My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Voldemort kills Ron in a scene written whilst Rowling was having an acid trip Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

holed myself in yesterday crying and laughing (sometimes simultaneously) over Deathly Hallows. it was good, one of my favourites in the series - a close second to GoF, which might get bumped up to top spot after a re-read.

on the down side, i had to queue for an at hour borders, melbourne central for the book! wth! and my receipt read harry potter and the deathly kids for the version of the cover i wanted - which was rather freaky in a way, come to think of it. was so pissed when the flatmate called from singas and said she'd had the book in her hands already, and was heading home for a read. when i was still stuck somewhere outside the front of the shop 3 doors away from borders.
bloody. chain. bookstore. well, at least i have a free plush owl watching over me. to make up for hedwig.

thoughts:
1/ i thought there would be more to the veil - no?

2/ cried about hedwig. ;..(

3/ dudley made me cry too, at the start. and i thought he'd be the one who 'manages to do magic quite late in life'. but i was mistaken, eh?

4a/ OMG!! SNAPE!!! that's just the kind of misunderstood hero i always fall for. seriously always gets me. and when the flatmate asked earlier if he was dumbledore's or voldy's, i'd told her snape was his own man, too.

4b/ snape killed by nagini? wtf?! wonder if he knew harry was just around the corner too. snape seemed always to be able to sense him around, even under the cloak. cried uncontrollably when he willingly gave his memories (essense of snape!) to the boy-whose-mother-he'd-always-loved. go snarry!

5/ aberforth was a nice surprise.

6/ mcgonagall thanking harry for his gallantry - so charming. glad she didn't die. love her to bits.

7a/ bloody hated the epilogue. was looking for the word 'scar' at what i thought was the last paragraph. when lo and behold, i turned over and there it was. 19 years later. staring me in the face. what was THAT for?! it would've ended nicely without playing up to that bit of harry/ginny and ron/hermione fanfic. wonder whose idea it was to put that in, too.

7b/ draco with a receding hairline? lmao! and what's up with 'scorpius'? and 'albus severus'? they just sound bad. like how new trying-to-be-hip-parents come up with hybrid kids' names like - oh, i don't know, some bastardised form of 'normal' names like janachelle, or chalynn, or estella or something. how annoying.

8/ the 'snape running away from shampoo' line got me so bad i couldn't stop laughing. at about 11pm. alone in the apartment.

9/ cried over fred. how could she? and what will happen to their joke shop?

10/ oddly, i cried over ollivander and gregorovitch as well. don't ask me. i get a bit weepy when old folks get tortured, but they still hold staunchly to what they stand for.

11/ literally bawled bucketfuls over dobby - dobby, who annoyed the hell out of me in CoS - one and the same. harry's torment-to-calm when digging the grave had me in the waterworks too. reminded me of when i buried my dog.

12/ kreacher's bullfrog voice - ha! never liked him much, but that's since changed. could almost see kreacher in a crisp butler's uniform after he got to keep the locket. too bad sirius never saw it in him.

13a/ molly screamed BITCH at bellatrix! lmao!! that was a good one. she was really getting to me at the burrow, during the wedding preparations. didn't think she'd go and kill bella, too! go molly!

13b/ was kinda hoping it was neville who killed bella, though. or better still, neville's gran.

13c/ having said that, neville was totally the bee's knees. wonder if he ever found out how close he might've been to being the 'chosen one' instead.

14/ i think the harry/hermione search for horcruxes was a bit too long drawn. months' worth of camping! gosh. that's too long without a decent toilet, i think.

15/ potterwatch added a nice touch. jumbled signals, passwords and secure locations. very WW II.

16/ oddly, voldy seemed rather subdued towards the end. i'd've thought he'd be a lot more swaggering and impressive if he'd thought he was going to win, but he seemed small-time. to me, at least. and then his death...? was a bit too quiet. anticlimax. too much smart talk going on beforehand.

