Reviewing: Harry Potter 6 + 7
I'm 28 years old, reading Harry Potter for the very first time.
Let's see if I missed out during my formative years or not.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
With a cataclysmic cliffhanger, this was one of Harry’s best years yet.
I might have mentioned before that although this is my first read-through of the Harry Potter books, I’ve definitely seen large chunks of some of the films. However, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any of The Half Blood Prince or either of the Deathly Hallows films, so I was 100% cold on the events of this book. To that end, I knew that Dumbledore was going to die at some point, but I didn’t know if it was going to happen in this book or not. What I certainly didn’t anticipate was Snape killing Dumbledore. That moment was a heartbreaking gut-punch for Harry and everyone at Hogwarts, made worse by the confusion it caused. Draco couldn’t do it himself, rebranding him as a trapped teenager instead of an evil villain. There’s definitely a lot of questions around why Snape did it – after all, we know that he had sworn to protect Draco, and doing this more or less prevented Draco from being turned on by the Death Eaters. Was any of this Dumbledore’s plan? And who is R.A.B? I imagine this moment would’ve hit especially hard for readers who had spent years and years waiting for this book. Either way, it’s the big moment that the entire novel builds up to.
I had a hunch that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince – after all, we knew it wasn’t Harry’s parents, and Snape’s always been teaching potions, so it adds up. I’m really looking forward to seeing how Snape’s story ends. He’s a really enigmatic character even after six books that continually shed light on his back story.
There was a subplot about romantic entanglements for our main characters – Ron starts going out with Lavender Brown, and Harry starts going out with Ginny, Ron’s sister. Part of me felt a bit squeamish about the idea of reading this aloud to my kid – or having them read it under a certain age. But upon further reflection, I realized there really isn’t anything wrong with this. Different people have different perspectives about dating and romance in high school (which is essentially where Harry is now). Some are all for it, some are totally against it, and that’s okay. J. K. Rowling shows us multiple perspectives and doesn’t shy away from the conversation. Some kids are picked on for dating too much. Others are singled out for dating too little. What’s the right answer? This book doesn’t say. Instead, it shows kids figuring it out bit by bit – in occasionally embarrassing ways. And that’s real life, whether it makes me squeamish or not.
One thing I liked about this book was how we were finally getting more of a backstory on Voldemort. It really felt like the only time to do it – we wouldn’t want to waste much of the upcoming final book on exposition. The similarities between Harry and Tom Riddle continue to be made evident, which is the key to any good rivalry. We don’t get a big battle between Harry and Voldemort just yet, but there is the big Snape moment we talked about earlier as well as a horrifying chapter in a lake filled with zombies. I loved that, and can’t wait for the illustrated edition – or to see it on film.
It’s been really cool seeing how well-thought-out this series has been. So many times in this book, there were references and answers to questions posed several books ago. There’s moments that characters remember that even I have forgotten, and it shows just how methodical Rowling was in planning out the series. I can’t wait to read the final book, and was thankful to fly through this one compared to the drudging pace I kept for its predecessor. On to the Deathly Hallows!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
A pulse-pounding and thoroughly fulfilling finish to the ride of a generation, The Deathly Hallows was exactly the conclusion that this series needed.
Like C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, Marvel’s Infinity War, or Tolkien’s climactic march through Mordor in Return of the King, this book has a distinctively bleak feel throughout most of its progression. Harry, Hermione and Ron are out of Hogwarts – many of the characters we’ve come to know and love are nowhere to be found. They’re barely hanging on by a thread, and given the six books that readers have worked through getting this far, it’s hard not to feel the despair of the characters – or the imminence of the end. It was cool seeing our three main heroes have to work so differently from the way we’re used to seeing them. There’s no classes or Quidditch matches to distract them from Voldemort’s ever-growing control. You can’t help but miss Hogwarts as you follow Harry and company’s quest, and I think that’s the point. But when the action comes – and it comes in waves, not just all at once at the end – there’s plenty of fun to lighten the mood. The break-in at Gringotts was a particular blast of a chapter, as was the chapter in the Ministry of Magic. At the same time, Rowling was prepared to kill off far more characters than I had anticipated. It seemed like every few chapters, another character we had known and loved for years was biting the dust. And hey, if there’s ever a time to kill a character, it’s now.
The Battle of Hogwarts was a spectacular segment that I can’t wait to see adapted in the films when I get there. Like Marvel’s Endgame, everyone is there, getting their brief moment of spotlight. Neville Longbottom, Molly Weasley, the Hogwarts house-elves, Grawp, Professor McGonagall, and so many others each contribute something valuable to the series’ conclusion. I flew through the final hundred pages of this book, intent on getting through this climactic act all at once. Of course, Harry’s one-on-one with Voldemort is every bit the dramatic finale that you’d hope it to be. Rowling’s narrative brilliance comes out in full force as you see the carefully laid steps that brought us to this duel. There’s not one chapter in the second half that doesn’t leave you desperate for one more page.
