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Oh, and of course, the house-elves themselves. I mean, sap that I am, I cried when Dobby, poor Dobby, annoying and loyal and loving and free, sacrificed himself, buried with clothes and socks and a hat. Probably *because* he was so annoying at times, not in spite of it, because he was who he was, and that sort of character (yeah, fictional, I know) you couldn't like, but couldn't, at the bottom line, not care about (Hmm, and now I'm thinking about Snape, again. With completely different shortcomings, but still). Oh, and of course, Kreacher, who finally had somebody be nice to him, caring and thoughtful, and how he managed to show his gratitude, attacking along with the other elves. I'm so glad that the elves managed to be more than just important plot-points. I wonder if Winky has an house-Elvish equivalent of AA, poor thing.

And, of course, the circles closing for Harry, Voldemort and Dumbledore. The spirals, the reflections, the slight differences. Between themselves, who they used to be as children, who they wanted to grow up to be, what they wanted to do and how they chose to do it.

Even, again, in a technical detail, of Harry being appointed Ted Lupin's godfather, there's of course a circle being closed and a new one, a different-yet-similar one, being created alongside it. The minute that Remus asked Harry to be the godfather of his son, I was both glad that all is OK between them, and heartbroken, because I figured that it means the deaths of Remus and Tonks. I did shed a tear at that scene, because, newsflash, I'm a horrible sap, and there are a few things that sap me more than new babies and their joy, but I also was afraid, ever since that moment, for the life of little Ted's parents. And, yes, he had a grandmother (Hello, Neville!) and a godfather who was *there*, who could provide him with all the love and strength and feeling of home and support that he needed, closing the circle in a completely different place, but still. I wasn't even surprised when they did die, because I waited for it for a few hundred pages already.

Unlike Fred, whose death made me close the book for a few minutes and go do other things (which needed to be done anyway, I have to say, and suffered a too-long waiting because of the reading, but still. I didn't think the twins were safe from harm when George lost his ear, I was wondering who will be lost, I wasn't surprised. I was just heartbroken for Mr. And Mrs. Weasly, and especially for George. I wasn't in the middle of a fight, so I wanted to give him that minute that Harry and the others couldn't, before going on.

Yeah, a fictional character, me a sap, taking this very personally, but you know, just like Dumbledore said, in what may be one of my most favorite story-about-a-story phrases already, the fact that they only exist in my head doesn't make them not real, you know?

So, yeah, circles and reflections. For example, from the previous book, but explained in this one - Dumbledore's death. It was brought on by his own weakness (much like Voldemort's, as is emphasized several times in the book), his passion for the Hallows, his hope to get his sister and make his family whole again. He put on the ring, he gave in to that wild hope, he failed, and that, more than anything else, was what led to his death. Indirectly, yes, but inevitable, all the same.

But unlike Voldemort, he could take that failure, that giving-in to the weakness, and turn it into something else, something better, something that could lead to strength and love and victory. He had to put his trust in Snape for that (and, no, I won't throw all the large paragraphs I threw about trust and its important, to me, in the "Harry Potter" books, like I did last time. Well, no, there's one more thing I wanna say, in just a minute, but that's that. Honest). He had to plan and die, but still.

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And Voldemort's death, by his own curse (even though Harry used two of the unforgivable curses, he never used the worst one of them all), due to his own efforts to try to win, against Harry's most "obvious" and expected-from-him spell (like Lupin warned him in the beginning), the first dueling spell he has ever learned, IIRC.

Was it Voldemort's arrogance that finally beat him? His over-confidence? His too strong attempts for the one final thing, the killing curse, that backfired on him? Was it like with the prophecy, only in reverse - his own attempts to destroy the baby created Harry as his opponent, his own attempt to finish Harry once and for all went back on him and finished him?

So in a way, he finished in that last duel, which took place at the very end of the last book, the duel that began before the beginning of the very first one. So much happened along the way, so many changes and developments, in plots and characters. Horcruxes and Hallows and families and friends and love and loss. And the circle came back exactly to the same point. And a completely different one.

I mean, even in the motherly love thread there was a circle being closed, different yet whole. On the first round, Harry was saved due to his mother's love, her protection. And now, when Voldemort hit him with the killing curse, in the forest, he was saved, again, due to all the clever plot points and characters' good qualities and Voldemort's lack of notice of important things. But not just that.

