But it wasn't until disco that he showed his power.

HiLARious.

Voldemort does seem like a very 70s sort of villain.

But it wasn't until disco that he showed his power.

Finally, an explanation for disco.

I just re-read the Epilogue, and it never refers to Ginny as Harry's wife, just as the kids' mother. Just something for the slashfic minded of us.

Aw hell, I missed the cover art discussion. Crappity.

FWIW, I prefer the American covers over most everything I've seen, though I think the covers for OotP & HBP are really dreary.

Now, if you want to talk really bad, here's the Italian cover to book 1 - [link]

Well, I do have one set of covers that I think are better than the American ones, it's just that I've never been able to see the images at anything much larger than a couple of inches high. These would be the wonderful covers done by Alvaro Tapia for the Swedish editions - [link]

I kind of like the Italian ones, but those Finnish ones kick butt. I notice after the Icelandic Zombie-Harry cover they went to the American covers.

I just re-read the Epilogue, and it never refers to Ginny as Harry's wife, just as the kids' mother. Just something for the slashfic minded of us.

Or anyone who wants to write a story where Mrs. Weasly never. fucking. speaks. to. Harry. Potter. ev. er. a. gain.

Clearly you don't want to get on Mrs. Weasly's bad side at all for any reason: I mean she was more than a match for the mad Ms. Lestrange, wasn't she? I think we can be quite sure Harry did right by dear Ginny.

I think we can be quite sure Harry did right by dear Ginny.

That's a great basis for a marriage, fear of your MIL.

I've finished the book!

It took me two weeks, a fast (I couldn't start the book before or during it), a sister's wedding (why, yes, the preparations in the book, and the crazy morning-of-wedding seem pretty much the same, magic or no magic), a weekend-full-of-guests (so I prevented myself from even opening the book, in order to not create a situation in which I disappear inside it completely), a missed bus due to reading at the station (Or, well, it could be that the bus was simply very late and not that I was so lost inside Ron and the sword and the locket to raise my eyes and see what's going on), roommates rolling their eyes at me, hiding from the internet in safe havens where I knew for sure I wouldn't be spoiled, and finally a peaceful weekend in which I could just sit and read and cry my heart out over several scenes.

And now, my head is spinning, and I'm supposed to work, but I kinda need to try and unentangle my thoughts, even if they are so stating-the-obvious and it-was-obvious-to-everybody-else-but-me. So I'm skipping (and threadsucking! And going to catch up!), and throwing large paragraphs at screens, OK?

I remember how, in the former book, I was all about reflections and triangles, but in this book, I shifted my geometry a bit, because it's so much more about spirals and circles. But still, of course, reflections.

It's silly, but even the riddle that they were asked when wanting to get into Ravenclaw tower, was about just that, a circle. Or rather, the answer to the riddle (what came first, the phoenix or the flames) was a circle, without a beginning or an end, returning to the same points, only a bit differently.

I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is nothing profound or deep or character-searching or whatever, but practically a rather technical detail: using Voldemort's name. In the "Philosophers' Stone", Harry uses his name, without knowing that it's dangerous. He's being told, over and over again, to stop that, and in its end (IIRC) Dumbledore tells him not to stop using that name, with all the meaning that it has - knowing your enemy's name, daring to use it, not fearing the myth surrounding it. And all throughout the books, Harry does just that.

And then, in "Deathly Hallows", the pronunciation of the name itself becomes dangerous. This is how they're tracked when they run away for the first time, this is how they're captured by the Snatchers and brought to the Malfoy house. The name has a real immediate danger attached to it now. Things moved from the realm of myth and fear-inspiring to actual actions, to actual captures and results. And for the same reason for using the name as Harry's, too.

But then, at the end of the book, when there's nothing to lose, because things are already pretty much as bad as they could be and there's no revealing in the actual pronunciation of the name, they return to their habit of saying it out loud. When the fight is out and at the open, even when the opponent is at his strongest position yet (or maybe because of that?), the name returns to its former place, loses that special power again (even with the added power it now has).

And it goes further than that. When Harry duels with him, one last time, he's using not only the name that Voldemort had chosen for himself, but also the name that practically nobody but Dumbledore has ever used when referring to him, Tom Riddle. His human name, his not-Lord-ish name, the human part he tried to leave behind, to change and distort. That little crying child in the King's Cross that's in Harry's head. And that was a simple name that had no magical power or spell attached to it. But that was the thing that held the most power over Voldemort, in a way. Because of the power that he gave to it, himself.

But, no, wait, I'm running forwards too quickly. I'm still just at the very beginning of the book, not already at the end, when it comes to those circles, and there are already so many of them. I mean, the whole scene of leaving the Dursleys for the last time was such a lovely circle closed with Harry first arriving there, almost sixteen years earlier, as a baby.

(continued...)