This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.
By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
- **Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lie here. Read at your own risk***
Have any of the Hogwarts professors been married or had children? I'm trying to come up one, but all the ones I can think of or find online have been single. I don't know if that's due to Harry's limited POV or what.
I have no idea what Rowling's conscious intent was, but, looking back at my own high school teachers, I'd be perfectly okay with chalking it up to Harry's POV. I can think of any number of teachers who were obviously espoused and kid-having but for whom it never, ever registered in my selfish little teenage brain. Except for the husband/wife theater/dance teaching tag team, whose marriage was a huge part of who they were to us, neither I nor most of my classmates had much interest in who any of them were during the hours they weren't at the front of the class.
I agree with JZ. I still get students looking vaguely stunned and uncomfortable when they run into me at the grocery store.
You mean you don't live in the school?
I have no idea what Rowling's conscious intent was, but, looking back at my own high school teachers, I'd be perfectly okay with chalking it up to Harry's POV. I can think of any number of teachers who were obviously espoused and kid-having but for whom it never, ever registered in my selfish little teenage brain.
These things often don't register. My parents taught at my (fairly small) boarding school and there were people who didn't realize I was their daughter (and if you know my last name IRL you know how craxy that really is).
ETA: And we did live at school!
I have no idea what Rowling's conscious intent was, but, looking back at my own high school teachers, I'd be perfectly okay with chalking it up to Harry's POV.
It makes sense to me that Harry wouldn't think about it, especially as Miss/Ms./Mrs. wouldn't come up because they address all their teachers as Professor. Harry had plenty to occupy his teenage years beyond the typical teen self-centered world view, so I'm fine with him not thinking about what his instructors are getting up to in the night above the dingle starry.
Of course, I'm also totally fine with Hogwarts professors being the antidote to heteronormativity.
If My F-List Had Written DH--Omigod so hilarious!
::snerk::
Also, everyone sees Harry naked. Six times. Sometimes with frilly underwear.
Aimee???
The next third of the book is a chapter all about Snape and how he was in looooooove with Lily. This may or may not have been preceded with the warning, "may cause nausea." But then Snape says, hey maybe I wasn't in love with her, maybe it was just the guilt. And this goes back and forth for a long time until people decide they want to see how the book ends. Well, except for a few who yell BUT SNAPE IS DEAD IT IS ALL OVER and fling themselves off of buttresses.
Then Harry dies. Then Dumbledore Explains Everything, as he is wont to do. Then Harry comes back, possibly plagiarizing from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or the Bible.
Harry came back WRONG....
Also, Neville kills Nagini and is more awesome.
Neville is MADE OF AWESOME.
All of that was in the first 300 pages of the book and the remaining 400 are the epilogue, which may be written in crayon, and may or may not have been uploaded by JKR onto fanfiction.net many years ago.
Also, a major plot point is that Draco Malfoy is going bald.
::snerk::
I've been reading through the Sugar Quill's discussion forum on DH, and someone pointed out something that I missed in my reread of the first six books:
In GoF, when Dumbledore is talking to Harry about what Harry had just seen in the Pensieve, do you remember what happened when he taked about Neville's parents? He said they were insane - and his voice was filled with a bitterness Harry had never heard there before. Well we know now why the thought of people being tortured into insanity is such a bitter one for Dumbledore.
A very interesting point.
I'm impressed that The Empress has something left that she can do innocently.