IIRC, Townsend was the original Aragorn in LOTR.
Posted on 07/21/2007 5:18:11 PM PDT by JenB
So you finally know what happens to Harry. All our questions are answered. Or not. What are your reactions? Whose death hurt the most? Do you want more, and about whom?
SPOILERS are ok on this thread! You have been warned!
Wow. It's over.
No, you're right.
But a lot of folks have wondered why a howler from Dumbledore, saying "remember my last," would affect Petunia as it did. "My last" seems to imply more than one letter was exchanged between them. Book 7 fleshes it out a bit more: she had actually corresponded with Dumbledore before, begging to be "taught" magic. It helps to explain why Petunia was affected more than perhaps she ought to have been by a seemingly cryptic message.
Ah. Didn’t see the movie, which is why I didn’t catch the reference.
IIRC, Townsend was the original Aragorn in LOTR.
I got 666 on a Harry Potter thread...
Tonks became an Auror before she ever even met Remus.
This is why I don’t think both parents should be deployed.
Agreed. The left would really make hay if some family lost both parents. We don't need another Sullivan brothers.
Excellent points. You’re right - it was dramatically necessary for some characters to die, but not for the specific ones, other than Voldemort. It could have been others.
I think it would be pretty powerful to be reminded that if you send your nephew out of your home, you are virtually executing him. I can see a reminder like that hitting Petunia pretty hard!
No. He moved to attack her, but didn't actually bite her, but I Later, during the battle, he was blasted by Ron and Hermione.
I think, for Petunia, it was less guilt over sending her nephew out than it was fear of knowing what could happen.
But there were no more official aurors, as the ministry had fallen.
I think one of the two should have thought about the baby that they were responsible for.
I think that is what Lupin meant when he said he hoped his son would understand that he died trying to make a better world for children to grow up in. Difficult choice, though.
Probably part of the letter that came with Harry was saying that if they took care of Harry until his 17th birthday (and the protections ended) he’d make sure they were still protected, but if they didn’t take care of Harry through then he wouldn’t take care of them afterwards. So the “remember my last” was a thinly veiled threat, reminding her that if they didn’t do their part of the bargain they were on their own starting on Harry’s 17th birthday. Petunia knows this stuff is real, know Voldy is a threat and knows he’ll capture and torture them to find Harry the first minute he can, and that he won’t care that they never liked Harry and won’t believe they kicked him out years before and haven’t heard from him since. Dumbledore played for keeps and wasn’t above saying “screw them they broke the deal”.
In my opinion, Tonks was basically selfish. She didn’t want to live without Remus, but she had a responsibility that she should have lived up to.
Yes, but she knew it was from Dumbledore -- even Harry, who knew his voice well, didn't know that.
It's a minor point, really -- but Rowling did address the question of why Dumbledore referred to "his last," which again implies "not the only correspondence we've had." Ultimately, it ties back to Petunia's childhood, and helps to explain how she became the person she did.
Interestingly, the letter also sets up the final goodbyes at Number 4 Privet Drive. Petunia and Vernon had been building a wall between the muggle and wizard worlds. Learning that Petunia had actually corresponded with Dumbledore irretrievably smashes the barrier between the wizard and muggle worlds. The Dursley's begin to appreciate the danger posed to them by Voldemort, and in Book 7, Petunia and Dudley finally recognize the protection that had been given to them over Harry's life.
Unsaid, of course, is that Vernon's take on things is right, too: Dumbledore knowingly and without their permission put them in mortal danger by putting Harry on their doorstep. Given Dumbledore's manipulativeness, of which we learn in the last book, one wonders if he mentioned that little item in his last letter to Petunia.
At the same time, though, they begin to see that the wizard world (the breeding dementors) is beginning to intrude on them anyway ... and Dudley, realizing this, finally humbles himself and is, I suppose, saved. Petunia, too.
I've always wondered, BTW, what nastiness baby Harry might have magically inflicted on baby Dudley. The tantrum of a magical 2-year old might do some serious damage. Perhaps Vernon and Petunia had a more personal reason to detesting Harry's magical abilities, and perhaps Dudley's dementor experience is explained as well.
And if Dudley suffered spell damage as a result of Harry's tantrums ... mightn't Petunia have to have asked Dumbledore's help in setting things right again?
Interesting....
There weren’t official aurors, but at it’s core auror was more of a calling than a job title, the ministry formalized into a job title but in the end it was about one’s willingness to stand against the darkness. Tonk was an auror in her heart, she was willing to sacrifice everything. And remember the way Voldy works Dora and Lupin were on the hit list one way or the other him for being a werewolf and her for sullying the family name, if Voldy wasn’t defeated eventually he was going for them no matter what. Better to take the fight to him, with maximal allies and the best chance of success than to stay home and wait. They were thinking about the baby, but the focus was on what kind of world the baby would live in 5, 10, 20 years from now, rather than the comforts of the baby’s home today and tomorrow. They decided it was better for the baby to grow up an orphan in a free world than with both parents in a world dominated by fear.
That's the choice men have always had to make, when they go to war. Tonks, OTOH -- that's a more modern aspect of the choice.
Rowling writes about choices, and the fact that choices always have consequences. Being a woman doesn't change that fact.
In the case of Tonks' final battle, Rowling pounds home to us the true nature of the decision faced by a woman soldier. A "surviving Tonks" would have been sad, but it would also have been a cop-out -- a sentimental lie that even in battle, women are somehow protected from death, and that they can go back to their babies when it's all over.
Killing Tonks says that battle is no respecter of whether a woman has kids back home: battle is battle, and people get killed in battles no matter who they have at home.
Dunno if I'm reading more into Tonks' death than Rowling put there, but that's what it says to me.
Hey! I answered you, you have to answer me!
That was exactly the cryptic clue Kyofu gave me when I asked, lol.
Is that like the bug (Vincent D’Onofrio) in an “Egger suit”?
LOL!
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