie Wright will measure up to the expanded role and intimacy with Dan Radcliffe required of Ginny, since she’s had practically only one line per movie thus far.
• Finally, on an upbeat (and a sort of ‘up yours’ to the ‘no Harry in schools’ crowd) note: a school in Nottingshire (UK) has turned around its academic performance by presenting the material along a Hogwarts theme. As in, “children dress as their favourite Harry Potter characters, chant spells and use their wands in maths classes at Robert Mellors Primary School.” The school was also duly separated into the four Houses (no word on who gets stuck in Slytherin). Over the past three years, “standards and achievement have improved greatly” and students say “It is easier when you are thinking about Harry Potter – and having fun when you are learning.” How dramatic has the turnaround been? “The school has gone from being in the bottom 25% of all schools in England three years ago to the top 25%.” Best keep this away from our schools, or they may suffer the same fate.

That catches us up more or less to present, although no doubt we have many more laps yet to go.

Books, by and large, don’t make very good movies (how many great film adaptations of novels can you think of that were true to the original that were worth seeing? How many total, utter disappointments can you recall?) Yet people who meet novelists inevitably ask, “anything of yours been made into a movie yet?”

First and foremost, film simply lacks the timeframe to cover all that can fit within the covers of a book, and then must often frame details much differently than on the page to meet differing logistic or narrative demands. Gibson points out in a follow-up that the standard Hollywood script is “120 pages. Lots of white space on those pages.” Even Stardust, a comparatively slim volume with illustrations, weighs in as at least twice that. All of this only serves as preface and reiterates past reviews of adaptations of beloved books.

Stardust the movie, then, accounts for itself rather well. Without dwelling overmuch on its unavoidable failing to uphold to the letter of the novel, it succeeds in conveying the essence of its source material. The script by Jane Goldman redrafts the tale to fit the pace of a film, necessarily contracts and streamlines the plot to fit the time available, and introduces some novelties which could be taken as ‘crowd-pleasing’ in intention. Yet none of this detracts overly from the central relationship of Tristran and Yvaine, which had heretofore been curiously absent from most of the promotion of the movie that had given it more the air of a comical swashbuckler. And it is that relationship, from awkward beginning through incessant bickering to its swelling conclusion, that forms the heart of the novel – being as it is billed “a romance within the realm of Faerie.” Without it, the movie would fall into well-executed but ultimately forgettable territory as just another swords and sorcery quest adventure.

Where I still harbor quibbles is, first, over the inclusion of an ultimately frivolous prologue (even with its portentous voiceover by Sir Ian McKellen) set in a Victorian era observatory; and second, with the evident relocation of the entirety of the world beyond the village of Wall from the realm of Faerie to a more generic fantasy demesnes dominated solely by the kingdom of Stormhold. All fey elements of the ‘other side’ are eliminated, doubtless to meet demands of simplicity and budget, but at the cost of robbing the story of its otherworldliness, the inherent menace common particularly to British portrayals of the wickedness of the Fair Folk, and any adjustments our hero must make in facing those more unlike himself even given his mixed heritage. This is particularly jarring in the casting of Una – her features are relatively broad, her physique rather toned (those arms!) as compared to the slight, angular figure from Vess’ illustrations, while her bearing betrays no royal upbringing even after her unveiling as the lost sister of the warring princes. No denizens of Stormhold betray even so much as a pointed ear, let alone fur or tails, and the costuming falls more firmly in the traditional fantasy trope than the delicate gowns or doublet and hose we might have expected from Vess’ plates. Even the architecture follows this eschewal of faerie influence. One might even go so far as to suggest, groaning, that the only ‘fairy’ in the movie is the re-imagined Captain Shakespeare as vamped up by Robert DeNiro.

That disappointment aside, much of the rest of the casting and their settings holds more true to the vision of the book. Charlie Cox makes an indulgently naive and winning Tristran, even undergoing a true makeover at the hands of Captain Shakespeare as he begins to take up the role of hero. Most critically, Claire Danes retains Yvaine’s temper and resentment at her predicament until her slow change of feelings towards Tristran, and while she is perhaps not an ethereal beauty or particularly otherworldly in her carriage – one could imagine a more exotic-looking actress like Kristin Kreuk for this purpose, albeit at the expense of craft – her grounded attitude can be taken as wisdom long established from observing the affairs of mortals over centuries. I am at least immensely relieved that, as reports suggest, Sarah Michelle Gellar turned down the role to stay close to husband Freddie Prinze Jr, as I simply cannot imagine the chirpy Buffy in the role. Michelle Pfeiffer masterfully inhabits the cold menace and ruthlessness of Lamia while playing up her vanity, while Mark Strong equally radiates danger as the cutthroat Septimus. Sienna Miller appears refreshingly rough as the peasant beauty Victoria, like the young Robin Wright Penn in Princess Bride. Peter O’Toole is both regal and cruelly cynical as the ailing king whose experience in the battle of succession has overseen a high body count among his siblings and offspring. Rupert Everett carries off a suitably pompous and dim Secundus, while I thrilled at being able to recognize Julian Rhind-Tutt behind the ghostly and mangled features of Quartus. And as a curiosity, I also discovered that the brief appearance via flashback of one of Yvaine’s sister stars – the prior victim of Lamia and her own sisters – is played by the daughter of Sting, Coco Sumner. As for settings, we must regrettably make do without the serewood, which Neil described in an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation as one of two scenes he regretted being absent from the film, and which was intended to feature the voice of Tori Amos. However, we do get at least a brief visit to the market, the enchanted inn, time aboard the skyship (including a dramatic water landing akin to a giant log flume), and most elaborately – due to serving as the film’s new climax – the home of Lamia in a deep shadowed crevasse.