17/ hermione as bellatrix was just cringeworthy. returning greetings down at diagon alley? bothering to reply? no shit that the goblins smelt a rat up their long hooked noses.

18/ the ginny/harry kiss in her bedroom melted me away. saved, at the right time for once, by won-won. wouldn't have gone anywhere from there then.

19/ what was the 'scene in harry's head at king's cross' about? consulting the dumbledore-oracle was too matrix-like, or at least, that was what was in my head - which is to say, it could've happened that way. the flapping baby was a bit creepy though, so i supposed it balanced things out a bit.

20/ the 'best friends with grindelwald for 2 months' thing seemed out of place. yeah, but no. FOR THE GREATER GOOD? very religiously-political. i liked that we were presented with 1 facet of dumbledore for the first 6 books, and much later, that understanding crumbles and gets slowly rebuilt with another multifaceted one. through a glass darkly, yeah? loved the dumbledore backstory. and slash fic fodder.

21/ fleur was totally boring this time. stripped of veela charms after marriage? love their shell house by the sea, at the end of the world, though. when i grow up, i want me one of those.

22/ luna kicked ass. loved how she answered 'which came first, fire or phoenix' - that's just so her. but the gurdyroots, wrackspurts and crumple horned snorcacks (i am writing all this from memory here, in the studio, so details might get hazed over) of xeno lovegood were a bit of an overkill.

23a/ not too clear on the overall significance of tales of beedle the bard too. couldn't ron and xeno have told the story when they went to visit him? and i had imagined the eye-within-triangle to be in some reference to popular theory on the freemasons at the beginning. and when i'd put the book down for a toilet break, i saw the symbol on the spine. liked how explanations to little details revealed themselves later on in the plot.

24/ loved the protection charms at gringotts safes. now i know where to put my money, if i ever have enough to actually have an account with them.

25/ hermione altering the memories of her parents as different people to live in australia? too sweet and heart-breaking at the same time.

26a/ the taking-turns to wear the locket horcrux was a bit silly. i kept thinking why didn't they just place it in the beaded purse for safekeeping, and save all the trouble of frazzled nerves!

26b/ wearing the locket horcrux around the neck kinda reminded me of lotr. and having it quiver in fear when it sensed imminent destruction? one locket to rule them all, eh, RAB?

27/ mad-eye's death really got to me at the beginning. plus the fact they couldn't find the body afterwards. but i loved how harry buried mad-eye's eye at the tree. that was good closure.

28a/ remus lupin was such a spineless useless twat! remind me why walking out on your wife and kid is a good idea again? glad he's out of the way. but poor li'l teddy! but there's always the grandparents. jkr's up to date, yes?

28b/ haven't really been a huge tonks fan. but it blossomed with natalia tena as the screen version. so i guess i'm a bit sad she's gone now...

29/ that's a really cool way to get into the ravenclaw commonroom. i was most impressed. i'd get left outside all the time, for sure. but then again, i wouldn't have been sorted into ravenclaw to begin with. 'wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure'. reeeeeaaaally.

30/ the harry-as-horcrux thing was too bad to be true. even as an accidental horcrux. couldn't voldy have chosen something else? when i first read, i thought the ruins of the potters' house at godric's hollow had become the horcrux instead of the poor scarred baby. but then, the harry-as-horcrux theory would've been needed to fit in with explanations for parselmouth and flashes into a-day-in-voldy's-life bits, i suppose.

31/ anyone else got the creeps at bathilda bagshot's rotting house? and the encounter with batty herself? i did.

will be needing a break before the next re-read. it was pretty full-on yesterday: preparing to start reading was almost ritualistic. i wanted to savour rather than rush through the last book. and i actually managed to put it down twice to prepare meals - something i'd never done with the previous ones. i'd placed the book on the counter and read as i cooked, though. so, technically i was still reading. just at a slower pace.

watched rose troche's the safety of objects amd greg araki's mysterious skin after reading DH last night. great twisted end to a twisted day. loved spending it away from the studio. and at home. :)