Finished!

[beowabbit]

I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which my lovely plumtreeblossom gave me) last night on the T. Spoilers and commentary in my first comment below. (I didn’t want to just put them behind a cut-tag, since some people have LJ configured to auto-expand cut tags when they go to somebody’s journal directly.)

There are spoilers in the comments.

Comments

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

I was actually totally ok with the do-over after Harry sacrificed himself. Self-sacrifice had been carefully described many times as an ancient and powerful magic (or rather, alterer of magic). There was a fundamental change to Harry as a result (piece of V's soul in Harry destroyed), which is required by the mythology of death and rebirth. So I don't agree that that's an example of deus ex machina.

What bugged me most about the ending was the contrivance whereby the Sorting Hat was on Neville's person when he had an opportunity to kill Nagini. We know from Chamber of Secrets that a true embodiment of Gryffindor can draw the sword from the hat, so I'm fine with that and count it as a clever plot connection. But the hat was only on the scene because V decided a great way to show off would be to summon it from the castle, stick it on Neville, and set it on fire. Lame.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I'm a big fan of Neville and always wanted him to "do better" than he did his first year, so I was estatic that he drew the sword out. Yeah, yeah, total plot contrivance, but Neville!