OK, so it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but things have been slow in the world of the Big Ugly Man Doll, and time ran away with me. We had a short fling, me and time, but in the end we realized it would never work out and we went back to our respective spouses. We’ll always have Paris in 1894, October 13, at shortly before sunrise, for about 38 minutes. Time doesn’t have so much a fear of commitment as she has a penchant for declaring an end and making it so. I’d say she invented serial monogamy, but that was Mrs. Kellogg.
None of which is what we’re discussing tonight, boy and girls, for something truly momentous and exciting has been delivered to my doorstep! That’s right, I’m one of those lucky bastards who got an accidentally early delivery of the last Harry Potter installment! (I think my little tête-à-tête rendezvous with the mistress of Chronos might have helped, but I have no proof and I’m not going to be the first to break down and call. Besides, what would my wife say?)
So, without further ado, let me give you an advance review of the book! It was fantastic, as only JK Rowling can be, but let me tell you now that all the so-called spoilers you’ve heard were completely wrong. It’s not even called “Deathly Hallows.” It turns out that she looked to the Bard to end the series, and while she didn’t use iambic pentameter, she certainly took a few pages from him on how to end a story!
Harry Potter and the Shakespearian Ending starts out with Harry attending Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Montague shows up, being distantly related to the Delacour’s on Fleur’s mother’s sister’s cousin’s side. The Weasleys thumb their noses at him, but rather than go for his wand, he professes that he has always loved Mrs. Weasley’s second cousin’s daughter, Mafalda, and she returns his love just as fiercely. Neither Montague’s family nor the Weasleys will countenance such a union, Montague’s side being convinced that he can do better than to shack up with those Muggle-loving redheaded Irish, and probably Papists too, no doubt, look at all those damned kids, and the Weasley are just as dismayed at the prospect of the cost of traveling to, nevermind living in, the town of Fair Verona, which is where Montague’s family has their estate.
Montague and Mafalda decide they don’t care at all what the rest of them think. They shoot their way out of the celebrations, sending bits of Fleur’s wedding cake flying into the cheap seats, and the chase is on. That oaf Hagrid is killed in a most humorous fashion, and the nuptials are demolished, along with Mrs. Weasley’s great aunt Muriel’s lovely goblin-made tiara, which was a horcrux. Montague and Mafalda find themselves star-crossed as they’re followed by all and sundry through many small towns and hamlets. It turns out that no one with the authority to do so will marry them – little wonder, since between them they’re cousin to half the country. Eventually, they find one person who is willing to bind them in matrimony.
You guessed it: It’s the Dark Lord. Voldemort wants to perform an unbreakable curse on them, binding them to each other – and to his own bad ass. He’s just about to torture them into giving up their Gringotts PIN numbers when the Three Angstiteers show up. Harry, Ron, and Hermione walk into the bombed-out church to find Wormtongue, sorry wrong book I mean Wormtail, reprising his role as toady in chief by playing usher. “Death Eaters on the left, please, you Phoenix lot on the right.” The church is suddenly much bigger than we thought it was since half the Ministry of Magic shows up, mostly seated on the right, along with what’s left of the Order of the Phoenix, and all the Death Eaters coalesce out of the shadows on the left.
In the ensuing melee, after Rufus Scrimgeour has taken down no fewer than 17 Death Eaters with his bare teeth, Voldemort kills off pretty much everyone we’ve ever heard of. The snake Nagini chokes to death trying to swallow and digest Crookshanks. Wormtail tells Lupin he’s always loved him, be he man or beast, and kills himself in a fit of homoerotic shame. Tonks finally realizes why Lupin wouldn’t marry her and runs off, swearing to change her name from Nymphadora to something sensible, like Ophelia.
Harry and Ginny vow to love each other to the end, which at this point is only 3 pages away. Voldemort catches them snogging and gets them with a twofer, both dead with a single Avada Kedavra. His elation is short-lived, since Ron and Hermione are so pissed about this that they find the one thing they can agree on, which is killing the Dark Lord. Voldemort remembers too late that he meant to kill Harry last because he was the sole remaining horcrux oh shit oh shit oh shiiiii.
Ron and Hermione mop up and leave the deathly, hallowed grounds, with Hermione noting to the stunned Montague and Mafalda that human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but instead are “more or less alike.”
“Yeah,” Ron adds, “more or less a bunch of gits.”
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