Of House-Elves and Children's Tales, of Love, Loyalty, and Innocence, of pg 709 and beyond...

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tonight.  Since a week or so before school started I’ve been listening back through to the books after having put them aside for a year or two, and now that I’ve finished them once again, there is too much in me to merely go to bed without getting out of me how I feel about these books and why.

There is so much I love about this story, so much that just makes my heart happy, so much that is wonderful and lovely, always.  And I am not surprised that this time through, I have found some things that are new.

Snape.  So much hatred and confusion, so much meanness and sadness all in one name.  After finishing the last book for the first time, it changed everything—or almost everything—about the way I saw Snape.  But for some reason, especially in this read through, I saw him differently—maybe I was looking for him even more.  If the fate of this world hangs on one character, it is not Harry or Dumbledore, but Severus Snape.  If he does not protect Harry, does not look out for him, does not always want to keep him safe, Harry would not survive.  And there is one reason he does it—the eyes of the woman he will always love stare back at him everyday at Hogwarts once Harry enters the school.  And that is enough.  A detail so small we all overlooked it right up until the moment that Snape’s memory revealed it was the most important detail of the entire series (Jo, you take my breath away as an author.) There is not much about Snape’s life that is not awful, and hard, and difficult.  In a terrible home situation, he finally has a bright light in Lily, and he cannot hold that light enough to become light himself.  Certainly he makes choices, bad ones, but his pre-Hogwarts life is pretty awful, and after Lily chooses James, he lives in a small personal hell.  A hell that grows hotter when he has to look at Lily’s eyes and see them inside his worst enemy, see constant proof that he lost her, every single time he looks at Harry.  And he loves Lily enough to protect him.  The courage of that man.  The love and the determination.  Set beside a man who also knew a lost love, knew how one true, deep love can affect you your entire life, and it’s clear why and how Dumbledore was able to understand the deeply troubled Severus Snape. 

            In reading back through the series, I can forgive Snape for almost all the small awful things he does to poke at Harry—or really at James—and make Harry’s life difficult along with his fellow Gryffindors. But what continues to bother me, what is not acceptable, is how he treats Neville.  Bullying him at every turn, making fun of him.  Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I just can’t do it.  And if it was—as some have suggested—because he hates that the Longbottoms were “spared” when the Potters were chosen by Voldermort—that’s just too far Severarus.  You can sort of hate Harry, but leave Neville alone.  But, considering, for a time, Snape was almost as bad as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, one offense alone is not so bad.

            There is just so much to love in these books—have I mentioned that? I love that it’s a classic quest story and that there are allusions to the canon of literature everywhere you turn around.  But mostly, I love how it all fits together so perfectly.  One of the reviewers said, “Harry Potter is so right in every respect it almost seems as if J.K. Rowling had no choice in the matter.” And this is how I feel.  It’s so easy to forget that she had power over this story.  She could’ve changed it and twisted it and made it into something that would’ve given her more gratification or given us less enjoyment.  She could’ve made it tawdry or cheap at the end or so confusing that we didn’t understand or refused us catharsis.  Maybe a man in a million could unite this story.  Thankfully, it was safely in Jo’s hands all along. 

            The story teller in me is amazed, is overwhelmed, is awed, by how perfectly this tale fits together—by how the exposition is so seamlessly woven in, that the details are perfect, and always just the right touch.  

            If there is an imperfection, it is the thing that always bothers me about the last book.  Why does the deluminator bring Ron back to Hermione and Harry? There is no foreshadowing, no hint of its power to do that.  Sure, it means he understands Ron, sure it means that Hermione is Ron’s light (I guess), but it just doesn’t quite fit.  And it is only because everything else fits so perfectly—pieces sliding into holes carved out just for them, that this slightly clumsy fit seems just a little off to me.  But perhaps it is like the Persian rugs, always woven specifically to include one small flaw, just to remind us that the maker is human, rather than divine.