Yet again, the story – and its resonance to the devoted readers of the novel – only succeeds if it captures the hesitance and slow development of the romance between Tristran and Yvaine. Their first meeting is accelerated in the story by the convenient use of the babylon candle, which also serves its later purpose to enable their escape from the inn (and a replacement serves yet a new purpose at story’s end). The candle also acts as the initial lure for Yvaine to follow Tristran, despite her been chained, back to Wall to be presented as a gift for Victoria’s birthday. Their joint ill-humor at the pairing while prevailing to cross their way back to the gap in the Wall slowly gives way at least to mutual concern, beginning with Tristan’s rush to protect her at her sisters’ urging – although sadly, her subsequent attentions to his burnt hand are absent, and we have only a brief moment referring to it as they sit bound in the skyship’s brig. The first reveal we have of Yvaine’s feelings are when she betrays her origins by shining from emotion, most notably when awkwardly attempting a waltz with Tristran. From there on, the telltale shine gives us a ready measure of her growing attachment to him, from the soft glow as they lay crouched beside the road to the brilliance as he confesses his own love to her. The speech she gives in Ditchwater Sal’s wagon, lovely if a bit overwrought, is really unnecessary from an emotional standpoint, a bit like Peter Parker confessing his secrets to a payphone after being disconnected from MJ – she says what we have already come to know, but the story seems to insist that it be said aloud nonetheless. To amp things up a bit from the book’s original anticlimactic resolution of the Septimus and Lamia subplots, we also get a panicked multi-party rush to intercept her from crossing the Wall in despair upon misinterpreting the innkeeper’s message left by Tristran, plus the obligatory damsel-in-distress scene in the final battle with Lamia. Contrary to the novel’s more bittersweet ending (itself a particularly brave or foolish choice by Neil to keep going well past the normal end of a fairy tale on through to the end of their time together, leaving Yvaine alone in perpetuity like Arwen after the death of Aragorn), the babylon candle again allows them to endure in that fashion most beloved of fairy tales – together, shining in the night sky, living happily ever after.

Though the movie lacks much of the novel’s subtle charm, due to the absence of what for a lack of a better term I would call its Gaimanisms – all those turns of phrase, diversions of plot, nuances of characters, and references to legend and mythopoetic tradition that allow him to impart a story with fairy tale notions while remaining inviolably in his own style – it does preserve the spirit of the story, reformed in film. Even without the furry visitor, the fellowship of the Castle, the fight between lion and unicorn, and all of the other moments that gave the book its quirky identity, the movie retains the awkward sweetness and purity of feeling between its two romantic leads that I was most concerned would be lost in the translation to an action fantasy. And with that alone, even without all of its other entertainments and delights (music pounding, horses racing, swashes buckling), the movie offers enough for me to leave the theater smiling and with a fresh burst of anticipation at re-reading the book yet again, and falling back into its sidereal enchantment.

This has been a few days in coming, for a variety of reasons – wanting the book to settle a bit, giving others a chance to finish reading it for themselves, and recovering from the side effects of Harry Potter Week. I had originally envisioned a full week embargo for spoiler avoidance, but I believe everyone I know that was reading it is now finished. Moreover, I really need to start thinking about other things, and instead I keep finding partial analyses of the book rattling around upstairs.

For the record, after the initial overnight recess on Sunday, I picked Deathly Hallows back up that evening with the determination to read it through to the end instead of spending each subsequent day in silent dread of overhearing forbidden information. So I reached the epilogue right about 6:30am on Monday morning, happy but exhausted. Had I been able to ensure a Cone of Silence during the first part of the week, I would have liked to stretch it out over another day or two, and I expect I will do just that when I re-read it in the near future. Also in contrast with the process for the previous books, I did not take notes or pull quotes as I went through, with the exception of a running list of mini-predictions (e.g. what’s in the Snitch?). All of this means that this review will be based primarily on my impression of an extended first reading, drawing from memory, and dealing with the act of reading it as well as what it contained.

Before breaking down the story into its many components and other literary vivisections, I wanted to begin by emphasizing just how engrossing the book was. While book 6 felt at the time, as I wrote previously, unpleasantly like holding one’s breath in icy waters, the pacing and stepped-up danger quotient in book 7 had a much more invigorating effect (Ennervate!). Knowing that the answers awaited just ahead, and recognizing the full sweep of dramatic options available when an author declares the end of a series (cf. Serenity – we miss you, Wash!), the everpresent menace served to keep me much more in the present rather than racing ahead. The change in scenery from familiar Hogwarts, the unleashing of the full powers of the trio as they came of age, and the constant march towards an inevitable-but-imminent confrontation all served to ratchet up the tension and spectacle, without giving up opportunities for tenderness and the mercurial moods of adolescence. I distinctly remember that when McGonagall declared that Hogwarts would be defended to give Harry time to find the Ravenclaw artifact, I felt a fierce happiness burning inside of me and I think I might even have jumped up and down a little bit. For any quibbles and could-have-beens that may come after this, I want to declare just how much I loved reading the book to its conclusion (maybe not so much the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). It is that sort of transcendent reader’s journey that is so hard to communicate, but inspires us to push favorite books on others, insisting, “You’ll love it!” when we really mean “I loved it, and I want you to experience that same feeling of breathlessness as I did when I first discovered it, and then we will share a kinship in its revelry and wonder.”

Now to the story itself. The structure is almost identical to that of Goblet of Fire – a prelude of sorts that shows us where Voldemort is and what he has begun to undertake, and then the now-classic bookends of 4 Privet Drive and Platform 9-3/4. We learn that the protection enjoyed by Harry by virtue of his mother’s blood in Aunt Petunia has a second limitation other than his coming of age – when he leaves for the Burrow with no intention of returning, it will no longer be designated ‘home’ and thus end. That this further puts the Dursleys in mortal danger, for those who might mistake Harry’s only natural family as a sentimental target, is another oversight on my part. The unreadable expression by Aunt Petunia at their parting is consistent with her mixed feelings, since even though she has acted consistently to bedevil Harry’s upraising, the fact remains that she took him in at Dumbledore’s urging with the awareness that to do otherwise would mean his probable death. While we might say that it takes only the basest emotion of sympathy to act to prevent the death of another, it does redeem her slightly that she entered into the contract nonetheless. The great surprise, of course, is that ‘Big D’ Dudley has developed some kind of favorable regard for Harry as well. Is he grateful for Harry rescuing him from dementors two years before? Does he truly grasp that Harry is heading off into danger’s way while the Dursleys are being kept safe by the very world they despise? Or is he, as I originally thought, either Confunded or Imperiused into acting in a totally uncharacteristic way? His concern must be taken as genuine, and if things could not seem stranger, we have yet a long way to go. At least we bow out the Dursleys in as genteel and reconciled fashion as could be hoped, indeed more than expected.

Where we first get the sense that the governor is cut and the throttle is wide open is when the volunteer Harry doppelgangers (and isn’t seven the most powerfully magic number?) first leave the grounds. We have some forewarning that an attack is likely due to Snape’s unnamed source, which contradicts the false trail laid through the crumbling Ministry. But the sheer abruptness of the Death Eaters’ mass appearance and the brutality of the battle and its consequences that follow get the message across clearly: Nothing is safe anymore. Not in Harry’s world due to Voldemort’s influence, and not in our reading because we have no more books in which characters must survive to reappear in. Like the last episode of a television series reaching its scripted end, we no longer have any presumed guarantees that the writer will have to safeguard anyone for the future. Even this early on, certain characters are more at risk precisely because they no longer have any critical role to play and thus become narratively expendable – compare this to the case of the Star Wars prequels, where we know enough about all of the main characters that their futures are essentially blessed, which in turn means that only someone like Qui-Gon can truly be at risk, in a sort of a time-limited predestination bubble. Only Harry has that kind of protection in this book, and then only until he finally faces Voldemort; everyone else is fair game for casualties of war. And so we see the first to fall.

