My Score

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

Well, after just over 7 hours, I've finished Deathly Hallows. Kinda appropraite - seven books, seven years since I found them, seven hours to read book 7, working on the seven series of airplanes for Boeing... but I don't think this means good luck for me.

Enough. The book.

Oh. Azel.

Oh. Zarth.

That woman has talent.

She may forget characters (where the #^%! was Fawkes?!!?), she may not know how many students are at Hogwarts, but oh sweet merciful Guardian can she write.

I guess I should start out by admitting I was wrong. Completely wrong. Oh, I could total up my predictions and score pretty well on a percentage basis, but I'd still be wrong. I thought that Half-Blood Prince was a fluke, and that I understood how the series worked. Nope. No way, no how.

It looks like I owe an apology to Steve Kloves, too.

I was wrong about so many characters. Not quite wrong about Neville - means vs. ends, I guess. I got the ends right after all, she just fooled me on the means even though I knew all along there were other means than wands. I wasn't entirely wrong about Ginny either, in terms of what she'd do (though I was wrong there, too), but I was completely wrong about how much she mattered to the plot. I was wrong about what would happen, and why.

I was even wrong within the book. The first time Harry saw an eye in the mirror shard and thought it was Dumbledore, I knew it wasn't him, but I tried to make a list of everyone else with blue eyes. I even spent a little time thinking Sirius' eyes might be blue.

It never even occured to me that the doe might be Snape's Patronus. I knew he was evil right up until the moment that something besides blood came from his body. Then I knew she'd redeem him, but, really, I should have seen it coming a mile away.

I really wonder if I'll ever be able to write again. Fiction, that is. I'm still in shock right now, highly emotional, I've had maybe an hour and a half of sleep in the last 26 and not enough this week on any given night, but I just can't see how I could ever create something that anyone would want to read after they read THAT. Others, certainly - I may be in the top half, even, of the fanfic authors out there, only becuase that group includes people who couldn't write a coherent sentance if they tried, but the curve goes way, way, over my level. Someone will someday make a worthy sucessor.

There's no single element. Zarth, some of them were weak enough that I could have done better. The Put-Outer can be a self-guiding portkey? Oh, please.

But I could never have written Harry Potter in the Deathly Hallows. Never in my life.

J. K. Rowling, you are brilliant. Bloody brilliant.