There was another mother, who checked if his heart was beating. He could just as easily have been killed by sword or somebody else's wand, if Narcissa had declared him alive. Nagini was not dead yet, so not all the Horcruxes were destroyed. All could have been lost. But she was too worried about her beloved son, to really care about anything else. And it was her love, the deepest of her loyalties, that protected Harry, in the most technical magic-less sense, until they got to the school, and Neville killed Nagini, and he could finally duel Voldemort.

And that scene in the forest (why, yes, how on earth did you guess I was reading it through tears? It's as if you know my sappiness, or something), it was such a lovely heart-breaking reflection to the first time Harry, as a baby, faced Voldemort. He was trying to do for his friends and loved ones the exact same thing that his mother did for him, all those years ago. Of his own free will, just like her, not for any means of "and this will be a clever trick to help us all". He walked to his death, in order to protect the ones he loved, and he knew that this was the only thing he could give them, and even his failure may help. Just like Lily.

And, yes, Lily died doing this, and Harry, at the bottom line, survived. But he had no way on knowing that! He was sure he was going to die, die for the people who tried to fight with him and protect him and love him, die for the people who - like Voldemort said in contempt and attempts to scare him, but they did it with pride, of their own choice, exactly the thing he couldn't understand - chose to sacrifice themselves for him.

And so his use of the Resurrection stone was both lovely and heart-breaking at the same time. It was just like he said - he didn't bring the dead back to life, in order to try to make them live again. He used the stone in reverse, in order to have them accompany him to their midst. Not what Dumbledore was trying to do with it - he didn't have his remorse, his pain. Harry's pain a nd longings were different. Yes, he probably felt that it was his fault that they were dead, but in a different way. And he managed to use the stone of resurrection in a way that took him to his death, rather than its original purpose. He took the circle and undid it, made it a different line altogether.

He was sure he was going to die, to join them, not have them join him. And in a way, that's what gave him comfort, enough strength to actually do what he was trying to do, that thing that Voldemort could never understand. That thing that took so much courage, so much selflessness, so much love. Oh, man, I think my computer screen is making a electronic face of "that sappy stuff again?" at me.

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And then, he got to choose whether to live or die, in the King's Cross chapter. King's Cross being the place between life and death in Harry's head, just like the real train station was the place for him between the Muggles and the wizards' world. And the places where the books started and ended, for so long. He chose to live. He chose life as the *harder* option of the two, the one with pain and fighting and the possibility of failure and lack of peace. So in another reflection and circle closing, he was neither dead nor alive, like Voldemort was for most of the books, but in a completely opposite way. And he chose what Voldemort tried to create for himself all along. But he could only do this through his willingness to die, and only through the hardships of life, not the fear of death. The acceptance of them both.

And in a heartbreaking image (and, oh, JKR is such a master of those images. She does what resonates most with me, in books - creates these powerful vivid can't-get-out-of-my-head images, that speak with something that isn't words or music or anything that I can explain, just live in my head and - oh, I'm not even going to try. I don't know to use words cleverly enough to express myself. It's not the English, of course. It's me). That baby, without skin, completely open to the world (the exact opposite of what Voldemort was trying to do all that time), feeling all the pain and the suffering. And can't be consoled. Voldemort refused to get any sort of comfort, of human connection, of love. And now he's bound to shiver, unable to receive any of those, anything that can help him, for all time. He got exactly what he fought so hard to get, what he sealed himself so tightly to enable, and that exactly in his punishment.

Oh, and in another circle closing, that child, or baby, crying all alone in a deserted train station, was a reflection of another baby, left alone at his parent's ruined house, crying and seemingly unprotected. Of course, they're as opposite as they can be, because Harry was protected exactly by being left alone, with his mother's sacrifice, and Voldemort was the one who cut, himself, all his cords to the world, but still. And, oh, that image. Sigh.

Oh, and it reminds me of something else I really liked about the whole series, which was especially noreworthy in this book: how it was not like the classics, in the old-and-wise-guys sense. We never knew Gandalf's past, he was able to resist all temptations (even by asking Frodo not to test him, but still). Aslan was never a cub, never made any mistakes, and when he sacrificed himself, unlike Harry, he had a notion of what may happen. And yet, we got the teenaged Dumbledore, he made mistakes, he was arrogant, he carried his weakness to his old age, to the time in which we already knew him and saw him, just like Harry, as that pillar of wisdom and strength. And he, too, was human.

