Some whiny thoughts about Harry Potter.

So the final trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out and J. K Rowling has opened a new website in honour of it. All this has reminded me of a couple of things I didn’t like about the way the seventh book ended and thought I’d take this opportunity to whine about them.

1)    The Malfloys.

After Voldemort’s been destroyed and the good guys have won, there’s a bit that says that everyone was sitting around the great hall and the Malfloys were there looking as though they weren’t quite sure whether or not they should have been there…erm; they shouldn’t have been there. They should have been in prison, they aided and abetted several kidnappings and murders. Why the hell weren’t they arrested with the rest of the death eaters? Oh that’s right, because at the crucial time they switched sides and helped Harry…when they could gain something from it at least. Lucius Malfloy was there in the fourth book, when Voldemort came back to life; he regarded Voldemort as his master and served him willingly. I mean we’re encouraged to believe that he, his wife and son are acting out of fear in this book, but it’s made clear that that fear only existed once they had all failed to complete their respective missions set to them by Voldemort. They wouldn’t have helped Harry if Voldemort had still liked them. And wait a minute, didn’t Lucius escape from prison between book six and seven. He should already be completing a prison sentence, let alone what he should be getting for all the other shit he did in this book. It’s like Rowling was trying to use them to show how powerful fear is in making people complaisant, but it doesn’t work with their characters; the Malfloys were complaisant, before they were afraid. They were helpful to Voldemort right up until he refused to give them what they wanted. Further to this, does the fact that they helped Harry avoid detection by Voldemort, make any of the people they helped kill less dead? When people go along with something because they are scared (for example electing an obviously fascist political party  - as in V for Vendetta) they are forgivable, given that they are motivated by blind panic and fear, but when people aid and abet murder, kidnap and a political coup and only stop doing so, when it becomes a raw deal for them, they should be punished. What sort of justice system exists in the wizarding world, where one self-servient “good” act can write off a near lifetime of evil service?

2)    

The Epilogue

Ok, so Ron and Hermione have kids and Harry and Ginny have kids…what else? What is the point of this epilogue? We learn almost nothing about the three characters that have been central to the series since the first book. All we learn is that Harry’s godson is snogging Bill’s daughter and Harry’s kid is stressing the fuck out about going to school for the first time. Alright, so Harry has a family…anything else, what’s he doing with his life? Where does he work? Did he meet his ambitions? Did he ever play quiddich again? Is he now a talented ballet star? I don’t care about this little kid whose never going to have a book series constructed around him, why should he get more page space than Harry?

Oh, and I am aware that Rowling did release information on a website about what the characters did with their lives, but that DOESN’T COUNT. I shouldn’t have to go digging about on the internet for basic character information. In my mind, the excuse of saying, well she said what happened to them on a website is akin to the DVD of movie coming out with every third scene edited out, with just flashes of a notice saying, ‘see special features for missing scenes’.

Ok that me done…Happy Sunday everyone…