Anzem Gauntlets Commentary: Thoughts on supremacism

There are currently five planned stories of Penumbra, in the following order:

1. The Rubicon
2. The Anzem Gauntlets
3. The Partisans of Goblynsrefuge
4. The Tetrarchy
5. Dalgormad

Most of the plot of Penumbra was planned out before the release of Deathly Hallows, but The Anzem Gauntlets, out of the five stories, is unique in the respect that it was conceptualized and added after Deathly Hallows; in fact, I first began developing it just over a year ago. The reason I added The Anzem Gauntlets was to give better precedence to the plot of Dalgormad, which will explore a concept actually central to Penumbra which has no background foundation from the first six Harry Potter stories.

The Anzem Gauntlets, as it's currently planned out, is an intense story about politics and intrigue, as well as the central plot, in which both Harry and Ginny end up searching for some device, supposedly of tremendous magical power, which Voldemort is looking for. It follows my usual motif of having parallel protagonists in Harry and Ginny, who are operating separately, but their stories are actually heavily connected, even if that isn't obvious at times.

Opening Chapter:
I've always figured that if someone left a phoenix feather for Harry or his allies before giving them a warning or a tipoff, Harry would find them trustworthy, especially if the feather proved to be from Fawkes. That is the scene that kicks off the plot of The Anzem Gauntlets. At the same time, we have the side-plot of a goblin uprising starting in Germany, in which the Koboldic goblins revolt against the German Ministry of Magic because of their refusal to prosecute a man they are certain had murdered one of their populace. They especially are furious because the man in question is son of a Triskelion, and he himself might be in league with the Neo-Triskelion movement.

If I haven't ever clarified it before, I will do so now: the Triskelions are Grindelwald's followers and the wizarding equivalent of the Nazi party. They have a very similar ideology to the Death Eaters, but the Death Eaters operate more as a terrorist organization, while the Triskelions, like the Nazis, were a political party. In the background, I might have explained somewhere that the Triskelions similarly were democratically elected into power, and I have definitely implied that Grindelwald was somehow involved in Muggle politics as well, in direct contact with Hitler.

I have studied Nazism since I was in high school, and an in-depth examination of Germany in that period, while often grim, is also very instructive in the role of fear in collective decisions. This subject is naturally fraught with debate between both liberal and conservative scholars, each of them interpreting Nazism differently and sometimes trying to claim that the Nazis were on whatever side of the political spectrum. Liberals claim they were conservative. Conservatives claim they were liberal. Both are wrong. The Nazis were neither.

But I'm not here to discuss where the Nazis lie on the political spectrum (which, on the scale of liberal-conservative, I don't think they fit in at all). I'm here to talk about supremacism, and why the Nazis were what they were, and why the Germans bought into their ideology. Liberals tend to think of evil in terms of taking advantage over somebody or causing oppression; the "-isms" liberals think of as enemy ideologies, such as sexism, racism, classism, etc., all oppress some minority class, and this is the source of injustice in the world. Moreover, I've heard liberals exhibit the attitude that these "-isms" are primarily motivated by the thrill of having power over somebody, and they accuse conservatives of "-isms."

Having grown up in a very conservative part in America, I can confidently say that this is rarely the case, and just as confidently point out that extremists on the left are just as guilty of this accusation as extremists on the right. Most of my conservative friends and neighbors would be offended by accusations of sexism or racism, and particularly of classism (as many conservatives are from the working class). What motivates conservative ideology is primarily fear of their world crumbling around them, and this is the basis on which I built both the Triskelion and Death Eater ideologies, something J.K. Rowling failed to do.

Rowling seemed to put classism (represented by Lucius Malfoy) as the source of Death Eater ideology, but this is a shallow foundation. What fuels the Death Eaters' hatred of Muggles and Muggle-borns needs to be something much more foundational, even primeval, than upper-class arrogance. While the upper classes have a history of arrogance and condescending attitudes towards the lower class, they never sought to wipe out the lower classes, because historically they depended on them too much. Feudalism originated as a symbiotic relationship between the nobility and the peasantry. In the early Middle Ages, Europe was a dangerous place to live. The continent was, at that time, almost completely covered with forest, and that forest was full of wildlife that could be quite dangerous. Wolves were much more common then, as were bears and wild boars; until about the 1st Century AD, there were also lions in some parts of Europe.