So, yeah, he managed to take his flaw and failed hope and use it for the greater good, he managed to choose, much like Harry did, Horcruxes upon Hallows, to try and have the Elder Wand rest, to beat his old friend and spare his life and enable him to try and make amends. But he was still flawed, and they were still mistakes.

He had that younger brother who seemed the lesser man and turned out to not only save the day and be a great source of help, a soldier in that same fight, but also the one who understood from the start what the brilliant Albus had to practically die in order to learn. Not only wasn't Dumbledore perfect, he also failed to see what was right in front of his eyes, what his brother told him all along.

And it wasn't just in the character of Dumbledore, who in the earlier books appeared as this great white figure, to save Harry when he needed, to save the day. It's not just this growing-up of finding out that the other grown-ups around us are people justlike us, with practically very similar flaws and aches, who can't, sometimes, make it all better with a flick of a wand (it reminds me of the end of the Prydain series, its first book and its last one, and how it was all so very different for Taran, just like it was for Harry).

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It happened with the stories themselves, in this book. Already in "Chamber of Secrets", with the chamber itself, and in "Prisoner of Azkaban", with the story of what Sirius did or didn't do, but mostly in "Deathly Hallows". The way secrets and legends from the past, from books and songs and myth, become not just real, with objects that people can touch and use, but also create new legends, in their turn, Harry's and Ron's and Hermione's. And I don't just mean the legends that we read and that I babble about for what I'm afraid to look back and see how long.

I mean the legends inside the story. The way things that are supposed to be merely ideas and far-off and inspiring become actual objects to hold and actual wands to break their strengths and actual stones that may be used to bring back the dead, bring them wrong, and break your heart, or change their purpose. The stories develop, unfold and change themselves, and this time without the veil of mystery and distance of the past. A different awe? I'm not sure, yet again, that I manage to explain myself. Oh, well.

Um, and if I may be so bold and refer to something that *I* personally wanted to find in the book, the trust that Harry would have to put in a person, the way of Dumbledore, that appeal to the best of a person, to believing that they can, indeed, act upon that best, regardless of the worst that is consuming them. I hoped that Harry would have to trust Snape. But in the book, it was so much better than this. JKR took this point and raised it, in my eyes, to a whole different level.

She didn't make Harry choose whether to trust Snape. She made Harry choose whether to trust Dumbledore. Which was brilliant! Taking the one character who had his faith without any reservations - Harry led "Dumbledore's Army" in "Order of the Phoenix", he kept saying how he's Dumbledore's man, through and through, and then, to crack this faith, to take the idol down, to make him human - not just as a teenager, Harry's age (as Harry kept repeating), but as the old, wise, father-figure he has been to Harry all these years.

And Harry really had to struggle with this inner conflict. He didn't have definite answers - and he didn't have them when he decided, too. He chose to *trust*, not to take a clear path of proof. He kept wishing for a final way of reassuring himself, kept not finding one. And still, he chose. Just like Dumbledore himself, in a way. Just like people not-in-stories have to do, all the time.

Oh, and my heart froze, for a minute, when Dumbledore was talking so matter-of-fact-ly with Snape regarding Harry's inevitable death. Was he so cold-hearted? Was he just keeping this boy alive as a weapon, as a tool, as something that needed to be killed at a specific moment and not beforehand? Frankly, I don't believe it. And if that makes me a naive fool who chooses to put her faith in somebody who doesn't deserve it (yeah, fictional, I know), then so be it. Just like he taught, I rather trust somebody's best qualities, rather than turn to their worst.

Just like Harry choosing (there's that word again) his own death, which was what made all the difference, sometimes it's not the act itself that matters, but what's behind it. And I don't believe that what was behind all of Dumbledore's acts towards Harry was a cold-blooded calculation. I think he loved the boy, and the man he became. I think he really wanted to prevent all harm from him. I think he made mistakes (he himself was sorry for them, talked about them), but I also think that he meant all the possible well he could.

Even if he sounded so matter-of-factly cold when talking to Snape, it might have been out of the personality that Snape showed him (Dumbledore wasn't sure, himself, how strong Snape's love to Lily was, after all these years), to the language he had thought that Snape would listen to, would understand. I don't care if it sounds like excuses. I'm sure that Dumbledore was broken by the inevitability to sacrifice Harry, was trying to do his best to make sure that things wouldn't turn out with Harry's death. And, hey, it worked. He found the loop-hole, and he and Harry managed to have it happen, too. The best in both of them.

