Finally finished HBP

[fenchurch]

rackham and I have been reading the book concurrently... leapfrogging each other through the chapters, until a few days ago, when we both ended up in the same spot and stayed there. Well, last night Rackham got back to the book and read to the end... and then came down, thrust the book at me and told me, rather desperately, to finish it (I suspect he wanted someone to talk about it with).

I wanted to get some thoughts about the book written down before I start going back and reading what everyone else has written on the subject. I'm likely not saying anything that hasn't been said before... it'll be interesting to see if I'm on the same page with the rest of fandom.


I don't think that Snape is actually evil... and I think he's going to be important to the good guys winning later.

I also think that Snape was in love with Lily, and *that* is why Dumbledore trusted his change of heart (because Snape was devastated over having caused her death). I suspect that Snape and Lily were friends, and that he helped her with her Potions studies (thinking, in particular, of Slughorn commenting that Harry had inherited his mother's ability in the subject).

So, why did he kill Dumbledore? Because he had to. He made an unbreakable vow. But, in the end, this will also put him in position to be very helpful to Harry and company.

And poor Draco (which is not something I thought I'd ever say). I liked him as a character before this, and even sympathized with him a few times (I thought his home life was likely to be fairly abusive, and that had a great influence on how he acted at the school), but I finally feel secure that we're actually supposed to be sympathizing with him. I was never sure, before, because it seemed a little too subtle and I worried I was reading too much into it.

Wacky theory #1: I'm wondering if perhaps Dumbledore was able to put something of his essence in the locket before he died.

Wacky theory #2: I'm also wondering whether Harry is the final horcrux containing a piece of Voldemort's soul. It would make sense... since he would be something that "belonged to Griffindor." When Voldemort attacked Harry as a baby, he would have just killed again, enabling him to split off a bit of his soul. It would also explain why Harry knows Parseltongue, why the Sorting Hat thought he might also be good in Slytherin, and why he could tell what Voldemort was thinking before he was blocked out.

Comments

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting, as I just finished the book as well, and desperately logged on here searching for other people's ideas. I agree about Snape, although I hadn't thought about the Lily link before (I think I'd have to re-read the previous books for clues).

Re Harry as horcrux, if it's so important to have a whole soul, surely it would be bad to have someone else's piece of soul residing in you, which makes me think that if it was possible Dumbledore would have checked it out. Plus wouldn't Harry be showing more corruption in his character by now?

I'm not sure about the finality of Dumbledore's death, I immediately thought he was gone forever, but now don't know...