Hedwig’s abrupt death is the first shock. While I could rationalize it – Harry is no longer at Hogwarts, and his main potential correspondents are already dead, making Hedwig more of a potential hindrance during the Horcrux Quest – I still did not think to put her in the ‘at risk’ circle. It is a major jolt to Harry’s confidence to lose something familiar and sever another skein connecting him to lost ones like Sirius; Hedwig had been his lifeline for outside news and encouragement. It further demonstrates his resolve to act out of expediency, as when he explodes the sidecar containing her cage in their running escape, a cavalier act despite his mourning. An ever greater shock is when Hagrid launches himself off the motorcycle as they approach the Tonks’, plunging to the ground below and lying unmoving at the chapter ends. For a moment I could only think of the selfsame sacrifice that titles the first chapter to the unreleased sequel to The Princess Bride, “The Death of Fezzik.” In it, Fezzik – that story’s friendly giant – falls to his death while defending Buttercup’s baby. Like Hedwig, I had not anticipated Hagrid’s life being seriously in jeopardy, and here we’ve not even made it to the Burrow! Fortunately, come chapter next we get a reprieve, but we are still left to wonder at the fate of everyone else who participated in the evacuation plan. When they take the portkey and find they alone have arrived, we are set to wait and see who else will not return.

Mad-Eye Moody is a safe choice – after Goblet of Fire, Harry has never really spent much time with the real Moody, although he did serve as part of the guard escorting him in Order of the Phoenix, aided in the fight in the Department of Mysteries, and, um, identified a boggart in the dressing room. Still, he can represent a material loss to the Order while leaving the majority of the roster intact for the greater battles yet to come. And the Disapparition of Mundungus lets us wonder at the traitor – could it have been Mad-Eye, whose body is never found? Mundungus, who has always been disreputable but is given credit for the 7-Harry deception that effectively confounds the Death Eaters? The latter’s disappearance has another effect – if he can escape that way, why couldn’t Harry just be taken directly to the Burrow by Side-Along Apparition? A brief mention is made of Apparition being monitored by the Ministry’s Department of Magical Transportation plus the Order’s suspicion that it has been infiltrated, but Remus Lupin says that it is impossible to track without physically touching the Apparator (as happens later to Hermione during their flight from the Ministry). Obviously the pat answer is “because it makes them have to go through a big battle scene and risk everyone’s lives, which is much more dramatic,” but perhaps on a closer reading I’ll run across a better explanation. We also lose George’s ear, although after the initial horror (and Fred’s uncharacteristic moment of shocked silence), they make such light of it that it’s easy enough to accept.

Once at the Burrow, we engage in that most faithful of fantasy tropes, the bestowing of key gifts-whose-worth-we-know-not-yet. Harry receives a flesh-imprinted Golden Snitch, Ron the Put-Outer, and Hermione a runed bedtime story collection. Oh, and the Sword of Gryffindor, except that’s held up in probate court. Harry comes of age, and naturally celebrates by poking his eye out with his glasses and tying his shoes almost permanently. For his birthday, Harry also gets a Mokeskin bag to keep bits of broken trinkets in – although it has nothing on Hermione’s Bag of Holding, er, Undetectable Extendable Charm on her beaded handbag – and a book on charming witches whose advice presumably shows up in Ron’s somewhat smarmy ministrations to Hermione. We learn the seriousness with which both Ron and Hermione are taking their pledge to help Harry on his Quest, to the extent of Ron making his own ghoulish stand-in (a la The Last Starfighter) and Hermione changing her parents’ identities, erasing their memories of her very existence, and sending them off to Australia. Oh, and yes, we learn that Ginny’s devotion to Harry has not flickered in his absence as he gets a very passionate, if tragically foreshortened, birthday present.

Then it’s time for a wedding! Fleur’s glamour and veela heritage is such to make even Bill’s scars disappear as they stand enraptured before the minister. We get some happy and light moments among the assembled throngs, plus salacious gossip on Dumbledore’s past as intimated by Rita Skeeter’s exposé, and observe a curious symbol worn by the even odder parent to Luna, Xenophilius Lovegood. And then Kingsley’s lynx Patronus arrives with its succinct warning: The Minister dead, the Ministry overtaken, and…they are coming. Death Eaters arrive, our trio escapes – fortunately with everything already stowed in the amazing beaded handbag. And now our Quest truly begins.

With all that as warmup, the search for the horcruxes has a somewhat lackluster beginning. With the locket as the only real starting point, and with the trio on the run after happening to encounter a pair of Death Eaters at a coffee shop in Tottenham Court Road, they go to 12 Grimmauld Place. And despite a rocky start, they accomplish – at Hermione’s urging – the remarkable conversion of Kreacher from defiant lackey to genuine ally. She sees to the truth of Kreacher’s behavior, that he does not really heed the pureblood mantra of his former Black masters so much as follow the lead of those he loyally serves who in turn treat him well – Sirius’ mother, Narcissa and Bellatrix, and most importantly, young Regulus. We could have guessed that Kreacher was the one who aided Regulus in retrieving the true locket from the cave, but not that he was used by Voldemort to place it there initially (at the cost of having to drink the potion) or that Regulus sacrificed himself upon retrieving it and called upon the house-elves highest calling to help Kreacher escape. Again, we find a level of magic that Voldemort does not comprehend because he disdains those who use it. And with a simple act of compassion, Harry wins Kreacher’s loyalty and becomes a true master of the house, justifying at last Hermione’s many stymied efforts at improving human/elf relations. It is unexpected, and surprisingly gratifying, to learn that Kreacher was reacting more to Sirius’ disfavor and mistreatment than some affiliation to the cause of the enemy, and is redeemed simply by sympathy and respect.

