21 July 2007
Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort’s remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him…
ALL the stars. Literally all of them.
Bear with me, because this is going to be a bit of a gush…
I recently reread Commentarius, my favourite Harry Potter fanfiction (a truly hilarious Jily) and it gave me the urge for something I haven’t felt in a while: more HP content. But fanfiction wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I needed to go back to the original source, and so I decided to start rereading the HP series – in reverse order.
Partly that’s in homage to the fact that the first time I read this series, I read it wildly out of order; if memory serves, I started with Book 3 aged seven (the mum of a boy who lived near us had given me a bunch of books he’d outgrown, and that was one of them). Then over the next year I moved onto 2, 7, 5, 4, 6, and 1. (Yes, I spent a lot of time being a bit confused at the plot points…) My grandfather loved books and he was the one who bought me Book 1, during a trip to Bangladesh when I was eight – the last time I saw him; that’s why my copy of Philosopher’s Stone has a spine with misaligned printing, since Bangladeshi printing houses aren’t exactly known for their quality. My grandfather actually owned a printing press, though I believe he had given it up by then since none of his three sons evinced any interest in it.
But the other reason I’m rereading in reverse order is because Deathly Hallows is in many ways my favourite of the series. Harry, Ron and Hermione really come into their own here, and their lives have never been more at risk. JKR pulls no punches with the series of losses she inflicts on Harry almost from page 1, and right up until the final chapters. She’s certainly not afraid to kill her darlings, and the losses get progressively worse until – as we all know – Fred meets his untimely end, ‘the ghost of his last laugh still etched on his face’, a phrase that’s been ringing through my head for more than ten years. When I first read that line, I was seven or eight and lying on my parents’ bed in the evening gloom, because I hadn’t turned the lights on. It was Ramadan and my mum was downstairs making our iftar, but I was up there trying to process Fred’s death, not as attached to him as those people who had read the books in order and spent more time growing with him, but still knowing that something awful had happened.
I actually really enjoy this book also because it’s not set at Hogwarts. Which feels a bit sacrilegious: Hogwarts has always been its own character, the reason we fell in love with the series in the first place. But it’s also kind of claustrophobic, and the suddenly expanded scope of the characters’ wanderings forms the perfect backdrop to their burgeoning adulthood. The Ministry of Magic, Malfoy Manor, Gringotts, Godric’s Hollow, Grimmauld Place – everywhere else that’s ever played a part in Harry’s development gets a look-in, making this the perfect final book.
I also should say that on this particular reread, Ron has grown on me. I’m still always and forever a Dramione shipper, but in ‘real life’ (i.e. canon) I can perfectly understand how well he and Hermione actually go together, and why JKR made the decision she did.
Now onto book 6…
The Literary Invertebrate 