We had sworn we were done with Harry Potter pieces, but we liked this one so much we had to have it just the same. Enjoy it: it’s the last one we’ll run in 2014.
Here is a thing I believe about stories: the best have a life of their own. When you are in a story—whether you are reading it or writing it—it will tell you what it wants.
The stories I love best, I love not for their shape or language or craft (though I often admire these books for all these and more qualities) but because I desperately want to live inside them. Its little surprise that many of these books hinge on a departure from the real world: escaping war-torn England in The Chronicles of Narnia, drab Ancelstierre in Sabriel, the unmagical and deeply abusive home of the Dursleys in Harry Potter. Little surprise, too, that I read many of these in my youth, even as I continue to reread them now.
I am not alone in my desire (this flame still lit inside me) to inhabit these worlds, magical because they are different, magical because they have, well, magic. I take little pleasure in relating to you that I have imagined hundreds of scenarios in which I access and live in such places, such books, because—though I know that it’s a pastime I share with so, so many other readers—it is for me a fundamentally private practice. But here and now I will tell you that since I first picked up The Sorcerer’s Stone at age eleven I have dreamed of the wand I’d hold, the house I’d study in, the classes I would take, and, inevitably, the plots I’d (at least slightly) change if just given a chance inside the world of J.K. Rowling’s books.
As I’ve read and reread the seven Harry Potter volumes over the years (the last came out the summer after my junior year in college) the questions I’ve asked of the books have changed, and my own discomforts with different aspects of the novels have shifted. I used to be so perplexed by the House Elves subplot—mostly because the early books make Hermoine’s activism seem so silly and pointless—but I’m starting to read it as a rather sophisticated critique of how systems of power work, of right and wrong ways to practice activism, especially as an ally. I’ve thought about (what I’d perceived as) Ron’s mediocrity, about Harry’s capriciousness, about who Ginny even is anyway, about Dumbledore’s terrible planning, about trauma. (What is the deal with religion in the Wizarding World? How did magic users support or resist European imperialism? Are there other paradigms of magic? Where are all the wizard drugs? How does magical contraception work?) I’ve hashed some of these questions out with friends, but otherwise this exercise has been a solitary one, an individual effort at reconciling myself to the Wizarding World and the Wizarding World to myself.
Though I’ve come to admire Ginny (she makes out with so many people and feels no shame and I love for it) and peel back the layers of Ron’s performance anxieties, I have never been able to stomach Rowling’s epilogue. It is a vision of the future that doesn’t read like Rowling wrote it—it reads like the characters themselves did. It is a high school fantasy of the future, where happiness and stability equals marriage and children, where no one drifts out of sight and few, if any, new faces appear. It is like a dramatization of a game of MASH that Ginny scratched out in the back of a history of magic class. It also is a vision of events that, because they come at the book’s tail end, can be easily excised from my mind. There, none of it happened.
This kind of readerly rewriting is the stuff of fan fiction and yes, so what? Fan fiction in some ways is just a more intense version of intertextuality. What is The Aeneid if not fan fiction? What is The Divine Comedy? (And THEN I get to hang out with MY FAVORITE WRITER for at least TWO THIRDS OF THE SPIRITUAL COSMOS!) Or Paradise Lost for that matter. J.K. Rowling’s codas to her work—embroidering onto the novels details of Dumbledore’s sexuality, McGonagall’s backstory, and now this alternate timeline: a series where Hermoine has a relationship with Harry instead of Ron—are themselves a kind of fan fiction, at least in their insistence that these books are not self-contained, that the truth of a story can be bigger than what’s printed on the page.
Ultimately I am a selfish reader. I don’t like to share stories I love, and especially not from these foundational texts, blueprints of my desire. This I have for a long time jealously guarded: my version of Harry Potter, I tell myself, belongs to me. So, though I understand and appreciate fan fiction as a concept, I have never really waded into its waters. This story has, for a long time, been my own. But Rowling’s announcement has forced us all to take a revising eye to her books—so drastic the change she suggested—and I might as well shake my version out and see if it still fits.
***
Ron and Hermoine break up sometime after the Battle of Hogwarts. They had loved each other, yes, and grown together too, but they wanted to date other people. They are still so young. It is alright.