Kreacher also retrieves Mundungus Fletcher, last known holder/fence of the locket. In turn he tells of proffering it as a bribe to a certain toadlike woman flaunting her Ministry connections, which of course refers to Umbridge. And that means breaking in to the Ministry to retrieve it, made all the more difficult because of the many changes undertaken via Voldemort’s control there. Here we come to another oversight – I did not give Voldemort credit for learning from past mistakes, and taking a different tack in subjugating the masses than just outright terrorism. Where I envisioned the Ministry paralyzed by internal struggles for self-preservation amid a growing mass panic, instead we have the calculated coup d’état of the Ministry by first overtaking the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (the closest to a military branch) by means of the Imperius Curse and then a surgical strike on the Minister himself. This accomplishes a number of aims simultaneously -

• it co-opts the primary mechanism for resistance,
• grants the Death Eaters carte blanche in their efforts e.g. to locate Harry,
• creates a public relations front for these efforts by casting FUD surrounding the events of Dumbledore’s death on the Astronomy Tower,
• provides the pretext for returning Snape to Hogwarts, and even appointing him as Headmaster,
• and most chilling, legitimizes a platform of purging all Muggle-borns from the Wizarding community, through efforts of registration, intimidation, and criminalization.

All of these measures serve to make Harry’s tasks and the struggle of the Order that much more difficult, but the last has ominous repercussions beyond the plot. Here we have the full incarnation of Voldemort’s self-hatred laid bare in his pogrom against those, like himself, guilty of impure birth. While pureblood children are mandated to attend Hogwarts so that the Ministry can ensure their proper indoctrination in the ways of the new regime, all those of ‘inferior’ birth are required to register and be judged. For those proven to be unworthy of wizarding stock, the dementors await with their deathless kiss. The historical examples abound, and have been mentioned in reviewing prior books, but it is in the annals of fantasy that this Muggle-Born Registration Act has even more resonant examples. The superhuman registration acts of The Incredibles, Powers, Marvel’s Civil War, and especially the X-Men’s Mutant Registration Act have all tread this ground of “what you fear and despise, catalog and bury within the pitiless gears of bureaucracy.” The additional replacement of a relatively benign meritocracy with some elements of cronyism within the Ministry with a hierarchy based solely on the twin pedestals of loyalty and blood-purity serves to realign the power base and further distract those within from pursuing any kind of overt or covert action against Voldemort’s plans. After all, per Pump Up the Volume, “your file is under review.”

The perversities of the Ministry were such that, just in considering this section of the review, I felt compelled to go back and watch V for Vendetta and focus on all of its similarities in portraying a government at war with its citizenry and zealously demonizing the Other, or as Valerie puts, “different became dangerous.” The hateful rhetoric of Lewis Prothero, foam-spittled pronouncements of a righteous Adam Sutler, and the simple tagging of those out of the mainstream as ‘undesirable’ all find their parallels in a Ministry in the throes of enacting its own program of “strength through purity” (as it was in the original novel, although changed to “strength through unity” for the movie version). Though they come to power through stealth and manipulation rather than the false catalyst of a staged terrorist attack, the Voldemort contingent does manage to capitalize on the fear spread by Voldemort’s return (effectively playing both sides), as well as demonizing their opponents, especially ‘Undesirable No.1,’ that notorious troublemaker and possible murderer, Harry Potter.

That Umbridge would be the appointed head of such efforts to drag down those of accomplishment in the name of party loyalty retrenches her personification as ‘mundane evil,’ or in the parlance of D&D alignment perhaps, ‘lawful evil.’ Whereas Voldemort and the majority of Death Eaters act solely out of puerile self-interest, Umbridge performs acts of cutting cruelty and revels in the discrediting of others deemed to belong to an underclass (half-breeds, Muggle-born) through the pitiless execution of an evil mandate. The depiction of her feline Patronus, purring as it walks back and forth in a clammy dungeon cell surrounded by dementors, is particularly chilling as she joyfully considers the fate of people guilty only of suspect heritage. That she further aims to bolster her own apparent blood superiority through the misrepresented Slytherin locket reveals even deeper dissympathies – one wonders if she conjures up this unadulterated vitriol, like Voldemort, out of profound self-loathing over her misbegotten ancestry. And it is curious in retrospect that her wearing the locket does not appear to have the profound subversion of mood shown later when worn by our heroes.

Before we embark on the complex, Mission: Impossible style infiltration of the Ministry to reclaim the locket,we first confront an ill-at-ease Lupin, on the run seemingly from his own self-doubt and his responsibilities as a parent. Harry rebuffs his attempts to aid them, and in fact sends him rushing off with his metaphorical tail between his legs, in a staunch repudiation of Lupin’s attempt to make his abandonment seem more noble before rushing towards reckless dangers presented by Harry’s tasks. With that accomplished, it’s off to the Ministry and some judicious use of the Polyjuice Potion to procure the locket. Naturally, everything quickly goes wrong, with Ron off to fix an office rainstorm, Hermione escorting Umbridge down to the dungeons, and Harry left to wander around and thus come across the stunning blue of Moody’s Mad Eye embedded in Umbridge’s office door. I thought at this point that the magical eye must surely have some critical part to play in the story ahead, along with their many other artifacts, since it has been demonstrated as one of the most powerful means of seeing through enchantments and even Harry’s otherwise impenetrable Invisibility Cloak. But instead it serves only to raise the alarm and provoke a panicked escape from the Ministry, locket at least in hand, and a resulting squinch as Hermione gets tagged during Disapparition and shakes off their pursuer at the steps of 12 Grimmauld Place. This in turn closes off their comfortable refuge from future use, and puts them in the wild and truly on their own.

So we embark on their extended sojourn through the many woods and towns of rural Britain as the Quest begins to break down from lack of momentum. The lack of food owing to it being one of the five exceptions to Elementary Transfiguration makes for bitter company, made all the more fractious due to Harry’s insistence that they each take it in turn to wear the will-sapping locket horcrux. With descriptions eerily similar to that of Sauron’s One Ring, the locket acts like a portable dementor, siphoning away confidence and cheer and making the wearer sink ever deeper in despair. Why Harry cannot simply conscience to keep it in the Mokeskin bag (unless it has no more room) or Hermione’s handbag (which certainly does) is a bit of a mystery, unless one resorts to the same rationale as for the initial trip to the Burrow. Still, time drags on and tempers raise as we get no closer to finding another horcrux, or destroying the locket. We get a hint at least that the Sword of Gryffindor, now imbued with the power of basilisk venom, would serve for the latter purpose, if only they knew where Dumbledore might have left it for them. From here, the exact sequence of events becomes a bit murky to my recollection, so these may not all follow in precise order. I’ll try to keep to the highlights and see if we can’t sprint ahead somewhat to the meatier fare.