Furthermore, when civilization collapses (as Roman civilization had), it leaves chaos. Europe at that time was full of bandits and criminals, and politically it became divided. After the Romans left, the place was overrun by the Germanic tribes, who developed a mutually beneficial system in which they selected their strongest and smartest members and gave them the role of protecting the rest of the population, who cultivated farmland. This is the feudal system: the peasants cultivate the land and support the noblemen, who in return protect the peasants. It was a survivalist system, and in such systems people stick to their prescribed roles because it's about survival. They don't concern themselves with matters such as classism or women's rights, because those are the concerns of societies in periods of relative safety, when those prescribed roles become less important.

But often survivalist rules become tradition over time, and people fear change, or more deeply, the unknown. Notions of racism or sexism develop later, over time, as people become conditioned to the system they and their ancestors lived in.

What conservatives are afraid of, at the most fundamental level, is usually not becoming "tainted" in some way, but of their world crumbling around them. Every human being builds an order and a world for themselves, the foundation on which they live, and it is always a terrifying thing is something upsets that. It's a perfectly legitimate fear, which liberals, in fact, share; but liberals' world is built on a different foundation from conservatives'. At its most fundamental definition, conservatism is an ideology based on the established order, the status quo; while liberalism is an ideology based on the reform or overthrowing of the established order (depending on how radical the ideology). They thus appear to change over time; two hundred years ago, liberalism advocated democracy, and conservatism advocated monarchy. Now neither do, but they continue to struggle over different issues.

In The Rubicon, there's a scene in which Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dr. Grobschmied, and Rok Grimrook discuss the Death Eaters in this light:

GRIMROOK: Their most important weapon is fear, and to fight them, we need to turn that weapon against them. So what do they fear? They are pureblood supremacists. How do pureblood supremacists think? The answer can be found in the past few centuries and why the movement emerged. 

RON: Salazar Slytherin, yeah? He started it?

GROBSCHMIED: It's not as simple as that; history  never is. The supremacists turned Slytherin into a legend, but in reality I'd say he was incidental. He was not the first to set wizards in a hierarchy above Muggles, and he didn't really start any particular movement. As far as I can tell, true supremacists, in the sense of Death Eaters or Triskelions, didn't actually start to appear until the early 18th century. 

HARRY: Why? What happened then? 

GROBSCHMIED: What indeed? I think you'll agree that little has changed in Wizarding lifestyle as a general rule, and certainly not in societal structure. The Wizarding World is remarkably static, but at least since the 18th century, there has been such a thing as pureblood supremacism. So what changed?

HERMIONE: The Muggles did. 

GROBSCHMIED: Exactly. Only a few years after the Statute of Secrecy was put in place, Sir Isaac Newton published "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," which revolutionized Muggle science. It set off a whole new range of thought which completely changed Muggle society. They have rapidly advanced in three hundred years, to the point of being unrecognizable. Before the 18th Century, the lifestyle of Muggles was like the lifestyle of wizards without the benefit of magic, but now their technology has put them on an equal footing with wizards. 

RON: You think so?

GROBSCHMIED: I know so. I've heard otherwise reasonable wizards make remarks like "I don't know how Muggles manage," or "Muggle attempts to substitute for magic," but that's not how it is. Muggles don't substitute for magic. Frankly, they don't need magic.

HARRY: But what's this got to do with the Death Eaters?

GRIMROOK: Because the idea of Muggles on an equal footing with wizards completely shakes the traditional world view of Wizardry. To make matters more difficult for traditionalists, as the Muggle population grows, so does the number of Muggle-borns, who enter the Wizarding World with all sorts of ideas Muggles developed in the past few centuries, which are foreign to wizards because they separated themselves from the rest of the world. Wizards completely missed the developments taking place, sometimes right in front of them. In other words, the line between the magical and non-magical worlds is starting to fade. I believe the Death Eaters fear that if things carry on the way they do, the walls between worlds will crumble completely. I might add that though they'd never admit to it, I think that deep down they're terrified that Muggles will surpass wizards. ... To preserve the society they believe in, they are determined to stamp out all Muggle influence, starting with Muggle-borns.


