It's over. Nothing really surprising in the ending bits. Harry only keeps the cloak which is pretty much what probably anyone suspected would happen. One thing though, Harry says if he dies a natural death then the elder wand will never have another true owner. Well, he won the wand by yanking Draco's wand out of his hand. If someone ever disarms Harry then the elder wand will have a new owner. The wand thing just doesn't all click together for me.

The wand stuff confused the hell out of me too, Gud. I think I need a diagram. Or perhaps a Powerpoint presentation.

I don't really see how the wand stuff can all add up. It's not like it ruined the book for me, but I would have liked something more internally consistent.

I hand-wave with "the want choses the master"

So, if the Elder Wand has ANY SHOT AT ALL of picking Harry over Draco it is so going to.

I'm sure even the other wands are giving him hell. "Oh puhleeze, you aren't even the wand he took in that battle!"

The POV who gets most of his wizard knowledge second-hand, at that. Hermione pretty much proves that the wizarding world is an unreliable narrator in re: house elves.

And most --if not all -- of this conversation is coming from a human perspective with human value judgements. I'm sure in some alternate universe, goblins are sitting there on the Internet typing, "You know, in all of J.K. Rowling's books, humans are thieves!"

Expanding on what Victor said, I thought JKR did a good job in the last book of explaining how the Goblins are not money-grubbing from their point of view. They just have a different way of looking upon trade.

Warning: tangential nit-picking ahead.

If I say retrievers are all about their toys and herders are all about controlling others, it isn't a stereotype--it's a basic trait of their p species.

Retrievers and herders are the same species. They're dogs. The tendencies described are, in fact, breed stereotypes. They're usually based on genetic tendencies all dogs share, but that have been enhanced in one group by human manipulation or genetic isolation. There are plenty of retrievers out there who are more interested in people than toys and plenty of herders who are deeply ball or frisbee obsessed.

Breed specific legislation (think Pit Bull laws) is based on such stereotypes, which means those laws won't do what they're intended to do. Since dogs aren't sentient, it's obviously not a good comparison, but the discussion of non-human legislation in the Potterverse reminded me of this.

Why not just have Gringotts be a money grubbing hostile institution, rather than have its actions representative of an entire species? (The series is quite specific in several places that Goblins in general are like than, rather than just Gringotts.)

I know this far back but I wanted to point out that institutions inherently don't operate with human intentions. Enron wasn't an inherently wrongheaded institution... institutions aren't operativces and shouldn't be afforded the same privileges and individuals. Rather, it's the beings that make individual choices for the institution that are evil, grubbing, hostile, good intentioned or kind, or at least that's what some economists like Robert Reich argue. Therefore Gringotts can't act a certain way. Just the goblins who run it.

ut I wanted to point out that institutions inherently don't operate with human intentions. Enron wasn't an inherently wrongheaded institution... institutions aren't operativces and shouldn't be afforded the same privileges and individuals. Rather, it's the beings that make individual choices for the institution that are evil, grubbing, hostile, good intentioned or kind, or at least that's what some economists like Robert Reich argue. Therefore Gringotts can't act a certain way. Just the goblins who run it.

But institutions are a set of roles and the people who fill them. The roles are important; because people will act in ways when filling a role that they would not outside it. Also, in general, people behave differently in groups than they do as individuals.

This is by the way irrelevant to my point. If I accepted your argument, then mine would simply be rephrased to say that she could have had the money grubbing be a characteristic of the goblins within Gringotts, rather than a characteristic of all goblins.

And this leads to why I'm a bit uneasy about this in relation to HB. Contrary to what I said the other day, Rowling has been quoted as saying she regards the series as a "prolonged argument for tolerance". Having species have genetically embedded cultural characters, when it is almost inevitable that they will be read as analogies to human races, ethnic groups, and nations is deeply problematic. It puts forward the message: be tolerant and accepting but it is ok to prejudge based on race. I'm certain that was not JKR's intent; but if the book is (in addition to other things) a "prolonged message" then it is fair to worry about the content of that message.

Having species have genetically embedded cultural characters

I'm not convinced that that's what she has presented. What we have seen are the expectations that Wizards have of how the various species will behave, but we also have examples of individuals defying those expectations: Dobby, the centaur who taught Divination, Grawp to a certain extent, Lupin. We didn't meet a lot of goblins, but mostly what we know about them is that they view the world differently than wizards do and that leads to misunderstandings.

I am troubled by the lack of visible queerness in the Potterverse, more so in the student population than with Dumbledore. Harry knew a lot of kids at Hogwarts, statistically some of them would be gay. It would have been easy to, say, have a Gay and Lesbian Alliance be one of the groups angry at Umbridge when the clubs were dismantled.