Harry goes to therapy. (Are there wizard therapists?) He has needed to go to therapy for a long time. He learns he has trouble confiding in authority figures, or really confiding in anyone other than Ron and Hermoine. He learns these are called “trust issues.” He talks a lot about the cupboard, about Dumbledore, about everyone who has died. He and Ginny last barely a year post-Voldemort—it is not the same now in peacetime. He is not sad about it. They want different things.
Harry tries out a few professions but none with particular success: too overzealous and secretive and resistant to authority to be an auror (which is really just a fancy cop), to apathetic to play Quidditch professionally, too lackadaisical to teach full-time. Still, he’s never really had to worry about money, and Grimmold Place—the whole world, really—has plenty of locked rooms and hidden corridors to still explore. He is surrounded by friends and, eventually, the families they have. There is little he takes pleasure in more than his friend’s children, and is a favorite babysitter, though his charges always seem to get in a few more scrapes with him than without. He dates on and off, mostly Muggle women who barely see his faded scar, women with red hair or green eyes, Lily’s eyes. He gives an (eagerly anticipated) talk once a year at Hogwarts to Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT students. It’s a quiet life, but not an unhappy one. The weight of the world is off him, and he’s come so far from those cobwebby stairs.
We all know Hermoine is the brightest witch of her age. Her time in her Muggle studies classes (which she caught so much slack for) made her realize how much she has missed in her magical education. She soon reads every Muggle textbook she can get her hands on, and isn’t very far behind when she arrives at whatever Oxbridge college she gets into. (You know she is good at calculus.) She gets involved in on-campus activist groups and comes to grapple with how very large and interwoven and systematic oppressions are. She reads physics, and goes on for her PhD. I cannot even conceive of the sort of magic she does at this level—electron magic? antimatter magic?—but it gets her on a chocolate frog card. Hogwarts begins teaching Muggle science and its magical applications.
Her time moving back and forth between Muggle and magic worlds cements her belief that the latter’s secrecy and isolation feeds the systems of oppression she is most interested in dismantling. Her agenda shifts towards across-the-board integration—magic-users and Muggles, humans and goblins (and centaurs and house elves). The International Statue of Secrecy does not fall in her lifetime, but she begins a movement that ultimately changes the way all sentient creatures on the planet live and work together.
She finds a partner someday—someone very smart and very supportive—but that information doesn’t make it to her trading card. She has a son; Harry is his godfather.
Ron, raised under the shadow of a parade of successful brothers, finds himself bereft of one, and everything—all his ambitions and fears—feel terribly small and petty. Fred and George, as awful as they were, were also the best to him. He joins George at the joke store and they find a measure of peace together. He meets a pretty Muggle and starts a Wizard Chess manufacturing business. He has a large, loud, happy family.
Neville and Luna, who are both so strong and who have suffered so much, find each other after the battle ends and become loopy and wonderful together. You could not find a kinder set of people.
***
Where do books go after they end? Are characters frozen in stasis the moment the final punctuation mark falls? Does Ishmael drift forever on board the Rachel in the middle of the expansive sea? Does Milkman hang suspended in midair, eternally mid-leap? Will Susan Pevensie never hear of the tragic train accident that took her siblings and parents? For the purpose of the book, I think, the answer is yes, but readers hunger for conclusion and will, without compunction, snap off a frame and paint beyond a story’s initial boundaries. Really the only ending that will satisfy us is death: Cervantes had to kill Don Quixote precisely so no more fan fiction (well, fake sequels) could be written about him. I imagine the epilogue to Harry Potter, as it stands, to be some readers’ perfect vision of the future, but for me it is not nearly messy enough, grand enough, quiet enough. Harry has never, ever been normal—why would he start being so now? But this is my story: you get to imagine your own.
Tags: books, childhood, harry potter, in canada it was called the philosopher’s stone bc we are not frightened of abstract concepts, it really is the end, jk rowling, love, molly mcardle, no more harry potter pieces in 2014
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This is infinitely more delightful and excellent than the actual ending of the book, which is unrealistic in many ways, the biggest being the fact that only high schoolers come up with life narratives where they and everyone they know marry the people they are currently dating. I think it’s a way of projecting stability on the future, which is inherently uncertain and frightening, and by taking a relationship (even a drama-filled high school relationship) and placing it in a future, stable context, it gives them hope and security.