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I thought that the epilogue was perfect (here is where I need to say that I'm not just a sap, but also twelve. Or a twelve-years-old sap, or whichever?). Not in the sense of answering questions or closing up loose ends, but in the sense of really finishing Harry's journey. Harry was called "father" in the epilogue. That's the first reference to him there, the little girl clutching his arm, her father's arm, and then Harry speaks and we know it's him. This was the place that he found for himself, the family he built, the way he could be there for his children and wife and friends, which was taken away from his own parents.

It showed that he really found that one thing that he looked for, all this time, that he longed for and saw in the mirror of Erised, that he needed and found and almost-found in the people around him and in Hogwarts, and eventually really created, managed to build. That's the real end of the hardships and the longing and the need and the pain. He lost so much - not just his parents, but Sirius and Dumbledore, and all the people who died in the fight - and managed to still find this place and go there. Not just for him, but for Ginny and those kids, as well. Probably for Teddy, too. It's somewhat like Sam's "Well, I'm back", which is the real final proper end to LotR, you know?

Even the children's names closed that family circle: James, his biological father; Albus and Severus, the two most important people from Hogwarts (father-figure and sort of opposite-father-figure, and of course, the two that made it possible for him to be alive); and Lily. Finally something with Lily close to Severus, in peace, the peace that the poor man could never have found in life.

But it's not just about having family and friends. Dumbledore's youth, with his poor sister, estranged brother, treachurous friend and the pain it all left him, showed us, at least, that. The important part, and that's also what the epilogue was, for me, is what you do with these people, how you choose to handle these components of your life. Even those things, the best they can be, can be a source of pain and hardship. Your choice. Your path. Not just what you were given, but what you do with it.

The book, the one that didn't have anything to do with the schoolyear, unlike any of the others, ends with going to Hogwarts. All throughout the books, there was a shift in the order of priorities of things, of what mattered and who could be in charge of that. "Philosopher's Stone" ended with house points and winning a cup. The coming books still had sports and exams and grades and the school spirit and good name, but each of them less so. Other things mattered, as well. The world outside, the crumbling of the grow-ups abilities to put order and peace in that world, the leaning, more and more, about the young children and teenagers, the main characters of the book.

Just like the legends twisted and changed and turned out to be real, and less and more than people wanted and needed them to be, the whole world had to change the importance of things, to look different, not just to the characters, but to the readers, as well. The Triwizard Tournament's cup was less important because of Voldemort's return and Cedrik's death. The whole of the school was closed because of Dumbledore's death. And in this book, even Hermione, who couldn't bare to think of detention, didn't even return to school. Other things mattered now.

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But with the epilogue, things return to the level of importance that Harry, Ron and Hermione saw to them, at the very beginning of the series. Their children worry about going to school, their parents writing to them, which house they're going to be sorted. A few pages ago, people sat all jumbled at the houses' tables, careless as to who belonged where, but the children who go to school for the first time care about that, and about not being friends with a professor, and about missing their family at night. We go back, full circle, real circle this time, to the child's point of view, the child's order of priorities, the child's world. I find that, not only lovely, but also comforting.

Oh, and then, to my delight, even there, with the children, and Harry as the loving father he always dreamed of having, there's one last mentioned of that whole choice subject, which to me is the heart of the stories. And again, full circle, real circle, to what Harry felt and went through, when he was a confused child of eleven, and the Sorting Hat took his consideration and choice into account. A small choice, of a house, which, as Harry himself notes, doesn't really matter all that much. And still.

Oh, I'm sorry that this turned out so ramble-y, so long (not going to read back! I've got too much to read, with all y'all words!), so confused and oh, oh-so-sappy.

[Edit: OK, shutting up. Threadsucking. Oops-ing.]

Dear lord I love Nilly's spicey brains. I so truly do.

Aww, Nilly - you made me cry.

There indeed seems to be a high pollen count accompanying Nilly's post. Strangest thing.

Whoa, Nilly! You write like a twelve year old but you think like a genius, Kid! Wow, you've got heart! I love the Potter books even more than I did before thanks to your absolutely crazy, rambling and brilliantly insightful analysis. Thanks!