Rowling never sets forth this kind of explanation; but this kind of fear is usually the reason that violent ideology arises. I'm currently reading a fascinating book, The Nazi Conscience, by Claudia Koonz, which explains a lot of this. Koonz's thesis is that Hitler won German support in three ways: addressing their fears, deception, and seduction. The first reason is very important, because as a look at Hitler's speeches in the early 1930s will show, he hardly mentions anti-Semitism. Hitler was not elected by Germany because he was anti-Semitic; he was elected because he was anti-Communist. At that time, Germany's easternmost border was less than two hundred miles from the Soviet Union, and the first few years of the Weimar Republic were fraught with fighting between German communists and returning war veterans, to such an extent that part of the reason the German government operated in Weimar was that the situation in Berlin was too chaotic for the government to function there.

Thus, to the Germans, communism was a very real and close threat, not some abstract threat on the other side of the planet like it was for Americans. Most Germans were absolutely terrified of the ideology and of the Soviet Union, for good reason. Their government was dysfunctional even outside of Berlin; their economy had been ripped apart by the Versailles Treaty. The French were occupying German lands. To the German people at that time, order and restoration of the country they knew and loved was a very appealing thing. So when Hitler came along and condemned communism, condemned the Versailles treaty, and condemned the disorder in the Weimar government, most Germans agreed with him. The following excerpt from The Nazi Conscience explains it well:

"In the nineteenth century, despite the protests of antisemites, Jewish Germans had been admitted to universities without quotas and had participated in cultural life, elite social circles, the professions, business, politics, and the sciences... During World War I, Jewish Germans fought and died for theri fatherland in the same proportions as Christian Germans. Of 38 German Nobel Laureates named between 1905 and 1937, 14 had Jewish ancestors. More Jewish young people married Christians than married Jews, and until 1933 the term "mixed marriage" referred to Protestant-Catholic and AFrican- or Asian-German unions, not to Jewish-Christian couples. A comparison of antisemitic acts and attitudes towards Jews in the popular press of Germany and four European nations (France, Great Britain, Italy, and Romania) from 1899 through 1939 demonstrates that Germans, before 1933, were among the least antisemitic people. Perhaps the best evidence of the relative openness of German society to Jews was the fact that no census had gathered data on ethnicity. ... In January 1933, all Germans belonged to the same nation.
"From 1928 to mid-1932, when electoral support from Nazi candidates leapt from 2.6 percent to 37.4 percent, antisemitism played little role in attracting voters to Nazism. Masses of Germans, disillusioned with a foundering democracy and terrified of communism in a time of economic catastrophe, were drawn to the Nazis' promise of a radically new order under Hitler's control. Archival research as well as memoirs and oral histories make it abundantly clear that Germans attitudes toward 'the Jewish question' began to depart from Western European and North American norms only after the Nazi takeover. Germans did not become Nazis because they were antisemites; they became antisemites because they were Nazis." (9-10)

To really understand how political and social disasters like Nazism and the Holocaust could take place, it is essential to understand the mindset of the populace that allowed it. Koonz goes on to explain the methodical process with which Hitler indoctrinated Germany into the Nazi mindset, so that by the 1940s, Germans were more inclined to believe what the Nazis told them about the Jews, where they were less likely in 1932. Koonz, in fact, demonstrates in a lengthy historical discourse that Hitler had to tread very carefully in his first few years in power to keep both popular support and the support of radical Nazis, because most Germans did not approve of the violence and harassment the SA perpetrated against the Jews.

I've done my best to set up both the Death Eaters and the Triskelions in this way; fear is the foundation of their ideology. Yes, there are people like Bellatrix Lestrange that are primarily motivated by the thrill that they get from holding power over somebody, but historically and demographically speaking, it makes more sense for the Death Eaters to be motivated primarily of fear of the unknown, even if they themselves aren't consciously aware that that's what they're afraid of. In that sense, as one reader remarked, I made them "just as bigoted and fearful of the unknown as the Dursleys."

A lot of people are not comfortable with this view of Nazism and similar ideologies because of the implications. It is the same reason that a lot of people were upset with the way the film Downfall portrayed Hitler. Essentially, looking at these ideologies in this way means acknowledging that people like Hitler and like the Nazis are human beings with human fears. It is more comfortable to define evil and extremism through the narrow lens of ideology rather than the much broader lens of human psyche. But understanding Hitler as a human being brings the rather disturbing realization that regardless of ideology, given the right circumstances and the right frame of mind, anybody could become something like Hitler.

