Rowling breaks no new ground in book seven, but instead pulls on threads left dangling from each past novel, tying them in a bow as pristine as the one atop Umbridge’s head. Her prose is just as predictable, replete with a clichéd flair for the melodramatic, but Rowling knows there’s no need to transfigure her style from plot-centric to literary at this point. Harry, now 17, goes undercover with his best friends Ron and Hermione on a quest set out by Dumbledore, the venerable headmaster and father figure whose demise so shocked in book six, The Half-Blood Prince. The wizarding world’s war rages on around the trio, with Voldemort and his Death Eaters gaining on Mudbloods and their sympathizers, while wreaking havoc on the Muggle world. From the opening broom battle scene, the Hallows is the bloodiest tale yet, with a death toll that climbs an exponential trajectory as Harry searches for the seven Horcruxes holding Voldemort’s split soul.
The Deathly Hallows pulls characters and spells from previous books into this new tale. Rather than introduce new characters, Rowling fleshes out established personalities. Beyond simply revealing deeper layers, however, she discloses secrets that flip our perception of characters’ moral compasses, uncovering both the follies of the more saintly and the humanity in the dastardly. Her twists are never far-fetched or unfounded, though, because she lays her plot machinations as carefully as Dumbledore did his plans for Harry, writing in just as many clues along the way for those who’ve been paying attention. If you weren’t, Rowling uses fast-moving dialogue instead of belaboured exposition to remind us of past events and to explain the resurfacing of characters. Despite the over-reliance on polyjuice potion as a plot device, her reintroduction of other spells and mythical creatures creates a balance between exhilaration and nostalgia, and the string of fight sequences keeps the pace hurtling towards the inevitable demise of either Harry or Voldemort.
Rowling has said that she knew how Harry’s story would end before she began writing the first book, The Philosopher’s Stone. The Deathly Hallows, while filled with death, leaves our hearts intact, as Rowling justifies each character’s survival or demise. She reads her fans and knows her cast, and though she wounds both, she leaves neither incapacitated.
That is Rowling’s coup de grâce: the simultaneous existence of Harry’s world next to ours. Other fantasy novels have the freedom of unique universes with rules that can be formed on a whim, but Rowling’s wizards and creatures must be aware of the effect of their actions on Muggles’, and readers’, reality. Rowling masterfully parallels her stories with our world so that wizards dwell alongside, but unbeknownst to, us.
The culmination of Harry’s quest will cleave readers into the satiated and the unsatisfied. But Rowling interweaves the tragedy with enough nostalgia that we must accept and appreciate, with saccharine satisfaction, her final word on Harry Potter.
