DH:35 - King's Cross (Bloomsbury 2007)
Mod person? What tag are we going to use when we post the epilogue? dh: ep?
Italics are impressions from my first read, when I did not yet know what was going to happen.
1) King's Cross. I personally like the double symbolism of this chapter title, but that may have something to do with my personal fascination with church history and how Christian symbolism resonates even within contemporary secular culture. Given what Harry just did, this title is enormously appropriate. I think Dumbledore thinks so, too, since he chuckles "immoderately" when Harry realises where they are, as if at some private joke.
2) Harry's awareness returns. He is in a sort of blank non-place, but he has retained a physical body. He is alone and naked. Gradually, he rediscovers his senses and his body. There seems to be some rebirth symbolism going on here. Or maybe Jo just wanted to have one last shot at getting Dan naked.
3) The pathetic thing. Harry wants to comfort it, as much as he is disgusted by it. I knew right away that this was Voldemort, since it so resembled what he was in GoF, and for the duration of this chapter I thought it meant that it was all over and that Voldemort had somehow been killed by his own curse again without the need to kill Nagini. OK, so I had been awake for about 36 hours by that time and was not thinking very coherently.
4) "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk. Dumbledore greets Harry with pride and affections. I love Dumbledore. I never stopped. I never questioned his motives. I was always sure of his basic goodness, wisdom and wanting the right things for the right reasons. So he has failings. Don't we all? He admitted himself that since he is cleverer than most, his mistakes are consequently huger. I'm still Dumbledore's man. Except for being female.
5) Dumbledore sez ... not dead! Harry tells (not asks) Dumbledore to explain, and for once Harry listens without interrupting. Harry was a Horcrux. How about that? Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse killed only the part of his own soul which resided in Harry. Ironic, what? But Harry himself continues to live because of his other connection to Voldemort and to the living world: The fact that Voldemort used Harry's blood to recreate his body. So Voldemort's not dead either. Yet.
6) The strange behaviour of the phoenix wand. Dumbledore cannot entirely explain it, as it is without precedent. But he thinks that Harry's wand somehow learned to recognise Voldemort, and not just its own twin, and to shield Harry from him of its own accord. And Lucius Malfoy's "poor little stick" was destroyed. *giggle* Wand innuendo never stops being funny.
7) Harry: "I feel great at the moment, though." Something about this statement makes me laugh. Maybe it's the release from all the tension of the last chapter, when Harry was being so desperately heroic.
8) Kings Cross Station. The place has formed around him as Harry observed it, conforming to his needs and possibly to his expectations, too. He subconsciously understands that he is standing at a crossroads, and because he knows himself to be dead and to have earned his reward, he is expecting an afterlife filled with grand and impressive architecture. The only real-world concept Harry has for such a place is King's Cross Station; the place from which he left his old life behind and began a new one. And suddenly I'm thinking of the last Narnia book, in which everyone finally enters into the true Narnia ....
9) The Hallows. Dumbledore begs Harry's forgiveness and declares him the better man. He may or may not be right in that, but it would be natural to worry that Harry might crave those Things of Power which he himself craved in his youth. And indeed, Harry did desire them, but he placed his quest for the Horcruxes over that desire. And Harry does forgive Dumbledore, if he had any remaining anger towards the man. Surely if Harry can, the rest of us can too?
10) The Peverells. Gellert Grindelwald came to Godric's Hollow looking for the grave of Ignotus Peverell. Dumbledore believes the Peverells created the Hallows, but I'm still convinced that the metaphor of the tale hints that they stole them from some great Dark wizard. The cloak was passed down to Ignotus's "last living descendant" (Harry), to which I call "bullshit". I'm sure it's more likely that, through the generations, branches of the family lost track of one another, but only one person in each generation could inherit the Cloak.
11) Dumbledore regrets borrowing the Cloak. But Harry tells him it's all right and that the Cloak would not have saved his parents. It might have helped, though.
12) Dumbledore's great dark secret. His resentment toward his family. Or not toward them, per se, but toward the situation they were in and the situation they placed him in. His father sacrificed his freedom to avenge Ariana. His mother gave up her life in caring for Ariana, and had closed herself away from her friends and the world for many years before. Aberforth was ready and willing to sacrifice his own education and life-prospects to care for his sister. Only Albus shirked his responsibilities to his family, and doing so resulted in the death of his sister.
13) Dumbledore speaks of his friendship with Grindelwald. Oh, I'm still seeing some passion there. There's fire in his words. Dumbledore denied himself the quest for the Hallows after his sister died, for fear of what his lust for power might make him do, but I wonder if there's not another lust he was denying as well? I wouldn't be surprised.