I will only remark further, however, that if you portray Hitler as a monster rather than as a human being, you are essentially making him superhuman, which was exactly the kind of image he wanted to be remembered by. By refusing to acknowledge that he was a human being gone very badly wrong, you are handing a psychological victory to Hitler.

Problems with "Deathly Hallows"

When Deathly Hallows was released in July 2007, I had not gotten as far in the writing of Penumbra as I should have liked, but I had a thorough outline. Still, I was excited to see what Rowling had in store for her readers. I liked it. It was good enough that I was up all night reading it, just as with Half Blood Prince, and in fact had read it more quickly, even though it's longer. But I also had some disappointments with it, which probably was my own fault, since Penumbra was, even then, taking a detailed (and wildly different) approach to Harry Potter. 

My favorite scene in Deathly Hallows, and the main reason I
sometimes go back to reread it. 

Don't get me wrong. There were many things I admired about Deathly Hallows, starting with the pacing. I was never bored reading it. Rowling has a gift for suspense which I appreciate. The pacing was perfect for the story (I wish I could say the same for Books 4 and 5). I also admired the powerful symbolism (even if it is a bit clichéd) of Harry's sacrifice. Rowling pulled it off well, and the film even better, which I can say with a surety because it is one of the few scenes in a movie that actually has reduced me to tears. I was impressed by the theme of motherhood, how they won because of Lily Potter's sacrifice and Narcissa Malfoy's turning on Voldemort; Molly Weasley's killing of Bellatrix Lestrange, in outraged defense of her daughter, also reinforced that. (Plus, I think we all loved "Not my daughter, you BITCH!"

But at the same time there were a number of failings in the book where Rowling either could have done better or done without entirely, which I will now detail:

1. The Epilogue
There was a lot I didn't like about the epilogue, but what I really couldn't grasp was the fact that after the devastation presented in Deathly Hallows, everything appears to have just gone back to normal. But history doesn't work like that. If Rowling were to present us with an epilogue at all, it ought to have been one showing the aftermath of war. Is it believable that Harry kills Voldemort, the remaining Death Eaters get imprisoned, and it's business as usual? There were no discontented persons who profited from Voldemort's regime, and lost their profit? No backlash from the International Confederation of Wizards, or the Muggle government, for the number of Muggles killed? The Dementors simply disappeared? There were no vengeful Muggle-borns or half-bloods preparing some sort of anti-pureblood backlash? Nobody coming after Harry for the Elder Wand, even though he shouted for the whole Great Hall to hear that he was now its master? No discontented, escaped Snatchers or Death Eaters? No backlash from the goblins? No economic repercussions?

History shows that after a war, especially one fought on one's own soil, society cannot simply return to the way things were before the conflict. The status quo is dead. This is why war should be avoided if possible, only done when in a crisis, all other alternatives have been exhausted. The deaths are bad enough, but when you go to war, there is no turning back. There are countries out there which fought wars decades or even centuries ago, which still haven't recovered. Of all things in the Harry Potter series that I found the most unbelievable, this was it. 

2. The Horcruxes
Simply put, Rowling made the Horcrux hunt too easy and too fast. Many fans didn't mind as much as I did, but I didn't like that Harry managed to locate and destroy four Horcruxes in twenty-four hours (the cup, the diadem, the snake, himself). The fact that he learned their location through Voldemort himself, or through a panicked Death Eater, is a cop-out. Rowling either was being lazy, or simply didn't think this through. An analysis of each Horcrux explains why this was badly handled:

a. Marvolo Gaunt's ring and Salazar Slytherin's locket

The ring and the locket were the only Horcruxes handled well (with the exception of the diary and Harry). The ring set a precedent to how Voldemort's Horcruxes are hidden and protected, and the locket set the standard. Firstly, the Horcruxes are hidden in places connected with Voldemort's obscure, yet significant past: the ring was hidden in the Gaunt shack, connected with his more obscure ancestry, his parents' meeting, and near where he murdered his father; while the locket was hidden in a cave Voldemort had visited as a child. Secondly, the Horcruxes and their hiding places are booby-trapped, extremely dangerous to approach, let alone remove: the ring was protected with a deadly curse, and the locket protected by a potion that could only be drunk, and was also surrounded by hundreds of Inferi. Thirdly, the Horcruxes themselves, and their hiding places, are connected to Voldemort engaging in an act of dominion over someone, either by murder or by something subtler: the ring was hidden in the place where Voldemort framed his uncle for his father's murder, while the locket was hidden in a place where Voldemort had terrorized two children. While the ring's location and destruction all happened offstage, the locket was entirely on page: its location was obscure yet significant, it was heavily booby-trapped, its history (and the history of the cave) was particularly dark, and this is to say nothing of Harry's struggle to locate and destroy it after R.A.B. removed it. Every one of the remaining Horcruxes should have been at least as difficult to find and destroy as the locket, if not more so. This, however, Rowling failed to do.