• Eventually Ron gets fed up and leaves. Hermione stays, but clearly at a dear emotional cost.
• Harry returns to his earlier fixation on the place he had first intended to visit – Godric’s Hollow, home of his parents and, we’ve since learned, that of the Dumbledores and Bathilda Bagshot, his confidante and author of A History of Magic.
• The visit to Godric’s Hollow goes disastrously, with Harry attacked by a giant snake (Nagini?), his wand broken, and no new information about Dumbledore since Bathilda has been dead for some time. We do, however, visit the graves of Harry’s parents as well as a couple of other notables (Ignotus Peverell, Ariana Dumbledore) and get a copy of The Life And Lies of Albus Dumbledore for free.
• The Life and Lies provides one version of Albus’ early years, including the mystery of his sister Ariana and his brief friendship with Grindelwald before his rise to power.
• Harry follows a silver doe Patronus to the sword of Gryffindor, hidden beneath the ice. Ron returns, just in time to save Harry from drowning in an icehole, and proves his valor by retrieving the sword and using it to destroy the locket after some choice taunting over his deepest anxieties.
• Ron tells of being ambushed by Snatchers (a term right out of The Borribles) which nets him a spare wand for Harry.
• We get news of the outside world through a couple of chance encounters – first with the roaming party of refugees including Dean Thomas, Ted Tonks, and Griphook the Gringotts goblin from book 1; and then once Ron finally guesses the password to Potterwatch on the wireless. (The latter has already doubtless been the cause of at least one new podcast, fansite, or other outlet starting to take up the moniker.) The contributors to Potterwatch all take the expedient step of adopting R-titled aliases, although Remus could really have done better than to choose his namesake’s brother, Romulus.
• Harry moons over Ginny, watching her dot move silently around the Marauder’s Map at Hogwarts.
• The trio visit Xenophilius Lovegood to learn more about his curious symbol, which he reveals as representing the Deathly Hallows – three more artifacts to find! Hermione reads the Beedle’s version from her runed book, and Xenophilius fills out the story, which takes on the dimensions of a Grail Quest or something like the secret society which pursued Charlemagne’s chess service in The Eight, alchemical examples all. We have already seen two of the three (Harry’s cloak and the stone of Gaunt’s ring), and Harry now guesses that the third, the Elder Wand, is what Voldemort has been pursuing in hopes of overcoming his inability to kill Harry. We also learn that Luna has been taken hostage.
• Finally Harry invokes the Taboo by saying Voldemort’s name (which Ron had conveniently overridden since their first escape from Tottenham Court Road), arranging for their capture by Fenrir Grayback and henchmen and thus their being ferried to the Malfoy estate for some providential eavesdropping.

A quick aside on the Taboo: it is fitting that such a stalwart notion from both magick and religious history as the ‘forbidden word’ makes its appearance in the commitment of Voldemort’s name as a formal taboo, and frightening that the power of Ministry is such that it can be used to detect the utterance of a single word anywhere within a wide sphere of influence and immediately acted upon. It is like a supernatural equivalent to infamous NSA programs like ECHELON that track for certain keywords, or else daemonic names that conjure up their counterparts from the nether hells to serve or menace those foolish enough to utter them. Like the underage Trace we learn about leading up to Harry’s birthday, one wonders just what other powers of surveillance are available to the Ministry.

Once at the Malfoys, we start off a flurry of events. We find Luna, Dean Thomas, Ollivander, and Griphook sharing the dungeon beneath the floor. Bellatrix’ torture of Hermione takes on new urgency when she spots the sword of Gryffindor among the spoils, and she demands to know how they have infiltrated her bank vault (a-ha!). Harry’s fragment of Sirius’ two-way mirror serves to call help in the form of Dobby. Wormtail redeems himself with the merest moment of hesitation, resulting in his being strangled by the enchanted hand granted by Voldemort. And Harry overpowers Draco, stealing three wands including Draco’s own. Sadly, in the slow-motion conclusion to their escape, Bellatrix’ silver knife flies through the air and claims the life of valiant Dobby. Now at Shell Cottage, Harry endeavors to bury Dobby by hand, which seems to work in his favor in convincing Griphook to cooperate in their planned bank heist. Meanwhile, Harry makes the fateful decision to put horcruxes before Hallows, interrogating Griphook first in seeking the means to retrieve whatever Bellatrix feared they had already discovered. By the time he meets with Ollivander, Voldemort is already well on the way to retrieve the Elder Wand from Dumbledore’s Tomb, although we learn something of the vagaries of wandlore – that wands innately possess some amount of sentience or will, that they choose the wizard (as we had first seen in his shop in book 1), and that the manner of their passing to a new owner affects their efficacy. Having wrested Draco’s wand by force, for example, Harry has earned its obedience in a way he never achieved with the blackthorn, which had been stolen by Ron.

We now embark on yet another thrilling break-in attempt, this time the seemingly impregnable Gringotts and into a high-security vault to boot. The untimely appearance of another Death Eater provokes Harry’s first use of the Imperius Curse, and we learn that goblins have a sick sense of humor in how they trap their vaults against thieves. Griphook makes off with the Sword of Gryffindor, foiling Harry’s plan to pull the “didn’t say when” gambit (which makes me think, of all things, of Prostho Plus – Piers Anthony’s tale of a space dentist who avoids a deadly fate through a similar loophole). Their escape by dragonback is likewise reminiscent of Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame, with its evocative emancipation of the slave dragon. The retrieval of Hufflepuff’s cup thereby takes us up to the limits of our foreknowledge of the available horcruxes – after the locket and the cup, we know only that one more item remains, apart from Nagini. And it is by the simple expedient of reading Voldemort’s mind, in his panic apparently forgetting to employ Occlumency against Harry’s intrusion, that we learn that the final artifact resides at no less a place than Hogwarts, and perhaps even in Ravenclaw Tower.

After confirmation of Aberforth’s identity as the barman of the Hog’s Head (which always smelled of goats), here begins the run-up to the apparent final battle between the massed forces of Good and Evil, suitably enough back at the grounds of Hogwarts. We discover that a defiant Neville has been leading the charge against the oppression within the school, through the adroit use of the full power of the Room of Requirement. The remnants of Dumbledore’s Army await them, and thus emboldened, Harry makes his way with Luna to Ravenclaw Tower in search of the last founder’s artifact. He runs into one stationed Death Eater, then after the arrival of Professor McGonagall, yet another and makes a disturbing display of the Cruciatus Curse in dispatching the latter. But at the invocation of Dumbledore’s name in announcing his intentions, Harry gains the complete loyalty of McGonagall and its staff (Snape fleeing the scene) that Hogwarts can put to its defense to buy him time to complete his task. And so the Battle of Hogwarts begins.

