Abbie's Real Life Blog

Some Harry Potter spoilers below, but very vague, mild ones.  If you haven’t read the book, I suggest skipping this anyway: 

After I finished reading the last Harry Potter book a few weeks ago, I reread the whole series from start to finish.  (Judge me on that, okay?  Fine.) 

I have to say that it was totally worth rereading them all, so if you are finished with the last one and have been considering taking out the whole series, I suggest you do it.  Yes, I’d reread the books before (keep on judging me, ok?  Or don’t you have some skeletons in your own closet, there?) but still I really had a low opinion of the sixth book when it came out.  I just thought Rowling had kind of reached a point where she knew how to end it but  had to get through one more book to do it.  I didn’t really think Snape would turn out to be evil, (though, still, you never know) but of course I was sad to see Dumbledore go.  When I finished the seventh book, I still thought the sixth book was sucky, but just slightly less so since it does set up all the background on Snape, who turns out to be the second-most-important character in the whole series, other than the titular character, of course.

Rereading all of them gave me a MUCH higher opinion of Rowling in general.  It was clear from the very beginning of the books that she knew what she was doing, when I’d given her none of the benefit of the doubt when it came to that.  Throughout the series, she throws off one-liner comments that you probably ignore, but they totally set up characters and entire plot points.  We meet Aberforth Dumbledore in Book Five, for instance, but we don’t know it until Book Seven.  From Book One onward, she’s set up the Snape plot but we don’t realize exactly what his motivations are until they’re spelled out in Book Seven.  For instance, it’s set up from the start that Harry looks like his father but has his mother’s eyes.  It’s also set up from the start that Snape hated James Potter, though no one in the story articulates exactly why.  They usually mention James’s skill in Quidditch.  This same kind of red herring is set up in the beginning of Book Five, when Petunia knows what Dementors are because she overheard a ‘nasty boy’ telling Lily about them.  Both Harry and the audience believe she is referring to James Potter.  Further, Book Five also sets up that story of Snape being teased by James and Sirius while at Hogwarts, and throws out yet another red herring when Snape calls Lily Evans a Mudblood.  There’s no reason in Book Five to believe that there’s any more to that story than what is presented, but it of course has great significance to the plot of the series and to the character of Severus Snape as well.

Anyway, there are tons and tons of little references that are similar to this throughout the series, and it’s worth rereading.  Stephen King wrote a column for Entertainment Weekly about how Harry Potter was an excellent mystery series as well as excellent fantasy children’s literature, and I agree.