Just Venting about Harry

I love the Harry Potter series of books, I really do. I just finished the final installment last night. I read until my eyes were totally tired and dry. Luckily the end (NOT the epilogue) made me cry so I didn’t have to run out for eye drops – J.K. Rowling knows how to hook a reader up.

***SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this post has spoilers, so if you are avoiding them, stop reading. ***

While I love the series, the characters, and the stories, as happens with a lot of the media that I love, my feminist and radical queer have to be gagged and blindfolded in order to get my initial enjoyment in. Then (now), I need to untie them, and let them say their peace.

I’m an occasional reader of Feminist SF – The Blog!. I think they write important, topical, deep, and fun stuff. They speak the truth, and fill a much needed space in the SciFi community (more later on my guilty love of FarPoint Media in spite of its tolerance of homophobia later). Their geek cred must be respected. One of their contributors posted about the latest HP book, and had some pretty interesting things to say. The part of that post that I wanted to say a bit more about was: why did Rowling choose to end the book focused on the heteronormative pairings of the major characters? Why leave us wondering about so many things in favor of telling us who married whom and how many babies they have?

I totally agree. The epilogue felt a bit to me like letting the air out of the tires slowly. Is Rowling really telling us now that Lupin was simply fond of Sirius? Does a kick-ass witch like Hermione simply tie the knot and stifle her brilliant career options? Was I wrong that Ginny always kinda had eyes for Luna?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t change a thing about the series of books. It has been one of the most enjoyable reading experienced of my life, and I’m sure I’ll revisit it often. I just wish that the book had ended with Neville coming out of the closet, Hermione as minister of magic 19 years later, and some information about what happened to Luna.