I mean, clearly Harry Potter and company would crave some stability but everything about that was wildly disappointing. Also naming every last kid after friends and relatives reminds me of when I was eight and I planned on having two daughters and naming them after my best friends and just reversing their first and middle names.
I groaned at the Epilogue and I was a high-schooler.
Also
“. I cannot even conceive of the sort of magic she does at this level—electron magic? antimatter magic?—but it gets her on a chocolate frog card. Hogwarts begins teaching Muggle science and its magical applications.”
Alchemy?
Oof. I somehow never connected that Susan didn’t die in the train accident.
Yeah, things I haven’t been able to forgive Lewis for: writing Susan out. She doesn’t get to go to heaven because she becomes too interested in invitations and lipstick?? WTF.
On the upside, the fact that Lewis did that basically made Phillip Pullman so angry that he wrote the His Dark Materials series in response, so I will TAKE IT.
Actually, Lewis said in a letter that he didn’t mean to condemn Susan — that her life trajectory was an adult one, too complex and adult for the children’s book he was writing but not BAD. Aslan told the children “you’re too old, stop coming to Narnia”. Susan is the only one who obeyed.
Here: it’s this article, but for Susan. By Gaiman.
http://grotesqueanddecadence.tumblr.com/post/2127…
Even before I finish reading this, my visceral reaction to that picture of the epilogue–BLLLEEEEHHHH.
That Harry Potter epilogue is wonderful, and I particularly like the section on Hermione. But *particularly* this part: “She finds a partner someday—someone very smart and very supportive—but that information doesn’t make it to her trading card.” I always wanted to see Hermione go onto great things worthy of a young overachiever. Both Rowling’s epilogue and most fan theories, however, seem obsessed with who she ends up marrying/bedding. But such is the inevitable nature of fandom, I suppose.
I have never written, even in my head, a full epilogue for these characters, but yours is perfection and I am now adopting it as canon in my head. (My only full-formed thought was that Hermione would clearly go on to Ruth Bader Ginsburg-level amazingness and my wizard-world life ambition would be working for her.)
In fourth grade, we were assigned to write new endings for Old Yeller. I was definitely in that life-phase where the correct answer was “Old Yeller recovers and then dad comes home and brings another dog for the younger brother and a pony for the older brother and then everyone is happy forever.” If Rowling’s epilogue had found its way to my hands when I was still in High School, say, I might also have found that ending far more pleasing than I do now, when I find it almost as stomach-achy as if I had to re-read my Old Yeller alt-canon.
We should all write down a new ending for some book or another every couple of years, then look back to see what sorts of endings we dreamed of five or ten or twenty years ago.
I love that idea. (And it’s possible that I would still love the idea of Old Yeller living happily ever after with the addition of a pony.)
I had an assignment at school of writing an extra ending chapter for Jane Eyre. I killed them all, bloodily and gruesomely.
Read so much fan-fiction I found it genuinely surprising Harry would ever get together with Ginny.
“She reads physics, and goes on for her PhD. I cannot even conceive of the sort of magic she does at this level—electron magic? antimatter magic?”
Can we talk about what an amazing whole new book/series this would be? HarryPotterMashedWithAWrinkeInTimeStarringHermione would be the best thing that ever happened to me.
Add in some His Dark Materials and I AM IN.
Oh, you want this! http://hpmor.com/
I am a sucker for “and they all lived happily ever after and named their children after their dead loved ones” endings, but your version is so much better than the existing epilogue. It’s better for so many reasons, but to me the biggest reason is that it takes into account how much healing everyone would have had to do.
“They clung together for dear life, made no new friends, married their high school sweethearts, and did not have exciting jobs, because face it, years of battling for their lives as children and watching their loved ones die around them really fucked them up and made them basically incapable of facing the world,” would have been a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they end up in the configuration they do in the epilogue, but…dark. (Unrelated, that is very much how I read the Mockingjay epilogue, which is why I think it didn’t bother me in the way it bothered many readers.)
Thank you for that about Mockingjay epilogue. I always thought it worked because of Katniss’s PTSD. Small small world because that’s the only thing they could face after years of fucked-up mind games.
This is fantastic, and hits on many things I disliked about the epilogue. Thanks for letting this one through, editors.
(Doubtless we will get more coverage if additional ROMBLEDORE information comes to light, no?)
