Deconstructing Harry Part 7: A Review in Seven Parts

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Author's note: The "thoughts-per-page" posted are the exact thoughts I had while reading that very page. They have not nor will not be edited in retrospect or changed in hindsight. Here are my thoughts on the final 118 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Page 642 - "I do not need to seek Potter. Before the night is out, Potter will have come to find me." Like Luke Skywalker coming to find his father in Return of the Jedi. Why do bad guys always go out of their way to hunt down the good guys until the ending of the final episode, where suddenly they sit around patiently waiting for the hero to come to them? Why not wait in the first place? Maybe take up knitting?

Page 656 - Voldemort has his pet snake dispose of Severus Snape. Blood gushes from Snape's wounds and such. Blah blah blah.

Page 658 - Right before dying Snape gives Harry his silvery brain semen because J.K. Rowling is too poor a writer to properly tell a story without a ton of exposition -- hence the Pensieve.

Pages 662 - 690 - We find out what we knew all along. Snape was a good guy. He loved Lily. Dumbledore had asked to be killed by Snape. Why tell us this now, during the book's electrifying climax? Because there's nothing like 28 pages of convoluted and predictable back story to truly bring the thrills and chills out of the final pages of the final novel in the Harry Potter series. I mean -- there's only a war going on out there. People dying. But why worry about that? Let's look at Snape's childhood and examine the relationship he had with Dumbledore, instead.

Pages 690 - 710 - Harry thinks back through every Quidditch match he's ever played and decides to free every Golden Snitch, as he feels that they are being abused in a way similar to House Elves.

Pages 711 - 759 - Harry sets hundreds of Snitches free. To his surprise, they gang up on Voldemort and kill him with their flapping wings. Voldemort screams, "And I woulda gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling orbs!" and dies a violent death. Ron remarks, "One thing you can say for old Voldy -- the guy sure had balls!" Tired of Ron's bad puns, Hermione dumps the dude and marries a House Elf. Ron begins dating a Snitch and Harry hides the secret feelings he has for Ron and finds his new Patronus is a closet. A closet he doesn't come out of for the rest of his life.

Okay, I made pages 690 - 759 up. Here's the real ending. Brace yourselves.

Page 691 - "Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive." This could be good.

Page 693 - "I must die. It must end." - Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling must not be playing with our emotions or this series will be destroyed. She's on the right path. Harry Potter needs to die to make the story complete. It's obvious J.K. knows this, but will she have the nerve to go through with killing Harry Potter? Only if she's an honest storyteller, not a cash-whore.

Page 694 - Poor Colin Creevey. "He was tiny in death." So many giving their lives for Harry. Will Harry do the same for them?

Page 696 - This is looking like it's for real. Harry's now telling Neville to kill the snake if Ron and Hermione fail. Harry has no plans on surviving. But what are J.K.'s plans for him?

Page 697 - "Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here." Beautiful description of a beautiful school. If Harry really dies, this could get emotional.

Page 699 - Sirius Black, James Weasley, Remus Lupin -- the dead have all come to see Harry off and welcome him to the afterlife, or something. The most sentimental moment is with Harry's mom. "You've been so brave," she tells him. James follows her up by saying, "We are ... so proud of you." And, if Harry really does die, this will be the most powerful moment in the entire 7 book Harry Potter series. If he lives, this moment will be cheap and tacky and I just may join the Christian nutters in burning the book. Not because it's sinful, but because it would be a sin for J.K. Rowling to play with our emotions like this and not be true to her own story. And the truth is: Harry Potter must die.

Page 704 - "[Harry] saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone." I paused here. I stopped reading for at least 5 minutes and paced my living room floor. I even debated vacuuming. Did J.K. really just kill Harry Potter? The drawing at the start of the next chapter of a corpse-like Potter certainly indicates that she did. If she killed him, this will be amazing. A miracle. A moment never forgotten by fans the world over. If not, this will mean nothing. It will be a trick, a double-cross, a disappointment unparalleled in literary history. I had to stop pacing. I had to get back to reading. I had to know the truth. I had to have an excuse not to vacuum.

Page 707 - Harry sees Dumbledore. "You wonderful boy." says Dumbledore. "You brave, brave man." My eyes well up, but I won't let a tear escape. Not yet. I have to know -- is Potter really dead? Is J.K. Rowling as brave as the hero of her novels?