14) Inferi. Dumbledore believes Grindelwald intended to use the Resurrection Stone to make Inferi, but it does not seem to work like that at all. An Inferius is a reanimated corpse, but clearly the shades Harry summoned to him were not the actual bodies of his family, but more like tangible spirits. Grindelwald would have failed here, I think. How could he force the dead to do his bidding? What could he offer them or how could he control them? I do not think it is possible. Dumbledore would have used it to bring back his parents and to lift his responsibilites, which is a more realistic prospect. I guess that must mean that by this time Percival Dumbledore had died in prison. Poor guy.
15) Wisdom and the Cloak. From the Tale of the Three Brothers, it is demonstrated that the Cloak was the wisest of the Hallows to desire, but it was the least desired by Grindelwald and Dumbledore, which says a lot. Dumbledore would have used it to shield his sister, which shows, at least, that he had a more caring heart than his compatriot.
16) Dumbledore: "That which I had always sensed in him [...] now sprang into terrible being." It's interesting that, even now, Dumbledore is half-protecting his memories of Grindelwald by using vague words. He does not explicitly state what Grindelwald did, only that it resulted in Ariana's death. He never mentions his use of the Cruiciatus curse on Aberforth.
17) Dumbledore weeps. My slashy self believes that Dumbledore here weeps as much over the irrevocable loss of his lover as over the death of his sister. In a way, he is like Remus when he still believed Sirius guilty (if you happen to 'ship RL/SB and AD/GG); his lover betrayed him and killed someone close to him, breaking his heart and disappearing from his life. Damn. No wonder I like slashing Dumbledore so much now!
18) Dumbledore: "I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power." Ariana's death shook Dumbledore to his very core. Before this, he believed in the natural entitlement of those with magical blood, and in the right of wizards to rule over and decide what was best for Muggles. But he learned the hard way that all men are fallible and are ruled by their own desires, and that a man is only as good as the choices he makes. Nothing gives him the right to make those choices for another. His words from way back in CoS, about our choices making us who we are, resonate more deeply than ever now that we know the experiences which inspired them.
19) Dumbledore: "Those best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well." Neville Longbottom for Minister for Magic!
20) Dumbledore feared the truth. He feared that if he faced Grindelwald, he would learn which of them had killed Ariana, and that was knowledge he never wanted. He could have found out easily, too, by using the Pensieve, but he never did. For that reason alone, it took him over forty years to face Grindelwald again. And we *still* don't know how he beat him and won the Elder Wand!
21) Harry understands at last what Dumbledore saw in the Mirror of Erised. It is not explicitly stated in the text, but I would venture to guess that, like Harry, he saw his family alive again and happy, and possibly himself in some position of power.
22) Dumbledore believes Grindelwald felt remorse in later life. Did he? I don't know. Why could have changed him, really? We've seen wizard prisons; no attempt is made to rehabilitate the inhabitants or make them realise the error of their ways. I think it more likely that Grindelwald denied Voldemort information about the wand because he did not want Voldemort's reign of terror to eclipse his own in the history books. Vanity; not remorse. Harry asks, though, if perhaps he did it to keep Voldemort from breaking Dumbledore's tomb. Dumbledore gives no answer to this, so I'll call it support of AD/GG.
23) Dumbledore declares Harry the worthy possessor of the Hallows. The Cloak is his birthright, and the Stone he used for selfless reasons. The wand, too, if he possessed it, he would never use to kill. In sacrificing himself, Harry Potter has earned the right to call himself Master of Death.
24) Dumbledore counted on Hermione to slow Harry down. Well, she did her job, and did it well, which was to force Harry to think and to plan and eventually to realise what needed doing more than what he wanted to do.
25) Voldemort never knew about the Hallows. He would not have known the Tales of Beedle the Bard, on which children like Ron Weasley were raised, and if he heard them at all later on, he would have scoffed at them as children's stories, never recognising their power and wisdom. He knew of the Elder Wand because, as Xeno Lovegood told us, it appears many times in the pages of what Voldemort would think of as credible history.
26) Dumbledore intended for Snape to take the Elder Wand. But he did not. Dumbledore must have told him to do so when they made their plans, but if I remember correctly, the wand went over the side of the tower, and Snape would not have had time to retrieve it. Dumbledore nudges Harry with a clue hammer, reminding him that that part of the plan did not work out exactly as he had planned. But he did make sure that night that Harry was able to witness properly what exactly *did* happen.
27) To be or not to be. Harry has the rare chance to make that choice for himself, hence the crossroads. Once again, the theme of what we are being determined by our choices. If he chooses to go on, he has left behind Ron, Hermione and Neville to finish his work for him, and he could easily have put his trust in them and gone to a much-deserved rest. Dumbledore tells him that the worst that can happen if he chooses to go back is that he will only end up here again, and Harry now knows there is nothing to fear in death.