Oh man, this was lovely.
Also, obviously it is not my decision, but I would definitely be in favor of more Harry Potter content this year. 2014 just started! We have another 11.5 months to go! So many Harry Potter things could happen in that time; let’s not be hasty.
*10.5 months, as we are mercifully nearly halfway through February. (All this snow blurs everything together.)
oh jeez math is hard I need Hermione to come do it for me
Truth. I need Hermione to come do everything for me.
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=303
<3
No, no, we started the year Feb. 1st. The Bartender said so.
TRUE.
I hope there is more Harry Potter content as well. Would they say no more Jane Austen content? No more Grimm’s Fairy Tales? I THINK NOT.
No, no, I’d wager a large contingent of The Toast readership grew up with Harry and Co and will faithfully read dozens more posts about them in 2014.
I’ll say this on every post like this, but anyone who loves Harry Potter but wishes it was uglier and messier should try Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I reread it pretty much every year. Magic school only lasts for the first 40% of the book, and then they have to go out and live their lives. I wouldn’t recommend reading it for the first time during the weeks after you have graduated from a wonderful college though; it will wreck you.
I love the Magicians/The Magician King. I fully endorse this recommendation and I’m really glad I’m not the only one who’s read them!
Yes. Agreed. Remember that piece that Mallory wrote about books that we recognize ourselves in? I definitely had that sensation about the post-collegiate part of The Magicians. (Uh, without the magic. To be clear.)
Also, the last Magicians book is coming out in August — cover image and brief, nonspoilery synopsis here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/11/cover-and-synops…. Are we excited? We are sooooo excited.
Yes!! I will occasionally harass Lev Grossman on twitter about any new developments in the series, since I’ve been gunning for a Josh spin-off since Book 1.
WHAT WE ARE TOTALLY SO EXCITED HOORAY
I have often said that The Magicians series are the only books that accurately describe what it feels like to graduate from college with a highly-specialized skill that the outside world can’t use.
Those books are going to hit me in the feels, aren’t they? They’re on my list and…yeah. That sounds like it’s going to hit very close to home.
I really wanted to like The Magicians, but then it turned out that I wanted to fling most of the characters out of a very large window very far off the ground while I ran away with the premise and made Alice the lead. And it makes me kinda sad because I could see the book that I wanted to read in there, only it just didn’t click for me. And I wanted it to!
I didn’t see yours before posting but yes, this exactly. Every word of it.
I dislike most of the characters but still like the books. Idk how that happens, but it did.
It’s a really polarizing book, I’ve noticed. I love it because I think it is how magic school would really work: if you are a sad-sack whiny brat and then *wow* turns out magic is real and you are actually as special and different as you thought you were… at the end of the day, you’ll still be a sad-sack whiny brat. Beats me why I find this message so satisfying.
Have you read his brother’s “Soon I Will Be Invincible”? It’s basically the same story, but for engineering majors.
I adore the world-building of the magicians but found Quentin to be an entitled brat and haaaate the storylines Grossman gives the female characters. Or maybe the way they’re handled, at least, because if the book had been written from Alice or Julia’s perspectives I would be SO IN.
I upvoted your comment after reading the bit about more articles on Harry Potter. Then I tried to upvote it again, forgetting I already had, after reading your The Magicians recommendation, and IntenseDebate yelled at me. That has never happened before.
this is so wonderfully bittersweet
brb dragging it to my hoarde to look at it for hours
I “meh”-ed at Rowling’s epilogue, feeling it too tidy and too wishful, but this actually got me a little teary-eyed because it’s so perfect. I’m also happy I’m not the only one who imagined Hermione finishing her 7th year of Hogwarts disappointed in the lackluster education she got there, and going on to Oxbridge to study science, or “Muggle’s Magic” as I imagine she describes it to Ron when they, and Harry and Neville and Luna, meet annually at the Three Broomsticks to catch up.
I think it’s interesting both you and the article author find the magical world and magical education irrelevant after seven books. Which is to say, that you think it inadequate that one of the smartest characters in the books has excelled at magic and needs to learn real science at a “proper school” to have her intellect legitimized.
Professor McGonagall ought to drop you a line reminding you that just because you failed your Charms O.W.L., the subject is not necessarily worthless.
