Amph Lingering questions from Harry Potter...

Yeah, I thought Scorpio was pretty bad.

 

Actually, it's Scorpius not Scorpio... (but his middle name, Hyperion, takes the cake). But yeah, the names were kinda... pathetic? Hugo's the one that bothers me the most, actually. And Rose. I just don't like those names, I think Ron and Hermione would have had better taste.

I could have done without any epilogue, actually. If you think really hard about epilogues, it's difficult to imagine any way for the series to have "epilogued" without some kind of ridiculousness, so "Nineteen Years Later" doesn't really bother me all that much. I would have preferred the series to have ended in the last chapter, but oh well.

 

Yeah, that's it. Utterly ridiculous at least you can abbreviate Albus into something likable.

 

I like the names of Harry and Ginny's kids... the others... well, not quite as much.

Though somehow, "Scorpius" just seems to fit in a family with a "Draco" And at least Ron and Hermione were a little more creative than their parents... Ron? Fred? George? Bill? Charlie? Some pretty common names there

 

It doesn't seem fair to Ginny, though. It doesn't sound like she had a say in the names. I'd also like to know why Lily Luna? What did Luna have to do with anything?

 

She is one of Ginny's best friends and a very good friend of Harry. Since they were aiming for the "name the kids after people important to us" and there are less female names to choose from, I'm not surprised that Lily's middle name is Luna.

I might not like "Albus Severus", but I do quite like "Al". Though that's probably because I have a favourite character from FMA named Al.

 

First, you guys are nuts == Scorpius is an awesome name.

Second, you guys are nuts == the final "nineteen years later" chapter is heart-warming and much needed for dramatic closure!

In summary, you guys are nuts!

 

I find this whole body of complaint about the Epilogue being too long to be rather funny.

Just a couple of years ago, everyone and their mother was crying that the Epilogue was too short, and there wasn't enough information and detail given, and JKR should have gone with the extra-long, no-trivia-left-out version which she had originally written.

In the long run, I think most folks will be happy with what we have. Excluding the epilogue, and ending with the previous chapter, wouldn't have flowed well, and would have been rather abrupt and unsatisfying. Too much more information, and the good feeling at the end would have been watered down by more weak names and would really have become a case of TMI. Personally, I think she could have stretched the ending out a little longer, to resolve some of the lingering questions or give closure to otherwise dangling threads, but what we were given strikes a nice balance.

 

I agree to an extent. That said, I think we should have been shown basic information about their lives- jobs, where they lived, etc. Without those tidbits, it feels like everything was in a vaccum. This feeling was exacerbated by the use of fog in the scene to bring in and take out characters; it ended up more ethereal than Harry's journey to the place between life and death.

Another note, I don't really get why everyone always complains about that names. You could have seen from miles, miles away that Harry would name any children he had after people he lost. As for Draco, well, he's a pretentious prat- is it really surprising he gave his son an equally pretentious name?

 

I have no problem with Harry naming his kids James and Lily, thought that was going to end up a given. My problem comes from the fact that he named his third kid after the two men who caused his life the most grief. While Harry wasn't physically abused (all that much, a slap here and there was probably all that happened, that and living underneath the stairs and being kept there for days when he did something bad (read magic)), he was emotionally abused a ton (called a freak practically everyday, being told your parents were drunken layabouts), he just wasn't raised in a good environment. And it's because of Dumbledore and Snape that he had to go through that. Dumbledore had good intentions, but as the saying goes "the road to hell is paid with good intentions." He might not have meant for Harry to be abused like he was, but he knew it probably would happen, and then let it happen.

Then Snape is the reason Harry had to even live with the Dursley's, or did everyone forget that Snape sent Voldemort after James and Harry so that he could swoop in and console the grieving Lily. Why else would Voldemort ask Lily to step aside when he just walked through James without saying anything other than Avada Kadavra? Harry knew this (compliments of his little vision after escaping Godric's Hollow), and yet he still named his kid after the guy that all but killed his parents.

I think J.K. had at least the first 5 books plotted generally out before she really sat down and writ PS/SS. You can see from how the first 5 books flow pretty well with each other (while still being good individual novels). Then with OOTP (and when HP really started taking off, helped by the release of the PS movie), it seemed like JK went back to those notes she made before she started writing and realized that the story she was writing now, wasn't what she had planned out then. So she gave Ginny a marginal (yet still improved) role in OOTP (kind of Mary-sueish) to improve her standing and try to make her at least in the same conversation as the trio (kind of worked with her going to the Ministry at the end of the book).

