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Deathly Hallows: The Reread (Chapters 7 and 8)
WARNING: Since this is a collection of comments from my rereading the book, expect there to be many spoilers in the sections on early chapters for developments that come in later ones; there is really no other way to discuss foreshadowing or the "real" purpose of something that occurs early on and is explained later. Do not read if you are still going through the book for the first time and do NOT want spoilers.

Chapters One and Two
Chapters Three and Four
Chapters Five and Six


Chapter Seven: The Will of Albus Dumbledore

This chapter begins with Harry once more seeing through Voldemort’s eyes as the Dark Lord goes in search of the Elder Wand (which we don’t know about yet). Again, this connection seems to be a good thing for Harry and a bad one for Voldemort, who does not seem to be attempting to learn what Harry is doing or where he is through this conduit. Neither does he seem to be attempting to mislead Harry; so confident is he in his superiority it seems not to have occurred to him to defend his mind from being infiltrated by Harry. As Dumbledore has often said, that which Voldemrot disregards he fails to understand, and he definitely disregards and underestimates Harry. (Isn’t this also a requirement when one is applying to be an Evil Overlord? Underestimating your opponents?) As a result of this connection, Harry believes that Voldemort is searching for Gregorovitch, although Harry doesn’t remember yet who that is, thinking only that there is a Quidditch connection.

We are shown yet another example of the consequences of using magic in trivial ways—Harry summons his glasses from only a foot away and they poke him in the eye. After this Harry ties his trainers with magic, resulting in a horrible knot in the laces; Ron suggests he zip his fly by hand, but then, Ron is actually a bit more restrained about magic than Harry, many times. (This is right up there with Moody warning Harry not to put his wand in his back pocket if he wants to keep both buttocks!)

Ginny’s “present” to him is, of course, further evidence concerning their being on the same page; without reading the book from Ron, Harry tells her that he expects “dating opportunities” to be “pretty thin on the ground” while he’s away, which is exactly the reassurance she was looking for and precipitates the steamiest kiss Rowling has yet included in the books, primarily because it is actually from Harry’s point of view (and because the Ron/Lavender kissing scenes in the sixth book were more humorous than sexy).

Ron’s interruption and subsequent conversation shows how very much he cares about his sister, and just because Harry is his best friend (not to mention Harry Bleeding Potter) he’s not going to stand by if Harry’s going to be “messing her around”. Harry pictures Ginny “marrying a tall, faceless and unpleasant stranger” due to her future being unencumbered compared to his. Clearly Harry feels he has no right to pursue Ginny at this time, apart from the inherent danger to her: “he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.” Nonetheless, when something amuses him, it is still his first instinct to catch her eye and grin at her. Harry cannot not look at Ginny, want to talk to her, want to be with her. He is definitely smitten.

Then we get the revelation that Norbert is now Norberta, a female dragon! When Charlie says that the females are nastier it seems like it could be foreshadowing for his mother’s battle with Bellatrix! (The way a friend of mine put it, concerning Norbert, was that Norbert has “gender issues”. We have a transgender dragon; who says Rowling hasn’t included sexual minorities in her books?)

Soon after Mr. Weasley’s Patronus, a weasel (appropriately) warns them that the Minister is coming home with him, due to his needing to talk to Harry, Ron and Hermione about Dumbledore’s will. Rowling gets a little dig in at lawyers when Scrimgeour says, “Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?” and she replies, “No, I’m not… I’m hoping to do some good in the world!”

Let’s get this over with: Hermione Jean Granger. Someone obviously misheard her or mistyped when she was interviewed about this. NOT a big deal. Moving on.

Ron gets the Deluminator but Hermione gets a book—one that is, ironically, familiar to Ron but not her, so for once he knows what’s in a book and she doesn’t (yet). Harry receives the Snitch he caught in his first match. Many times in subsequent books Harry has been a symbolic Snitch and Snitches have also stood in for Harry, such as when the Snitch he was holding while he was kicked off the team in OotP was struggling in his grip, as trapped as Harry felt, and when Ginny caught the Snitch from under Cho’s nose in the fifth and sixth books. This is foreshadowed in the very first book when Harry nearly swallows the Snitch during his first match; when this occurs, he becomes entangled with it, effectively, and now we learn that that entanglement is literal due to Snitches having something called a “flesh memory”, which just seems to be another way to speak of a Snitch and the person who has first caught colliding and becoming entangled (to use language from the world of physics that I also utilize in Quantum Harry).

Scrimgeour quite rightly guesses that the Snitch contains a small object and that Dumbledore enchanted it to only open for Harry. Harry’s hand won’t do it, though, since he took the Snitch into his mouth, so his first contact with it was not through his hand. Even though Rowling has no actual Quidditch matches in the seventh book, this relationship between the first and seventh books is clever and striking. In the first book, Harry was beginning his training for a metaphorical war (Quidditch) and became entangled with this very Snitch by swallowing it and then metaphorically giving “birth” to it by spitting it out, so that it is “of” Harry now, a part of him; in the final book the metaphorical war has become real and the Snitch Harry has birthed will in turn give birth to the Resurrection Stone that will bring him the essences of those he loves who have died, who will accompany him when he is on his own “death march”.