I wanted Hermoine and Ron to stay together, and I wanted Harry & Ginny to stay together as well. Some of this is because this was what was presented to me, and so I loved it. I didn’t like the epilogue though. It was too tidy.
I think I wanted Ron & Hermione to be together for a while, and break up, and see other people, and then come back together again because their shared history drew them together. Ron knew why Hermione woke up crying from nightmares and he was steady enough to soothe her. Hermione brought out the best in Ron – her example led him to start to examine his own privilege, and he turned out to be passionate about it because he lived through what the end result could be if it wasn’t stopped. I wanted Hermione to do MORE, be more, than just stay within the Magical world. I wanted Ron to be a stay at home dad, who was able to be steady and strong because this world inside his home centered him, and he was able to still be an activist and to raise activists.
I wanted Harry to be shaken, and bereft. I wanted Ginny to be the fierce, strong, badass woman who was able to be his rock while he recovered. I know it’s not rational – he’s never had a family and everything he ever touched fell apart. It’s likely that he pushed Ginny away time and again, and if I’m being hyper-realistic, eventually she took him at his word, and left. I like my endings happy, in the long run, though.
I love this take. Yes, I get that it’s unrealistic expecting everyone who was in high school together to end up together … but, I grew up to marry one of my best friends from high school whom I always used to bicker with (and still do). So I always identified with the Hermione/Ron & Harry/Ginny relationships.
Although, did Rowling actually say that she wanted Harry/Hermione to end up together? Or did she just say that Ron/Hermione shouldn’t’ve, and the H/H shippers in the international news media extracted from there?
Apparently she made some comment in the very recent past to the effect that she put Ron & Hermione together as a sort of fan service, but it was WRONG. I don’t know if she explicitly said, “Harry/Hermione 4eva” though.
(FALSE. YOU ARE WRONG, JK ROWLING.)
I also married my high school sweetheart who I bickered with. Granted, we got divorced, but I don’t think that was so much the fact that we knew each other from high school.
That’s what I’ve come up with! She said that Ron and Hermione shouldn’t have been together, but I can’t find anything where she says “Hermione and Harry are the true soul mates.”
BECAUSE H & H DOESN’T AVOID ANY OF THE PROBLEMS WITH R & H. Still the darn high school thing.
ALSO! Hermione and Harry are both alphas, really, when you come down to it. Alphas can sometimes be in successful relationships together but it takes special alphas and I do NOT think those two are the right ones.
ALSO! Hermione and Harry are one of the best examples of platonic male and female friendships in children’s literature. Men and women can be just friends, thankyouverymuch.
she said that harry and hermione were better suited in some ways which is basically meaningless. i took it to imply that they’d butt heads less, but it says nothing to whether they actually had chemistry.
she said ron and hermione are fundamentally incompatible though which is as damning as it gets, really.
Also, I saw your post upthread and in case you have not seen this, someone else posted it downthread: http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/69470941562/th…
Thank you!! I hadn’t seen it, and it is perfect.
I think kind of an important thing to remember is that JKR wrote the epilogue back when she was writing the first book. When the kids were 11 and were legitimately worried that they’d get in trouble for being out of bed after hours. The epilogue makes sense as the logical progression of book 1, and when JKR was, you know, a single mom living in poverty, writing a book on the back of napkins, whose target audience was about 9 yrs old. (This is not to sell short any demographic mentioned in the previous sentence.)
That said, I think Harry and Ginny make perfect sense for each other, after like 10 years post-book 7 of figuring their own shit out and then getting back together. Hermione and Ron I don’t so much know what to do with, though I like what you’ve talked about here.
Speaking of perplexing things/ questions I have needed answers to for well over a decade:
1) WHAT HAPPENED TO HARRY’S GRANDPARENTS. WHERE THE FUCK WERE THEY.
2) What were the Weasleys doing during the first war against Voldemort?
3) How do humans and giants fuck?
4) Magic in other countries. I need ALL of the info on this.
3: Verrrrrry carefully
1. I ALSO WANT TO KNOW THIS.
I spent 6.75 books waiting for the redemptive arc that I was sure would happen for the Slytherins and/or Draco and then… it didn’t really happen, which in turn made it non-sensical that they would even allow Slytherin House at the school in the first place. The House is just 99% evil wizards and the occasional 1% hero that is so unpleasant that everyone juse assumes that he is evil. I didn’t even like the Slytherin characters that much, I just wanted some explanation for them!