Then I will always believe that JK phoned in HBP. It's just a book that doesn't approach the quality of the first five. She changed her characters to fit in the outline (and epilogue, heard she wrote out something that looked like the epilogue around the same time she finished POA or in between POA and GOF) and didn't continue writing the characters that had grown out of the first 5 books. How else could you explain Hermione losing 50 IQ points and becoming petty (nagging Harry about the Potions book and trying to make Ron jealous by takning Cormac to the Christmas party). Then, for Harry, after 5 years of knowing the girl and never looking at her more than Ron's little sister, he feels the need to maim Dean the moment he sees her kissing him and spending the rest of the book (until they get together) pining for her like a puppy.

DH had it's up and downs, but it's still a decent enough book. I'll say this though, JK is not a romance writer. When she's trying to write romance it sucks (look at the majority of HBP for examples). But when she's not trying, it can be pretty good (the Graveyard scene in DH is the most romantic scene in all the books).
/rant

 

So, you're blaming Dumbledore for placing Harry with the Dursleys? Well, okay; do you have some alternative residence in mind, in which Harry could have grown up protected from Voldemort and/or his minions? Because, as you seem to be overlooking here, the blood bond that existed between Petunia and and her sister transferred Lily's sacrificial protection spell to the Privet Drive house.

Snape did not "send Voldemort after James and Harry so that he could swoop in and console the grieving Lily". Snape told Voldemort half of the prophecy, which Voldemort believed was about Lily and Harry. Snape joined the Order as Dumbledore's spy, with the understanding that Dumbledore would protect Lily. Snape even went so far as to ask Voldemort to spare Lily. Harry told his son, Albus Serverus, that he was named after "the bravest man I ever knew".

I assume you mean "the first four books flow well". At all events, the fifth book represents a shift in terms of the sudden loss of safety and increase in danger in Harry's world, because Voldemort has returned. It also marks his -- and the others' -- transition from childhood toward sexual maturity. Rowling addresses this in interviews.

 

I won't address your other replies because anything else I add to the discussion will just be rehashing what I said and it's coming down to your own opinions.

But with Snape, JK tried to make him something other than a unrepentant B'tard but what she has on paper doesn't really show him as such. He held a grudge on a kid who's only problems would be that he survived while his "love" died and looking his childhood rival. James Potter seems to have grown up between Harry's viewing of Snape's Worst Memory and him and Lily getting together. From what we see of Snape he doesn't. How else would you explain the bullying of school-age children to the point of almost breaking down?

Also he had to have known about Harry being born and a prospective prophecy child, what else did he expect than for Voldemort to go after the Potters and kill the whole family? He'd done it how many times before the prophecy was even spoken by Trelawney. While it is a bit of a stretch for me to presume that Snape would swoop in console Lily to the point that they start a relationship, it's made very clear in the books that Snape didn't care for James at all and only cared about Harry to the point to keep him alive to kill Voldemort.

Everything that Snape did in defiance of Voldemort was for revenge against him for killing Lily. While that isn't enough to vilify him, his on page actions are.

While Harry's reasons for having the middle name of his second child Severus alright (forgiveness and such), I find it head shake worthy because no matter the intentions of Snape telling Voldemort the prophecy. Him telling the prophecy to Voldemort led to the killing of James and Lily, which led to Dumbledore making the decision to leave Harry with the Dursley's and in his own words "10 years of hardship" or something like that. He expected Harry to have a hard time while living with the Dursley's, but he believed in the best of them. While labeling Dumbledore an unrepentant b'tard too much, he also didn't do too much to make Harry's home life better.

In review, while Rowling wanted readers to view Snape as a good guy, she didn't do a good job at it. What she showed was a man too caught up in the hurts/sleights of his past that it affected his actions of the present to the point of taking things out on people who have very little to do with those hurts (his ever present grudge with Harry, mainly because of Harry's resemblance to James). Heck his last words are for Harry to show him one last glimpse of the thing he wanted most, but never got. Rowling wanted repentant, but I don't see it.

 

That Dumbledore chose the Dursleys' because of the blood bond that protected Harry to his 17th year is not "my own opinion". It's a major plot point of the series. If you choose to hold Dumbledore responsible for the abuse Harry received at the Dursleys' hands, then your own subjective opinion in this regard has no basis in fact, and indeed contradicts the rational proposition that each person is responsible for his/her own actions. In short, the Durselys abused Harry, not Dumbledore. That is not a matter of opinion.

