Discussion PS

It's a little out of the current chapters, but yesterday I talked with my cousin about her ill toddler.
Normal business with children - fever, feeling bad...
What normal parents do in this case is to keep their child on the arm or beside in the bed, doing something to get the fever down and take good care of it. (Btw, that's what my cousin did, too, just to make this clear ;-)

But what about Harry? The first five or six years are a cycle of being ill and getting healty again - 12 times or more a year.
Starting with a simple cold, not ending with a flu, a broken leg or some other "damages".
Who cared for him? Who stayed (das ist jetzt bestimmt falscgeschrieben) at his bed, when he was ill? Has he ever been taken to a doctor?
Did they do any health-care for him?

How did he survive his first four or five years at the Dursleys?

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

Good question, Google - and one that is nearly impossible to answer. Though I strongly suspect the Dursleys didn't do anything more than locking poor little Harry up. Freaks don't deserve medical care, right? (Or am I once again too badly influenced by fanfics?) Regardless of what they did, the boy had to be quite resilient to turn out so well, bodily and mentally.

What I find rather questionable is Dumbledore's (or rather JKR's) insistence that LV had to be defeated with love. How on earth did they expect Harry to do that, considering he grew up without any love?? He can't really have known what that is - love is something you have to experience, not just get explained to you. Dumbledore's questionable way to keep the boy "safe" could easily have led to another Voldemort, IMHO.

Maybe aunt Petunia wasn't as bad, as we always thing and like to belive.
Even when it was the son of her unloved sister, it was her own flesh and blood, add AD's letter to it and you may get some care for Harry.
Not as much as for Diddledums, but mybe enough to raise Harry not totally without love.
Can it be, that the more Harry made his strange things (like letting his hair grow) the more, they got afraid of him and in the result, they "loved" him less?
We'd like to know this, JKR!

It's long ago and I only read the Weltbild-description of it.
As Hitler was a mummy's-boy, it was als Napoleon. Btw, Roald Dahl wrote a realy scarry story about the circumstances of Adolf's birth, I dunno how much historical facts have been in there, but the story was very suppressive! Also some of the other well known persons from the last two centuries, who did some unpolite things were of these kind.
JKR knew this book if course and decided to create a antipole!

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

Would you call it love to lock a small child in a cupboard? There was never any indication that they were ever nice to Harry. And yes, they feared his magic, and it may have influenced them negatively, but I doubt the Dursleys needed that to turn the tables against Harry.

Neither being neglected nor being spoiled rotten is healthy for any kid, if you ask me. Can you imagine how Dudley could have turned out if he was magical as well?

The longer I think about it, the less I think the solution JKR chose was logical. To base the defeat of a Dark Lord on love in that way is suicidal risky and could have backfired spectacularly. The whole Horcrux-Deathly Hallows-Love stuff seems more and more to be a Deus ex machina for me. And don't get me started on Albus 'you-don't-need-to-know' Dumbledore keeping everything he needed to know from him and not even training him, but putting the weight of the world on his shoulders, right after Harry had to see Sirius die. That man has the pedagogic skill of a blast-ended skrewt.

Ok, ok, rant over :)

You're right, I'ma afraid.
There was no hint, that any Dursley was any nice too Harry.

JKR surely has not thought through the pre-story. Only developping her Cinderella-like plot.
Poor lonley child finds out, that it is something special.
That's all, nothing more.

Through the first four books, it looks like (for me) that AD was the puppet master, playing his games with all the figures on his personal chess board.
Nobody knew more, than it was necassary.
But everything worked out fine, because he let Harry enough time and space to develop his power and mighty. In the background AD arranged all the details that Harry was able to succede.
But up from book five (maybe the end of book four) the things changed - not only in the plot. The star of the Potter-universe itself went down.
And you are right - AD's plans came to success only be a couple of accidents, until AD died while one of these accidents...

What would have happened, if JKR stopped writing after the fourth book?

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

IMHO JKR had a nice idea, but the decision to stretch it over 7 books was the first huge mistake. The second was to cling stubbornly to her first ideas, even if she had to bend characters in the process.

Thinking about it - Albus took a lot of time to talk instead of to act; he told about Riddles childhood instead of to give Harry combat training. And he didn't even tell him how to destroy a Horcrux. That's inexcusable. To me he looked even more the puppet master after knowing everything in the last book. He was playing chess with many, particularly Harry and Severus.

Who said she didn't? There are a lot of people out there who think the last three books are from a ghostwriter who didn't really read the first four very careful.