I just read something on tumblr within the past week that was about the good things Slytherin did during the Battle of Hogwarts (making sure everyone who was leaving got out okay, including underaged kids from other houses, mostly) and, like, no. There’s no canonical support whatsoever for that. I kind of just think that some wizards are supposed to be evil, so there’s a house for evil wizards.
The thing I can’t get over is that Slytherins are 25% of all the wizards. 25% are basically evil from the time they’re children? That’s a pretty dark point of view for JKR.
I feel like canon is kind of confused on that point, though. All the Slytherins we actually see are pretty evil but the Sorting Hat does not make it sound like Slytherin traits are intrinsically evil.
And also, why do none of the Hogwarts professors ever seem to get married? Except Alecto and Amycus Carrow, who definitely have a McPoyle siblings thing going.
Wasn’t McGonagall supposed to be widowed?
My big thing is: why do none of the teachers have personal lives? Like, could Neville marry Luna, or does he have to take a chastity vow to be a Hogwarts teacher?
And 3) — thinking through how Hagrid was conceived is terrifying.
1.) James was born to his parents when they were already quite old; that is why he was so spoiled.
2.) They were in the Order of the Phoenix, and all of Molly’s family died fighting, right? Like, two or three brothers and also her parents.
AAAAHHHH how do I know this how.
Yeah, grandparents all dead, as I recall. And you’re right about Molly’s family- Fabian and Gideon Prewitt were her brothers, both died, one of them had a gold watch that they give to Harry maybe? WHY DO I REMEMBER THIS
Also the title of this piece reminded me of “Where do whores go?” a la Game of Thrones, and so now in my mind there’s some place where there are a bunch of whores and books, and everyone’s just chilling, reading, and everything’s lovely.
Valhalla
<3
Speaking OF, did you see the new behind-the-scenes trailer thing that aired last night?
But Ginny… everything is perfect except the absence of (book) Ginny’s badassery minus Harry taking her for granted
Molly, this is gorgeous. It’s the right ‘Return with the Elixir’ ending of the Hero’s Journey (Frazer & all that). The problem (as I see it) with the Rowling one is that it’s missing the essential element of their circling back into an ordinary world that they’re able to benefit in some way; the world (muggle or magical either one) doesn’t become better via the trio’s actions in Rowling’s epilogue, and therefore we have no real sense that the changes they fought so hard & so long for are going to truly take hold.
Your epilogue makes their journey circular and shows that the H/H/R’s experiences have formed them in ways that help them individually, but also globally. The world is a better one because of H/H/R, in large and in small ways, which is what a satisfied reader needs to see.
I know this isn’t about Narnia, but this post about what Susan’s life after The Last Battle should be like is perfect and gorgeous and made me cry http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/69470941562/th…
Oh man, I came into the comments all excited to post that but of course someone already got to it because it’s PERFECT and Toastrons are all excellent people with impeccable taste.
Oh, that’s perfect. So perfect. This makes me so happy.
Love! Here’s another version that I like: http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1510426.html
As long as Neville and Luna get to be together, I don’t care what happens to any of the others.
Ahhh! I’m so glad I saved this for when I was in a bad mood at work because this was wonderful! This is the epilogue, now and forever more.
And now I reallly want to read some quality post-DH fic.
Your ending is very realistic but the story really demanded that Harry have a family, and I think that if he got together with Luna that would be perfect because Luna marches to the beat of her own drum and has this innate belief in something greater than themselves – which Harry would find comforting after all the loss in the final battle. She could do her newspaper, Harry could laze around and look after the two or three kids that they have, and (this is a wonderful suggestion from someone on another forum) they could go on holidays together to find rare magical beasts and save them from extinction.
I do love Hermione/education/educated muggle though. The most satisfying ending for her.
Ron should get together with someone who reminds him of Hermione because he’s a sad sap that’s never gotten over her.
I think Neville and Ginny would be perfect together and give a kind of symmetry to the book as Neville is Harry’s double in a sense, and given that Ginny and Neville did end up going to the Yule ball together and both have had similar battles against traumatic pasts.
