After two years of anticipation, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was released and it’s official: The Boy Who Lived, well, lived.
Though seemingly everyone in America had finished the book within 24 hours of its July 21 release, the UO Bookstore gave area readers a few weeks and held a book discussion Saturday afternoon.
“We’re coming down on a month after the book came out and we understand the disappointment a lot of people felt at the end of the series,” bookstore employee Lee Ann Erickson said.
Laura White, the bookstore’s events coordinator, set up the book release party and felt it was only natural to hold a subsequent book discussion event.
The discussion took place on the bookstore’s second floor, an appropriate venue given the colorful mural depicting a “Harry Potter” timeline that decorates the walls of the staircase. Coffee, apple juice and snacks were provided.
“Deathly Hallows,” the record-breaking seventh and final installment of J.K. Rowling’s popular series, is centered around Harry and his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, on a quest to find Horcruxes, bewitched objects that contain fragments of the murderous Lord Voldemort’s soul. It’s not until the Horcruxes are destroyed that Voldemort himself can be killed.
As per a prophecy shortly before his birth, Harry is “The Chosen One,” the sole person with “the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.”
After a heated argument, Ron left mid-quest only to regret his impulsiveness and rejoin the others later, a plot twist Andy Lillich, the bookstore employee who served as the discussion’s mediator, liked. She felt that Ron’s temporary absence highlighted his importance to the trio.
University student Maggie Gonzalez agreed. She said that Harry’s “Chosen One” status and Hermione’s intelligence make their vitality obvious.
“It’s hard to pinpoint what’s important about Ron,” she added.
The conversation proceeded to run the gamut from pondering whether dark wizard catchers still existed after Voldemort’s eventual demise to favorite moments in the book. The dozen or so participants agreed it was great that Neville, Harry’s clumsy and bullied classmate at Hogwarts, came into his own.
Each book represents a year in Harry’s life, beginning at 11, when young witches and wizards start school at Hogwarts, and ending at 17, when they come of age. As Harry has grown up, the books have gotten progressively darker.
In “Order of the Phoenix,” the fifth book, Harry struggles in classes, gets his first girlfriend, learns of the prophecy, watches his godfather die, and is often hormonal and surly. The film adaptation of “Order of the Phoenix” is currently in theaters.
Several discussion participants liked that Harry was so moody through much of the fifth book since being “The Chosen One” could potentially make him seem too perfect. It was pointed out that his flaws – particularly hotheadedness and self-doubt – made him easier to relate to and seem more human.
“I think a lot of critics lost sight of his age,” Erickson said. “He’s 15. He’s going through all of the regular teenage stuff while he’s supposed to fight the greatest evil ever.”
Inevitably, the discussion turned to the epilogue, which the group collectively decided was somewhat cheesy, but nice.
“She copped out in a way, but I was really glad that everyone lived happily ever after, so to speak,” Eugene resident Kay Porter said of Rowling’s decision not to kill off any of the three protagonists.
At the heels of the intense battle in which Harry killed Voldemort, Lillich called the cheerful epilogue “emotional vertigo.”
However, she liked that by then – 19 years later, when the surviving characters were at the train station seeing their kids off to Hogwarts – Harry and Draco, his archenemy from the first book, had buried the hatchet.
“The people you think are totally bad wind up having some good in them after all,” she said. Gonzalez added that a previously one-sided antagonistic character like Draco having a mix of good and evil made the series seem more real, despite being set in a fictional, magical world.
A fictional, magical world that millions of people will miss.
“I turned 17 this summer and my birthday is one day away from Harry’s,” said Jake Harder, a student at South Eugene High School. “My generation has grown up with Harry.”
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