b. The diary
I admit that the diary completely violates the standard of the locket; but I still think this was handled well because though the diary was a Horcrux, it wasn't created for the same purpose as the others; unlike the other Horcruxes, which are safeguards for Voldemort's immortality, the diary was created as a weapon, a means for Voldemort to personally infiltrate Hogwarts and open the Chamber of Secrets without actually going there. He gave the diary to Lucius Malfoy, with the intention that Malfoy plant it on a student for this purpose; but Malfoy wasn't supposed to do so until Voldemort gave the go-ahead. But this is where my praise ends and my criticism begins.

c. Nagini
I don't have as much to say about Nagini as I do about the others, but I find it strange that Voldemort would place a piece of his soul in a creature that can think and act for itself. My largest criticism about this, however, is that it would have made more sense if the piece of Voldemort's soul in Nagini completely took over her body, so that Nagini either lost her sense of self, or was being constantly possessed. It wouldn't have been difficult for Rowling to say as much, but she never did.

d. The cup

Seriously?

This was the first Horcrux, which Rowling did not handle well, because it has the same purpose as the locket but doesn't follow the standard set up in Half Blood Prince. In fact, the cup's hiding place seems completely contrary to Voldemort's character:

1) Its hiding place, though difficult to get to, was not in a remote place, and its location had nothing to do with Voldemort's personal past, and to our knowledge, it is not a place where he ever killed, terrorized, or showed dominion over someone. The Gringotts vault only had one connection to Voldemort, in  hat it belonged to one of his Death Eaters. This in of itself doesn't fit in, but we'll get to that shortly.

2) Its hiding place was only booby-trapped after Bellatrix began to fear a breakin, and the traps were laid by goblins, supposedly at her request, but not by Voldemort himself. 

3) It is established in Half-Blood Prince that Voldemort works alone, and does not depend upon his Death Eaters. Therefore, it seems completely contrary to his character that he would place one of his Horcruxes in the custody of one of the Death Eaters, even one as loyal as Bellatrix Lestrange, and make the cup dependent upon goblin security and enchantments for protection, which Voldemort himself has broken through (in Philosopher's Stone). The exception is the diary, of course, but again this was because Voldemort created the diary as a weapon and not a safeguard. The cup, however, had no such purpose (at least to our knowledge); therefore it makes no sense for Voldemort to place it in Bellatrix's custodianship.

4. The justification given for Voldemort hiding the cup at Gringotts is that he never had been part of the Wizarding World before Hogwarts, and had no vault-- and resented it. Again, given that he prefers to work alone, dependent on no one, this also is inconsistent to his character.

The inconsistencies are glaring. It makes it almost sound as though Voldemort put the cup there because he couldn't think of anywhere else to put it-- making him less creative, and therefore less formidable, than is established.

How did Voldemort not realize that hundreds of students had used it?

e. The diadem
The diadem's hiding place was the most incomprehensible to me. Like the cup, it was glaringly inconsistent with the standard set by the locket.

1. While Hogwarts is a part of Voldemort's past, it is hardly obscure, and the Room of Requirement is simply too obvious. In Deathly Hallows, we are told that because Voldemort works alone, and because of his own arrogance, he didn't realize that anyone can get into the Room of Requirement. This was a brain fart on Voldemort's part if there ever was one. He was a prefect, and chances are he could have heard about the Room of Requirement from other prefects; surely someone knew about it? But even if not, how did he fail to notice the hundreds of items which other students had hidden there over the centuries, some of them undoubtedly hidden recently? Voldemort is not an idiot. He's arrogant, yes, but not stupid. It should have taken him a single glance at the "Room of Hidden Things" to realize that hundreds of students have been there, used it, discovered it by accident, and that more almost certainly would in future.

2. The diadem wasn't booby-trapped at all, making it incredibly easy for Harry to obtain (it was only Draco Malfoy and Crabbe that made it difficult, nothing Voldemort did).