Although Rowling provides tremendous fan service in the ensuing battle (while Harry wanders about, asking questions of ghosts), it seems like nothing would be enough to satisfy our appetite. We get the arrival of the full Order plus Ginny, and the long-awaited return of the prodigal son, Percy Weasley, who announces his failings and joins his brothers. Grawp and Hagrid wreak their normal giant-sized havoc, while Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall demonstrate the most ingenuity in employing the resources of the castle and grounds itself into their defenses: we cheer when the transfigured statues all march off as one, or desks rush from the gates into melee, or Neville rushes past with arms full of Snargaluff Pods and Mandrakes to rain down on the invaders from the ramparts. One wonders just how much an enriled Professor Flitwick is capable of, as he begins casting an enchantment of immense complexity (Protego Horribilis) within Ravenclaw Tower. The house elves make their stand with Kreacher at their head, rushing to fight with pots and a form of magic that has thus far shown no restraints. Perhaps most thrilling is the full force of a mother’s rage unleashed when Bellatrix nearly kills Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley flies to her defense with a cry that is nearly an echo of Ripley facing down the Alien Queen (Aliens) in protecting her own adopted daughter, Newt: “Get away from her, you bitch!” But at some point we may be disappointed as the battle dissolves into the usual exchange of jets of colored light, with the occasional Shield or Disarming Charm thrown in.

Yet amidst all this chaos, Harry manages to identify the location of the diadem of Ravenclaw, and discovers that Ron and Hermione have managed already to destroy the Hufflepuff cup through the simple expedient of having Ron emulate Parseltongue to re-open the Chamber of Secrets (which must have been a hoot to witness). We also get Ron and Hermione’s first ‘on screen’ kiss, when Ron expresses concern for the welfare of the Hogwarts house elves, evidently having learned as much as Harry from the transformation of Kreacher as well as the sacrifice of Dobby. We encounter a not-so-friendly Draco and his thoroughly evil minions Crabbe and Goyle within the Room of Hidden Things, who conveniently manage to destroy the diadem by Crabbe’s unwise conjuration of Fiendfyre. Leaving a cowed Draco in their wake, the trio set off again to the Shrieking Shack, where Voldemort is holed up with Nagini, now the last remaining horcrux (we yet know of). Here they witness Snape’s summoning, and prescribed death by Voldemort in an attempt to gain mastery of the Elder Wand (although it begs inquiry why Voldemort would choose Nagini as the instrument of Snape’s dismissal rather than his usual Avada Kedavra, the better to win the Elder Wand to him, although we must suspect that slow death by poison simply provides the requisite time). In his final moments, Snape extracts his hidden memories (fortunately not hidden elsewhere to protect them against Voldemort’s Legilimency) and thus provides us with the final answers to his true nature, the justification for his actions, and the secret of Harry’s scar that Dumbledore had kept from him.

From this point forward until the story’s end, the ensuing events become somewhat tangled and confusing and describing them is nigh impossible without also critiquing them or making an attempt at forceful explanation. So we will therefore dispense with a straightforward summary of events, and approach them instead with the clues and insight provided us.

1. Harry is a horcrux, containing a fragment of Voldemort’s soul just as his skin contains the protection of his mother’s blood. Dumbledore foresaw this, and thus arranged for Harry to be prepared for the sacrifice he will have to make in order to truly accomplish Voldemort’s defeat.
2. The protection provided by Lily’s blood magic is infused with Voldemort, as a result of his taking Harry’s blood in the graveyard to accomplish his resurrection at the end of Goblet of Fire.
3. The three Deathly Hallows are reputed to make their owner a “master of Death,” although the exact extent of this mastery is not described, as all mention of it has been corrupted by legend and fairy tales.
4. While Harry possesses 2 of the Hallows (the Resurrection Stone and Cloak of Invisibility), Voldemort holds the Elder Wand, which Dumbledore captured from Grindelwald.
5. Harry chooses the path of the horcruxes over the Hallows while at Shell Cottage, i.e. he seeks to end Voldemort’s reign at the peril of his life. In this sense, he has conquered fear of death, although he can not be said to seek it out willingly.
6. Harry enters the clearing in the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself, both to protect all those he cares about who remain at Hogwarts and to destroy the horcrux he carries.
7. Voldemort casts the Killing Curse at Harry using the Elder Wand, thinking he has won its allegiance through killing Snape, who had killed its former master, Dumbledore.
8. Harry is temporarily free of his body, and meets with a representation of Albus Dumbledore in a place like Purgatory (or Limbo aka Mobil Station of The Matrix Revolutions, a place between two worlds) that appears to him as King’s Cross, which for Harry stands as the interface between the Muggle and Wizarding worlds. With him is the scrabbling fragment of Voldemort’s soul. Harry is given the chance to ‘move on’ or go back to his body to continue fighting Voldemort.
9. Like Aslan exploiting the loophole of Deep Magic in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Harry is resurrected through the purity of his sacrifice, but also by the merit of his soul remaining bound to life through his mother’s blood, and by the inability of the Elder Wand to act against its true master (although his willful sacrifice appears to have allowed it to act to briefly separate his soul).
10. Once his body is again ensouled, Harry’s mercy towards Draco is repaid by Narcissa’s deceit towards Voldemort in declaring him dead.
11. Although feigning death, Harry is not affected by Voldemort’s Cruciatus Curse, again because the Elder Wand cannot harm him.
12. At Harry’s insistence, Neville challenges Voldemort rather than swear fealty (a feint seen recently in 300), and kills Nagini with the Sword of Gryffindor, which has come to one truly worth of it through his Sorting Hat, just as Harry received it in the Chamber of Secrets. This leaves Voldemort exposed in his body.
13. Challenging Voldemort to a duel with Draco’s wand, Harry recites the chain of ownership of the Elder Wand – it was not Snape who defeated Dumbledore, but Draco, who first disarmed him on the tower (probably with Dumbledore’s acceptance, since the Elder Wand is supposed to be invulnerable when dueling). Harry in turn captured Draco’s wand while at the Malfoy estate, and we are meant to believe that a sort of transitive property applies, so that mastery thus passes directly to Harry.
14. In the final exchange, Voldemort’s Killing Curse rebounds on him again, as the Elder Wand still cannot act against its master (and now Harry does not wish for death). Harry’s Expelliarmus succeeds, and the Elder Wand spins to him, reacher its master at last.
15. Harry retires to the Headmaster’s Office, and declares before an astonished Ron and Hermione that he will return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore’s Tomb, where if it remains until Harry’s natural death, the chain of ownership will be broken. Likewise, he plans not to seek out the fallen Resurrection Stone, still lying at the edge of the clearing in the Forbidden Forest, whose shades once drove its first master to suicide. He will only keep his true heirloom, the Invisibility Cloak, and use it perhaps to hide from Death for a normal span of life, ceding it in time to his own offspring.