It is entirely appropriate that Dumbledore wanted to leave to Harry another object with which Harry became entangled: the sword of Gryffindor. While these things are, symbolically, parts of Harry, who became a symbolic sword of Gryffindor himself when he used it to kill the Basilisk, he is not diminished by these objects being apart from him, unlike Voldemort’s soul being damaged by his creating Horcruxes. Since Harry is in fact both a symbolic sword of Gryffindor and a Horcrux, it is also as if Voldemort did succeed in making a sword of Gryffindor into a Horcrux—it just wasn’t the one he intended to.

After Scrimgeour is gone Harry reminds Ron and Hermione that he nearly swallowed the Snitch, but his attempts to open it still fail because Dumbledore has charmed it to only open when Harry is near death, and it bears a legend referring to this: I open at the close. Harry doesn’t yet understand the meaning, though.

Rowling seems to be making a statement again when she has Hermione puzzled over the usefulness of a book of children’s stories. Although many people dismiss the Harry Potter books as frivolous children’s books, they are anything but; she is also including a veiled criticism of such a dismissive attitude with Dumbledore’s criticism of Voldemort’s dismissing things he deems insignificant and unimportant, with the result that he fails to understand them and misses quite a lot as a result. (A.S. Byatt, are you taking notes?)


Chapter Eight: The Wedding

The first thing Hermione says to Ron after he compliments her appearance on the day of the wedding, “Always the tone of surprise,” is an exact quote of what he says when she is surprised at his impressive magic during the flight from Surrey, showing that they are growing closer and improving their relationship and the way they interact with each other.

We get to see Viktor Krum again, which serves multiple purposes: 1) because of Krum’s being present Harry remembers that Gregorovitch is the maker of Viktor’s wand (so that the wand-weighing scene in Goblet of Fire serves yet another purpose); 2) Krum identifies the symbol Xeno Lovegood is wearing as the mark of Grindelwald, which connects us again to the first book and the information on Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog Card (which he said, in the fifth book, he hoped they wouldn’t take away from him!); and 3) Harry shows yet again how he feels about Ginny when he tells Viktor that “she’s seeing someone. Jealous type. Big bloke. You wouldn’t want to cross him.” All of these statements are essentially true (even the part about her “seeing someone”—she’s spoken for, definitely, as long as Harry lives); Harry is also bigger than usual while Polyjuiced into “Cousin Barny”.

What a lovely idea, that rather than outshining everyone around her, as she usually does, on her wedding day Fleur’s radiance “beautified everyone it fell upon,” including making Bill “look as though he had never met Fenrir Greyback.”

Muriel’s comment about Ginny’s dress being “too low cut” seems like a not-too-subtle way of telling us that Ginny’s showing us some cleavage (it could possibly come off as prurient or vulgar if Harry thought about how low-cut her dress was); we do get the impression that Harry has noticed this, though, as Muriel’s saying this prompts Harry to remember spending time alone with her at Hogwarts (perhaps that “particularly happy hour” down by the lake). When Harry watches Ginny dance with Lee, he clearly wishes that he had her in his arms instead.

Ron’s appreciation of Luna shows that he is developing Harry’s ability, which he’s had for as long as we’ve known him, to have a female friend without overtones of romance. Harry has Hermione as one of his best friends; Ron may be able to relate to Luna in a similar way, and it’s doubtful that Hermione would be jealous, just as Ginny wasn’t at all jealous about Luna going to Slughorn’s party with Harry.

We also learn that Viktor’s grandfather was killed by Grindelwald and that he’s seen the mark on the wall at Durmstrang. While talking to Krum, Harry also realizes that he thought of Quidditch when he heard the name Gregorovitch because he associates Viktor with Quidditch.

When Harry is discussing Dumbledore with Elphias Doge, who denies that Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts in his youth, there are overtones of Harry finding out that his father was a bully and Sirius and Remus defending him. As with many of Ron’s accidentally truthful statements, Doge isn’t far from the mark when he says, sarcastically, “Oh, no doubt Ariana murdered her [Kendra].” Ariana was responsible for her mother’s death, but it was an accident. The account of Aberforth breaking Albus’s nose and Albus not defending himself against the accusation that it was his fault his sister was dead (and Albus not repairing his nose, ever) suggests that he did in fact feel guilty about this, similar to Sirius feeling guilty about James’s and Lily’s deaths and even saying, in the Shrieking Shack, that he had killed them. Albus Dumbledore seems to carry the burden of guilt over his sister’s death for the rest of his life, always remorseful over this; it is little wonder that he understands Snape’s remorse over Lily’s death.

Harry also discovers an important connection to Dumbledore: his family also lived in Godric’s Hollow. This does not make him happy, however, because Dumbledore never told him about this. It seems highly likely that this omission was simply so that he wouldn’t need to discuss his tragic family history, something that haunted him all his life. It may genuinely have never occurred to him that Harry would feel proud to have come from the same village as Dumbledore (even though the family moved there from another village).

Chapters 9 and 10