HP7: finished

[rm]

Eventually, I will write about the book as a book -- its structure and plot, the satisfaction it provides as a conclusion, its pacing, and what issues it raises in terms of cinematic adaptation.



I also don't know if this will be the deeply elegant post I eventually want to write about my emotional response. I want to try, but may simply be too wound up.

I am so, deeply, deeply angry at Dumbledore. I am angry at how he used Snape, underestimated seemingly everyone's capacity for love and good judgement and grief, and ultimately, forced people to be alone far more than they needed to be, and I am a believer in alone and in grief as forces not just of testing and refining, but sometimes of redemption. But wow, fuck youm Albus Dumbledore. You saw people's intelligence get them into trouble time and time again -- your own, Grindenwald's, Severus's, Hermione's, Voldemort's and then never trusted any of them to use that intelligence to get them back out of the messes they made. Skill led, justifiably to suspicion, but who were you to condemn people to all the various things you did? For the greater fucking good, indeed.

I'll probably have more sympathy for Dumedore when I calm down.

And while I always had trepidation about the Snape/Lily plotline, I was charmed by him as a small boy, and can live with the quiet way he carried his burden. Oh but I hated Dumbledore for being surprised he still felt for Lily. But I react poorly to people having contempt or surprise for love, even when it is unlikely, foolish or even limiting. It is the nebulous thing in the world that perhaps most enrages me.

Still?

Yes, still.

I hated, hated that Snape essentially died alone with far too much still to do and both solace for and condemnation of his sins in Harry's face, but then in my mind this thing I expected for so long was always some sort of awful public spectacle. I hated that it made me call Kali and blurt out "Oh my poor Severus," as if anything about those four words isn't just findamentally embarassing. But the thing about Snape is that he, of all the characters, belonged most to the fans, in large part, because he belonged least to anyone in the books. Harry had support in the novel; Snape only had support outside of it. Which is one of those things that for all of JKR's really sloppy writing ticks is profoundly elegant, and I loved, loved the cadence of the moment where Dumbledore agrees to keep the secret of "what is the best of you" even if his later actions imply he never really believed in it.

I know lots of people hate the epilogue. And I have issues with all these high school relationships being happily ever after, but who else could understand what these people went through? And as a strange, serious, frightened child, who asked very earnest questions my parents never knew how to answer, Albus Severus melted my heart. And I hope to hell he was sorted into Slytherin, a strange place for strange children.

And unrelated to all of that: Redemption of the house elves! Dobby's death gutted me. Kreacher's grief for Regulus and everythign about Regulus gutted me.

But at the end I must say this, which grieves me most of all because nothing I say could be precise enough, nuanced enough, could make it make sense to anyone it doesn't already make sense to. But Severus Snape was not so much my friend, as literary characters went, as I was his. And his creation kept me distracted and amused and strong, when I've have never been good at the first two, and always regretted my propopensity for the third -- perhaps, the best of me, as it were. And maybe that's why it matters, not because in the world of stories I love he was my strength, but maybe because my reading of these stories taught me that I could be someone else's strength, other than my own.

See, my life starts in fiction, over and over again.

But it never ends there.

But even with Descensus and fandom and the inevitable rereads and the movies, I will miss him.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

What I am trying to figure out is if it was just poverty, or his witch mother not really knowing how to dress him like a muggle, or him trying to dress more like a wizard which his father probably forbid or some combination of the three.

[fleur.livejournal.com]

My immediate assumption was that the shirt and trousers were cast offs, that was all he had available so he had no choice but to have to wear them. But the coat .. where did he find the coat? And how much did he love and cleave to that coat, something that was of his own choosing?