Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I remember the little bet I made with Karan two years ago. In return for inducting him into Star Wars, I had agreed to try reading the Harry Potter books, which hitherto I had never really come into contact with. I approached the first book with scepticism. It was a bright afternoon. I sat on a chair and picked up the book, with its faded jacket of garish illustrations, and when I emerged, I promptly and shamefacedly telephoned Karan to instruct him to bring the next book the very next day, under threat of disembowelment. The rest is history.

So it is that my acquaintance with the Harry Potter phenomenon has lasted a mere two years, in contrast to devotees who undoubtedly possess fifty-thousand dollar first edition copies of the first book and are yet unwilling to part with them. Well, having now read the seventh and last of the books narrating Harry’s story (well, a part of it, hopefully), I nevertheless can feel every inch of the sorrowful yet euphoric catharsis shared by millions of fans around the world. For this is indeed the grand finale, the capstone, the denouement, the finish, the coup de grace.

Oh, and if you haven’t read the book, you might want to run screaming from your desk just about now.

I shall indulge myself in a narration of the events leading to my early procurement of the precious tome. I’d ordered the book from Singpost in April, in the hope that I wouldn’t have to endure long queues in major bookstores at 7:01 a.m. I was, however, anxious that Karan’s experience would be repeated – that I would somehow not get the book, and would be forced to either get the book from a bookstore (a flagrant violation of my finely honed parsimony) or to wait, in which case I would be bombarded with loudly discussed plot elements on Monday. Well, fortunately the book arrived – at 8:30 in the morning. I’d just finished Half Blood Prince only half an hour ago and was therefore able to resume reading almost immediately . My hands were literally trembling as I took the package from the postman and signed the receipt. When I unwrapped the book from its protective bag there lay the object of my obsession, a beautiful hardcover Adult Bloomsbury book with Slytherin’s locket elegantly draped on the cover. I retired from the pressures of daily life and began to read, forgetting everything but the pages in front of me. In such a state, I read the book in about six hours, from 8:30 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon, pausing only for a short lunch.

The thing that strikes you is how the book is so different. It is no longer truly a book accessible to young children who might have understood the first few books without trouble. There is no childlike wonderment, little wry humour. Instead the book is dark, grim, and meaty, with terror, excitement, suspense, revelation, and moments of almost transcendent pathos and tragedy. The difference is accentuated when you realize that Ron, Hermione and Harry do not return to Hogwarts. Instead, they are entrapped by a newly emergent Voldemort, who has taken control of the Ministry of Magic and established his Nazi-like reign of terror and domination over the wizarding world, and are forced to hide whilst simultaneously uncovering the Horcruxes that are the key to defeating Voldemort. Deaths occur by the droves, and some are painful. What the reader senses is that Harry, who has come of age, has indeed left childhood and become an adult, and the tenor of the narrative reflects this. It’s an incredibly simple turn of events, but an impactful one. Harry has become a master of his destiny, no longer bound by mentors. He is, in other words, his own man.

Other aspects of the book were brilliantly handled, such as the introduction of a more morally ambiguous side to Dumbledore. He has been deified in the eyes of Harry beforehand, but now we get a closer look at his fears, his weaknesses, his doubts and failures. It is a very significant counterpoint to Harry’s emerging heroism and adulthood.

Rowling has, of course, a flair for suspense. The narrative starts already at a feverish pace and we see two deaths in the first few chapters. The pace picks up as Harry continues on his quest, for the Horcruxes, and the final battle at Hogwarts was magnificently realized. The epilogue, however, was frustrating. It was brief, inconclusive, and seemed to promise more to come. I wanted to know more about the fates of the surviving characters, but of course (for now in any case) there wasn’t any more. The magnitude of the ending struck me then as I turned over the last page and found nothing. I reread the epilogue over and over, getting every nuance of meaning and significance, and was finally forced to put the book down. Slowly the realization of the finality of the series came to me. The first few seconds of the Post-Potter world were the most bewildering and disappointing.

I, for one, believe that there is still much room for Harry’s story to continue. He has yet to complete his last year at Hogwarts, for example, and with Voldemort dead, there has to be some room for more conflict. But the great story arc of the past seven books is indeed conclusively and magnificently brought to a close. Yet, there remains that yearning to delve into that escapist world, to desire new, clean, triumphant adventures, to watch them blossom and grow and fall in love and marry.

The seventh book was then a triumph and a disappointment. Triumph, because it dared to subvert the patten of the previous six, to transform the Harry Potter series into a classic of children’s literature deserving of a place in the literary canon in which greats like The Hobbit, Narnia, HDM and Lord of the Rings now occupy. Disappointment, precisely because of the same reasons. Nevertheless, the change was necessary, because the book deals ultimately not in the escapist adventure of the earlier books, but delves into the deepest and most profound of themes: the questions of love and sacrifice, death and justice. Rowling’s moral vision, her sense of justice reflected so strongly in the books, her foresight, her deliberation, determination and destination, in other words, has helped her achieve what is so vanishingly rare in today’s world of fantasy fiction – to actually pull off such a consistently exciting, engaging and moving story, to create such an appealing and magical escapist universe.

It has been a truly amazing ride, and I do fervently hope that the magic of the series will never fade. (And of course, I hope that more books will come.) I’m sentimental in this way.

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