I have nothing but good things to say about this book in terms of its narrative structure and the way it ties up loose end after loose end from the series as a whole. In particular, I loved how we finally learned what Snape’s true intentions were all along and why he’s been so difficult to read. It’s the kind of revolution that makes you want to read the whole series over again. I also liked how the house elves were able to get involved in the Battle of Hogwarts in their own way. We don’t ever get a grand liberation of elves or a moment that makes it clear their fate in the future will be different, but this felt like a great way to honour them in the climax of the series. The one thing that I was kind of disappointed in was the fate of Draco – and to an extent, Ron. Draco doesn’t ever totally abandon his allegiance to Voldermort as near as I can tell – despite his obvious growing reluctance throughout the book to living the life of a Death Eater. I think I was hoping for more of a redemption path for Draco, but it’s not necessarily bad or even implausible that he ended up where he did. You’d just think that after two books of serving Voldemort, he’d wizen up. Again, it’s not bad to have a bad guy stay bad – Voldemort being a perfect example. But what’s different about Draco is that he’s a very real kind of character. We all have Dracos in our lives – people who think they’re better than everyone else, or ‘the school bully’. By the end of this series, it seems that that’s all Draco ever was. We got to see him as a bit of a pitiable figure from time to time, but on the whole it seems that a tiger doesn’t change their stripes – and I would’ve liked a more optimistic conclusion to Draco’s story.
That’s why I mentioned Ron a second ago. In the epilogue, a grown-up Harry, Ron, and Hermione are dropping off their kids at Hogwarts. We catch a glimpse of Draco doing the same – nodding to our heroes as an act of acknowledgement, maybe even respect. So I guess you could take that as a sign that he turned around, though likely years after the Battle of Hogwarts had passed. Anyway, Ron sees Draco’s kid Scorpius, and has this to say to his own daughter:
"So that's little Scorpius," said Ron under his breath. "Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie…Don't get too friendly with him.”
I wrote back when reading The Philosopher’s Stone that Harry had a knack for stooping to the level of his enemies. Now, over the course of the series, there have been a number of times where Harry has not done this – the sparing of Wormtail in The Prisoner of Azkaban, for example, or in this book when he saves Draco’s life. But while we, the readers, are given a chance or two to see Draco in a new light, I don’t think Harry ever really does that. To Harry, Draco is rarely ever more than a villain to be beaten. Ron makes that clear here by passing his own prejudice about the Malfoy family to his children. It’s a classic example of the very hereditary self-righteousness that Ron so despises in the Malfoys. If we view the people we don’t like as rivals or enemies instead of humans as multifaceted and flawed as ourselves, we run the risk of turning out just like the Death Eaters did. I’m likely reading too heavily into this moment, but I have to admit that I was hoping for more of a reconciliatory ending to Draco and Harry’s relationship.
So now that I’ve read the entire Harry Potter series (excluding the spinoff stuff that’s next on my list), I feel that I can take an informed stance on whether or not I feel that the series would be appropriate for my own children. Here’s my conclusions.
Firstly, I don’t think this series would inspire my children to attempt witchcraft in their own lives. Sure, watching Star Wars made me try moving objects with my mind as a kid – but deep down, I knew that it was fiction, and the same is true here. This is very clearly a work of imagination, not an instructional guide on trying to commune with the dead or craft love potions. Secondly, I’m not sure when and how to share these books with my kids. I’m fine with my kids reading them, to be clear – at the very least when they’re the same age as Harry himself, if not sooner. In terms of reading these books to my kids, I get a bit anxious at the thought of having to read some words aloud that I would never otherwise use in our house. If we were to read these books together, I think we’d tackle the relatively tamer Narnia series first as a test. Lastly, I think there’s a lot of admirable behaviour on display in this series, as well as a lot of stuff that I’d want my kids to aspire past. I’d love to discuss, compare and contrast the behaviours of different characters in school, i.e. is Ginny wrong for dating lots of boys? Is Ron silly for not dating any? Was Harry’s relationship with Cho a waste of time? Those are all just questions in one particular category, but I like the opportunities that this book presents to tackle real-world issues from the safe place of a fictional world.
Altogether, I’m thankful to have read this series. Rowling’s writing style was fun and exhilarating, and I was blown away at how everything came together in the end. I definitely understand the hype now of how millions of people my age were heart-and-soul fans of the books and films. I’m on my way to read the spin-offs next as well as watching all eight films for the first time. Thank you, J. K. Rowling!