Page 707 - Dumbledore lets Harry know that he's (Harry) still alive. From this point on I read only to get to the end. There is no enjoyment for me in this series anymore. It has been compromised in a way that I will never forgive. J.K. Rowling has never been an exceptional writer, but she can spin a good tale. But this isn't one of them. Sure, Ron and/or Hermione could still die -- but what does it matter anymore? J.K. just spent the last how many pages playing with our emotions? Messing with our heads to make her book seem like something other than a 700 page tease. We waited a decade for this? Are you fucking kidding me?

Page 709 - "You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry" says Dumbledore. No shit. I called it way back on page 601. "'What, then, was the Horcrux?' How about Harry himself? Isn't this obvious? Now, if I'm wrong, this will be embarrassing." I wrote in the last update.

I wasn't wrong, but it's still embarrassing. Just not for me. It's embarrassing for J.K. Rowling to write such a predictable story full-up of shit. Sorry guys, but this whole thing is really pissing me off. A decade's a long time to wait to be crapped on by some pussy too scared to give us a decent ending to a blockbuster series.

Pages 713 - 714 - Dumbledore rambles on about the Hallows being real. And we'd expect anything else? Like J.K. would title the final fucking novel after some made-up shit. That'd be like finding out in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that there really wasn't a Chamber of Secrets but rather an Outhouse of Doodling.

Page 717 - Dumbledore confesses to being a bit of an egotist and failing his sister. This is about as shocking a revelation as we're going to get in The Deathly Hallows. And it isn't all that shocking, as Dumbledore essentially excuses away his actions in the same way that Bush excuses away his years of drinking, driving and cocaine sniffing.

Page 720 - Harry's the true master of death because only the true master of death doesn't run away from death, or something. Gotta love the irony found in nearly every single fantasy book or screenplay ever written.

Page 727 - Hagrid carries Harry's "corpse." I guess this "'corpse-carrying'" is Hagrid's only reason for being in this book. What happened to the big war with the giants that J.K. promised? Is this it? Some big oaf carrying a kid who's playing dead?

Page 733 - Neville slices off the snake's head. Maybe I would have cared 100 pages ago.

Page 736 - "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" - Mrs. Weasley. Okay, how could you not like that line?

Page 737 - Harry and Voldemort begin circling each other. Like in a Western. Sorta generic. Somebody just kill somebody else and be done with it, already.

Pages 738 - 743 - Unbelievably, we have to sit through more exposition. And not just exposition, but exposition we've already sat through. It's like J.K. Rowling forgot that we could read Harry's visions, so we also have to hear Harry explain his visions to Voldemort. Seriously, this has to be the first time in literary history where the reader is forced to sit through the exact same exposition twice in one novel. And I never thought Rowling could top the Scooby-Doo ending she wrote up in Chamber of Secrets, but somehow she manages.

Page 744 - Voldemort dies. It's a genuine "meh" moment. And I don't even use the word "meh."

Page 745 - Luna has one final moment to shine and remind everyone how shiny she can be. I can't help but smile through my vile dissatisfaction with The Deathly Hallows. That Luna. She's got me whipped.

Page 747 - Dumbledore in the portrait breaking down was moving. I'll admit it. Not moving enough to make me reconsider the sheer suckiness of this book, but moving nonetheless.

Page 753 - "Nineteen Years Later." Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worser (is "worser" really a word? Spell check isn't calling it out). If you care at all about this series, you will stop reading prior to page 753. This is where J.K. reveals her backup plan. She knows she isn't a writer proper and all she has going is Harry Potter, so she sets up a sequel with the children of the children made famous in the first 7 novels. And, in the process, she expects us to believe that Harry stuck with Ginny, Hermione stuck with Ron and everyone named everyone after anyone that mattered in the first seven books. That makes it easier for J.K. when she writes the shitty follow-up series. Why waste time with new names when you can conveniently rewrite the same story with the same names and still bring in the billions? What a joke Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows turned out to be. But the joke's on J.K. Rowling, as even her most devoted fans will find the "epilogue" to this novel desperate at best and pathetic at worst.

Well, Harry Potter is over and has ended in a raging torrent of disillusionment. I think I'm going to get obscenely drunk and eat an ungodly number of KitKat candy bars. As far as I can recall, no novel has ever caused me to do that before ... and I've read a lot of novels. Thanks for setting me down the path of obesity and alcoholism, J.K. Your little wizard fable has destroyed my life. Hope you're happy, bitch.
--Alex Sandell