Snape is flawed; he bullies young students and is very petty and prideful. He also serves the Order of the Phoeneix unto death, involving numerous acts of bravery and great personal risk, such as continual lying to Voldemort and the use of Occlumency to hide his true allegiances. His oath to kill Dumbledore saves Draco Malfoy's soul from being shattered. His dying act of imbuing Harry with his memories affirms Snape's allegiance to the Order and to Dumbledore. Your reading of his character as an "unrepentant B'tard" is inconsistent with the texts.

Once more you're inventing motivations that are never ascribed to the character, and pretending that these are canonical and irrefutable interpretations. They aren't. Snape did not know who the child of prophecy was, and your continued insistence that he did is unsupported and specious. Yes, yes -- we know Snape didn't like James. It does not follow logically, as you imply, that he therefore wanted James and Harry dead, or that his only reason for wanting Harry to remain alive was to kill Voldemort. These are all unsupported and insupportable assertions, and you continue to state them as though they are fact.

Hogwash. Snape switched allegiances out of love for Lily, and out of remorse for his own unwitting complicity in her death. Your gross over-simplification of his motives to "revenge" reveals a lack of understanding of human nature, and of the complexities and shadings of gray in Rowling's characters.

 

Voldemort had to of had a reason to ask/demand Lily to get out of his way when she was protecting Harry. He had just walked past James with nothing other than Avada Kadavra, so why would he stop for a few seconds just for Lily?

After Snape left the inn after hearing the prophecy, he goes straight to Voldemort with what he knows, only when Voldemort mentions Lily does Snape start having second thoughts and asks for Voldemort to only spare her. Only when Dumbledore calls him out on asking only for Lily, does he even grudgingly ask Dumbledore to protect the whole family. He even had to be prompted by Dumbledore to even bring up the subject of protecting Harry.

If I had to compare Snape and Lily's relationship to another I guess the closest I could come up with is Anakin and Padme, except without the mutual love. Lily liked him as a friend but never as anything more, yet he goes around acting like they're in a relationship. He tries to control her, but it doesn't really work out. He even acts like he lost his wife or lover instead of a person who'd probably hardly spoken to him in years.

My main point in this whole thing is JK wanted Snape to be looked at as a man who made mistakes in his youth that he regrets, and she partially did that. But it wasn't enough for me to even start to give a darn about the character.

 

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion about the character. I don't mean to dissuade you from your own feelings about him. What I'm arguing for is that Harry has every reason to forgive him, and in time even to see Snape as the brave and ultimately self-sacrificing person he became. You may disagree, but it's Harry's decision to name his third child Severus, based on his own sound reasoning and feelings of mercy. I for one agree with Harry.

 

So Voldemort made harry what he was.
I was given to believe this was intentional. He did it so he would have a rival?

Or was it a mistake from not understanding the ancient magic lilly's love used to protect harry?

How did she know how to use this anceint magic?

Was it just a desperate made up spell in the heat of her death?

And I'm a little rusty on the series having not read them since they came out, but after his spell back-fired Voldemort just left the babe with a scar on his head?

 

The prophecy ended up being self fulfilling. If Voldemort hadn't heard part of it, he would've never targeted neither Harry nor Neville exclusively. Of course Voldemort would've still went after the Longbottoms and Potters because they were on opposite sides of the war.

 

I understand that part of it, but I still have the same questions. Why did/how did Voldemort give harry all that power? Was it a resault of Lilly's protection spell? How did she know how to do such things that Voldemort hadn't even heard of? Was this the same sort of magic used to keep Harry safe at the Dursley's?

 

Voldemort went after Harry because Snape heard part of the prophecy, but in going after Harry, Voldemort actually fulfilled the prophecy.

Harry's protection worked because of Lily's sacrifice. The AK curse rebounded on Voldemort, destroying his mortal shell. However, Voldemort had intended to use Harry's death to create his final Horcrux, meaning that due to the rebound, this didn't work as he intended. Harry became the 7th Horcrux (so Voldemort's soul was in 8 pieces instead of the 7 he desired). Voldemort didn't know this, so he made one final Horcrux: Nagini.

 

So Voldemort's body was destroyed on the spot? Or were his powers destroyed? I think it says his powers were destroyed on wiki.

 

His body was destroyed, but his spirit lived on. Voldemort still possessed all the powers he previously had, but as a disembodied spirit, he had no way to use them.

 

See, I always took it to mean Remus, not Lovegood, considering the Potter kids are all named after people that died during the war. Last I checked, Luna was very well alive.

 

^Maybe they should've named her Lily Moony.

 

This is my first time in the forums .

Well anyway here is my question:

What do they do with Voldemort's dead body after Harry kills him?

 

Probably tossed it in the lake and let the giant squid eat it.