That’s quite a lot to take in, and hinges on some rather finicky aspects of wandlore and the esoterica of blood magic and the path souls take after death. It takes a lot of emphasis on the mastery of the Elder Wand to make sense of why Harry could triumph over Voldemort and his invulnerable wand while wielding Draco’s, so it makes sense to learn that Rowling had originally considered titling the book, Harry Potter and the Elder Wand. It also still raises a few questions for me, particularly about Harry’s interaction with Dumbledore at King’s Cross. Was he really meeting with the soul of Dumbledore at the antechamber to the afterlife, or was he somehow empowered in a Gnostic fashion to understand the greater pattern once freed temporarily of the trammels of the demiurge’s deception? Was it solely because of his soul remaining anchored to the mortal plane through his mother’s blood in Voldemort’s body that he was able to return to his own body (remembering that when Voldemort was first vanquished by his own Killing Curse, he roamed the earth as little more than spirit, his body having been destroyed by the curse), or through some intervention of the Elder Wand which less-than-killed him?

The issue of remorse and through it redemption also comes into play for many characters, yet not to the one I expected after first learning of Hermione’s discovery in Dumbledore’s secret library. Harry has shown it after harming Draco in book 6, and to some extent when he overcomes his instinctive revulsion and extends sympathy to Kreacher. Ron overcame bitterness and feelings of inadequacy and struggled to return to Harry and Hermione, guided by the Put-Outer for, as said by Harry, Dumbledore foresaw that Ron would “want to find them again.” Draco, Narcissa, and even Lucius at the last show a greater love of family and act to correct their mistakes in serving Voldemort. Remus Lupin returns to his family, and dies alongside Tonks in defense of their right to be a family. Percy overcomes his pride and loyalty to ambition and rejoins his family. But apart from a brief, almost mocking offering from Harry in their final confrontation, the one person who never truly considers remorse and its salvation is Tom Marvolo Riddle. Even though it could reverse the horcruxes’ damage to his soul, and provide him some possibility of an afterlife as more than a pitiable, helpless fraction of a person, his steadfast avoidance of Death to the last is his undoing. As he brought misery, pain, and death to so many who opposed or even served him, his final act is to condemn himself to a wrenching everlasting exile from grace.

In the aftermath, we can briefly mourn the loss of Remus and Tonks, parents to Harry’s godchild Teddy, as well as Fred Weasley and the unnamed 50 others who perished in the battle with the Death Eaters. Still, the toll seems less than we might have feared – Hagrid survives, as do the rest of the Weasleys, and the rest of the Order and staff from what we know. And what of the epilogue? Nineteen years have passed since the events of that night at Hogwarts, and we learn only that our trio are all parents, with significantly named children (well, maybe except for Hugo) on their way to Hogwarts themselves, in a world that seems to have weathered the scars of its past well. The only profession we explicitly hear is that Neville now teaches Herbology at Hogwarts. Yet some of this vagueness can be forgiven if we accept Rowling’s explanation that it was meant to be a gauzy scene showing mostly that life continues, and that the world is brighter and more carefree for all the labours Harry and his friends have undertaken. If I have any real disappointment of what is not shown, it is that moment when Harry finally goes to Ginny’s side, overcome as she is with Fred’s death, and shares with her a look or a silent touch. Something that reconnects them and gives us the hope that the world will indeed heal, and reintroduce those things as love and companionship that will provide the salve to all the pains they have endured. Having them instead only appear together again after almost two decades, with so much now assumed between them as the parents of three, we never get that wonder at seeing each other again when both thought their future lost. (Oh, and those last three words – augh!)

The Prediction

On the whole, I give myself some credit for doing what I could with the facts presented, given that the major plot turn surrounding wandlore is all new to book 7.

The Right

• The identity of the horcruxes is correct, although I can only take half-credit for the diadem of Ravenclaw, not having made the connection to the tiara in the Room of Hidden Things as some did (I forget how we may have already known that it was even a headpiece).
• Harry’s departure from the Dursleys and the subsequent wedding at the Burrow just after his 17th birthday are all valid.
• The Quest indeed starts at 12 Grimmauld Place, with the invaluable assistance of Kreacher, who did retrieve the locket with Regulus (RAB) from the cave.
• Hogwarts loses its Muggle-born population, and Neville leads the DA in a fashion, with Ginny’s assistance (such as in attempting to steal the Sword of Gryffindor) until she is taken into hiding after the holiday. Draco does not return until close to the Battle of Hogwarts.
• Sirius makes no appearance, and Dumbledore does not return to life, although he does appear both in the headmaster’s portrait (as guessed) and in the spectral King’s Cross (maybe a sort of ghost, and limited to providing information).
• Harry does not directly kill Voldemort – he attempts to disarm him, and Voldemort’s curse reflects thus killing himself (again).
• Snape is acting on Dumbledore’s orders, killed him at his command (although I hadn’t guessed that Dumbledore was already dying by other causes), and does so out of remorse for Lily’s death.
• Harry is a horcrux!
• Harry sacrifices himself to destroy this fragment of Voldemort’s soul.

The Wrong

• I did not imagine the Dursleys going into hiding or how dangerous the trip would be, especially the loss of Hedwig.
• The theft of the locket by Mundungus, the whole subsequent trip to the Ministry, reappearance of Umbridge, and the risk of entering the Ministry were all new.
• In fact, I totally whiffed on the state of the Ministry, it becoming a home base for the Death Eaters to act with impunity, carry out their extinction of Muggle-borns, and sever Harry from any outside aid.
• The Muggle world is never really mentioned, so the notion of them discovering wizards in their midst was wrong.
• Hogwarts becomes compulsory, so students do not attend according to their parents’ affiliation (with the notable exception of Muggle-borns, who have no choice).
• Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes sadly makes no appearance aside from the involvement of Fred and George in the Order and on Potterwatch.
• Harry’s Parseltongue has no bearing on the end of Nagini, and is even used against him at Godric’s Hollow (when he is fooled into thinking Bathilda still alive while inhabited by a snake). I did guess partway through the book that it would allow him to open the locket, but Ron emulating him to open the Chamber of Secrets was a complete surprise.
• Nonverbal spells have no significance. At all.
• Madam Maxine does not aid in the final battle, and Charlie Weasley plays no major role (doesn’t ride in on Norbert or anything).
• The final battle is held at Hogwarts instead of the Ministry, and thus the Love Room and Death Room have no role.
• Fred will not be participating in the expansion of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes (sniff).
• Harry does not use any form of blood or binding magic on Voldemort (aww, no Amor Fidelis), and the prevalence of couples among his supporters has no greater import.
• Harry does not die, really.