Italics are impressions from my first read, when I did not yet know what was going to happen.
1) King's Cross. I personally like the double symbolism of this chapter title, but that may have something to do with my personal fascination with church history and how Christian symbolism resonates even within contemporary secular culture. Given what Harry just did, this title is enormously appropriate. I think Dumbledore thinks so, too, since he chuckles "immoderately" when Harry realises where they are, as if at some private joke.
2) Harry's awareness returns. He is in a sort of blank non-place, but he has retained a physical body. He is alone and naked. Gradually, he rediscovers his senses and his body. There seems to be some rebirth symbolism going on here. Or maybe Jo just wanted to have one last shot at getting Dan naked.
3) The pathetic thing. Harry wants to comfort it, as much as he is disgusted by it. I knew right away that this was Voldemort, since it so resembled what he was in GoF, and for the duration of this chapter I thought it meant that it was all over and that Voldemort had somehow been killed by his own curse again without the need to kill Nagini. OK, so I had been awake for about 36 hours by that time and was not thinking very coherently.
4) "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk. Dumbledore greets Harry with pride and affections. I love Dumbledore. I never stopped. I never questioned his motives. I was always sure of his basic goodness, wisdom and wanting the right things for the right reasons. So he has failings. Don't we all? He admitted himself that since he is cleverer than most, his mistakes are consequently huger. I'm still Dumbledore's man. Except for being female.
5) Dumbledore sez ... not dead! Harry tells (not asks) Dumbledore to explain, and for once Harry listens without interrupting. Harry was a Horcrux. How about that? Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse killed only the part of his own soul which resided in Harry. Ironic, what? But Harry himself continues to live because of his other connection to Voldemort and to the living world: The fact that Voldemort used Harry's blood to recreate his body. So Voldemort's not dead either. Yet.
6) The strange behaviour of the phoenix wand. Dumbledore cannot entirely explain it, as it is without precedent. But he thinks that Harry's wand somehow learned to recognise Voldemort, and not just its own twin, and to shield Harry from him of its own accord. And Lucius Malfoy's "poor little stick" was destroyed. *giggle* Wand innuendo never stops being funny.
7) Harry: "I feel great at the moment, though." Something about this statement makes me laugh. Maybe it's the release from all the tension of the last chapter, when Harry was being so desperately heroic.
8) Kings Cross Station. The place has formed around him as Harry observed it, conforming to his needs and possibly to his expectations, too. He subconsciously understands that he is standing at a crossroads, and because he knows himself to be dead and to have earned his reward, he is expecting an afterlife filled with grand and impressive architecture. The only real-world concept Harry has for such a place is King's Cross Station; the place from which he left his old life behind and began a new one. And suddenly I'm thinking of the last Narnia book, in which everyone finally enters into the true Narnia ....
9) The Hallows. Dumbledore begs Harry's forgiveness and declares him the better man. He may or may not be right in that, but it would be natural to worry that Harry might crave those Things of Power which he himself craved in his youth. And indeed, Harry did desire them, but he placed his quest for the Horcruxes over that desire. And Harry does forgive Dumbledore, if he had any remaining anger towards the man. Surely if Harry can, the rest of us can too?
10) The Peverells. Gellert Grindelwald came to Godric's Hollow looking for the grave of Ignotus Peverell. Dumbledore believes the Peverells created the Hallows, but I'm still convinced that the metaphor of the tale hints that they stole them from some great Dark wizard. The cloak was passed down to Ignotus's "last living descendant" (Harry), to which I call "bullshit". I'm sure it's more likely that, through the generations, branches of the family lost track of one another, but only one person in each generation could inherit the Cloak.
11) Dumbledore regrets borrowing the Cloak. But Harry tells him it's all right and that the Cloak would not have saved his parents. It might have helped, though.
12) Dumbledore's great dark secret. His resentment toward his family. Or not toward them, per se, but toward the situation they were in and the situation they placed him in. His father sacrificed his freedom to avenge Ariana. His mother gave up her life in caring for Ariana, and had closed herself away from her friends and the world for many years before. Aberforth was ready and willing to sacrifice his own education and life-prospects to care for his sister. Only Albus shirked his responsibilities to his family, and doing so resulted in the death of his sister.
13) Dumbledore speaks of his friendship with Grindelwald. Oh, I'm still seeing some passion there. There's fire in his words. Dumbledore denied himself the quest for the Hallows after his sister died, for fear of what his lust for power might make him do, but I wonder if there's not another lust he was denying as well? I wouldn't be surprised.