I have always wondered about Harry’s grandparents but decided that they must have been dead if Dumbledore left Harry with Petunia. And it has to be someone on his mother’s side for that complicated mother’s blood magic thing to work. I have no idea about the human and giant sex but there is a killer book idea there(if those silly women can make money writing dinosaur erotica, giant /human sex will make someone a fortune).
I also want to know about the Eight(!!!) Schools of magic JK R has hinted about.
Molly Weasley’s older brothers were the Prewitts, who were murdered by the death eaters. Members of the Order of the Phoenix. Harry gets Fabian’s watch for his birthday.
Reading the Potter books as an adult, I can’t escape the suspicion that the larger wizarding world is not a very nice place. In the early books the reader gets to play in the whimsical, tolerant, welcoming side of wizard society–but in the later books, once we leave Hogwarts, it’s clear that people like Lupin, Hagrid, and the Weaslys are exceptions rather than the norm. The majority of wizards seem to be closer in attitude to the Malfoys. When the Ministry of Magic begins taking on an explicitly authoritarian nature, most wizards are pretty much okay with it. Since some people are inherently better at magic than others, it seems natural that wizards would think in hierarchies and gravitate towards strong leaders like Voldemort, Grindlewald, and Dumbledore.
I imagine that wizarding society is afflicted with a fantasy-world version of the resource curse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). They have one very great gift (magic, in their case, rather than oil or minerals) which is ultimately more crippling than liberating. It creates a society that is over-specialized, unstable, regressive, stratified, xenophobic, and backwards. On a social scale, the wizards are slaves of magic rather than its masters. They don’t understand how to collectively confront problems without it. Their education system is completely dominated by it. Even their government is concerned with magic first (they’re the Ministry OF MAGIC) and people second, if at all.
Like you, I think Hermione is too smart not to realize this. In my personal post-DH Potterverse, she ends up renouncing magic completely. Her friends come to think of her as a crank and she doesn’t get a chocolate frog card, but she does get the dubious gratification of self-ascribed moral superiority.
And your version of post-DH Harry is pretty much perfect. I can imagine him coming out of therapy and thinking: “Screw it. I’ve had enough responsibility for one lifetime.” And he’d remain likable but vague, and forever aloof from the consequences of his actions.
I hate to be That Girl, but it’s Grimmauld Place, not Grimmold Place. But I enjoyed the article, even if I am sort of against the idea of any of the characters ending up with someone they knew in school.
I made an account specifically to get really excited about that Sabriel reference in the second paragraph! Now, to keep reading.
I LOVE SABRIEL. And I am so, so excited for Clariel.
ALSO! Hermione and Harry are one of the best examples of platonic male and female friendships in children's literature. Men and women can be just friends, thankyouverymuch.
I’m tearing up over my bagelwich right now.
I love this epilogue a lot, and I say this as a person who has written her own epilogue to everything she’s consumed, cared about, and found even slightly lacking.
What maybe frustrated me most about JKR’s vision was her insistence that Harry had to marry into the Weasley family to be a member of it, when I felt that he was a member of their family all along, probably from his first Weasley sweater onwards. I really, REALLY wanted the magical clock to prove me right about this in the last book. ALAS, it only happens in my headcanon (but it’s really beautiful, jsyk.)
I love this so much I want to cry a bit.
I always thought the epilogue was too neat. Anyone who saw what those kids had to see at seventeen would come out of it damaged, and need repair, instead of just continuing on with a tidy little life.
Harry in therapy, oh my goodness, yes. I love him to death (another eleven-year-old reader of Philosopher’s Stone here) and still I think that the other characters spent all their time revering and loving him and being consumed with the importance of his mission. So he was never seen as just a person, never really challenged, never had to face up to his own reactions.
I’m not too much of a fan of Suzanne Collins’ writing style (personally I think Rowling’s is better, especially towards the end), but one of the things I did like was that Katniss spent so much time thoroughly messed up and drugged to the eyeballs after all the things she’d seen. Part of me wanted her to return to a normal life afterwards, but in reality you’d never be the same. Collins did a good job of capturing that.
End of long overly emotional comment.
JK Rowling just released a new short story about the HP gang after the fact. I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not to read it, because a few months ago I had decided yours was the true epilogue that had been kept hidden from me.
I don't want to hear about all the kids and couples that Rowling decided would appease us. I want to know that the characters went on and are doing lovely and important things with their lives, like physics or annual speeches to NEWT classes.