            I told my aunt once that I would go to see Michelangelo’s David every day if I lived in Italy.  She asked me why, saying it wouldn’t change.  But, my response to her was, I would change.  And therefore see it differently.  The thing I saw differently in this story was the fairy tale—The Tale of the Three Brothers—and Hermione’s disbelief in the Hallows.  This summer during CTY Andi said something to the kids about believing in fairy tales—how, do you think that maybe, it might be good for us to believe, even in some small way, that a fairy tale could be true.  I wouldn’t have been able to put it into words that well, but it so perfectly expressed how I felt.  There is small part of me that believes in things like fairy tales and deep magic, the kind Tom Riddle never understood.  So it made me laugh to realize that this world of Hogwarts is created so perfectly and completely that they too have their own fairy tales.  Tales of magic that even those who are never far from a magic wand do not believe in.  That Hermione, who knows better than anyone how much magic there is in the world, could disbelieve in this magical fairy tale.  And the world turns out to be a better place because of the truth of that tale.

            There are so many things I love about this story—all seven as a complete story—but it is the ending that gets me every time.  It is the moment that Harry circles Voldemort, knowing of the power he holds, and he offers him one last chance.  Harry stands there and offers Voldemort repentance, if he can merely grasp it.  If he can only humble himself and decide to understand what he has resisted for so long.  Voldemort cannot lower himself to be a mere human who could need to repent from evil.  But the point is---Harry offers it to him.  There is something right, and cleansing, and full about that moment.  Just in the same way that getting these thoughts out on paper so that I can sleep leaves me feeling right, and cleansed and full. 

Some Things Last Forever

Mid September I went home to grieve and show support for one of my oldest friends who lost her mother.  I went home to see Virginia and try to find words to say when there are no words that can make it better.  I’ve been pretty bad about keeping in touch with the group of girls that ended up there to support a family we grew up loving.  I hadn’t seen Virginia in months, hadn’t talked much to Brianne in the entire two years she lived in Colorado, hadn’t touched base with Kristen in ages.  And yet I never considered not going home that weekend.  Because there are some people who are always part of you.  Yes, there may be other friends who are more visible in my life in the moment, but part of how I act around them, part of almost every relationship I’ve built since them is built upon those first friendships that remain part of who I am.

I met Kristen in kindergarten, Brianne in first grade, and Virginia in sixth.   Ginny and I went to basketball camp and shared a seat squished together on the bus of away games after we went to Sheetz to get subs before the team left.  These girls tricked me into coming over to watch horror movies at Gin’s house and I watched Psycho before falling asleep before The Exorcist even started (thank you Jesus, that can only have been a miracle).  I have a vague memory of once painting letters on our stomachs for some unknowable reason since we never left her house that night, and being dared to eat dog food which made me want to throw up. 

There were adolescent fights, backyard bonfires, and elaborate dinner/killer English test study parties.  There were homecoming after parties and weird, three-legged rabbit pets. 

Now, today, we live in different places, though since Brianne has made it back to the east coast, things are a little easier to coordinate.  But it’s so much less about actual time and distance than it is about the ties that bind you to people.

Several people have told me lately that they think I’m brave—the way I’ve gone on a solitary writing retreat or flew out to California to teach for a few weeks.  Going to Yosemite without knowing anyone.  And maybe those are sort of brave things.  Certainly I wasn’t brave enough to do them five or ten years ago.   But these three women have never been among those who thought there was anything particularly special or daring about those actions.  These are the girls who encourage it, knowing how good those slightly scary experiences are, because they’ve had them as well.  These are the girls who taught me to be brave.  These are some of the first friends—certainly the longest-standing friends—and there’s something truly comforting about how totally accepted I am with them.

            I don’t know if everyone has this experience—certainly there are people who change tremendously between child and adulthood—but these women have known me through enough that I think it would be pretty hard to surprise them.  No matter how much you change, I think there is a part of you that remains the same, and if someone loves that deepest inner part of you, they see the career changes and long distances moves as the trappings they really are. 

If I am brave at all, if I willing to step outside my comfort zone, I owe that, at least in part, to the girls who—weirdly, now slightly ashamedly—were, and still remain, the Womanites.   Some things last forever, even in this world where everything must pass away.  So I went home to hug and try to show support to someone who can never be erased from my life—not even if I wanted it to be so.  I sought and didn’t find words that could comfort or ease her pain.  I hugged her tight, which was the only thing I had. 

Some things last forever.  Friendship, home, peace.  And love.