Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort / Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Here we go for the final book in the series! We’re in for a lot of feelings.  This book represents so much to me, I can’t begin to tell you. To tell you the truth, I start sobbing at the dedication : “AND TO YOU, IF YOU HAVE STUCK WITH HARRY UNTIL THE VERY END.”

As for this chapter, it always had a special meaning to me, because it always remember me of this video, which is when I first started the book by listening to Jo reading the chapter on release day, and when I really realized that it was the beginning of the end. This is why I decided to share it with you here earlier today.

I have always loved this chapter, it’s dark and scary and an excellent opening for this final book in the series.

Here are my particular thoughts : 

Citation :

“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. “Yaxley — beside Dolohov.”
The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.

I’ll give this to Snape, whichever side he felt the strongest pull towards, he managed to put himself as Voldemort’s most trusted man, getting to sit right beside him and being the first one Voldemort wanted to hear news from. This has always felt really important to me.

Citation :

“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, “have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?”
“Yes, m-my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.

1. How did Voldemort learn of the nickname ‘Wormtail’ ? We have seen before that the Marauders nicknames in canon are way less common that what people write in fanfics and headcanons. Was Peter so proud of being a member of a group that he told everyone about it? Did he tell his whole story to Voldemort when he first joined him? Or it Legilimency from Voldemort ?
2. It is shown here that if it’s not the only reason (maybe it is), the main reason why Peter joined Voldemort was because he was scared. He clearly doesn’t belong there. He is so scared all the time. Just safer than being against him, I guess.

Citation :

The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair. It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s shoulders: its neck the thickness of a man’s thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers, still looking at Lucius Malfoy.

This imagery is so scary, and yet so beautifully written!

Citation :

“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted with emotion, “it is an honor to have you here, in our family’s house. There can be no higher pleasure.”
She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark hair and heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor; where Narcissa sat rigid and impassive, Bellatrix leaned toward Voldemort, for mere words could not demonstrate her longing for closeness.
“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side as he considered Bellatrix. “That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you.”
Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.
“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”

Bellatrix is acting like a total teenage girl here, and a young one at that.

Citation :

“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And yours, Lucius and Narcissa. She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud.”

Not the best circumstances to learn it, but I was so happy when I first read this!! Remadora <3

Citation :

Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his father, who was staring down into his own lap, then caught his mother’s eye. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.

J.K. Rowling and writing mothers who would do anything for the safety of their children

Citation :

“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemed unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her classes,” said Voldemort. “For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.
“Yes … Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles … how they are not so different from us … .”
One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape again.
“Severus … please … please …”
“Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. “Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance… . She would have us all mate with Muggles … or, no doubt, werewolves… .”

1. How come did Draco knew her ?
2. I always loved that we got new information about Hogwarts’ teachers even so late in the series.
3. I’m pretty sure I would have loved the character of Charity Burbage!

Citation :

Nobody laughed this time: There was no mistaking the anger and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.

The ending is so scary!!

Oh, I never noticed the bit about Draco falling out of his chair before… hmmm

• Not funny, Jo, starting the book with Harry bleeding, way to hint about 90% of the book
  
• Am I the only one who was confused for years about how Harry cut himself ? I thought for the longest time that it was the tea cup, but it was the mirror!! 
  
• Sad to see that Harry thought that Dudley was trying to hurt him, when in fact, he was trying to be nice to him (see next chapter)
  

Citation :

Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly between SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and POTTER STINKS, a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden, he finally discovered the sharp edge that had done the damage. He recognized it at once. It was a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that his dead godfather, Sirius, had given him. Harry laid it aside and felt cautiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing more remained of his godfather’s last gift except powdered glass, which clung to the deepest layer of debris like glittering grit.

• Way to lay the nostalgia already, Jo!
  

Citation :

In a front pocket were the Marauder’s Map and the locket with the note signed R.A.B. inside it. The locket was accorded this place of honor not because it was valuable — in all usual senses it was worthless — but because of what it had cost to attain it.

• Dumbledore’s death has a HUGE influence on Harry in this book, we can already see it.
  

Citation :

I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders.

• bold + the plan to leave across the world alone with the same young man : and people still say there weren’t any hints of Dumbledore being gay in the books 
  

Dumbledore was as straight as I am and I’m as straight as the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Diagon Alley!

Citation :

In a matter of months, however, Albus’s own fame had begun to eclipse that of his father. By the end of his first year he would never again be known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the school.

• So Dumbledore had been a better student than Merlin (who we know had been in Slytherin) ?
  

Citation :

All those closest to Albus — and I count myself one of that lucky number — agree that Ariana’s death, and Albus’s feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, he was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore.

Can I cry now ?

Citation :

and it seemed to Harry now, despite the fact that his future was so dangerous and so uncertain, that he had missed irreplaceable opportunities when he had failed to ask Dumbledore more about himself, even though the only personal question he had ever asked his headmaster was also the only one he suspected that Dumbledore had not answered honestly:

“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”
“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”

• Nostalgia again!! And I wonder if Dumbledore would have answered him the truth if Harry had asked him in HBP ? They were a lot closer by then.
  

Oh, and I hate Rita Skeeter!