raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (hp - remus at the window)
raven ([personal profile] raven) wrote2007-07-21 11:11 pm

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I have just finished

Okay, what follows under the cut is not a review of Harry Potter. It is, however, massively spoilery, and I think anyone who has both a) read the book and b) known me for any length of time, will know what it's about.

Remus Lupin is dead. REMUS LUPIN IS DEAD. [livejournal.com profile] hathy_col carefully checked on my mental state more than once this afternoon, because, well, it's Remus. WAAAAAAAH.

Okay. I have decent commentary coming up, probably, at some point, where I will put my grown-up hat on and talk about, I dunno, themes and morals and narrative arcs and the soppy epilogue. Maybe. But before that, this. I am twenty years old. I picked up my first Harry Potter book when I was ten. I've been in fandom for most of the intervening period, too. So that's half of my life that these characters have lived and breathed in whatever the place is where fictional characters live, and they've been part of a glorious story that I've been listening to for half my life, and I don't feel any embarrassment whatsoever for sniffling through the last few chapters.

And more that - it's a damn good story. It's a story about good and evil, naturally, and about the importance of tolerance and co-existence, and about friendship. And the thing that stuck with me when I was ten was that Harry, at the beginning, is nervous about going on to secondary school even when he doesn't know he's going to Hogwarts. It was summer when I read it, and in September I was nervous about secondary school too, and I remember thinking clearly that it was funny, and kind of nice, that the same worry persisted through the shift into worlds of magic. And I worried about making friends, and library books, new subjects, house points and tuck shops, and GCSEs and A-levels, too. (Although I note with weird amusement that I got my A-levels and Harry never got his NEWTs!) There was a current of simple reality going through the stories which I appreciated for the ten years that followed.

And everyone knows that I loved Remus Lupin a whole, stupid, idiotic lot. It's quite a long time to have loved a fictional character, and I really have done. Yep, he's not real. Not even close. He's still dead, and [livejournal.com profile] hathy_col are going to have a long lunch on Monday, and weep and wail and get thrown out for excessive displays of emotion.

So this is me raising a late-night toast - to Harry Potter, and the stories, characters and friends I've met through him, and to ten years of my life. Cheers.

[identity profile] schlagen.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 10:20 am (UTC)(link)
I did think of you when I read that he'd died. I'm pretty pissed he didn't get a decent send off as it were, just 'oh yar, there's remus & tonks dead on the floor. Right oh.' And Mad-Eye. She could have scraped the epiloge and used the word count to write Lupin a proper death.

I love Lupin too, although I fell in love with him in the films the moment he turned the grammarphone on in the DADA lesson in Prisoner of Azkaban. I shall join you in the mourning for Lupin.

[identity profile] schlagen.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 10:21 am (UTC)(link)
I obviously meant to say 'she could have just scrapped, rather than scraped, the epilogue'.

[identity profile] absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 10:23 am (UTC)(link)
I really think scraping would have been good, actually.

[identity profile] loneraven.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 10:32 am (UTC)(link)
Me too! OFF-PAGE, for fuck's sake. I wanted him to actually be involved in the plot, somehow, this time round, but nooooo. And argh, my love for him is dramatic and legendary and I'm horribly amused that everyone seems to have got to that point and fully expected me to have a fannish meltdown. Which I am, indeed, doing.

And, heh - scraping and scrapping are BOTH GOOD. Although, is it wrong that my mental image of Teddy is now of a spiky-haired indie boy with eyeliner and very sharp teeth?

[identity profile] lizziwig.livejournal.com 2007-07-22 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope, that's totally right. You can tell he was the coolest guy at Hogwarts, and everyone was madly in love with him.

I will add to this fannish pile of woe. *WEEPS*

[identity profile] loneraven.livejournal.com 2007-07-23 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
He had a band. He had a band called the Punk Librarians, or something. And he was moody and intelligent and had a secret passion for musical theatre.