I cannot say I am either surprised or upset that my ultimate prediction that Harry’s death would be permanent was proved wrong. I thought that Rowling might finagle a Mega-Happy Ending by some means, with Harry’s continued survival and a future full of happy children, but come the end of book 6, the signs seemed to pointing towards her taking the less precedented step of having her hero and titular character become a martyr “for the greater good.” That the “gleam of triumph” seen briefly in Dumbledore’s eyes at the conclusion of Goblet of Fire would amount to a free ticket out of oblivion was more than I expected, after the seriousness with which she seemed to take the march towards the abyss. And what of the careful wording of the prophecy? Perhaps it was only meant to achieve that nebulosity that gave real impact to the unfolding of events – after all, I went into book 7 thinking that there was a very good chance that Harry would die, even while looking to see if she could manufacture a plausible means for his escape from its clutches. Rowling has said, “I was very proud that people thought Harry’s death was a genuine possibility. I was very proud, because my story had to make the possibility of death real. I wanted the reader to feel that anyone might die, as in life.” The first time I realized that she would grant him a reprieve was, ironically, just after his death in the forest – looking at how much of the book remained, I thought, “clearly there is too much remaining to account for just the wrap-up and epilogue.” Harry hadn’t even taken any opportunity to say goodbye, so he would have to get at least one more chance among the living. The relative ease of his return might cheapen the significance of his willing sacrifice somewhat, but as with his decision to seek the horcruxes over the Hallows, and his determination not to rejoin the Hallows, he has shown a sort of mastery over Death after all – like Evey passing through the crucible of imprisonment and torture in V for Vendetta, Harry emerges with his integrity intact and no fear of death, which in turn enables him to embrace life fully. Death is no longer an unknown, and as Dumbledore suggests, it is the fear of the unknown that makes us dread both death and darkness, not the things themselves.

Aftermath

Having released myself from the bonds of self-enforced isolation during the reading, I have already run across several interviews with J.K. Rowling that go some ways to assuage some lingering concerns (for, as she puts, “some people will not be happy until we know the middle names of Harry’s great-grandparents”). As mentioned, the epilogue is meant to be nebulous as if seen from a distance or through a fog. She also gives details on the professions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione (who I imagined would have found something more challenging, such as revitalizing the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures) as well as Luna, and leaves the possibility of a relationship between Neville and Luna open after having scuttled it in the past. We also learn that the characters she spared were not so certain, such as Arthur Weasley being saved at the expense of Lupin and Tonks (creating yet another orphaned godchild), who had been meant to live. We also learn of the effect of her own mother’s death on the books, and her tentative plans to publish an encyclopedia that will fill in the histories and fates of other characters – but not, critically, any attempt to write more stories set in the world after Voldemort’s defeat as Harry and his friends grow to adulthood, which for her “would be an enormous anticlimax.” And I especially should not be one to complain that we are given less instead of more details at the book’s conclusion, having asked for that at the very beginning. And as for what’s next, she has already revealed that she’s working on two new books, outside of Harry’s world – one for children, one for adults. After the success of Harry Potter in bridging that gap, I wonder if it will make any difference to her readers which she releases first.

Vital Stats
Pages: 759 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 36+1
Starts: Malfoys’ Estate
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Cursed in Ravenclaw Tower
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: King’s Cross (Purgatory)
House Cup: n/a
Exams: n/a
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry – 5, Voldemort – 4

About 12 hours after the arrival of Deathly Hallows here, with K finishing it first and my Prediction finally wrapped up, I started it for myself around 2am this morning. The rigors of the preparatory ritual having taken their toll, I made it through 8 chapters before stopping to sleep. Now it is some 16 hours later, and with the lawn cut and dinner served, I am finally preparing to settle in again for a proper focused reading. Yet that strange urge that has kept me writing of this series all week prompted me one last time to reflect on what may come. This, of course, will come of no surprise to t.n.g., who probably suspects my delaying gratification out of sheer habit.

To start, I have to express simply how much I am enjoying the book. Contrary to the experience of book 6, which was rather like swimming underneath an ice floe towards the next airhole, the story so far in book 7 has been just thrilling, chilling and rewarding even after only 8 chapters. The change in tone strikes me as a return to classic quest fantasy, worthy of the word ‘epic’ – a term I am sure to be the first to associate with…wait, no, it’s on the inside front cover. But truly, from terse inside flap to unprecedented flyleaf quotations, and on to the story itself, it feels that we have stepped up the drama and danger beyond all endured so far (cf. Serenity). And the dangers present are in far greater measure than I had expected, having underestimated the limits of the protection left at 4 Privet Drive and overestimated the solidity of the Ministry. We also get compensation in some tender ’shipping moments before launching into the quest proper, to gird us for what must lay ahead. And the heralding of Kingsley’s lynx at the Burrow came as if from Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising, another tale of children caught up in the prevailing struggle of Light and Dark (and I had forgotten that its Will Stanton began his quest (1) once he turned eleven, (2) that his quest was to discover Six Signs, and (3) was called the Seeker).

Next, as far as the Prediction holds so far, I would only mention that with the additional insight provided by Hermione’s research, I can now see how we may resolve the central conflict by an alternative avenue. The William Penn quote, however, still holds the course. I am very excited to see just how wrong I can be!

Finally, while grinding through the death march of the “Green Mile” (our back yard) with a mower hindered by a gimpy front wheel, the iPod Semuta IV fed my slightly hypnagogic state with the following apophenic morsels.

Morrissey’s “Irish Blood, English Heart” became translated immediately to the filkish “Wizard Blood, Muggle Heart” as sung by Harry:

Wizard blood, Muggle heart, this I’m made of
There is no-one on earth I’m afraid of
And no Ministry can buy or sell me

I’ve been dreaming of a time when
To be pureblood is not to be baneful
To be standing by the Muggle-borns not feeling
Shameful, racist or partial

Wizard blood, Muggle heart, this I’m made of
There is no-one on earth I’m afraid of
And I will die with both my hands untied

I’ve been dreaming of a time when
The Wizards are sick to death of part-human haters
And Death Eaters, and spit upon the name of Lord Voldemort
And denounce this pureblood line that still salute him
And will salute him forever

Next was Esthero’s “My Torture”, which contains lines like, ” I want you to stop disturbing my sleep / I want it to stop hurting so bad”…while echoed in the refrain from Garbage’s “Bleed Like Me”, we hear “You should see my scars.”

And last came the brief interlude to Sarah Nixey’s “Sing”:

There are at least two sides to every story.
There are songs that tell of the beginning, and some that come towards the end.
Some of these songs are true, and some tell lies.
One or two are eager for impossible romance.

And if there is a better description of the whole of fiction, well…it didn’t come up in my playlist, anyway.

Now, back to book 7, to revel in the last hours of an unknown End.