Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	J.K. Rowling

I started reading the “Harry Potter” series when there were just three books out. I had heard how this book about a boy wizard was really cool, and that once I started reading it, I wouldn’t be able to stop. Well, during a brownout one afternoon in the early 2000’s, I began to read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. True enough, I couldn’t put it down. I think it took me just a little over a week to run through this book as well as “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. Author J.K. Rowling had opened up a world of wizards and goblins, hippogriffs and centaurs. This was not your ordinary children’s book.

As time went on, Harry matured in every book and we, his audience, saw him grow up. Even as the movies featured Daniel Radcliffe wearing Harry’s glasses and robes, we were allowed to attach a real face to Rowling’s words. When it was then announced that there would be 7 books in this series, anticipation for every succeeding volume grew. More people got on the Potter bandwagon, and those of us who were there early would brag that we were ahead of the curve. Still, one couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sadness when Rowling completed “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. For her series finale, J.K. pulls out all the stops, resolves every hanging plotline, and gives us the final fate of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Lord Voldemort.

SPOILER WARNING!!! I might as well put this up now because I don’t think I can avoid writing any spoilers from here on. “Hallows” ties in directly with volume 6 of the series so it is advisable that you read “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” again right before reading volume 7. After the death of Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, the wizarding world is in a state of panic. Lord Voldemort has made his full-fledged return and is consolidating his power. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than the capture and eventual death of Harry Potter. Of course, Harry and his friends are a clever lot and they aren’t going to go down without a fight.

Within the first few chapters, a few of Harry’s friends have already been killed, namely Hedwig his owl and the auror Mad-Eye Moody. Although Ron’s brother Bill Weasley is able to marry Fleur Delacour and give some measure of normalcy, everything is torn asunder when Voldemort’s Death Eaters attack. Forced to run and complete the task Dumbledore left to him, Harry must find the Horcruxes that hold parts of Voldemort’s power. Even with Ron and Hermione by his side, the task seems impossible and tedious yet with a little luck, and with some help from unlikely sources, the trio gain hope.

Though they are betrayed by Luna Lovegood’s father Xenophilius (since Luna was captured and only the capture of Harry would gain her freedom), Harry and friends learn of the Deathly Hallows. This opens their eyes to another of Voldemort’s plans to cheat death and be the most powerful wizard ever. With a battle to end all battles within Hogwarts itself, Harry must summon the courage and the wisdom necessary to defeat the Dark Lord while also saving his friends and the wizarding world in the process.

As arguably the most anticipated book in history, “Hallows” proves to be a fun, frenetic, and fearful finale to Rowling’s Potter adventures. Most of the books leaves you guessing, whether it be “Who died?” or “Where is the next Horcrux?” or “Was Dumbledore more sinister than we thought?” With all those mysteries as part of the plot, Rowling masterfully keeps the reader glued to each page, hurriedly going from chapter to chapter while hoping that Harry and his friends figure everything out before it’s too late. I had once feared that Dumbledore’s death would render this final volume as anti-climactic but instead, Rowling makes the late headmaster’s mysterious past another delight that we must slowly unravel. The result is that where once we saw a grandfatherly genius of a wizard, we end up seeing a once-ambitious, still brilliant, yet all-too-human man.

Rowling doesn’t kill off characters just because she feels like it. You clearly feel pain when each of these people (some we’ve known since book 1, others we meet right here in “Hallows”) meet untimely ends. Particularly painful for me were the deaths of Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, and Nymphadora Tonks. Fred, after all, was one of the eternally joking Weasley twins, a staple of the series since “Philosopher’s Stone”. Lupin and Tonks were finally married and just had a son, yet they sacrificed themselves so that little Teddy Lupin might actually have a future. These deaths make Harry’s final confrontation with Voldemort all the more dramatic, particularly after Rowling shows that the Dark Lord’s hubris and arrogance all serve to be his undoing.

The epilogue, set 19 years after the fall of Voldemort, gives us readers a proper farewell to Harry and his merry group. It is the quintessential “happy ending” as Harry is married to Ginny, just as Ron and Hermione have wed. I found it particularly poignant that Harry’s second son was actually named “Albus Severus”, named after one wizard whom Harry always admired, and another whom he actually loathed. I always felt that there was more to Severus Snape than met the eye, and his thoughts in the pensieve proved me right. I can’t wait to see the great Alan Rickman play him once this final novel is translated to film.

And so, we bid a sad farewell to Harry Potter and his magical adventures. From a scared boy of 11, we see him mature, to even become Head Auror at the Ministry of Magic at the age of 36. “The Boy Who Lived” proved that he indeed was the hero that everybody hoped he would become, as he was the one wizard who toppled “He Who Must Not Be Named”. As I closed the pages on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, I was very satisfied with the ending, yet, like most everyone who has followed Harry from the start, there was a tinge of sadness in the air. Such is the feeling we inevitably have when one great series comes to its end, and it is the same feeling we have when we bid goodbye to good friends.