Things Potter Tought Me.

I must have written a million draft posts in the last two days, and deleted them all. Nothing seems coherent. So I am going to re-review a book. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. After the first reading I loved to book, but hated the Epilogue. It was too predictable. Too... nice. (For full details see my review here.)

Recently I saw an interview that Rowling did where she explained why she wrote the epilogue at all. She explained her motives of sharing the fate of her characters with the world and then added, "He survives and goes on to live a normal life." She talked about how a person who can go through the horrors that Harry did and return home and be normal is nothing short of amazing. Living a normal life after a person has been through something extraordinary and painful is the hardest thing in the world to accomplish.

The last year of Harry's life we get to see wasn't easy. He was preparing to fight a dark wizard, but more than that he was learning who to trust. He learned that there is no such thing as pure good vs. pure evil. Everyone is a mix. Even Voldomorte, who was too far gone to ever be good again, could have been good had he made different choices. Had his early childhood been a little bit different.

Perhaps that is why the epilogue didn't ring true. Because life never ends tied up in a nice little bow. Life is messy. Its madness. Nothing is ever simple. Nothing ever turns out the way it should. I think I'm starting to slowly see what Rowling means though. Some times, despite great odds, things do turn out better than you had any reason to hope that they would. Some times good things do happen to good people. And I would agree... that accepting that as truth, and not ideal fantasy, is the hardest thing in the world to do.