For me and only for me, the first three books were great!
Book one had a naive magic on it's own.
Book two gave us a deeper sight into the magical world and how dangerous Little Riddle really was.
Book three was the peek, it was thrilling, had an open end, and brought some interesting details to the reader.

The first break in the whole HP universe started with book four.
Already this was one or two hundred pages too long - the extended beginning with the Quidditch cup, pages of empty words about the tri-magical Dings, but there still were good ideas - the wrong Mad Eye Moody was one, also the death of whatever-was-his-name, this showed, that it would be a hard way to get to the final goal.

Book five - I'm tiered to repeat it again: too long, too many new characters, too many loose ends, too many pages, too much of everything. Not worth the waiting for the waiting for it.

Book six and seven - waiting for the final fight and then the dissapointment about a end what I will call "halbgar", not to talk about the so called epilogue...

Maybe JKR would have done it better, if she had choosen to write a triology - that also worked with other plots...
;-)

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

*nods vigorously*
Yep, the first books were the execution of a wonderful idea, describing Harry's adventures in a fascinating new world. The highlight was the showdown in the Shrieking Shack and the rescue of Buckbeak and Sirius.

The fourth book I still liked, though I agree, the Quidditch World Cup was a bit drawn out. In hindsight, I have a lot of issues with the Triwizard Tournament, first and foremost how Harry was entered. If putting the name of another into the goblet really means a binding magical contract for that other person, then Sirius could have signed the Malfoy wealth over to Andromeda and it would have been valid, too. To me, it makes no sense whatsoever. And Albus not noticing that his old friend was a polyjuiced stranger is just pitiful.

The fifth ... I absolutely hated the dismantling and killing off of Sirius, who had been build up so well in the third and fourth book, I hated the way Harry was still treated like a small child by the ones who didn't even dare to say Voldemort, I hated the way Umbitch was allowed to wreak havoc around the school (why didn't any parents protest? Are the British wizards really so stupid and cowardly?), and Harry was grating on my nerves, though I could understand that the combination of puberty and stress would cause that.

The sixth ... weeellll ... Hermione going off her rocker about a book, and the whole drawn out stuff weren't my cup of tea, I barely remember anything out of that book, to be honest. Never re-read it. And don't get me started about Snape and Malfoy.

The seventh ... the camping trip was a bit too much drawn out, and the fact that Harry & Co. neither knew where and what the Horcruxes were nor how to destroy them. While I liked how Harry treated Voldemort in their last duel, calling him Tom and telling him off like a school boy who hadn't done his homework, the whole love-Horcrux-Deathly Hallow-stuff was not satisfying, as I already said. Not to mention the cheesy Snape part and the crapilogue. Albus Severus Potter ... *gag*

Two chairs - one opinion.
;-)

Btw, the horcrux-idea was not very new.
But I think, I mentioned it before.
I met this subject some years before HP in "Niemalsland" - maybe it was named kind like "Neverland" in the original.
In that story it was a "normal" man who hide his "life" in a secret place.
I havn't got the details anymore, I even gave this book away, because it was such a dark story.
The fact (to hide away a part of his soul, his life, his heart, whatever) by itself is scary enough.

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

There are probably a few books out there who use a similar idea. My problem aren't so much the Horcruxes themselves, but the Hallows and the whole 'Harry has to sacrifice himself out of love for his friends to defeat Voldemort' plot. The combination of all three was just too much for my taste.

"weniger ist mehr"
As we germans like to say.
But in the moment I can't think of any alternativ solution which would also fit.
The point is, that Harry's victory wasn't based on his strength in fighting, but on love (?) and/or weakness and the willing not fall in love with power and destruction. (in german I would have said "Macht", that is a little more precise than "power" what can nearly mean everything!).

Maybe the horcruxes weren't really necessary.
And the Hallow (that's the death stick, the cloak and something else, am I right?) could have been a nice thing to give the story a little more depth.

Bücherwurm Anmeldedatum: 04.10.2004 Beiträge: 8485 Wohnort: bei Mrs. Figg

Someone said the Horcruxes were there only to get the trio out of Hogwarts for the last year, and sometimes I'm inclined to agree.

Yep, that's what the book said, but I always thought it a bit strange. The only real temptation for power were the Hallows, and that was unforeseeable. Without that, Harry was just a young wizard, though an exceptional courageous one.

The third Hallow was the Resurrection Stone.

Btw, while we are at the Hallows - at the end it was said that the power of the Elder Wand would be broken if Harry dies a natural death. There's no logic whatsoever behind that, considering what we learned before. Harry went on to become an Auror; it's inevitably that he got disarmed now and then, in training or in action. Then he's not the Master of the Elder Wand any longer, so how was that supposed to work?