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.
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