Again, I cannot stress enough--this post is CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS. FOR REAL.My PredictionsI did
pretty well, eh?
Guess One: Snape was indeed good and, as I forgot to talk about in the main post but mentioned in a comment, was the one who tipped off Dumbledore that Voldemort was going after the Potters.
Guess Two: Snape was WAY in love with Harry's mom! That part exceeded even my expectations.
Guess Three: Not only did Voldemort die, he died A) without much fanfare and B) without Harry having to Avada Kedavrize him, which was nice.
Hope One: Harry
did get to keep being The Boy Who Lived, although he
also kind of died--so my 50-50 (if you want to look at it this way, and I do) was strangely accurate. [And about his whole "afterlife" experience: I was leery about the concept, when I first started that chapter, but Jo pulled it off really well. Much better than, say,
Grey's Anatomy did. {For instance, I'm glad Cedric Diggory wasn't there, yelling and falling down dead over and over. That . . . might have ruined it for me.}]
Hope Two: Ron lives! (And turns out to be a really funny adult, I thought.)
Hope Three: We did hear about the Dumbledore/Petunia thing, and again, it was even more interesting than I would have thought. Also, a little sad.
Hope Four: I didn't think there was enough Neville overall, but
man! did he get to do some cool stuff! I don't think there was a single heroic moment in the entire book that was as awesome and perfect as Neville beheading the snake with the Sword of Gryffindor.
Go Neville!Hopes Five and Six: I did stay up and read, and nothing gave away the ending until I read it.
I will admit, I had never really come around on the "Harry is a horcrux" theory. My bad. Who knew you could
accidentally make a horcrux? Voldemort sure didn't. Which brings me to my next point . . .
Wasn't Voldemort Dumber Than You Thought He Would Be?He was certainly dumber than
he thought he would be. I mean, he just counted on his whole idea and all his hiding places being WAY too good for anybody to be able to defeat him? And as Ron pointed out, he couldn't even put it together that anybody had ever found the Room of Requirement when confronte with a room filled with a whole bunch of discarded stuff.
I'm not complaining, really. It made the book funnier than it could have been that Voldemort kept having these, "Crap! No WAY!" experiences. And, of course, made it more plausible for Harry to beat him.
The DeathsAs usual, I felt that J.K. let us off easy--at least as compared to my expectations. A lot of characters I felt were high-risk made it: Neville, McGonagall, and especially Hagrid.
Moody, I felt, was not that big a surprise. The way he died made a lot of sense for the character (especially if you think of the parallel between how Harry left Privet Drive in Book 7 with how he did in Book 5; a bunch of Aurors coming to his kitchen and taking off with him to a safe place--and the first time Moody was all serious about the possibility of death, though no one else was.)
I was also unsurprised that a Weasley died. (There are a lot of them, y'know?) It's still awfully sad, since poor George will have to be a solo act* for the rest of his life.
Also sad, but still not all that shocking, were Tonks and Lupin. But it's nice that before they went, they were happy together and with their turquoise-etc-haired baby. And at least turquoise-etc-haired baby seems to have a nicer caregiver-grandmother than Neville had, and a less incarcerated godfather than Harry did.
Oh, and Snape. I didn't mention in my guess list, but Snape was clearly toast.
Dobby dying was kind of weird. I thought the only kind-of-off part of the book was the whole Malfoy Manor debacle--it just didn't seem to gel as well as the rest of the plot. And Dobby seemingly randomly showing up (I know it was explained, but it was still strangely jarring) and then
immediately getting killed . . . I dunno.
Ergo, the one death that surprised and resonated with me? Hedwig. I didn't see it coming, and I didn't see it coming that soon. Poor owl.
*tasteless joke: just like his ear.
A Ponderance
How in the world will they make this into a movie?
Now, I'm no screenwriter, but the book seems to me to have a very film-unfriendly story structure, especially when the climactic Battle of Hogwarts is interrupted by
two very long interludes--Snape Loved Lily All Along and Harry in the Afterlife. Very puzzling.
I sure hope they're able to keep in enough of Snape Loved Lily All Along for Alan Rickman to do justice to it.
Ron and HermioneSo, at last, on the 625th page of the seventh book, Ron and Hermione kiss. That . . . really took awhile.
But at least it finally happened.
And, of course, they get married and have babies, and even though I don't think it's explicitly said, I'm choosing to believe that their hair is both bushy and red.
And They All Lived Happily Ever AfterI could see how some people would find the ending trite--everybody marries their school sweethearts and has adorable babies and happy family friendships. But I think it's great.
I think I would have liked more details on what ended up happening to
everybody, and for instance, what any of them were doing for a living, but the epilogue would to have been much less narrative in style. I
guess it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Also, since J. K. didn't
officially rule it out in the text of the book, I get to decide that Neville and Luna end up getting married. Yay!
Overall It was very very good. I got everything I wanted to know out of it, and--even though it could easily have been bogged down by needed to be the darkest book of a dark series--it wasn't so heavy and dramatic that I felt like killing myself once it was over or indeed, at any time during the story. Well done, J. K. Rowling. This is why you're a billionaire.
What did you guys think?
Click here to read more . . .
I know it's been brought up in this space before, but I'd just like to emphasize it one more time--lots and lots of people have a thing for Alan Rickman. 
And then there's this supercute Tonks:
Alan Rickman! 
And of course, in An Awfully Big Adventure for which, instead of an a.k.a, I bring you a PSA: if someone comes up to you with a deadly weapon of some kind and tells you that you must either stick an oyster fork in your forearm or watch An Awfully Big Adventure, seriously consider the oyster fork. The physical pain will subside much more quickly than the mental anguish incurred by a movie that, starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant, really ought to be at least watchable.
(Look at him. He's saying, "No. No, choose the oyster fork, for your own sake. I wouldn't dream of making you watch me in this movie." Hugh solemnly agrees.) Seriously, I've gone into minor convulsions more than once while typing this paragraph, just from the flashbacks. I can't accurately transcribe the noise I tend to make when trying to describe the horror that is An Awfully Big Adventure, but here's my best effort: HKKGLLghhkkkklllluuurggghhkkkKLHGXXHjjlkhhhhhh.
Awwwwwwwww.
(I love how he looks really unhappy to be on the plane. Also, I want to see that movie.)