14) Inferi. Dumbledore believes Grindelwald intended to use the Resurrection Stone to make Inferi, but it does not seem to work like that at all. An Inferius is a reanimated corpse, but clearly the shades Harry summoned to him were not the actual bodies of his family, but more like tangible spirits. Grindelwald would have failed here, I think. How could he force the dead to do his bidding? What could he offer them or how could he control them? I do not think it is possible. Dumbledore would have used it to bring back his parents and to lift his responsibilites, which is a more realistic prospect. I guess that must mean that by this time Percival Dumbledore had died in prison. Poor guy.
15) Wisdom and the Cloak. From the Tale of the Three Brothers, it is demonstrated that the Cloak was the wisest of the Hallows to desire, but it was the least desired by Grindelwald and Dumbledore, which says a lot. Dumbledore would have used it to shield his sister, which shows, at least, that he had a more caring heart than his compatriot.
16) Dumbledore: "That which I had always sensed in him [...] now sprang into terrible being." It's interesting that, even now, Dumbledore is half-protecting his memories of Grindelwald by using vague words. He does not explicitly state what Grindelwald did, only that it resulted in Ariana's death. He never mentions his use of the Cruiciatus curse on Aberforth.
17) Dumbledore weeps. My slashy self believes that Dumbledore here weeps as much over the irrevocable loss of his lover as over the death of his sister. In a way, he is like Remus when he still believed Sirius guilty (if you happen to 'ship RL/SB and AD/GG); his lover betrayed him and killed someone close to him, breaking his heart and disappearing from his life. Damn. No wonder I like slashing Dumbledore so much now!
18) Dumbledore: "I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power." Ariana's death shook Dumbledore to his very core. Before this, he believed in the natural entitlement of those with magical blood, and in the right of wizards to rule over and decide what was best for Muggles. But he learned the hard way that all men are fallible and are ruled by their own desires, and that a man is only as good as the choices he makes. Nothing gives him the right to make those choices for another. His words from way back in CoS, about our choices making us who we are, resonate more deeply than ever now that we know the experiences which inspired them.
19) Dumbledore: "Those best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well." Neville Longbottom for Minister for Magic!
20) Dumbledore feared the truth. He feared that if he faced Grindelwald, he would learn which of them had killed Ariana, and that was knowledge he never wanted. He could have found out easily, too, by using the Pensieve, but he never did. For that reason alone, it took him over forty years to face Grindelwald again. And we *still* don't know how he beat him and won the Elder Wand!
21) Harry understands at last what Dumbledore saw in the Mirror of Erised. It is not explicitly stated in the text, but I would venture to guess that, like Harry, he saw his family alive again and happy, and possibly himself in some position of power.
22) Dumbledore believes Grindelwald felt remorse in later life. Did he? I don't know. Why could have changed him, really? We've seen wizard prisons; no attempt is made to rehabilitate the inhabitants or make them realise the error of their ways. I think it more likely that Grindelwald denied Voldemort information about the wand because he did not want Voldemort's reign of terror to eclipse his own in the history books. Vanity; not remorse. Harry asks, though, if perhaps he did it to keep Voldemort from breaking Dumbledore's tomb. Dumbledore gives no answer to this, so I'll call it support of AD/GG.
23) Dumbledore declares Harry the worthy possessor of the Hallows. The Cloak is his birthright, and the Stone he used for selfless reasons. The wand, too, if he possessed it, he would never use to kill. In sacrificing himself, Harry Potter has earned the right to call himself Master of Death.
24) Dumbledore counted on Hermione to slow Harry down. Well, she did her job, and did it well, which was to force Harry to think and to plan and eventually to realise what needed doing more than what he wanted to do.
25) Voldemort never knew about the Hallows. He would not have known the Tales of Beedle the Bard, on which children like Ron Weasley were raised, and if he heard them at all later on, he would have scoffed at them as children's stories, never recognising their power and wisdom. He knew of the Elder Wand because, as Xeno Lovegood told us, it appears many times in the pages of what Voldemort would think of as credible history.
26) Dumbledore intended for Snape to take the Elder Wand. But he did not. Dumbledore must have told him to do so when they made their plans, but if I remember correctly, the wand went over the side of the tower, and Snape would not have had time to retrieve it. Dumbledore nudges Harry with a clue hammer, reminding him that that part of the plan did not work out exactly as he had planned. But he did make sure that night that Harry was able to witness properly what exactly *did* happen.
27) To be or not to be. Harry has the rare chance to make that choice for himself, hence the crossroads. Once again, the theme of what we are being determined by our choices. If he chooses to go on, he has left behind Ron, Hermione and Neville to finish his work for him, and he could easily have put his trust in them and gone to a much-deserved rest. Dumbledore tells him that the worst that can happen if he chooses to go back is that he will only end up here again, and Harry now knows there is nothing to fear in death.