3. To our knowledge, the room has no connection with Voldemort terrorizing or killing somebody. It sounds as though he simply found it by accident, like many students before him.

Simply put, the Room of Requirement was a bad place to put the diadem. It was lazy on Rowling's part, and inconsistent with what she'd done with the locket.


3. Ginny
The fact that Penumbra is largely about Ginny ought to show that I actually love her as a character. I find her a fascinating part of the series, and unlike many of my friends I can see Harry and Ginny as a believable couple. Unfortunately, believability is all that can really be said about them. While Rowling put enough into Ginny's character to make the relationship believable, I do not deny that she is not as well developed a character as many of the more central characters. It wouldn't have mattered if Harry hadn't fallen for her; but the fact that he does, and that Rowling intended it that way from Philosopher's Stone,  makes the lack of Ginny's development aesthetically unacceptable. I only let Rowling off the hook because it makes Ginny stories more creative. The development of Ron and Hermione's characters and their relationship exhausted itself, but with Harry and Ginny I always have room to maneuver.

Ginny Weasley: The most neglected
character in Harry Potter. 

In Half Blood Prince, Rowling put Ginny almost on center stage, towards the end almost in Harry's inner clique. It was something she'd been building towards since Order of the Phoenix. I therefore expected Ginny to play some essential central role in Deathly Hallows; but when the last installment came along, Rowling just sort of swept Ginny out of sight, giving us only a few brief mentions of her and her doings.

In story-telling, I care considerably about aesthetics, and in literature, it’s often better to either completely justify a character’s prominence, or simply not make that character prominent at all. Rowling should have given Ginny a lot more presence from the beginning, at least from end of Chamber of Secrets on. The plot of CS gave Rowling considerable potential to give Ginny her own journey, her own story. She could easily have developed Ginny further on the basis of the trauma of the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny ought to have been presented as someone who, like Harry, has a personal (and painful) connection/relationship with Voldemort. Rowling treats her possession by Riddle’s diary as something initially painful but which she can brush off, like Riddle striking or beating her. But what Rowling presented in Book 2 (heavily veiled, considering her audience), and briefly discussed in Book 5, sounded a lot more like rape, which is very difficult to recover from. Is Ginny presented as a tough, gutsy girl because of her upbringing among six brothers? Or is that her character because of what Riddle did to her? Does Ginny try to deal with it through toughness? These are questions Rowling never answers, but Ginny’s character would make more sense in this aspect if she shows signs of PTSD, especially in the wake of Voldemort’s taking over and Harry’s departure on the Horcrux Hunt.

4. Harry's failure to use resources
Harry's "eternal camping trip" (as my brother calls it) was much more difficult and dangerous than it needed to be, because he did not use all available resources at his disposal. Some of these might not have helped in his survival, but they might have been useful in the fight against Voldemort.

I don't know about you, but Parseltongue seems like a useful asset. 

1. Parseltongue: (I am not counting his using it to open the locket.) Why does Harry never use this against Voldemort? Since snakes seem to be sentient in the Harry Potter series, why doesn’t Harry make use of snakes?

2. Not making any use of his financial assets: Harry and Ron are completely dependent upon Hermione for money; yet we know that Harry has more money than both of his companions. Why did Harry never visit Gringotts and remove his money? Knowing he'd be going away on a very undercover mission for a while, the very first thing Harry should have done, as soon as he left Hogwarts in Half-Blood Prince, was transfer his money to Muggle banks, or even completely into cash. Either way this would make it more accessible to him even if Voldemort took over the Ministry. 

That being said, 3. Spends more time living off the land than researching and hunting Horcruxes: This is understandable, given that once Voldemort takes over the Ministry, Harry would be barred from all conventional resources in Britain. So why does he never go abroad? He’s rich enough, and he’d be able to put much greater focus on his actual mission, than on surviving. 

That being said, 4. Clearly not knowing how to live off the land: This isn't as serious a problem, but was simply something that irritated me. I've lived on the border between city and wildlife for most of my life, and there are few simple rules to this, one of the most important being to never eat wild mushrooms (or wild anything) unless you are absolutely sure they are edible. I don't know how many edible mushrooms and berries, or poisonous ones, grow in Britain, but in America if you went camping with Hermione's and Harry's foraging habits, you'd either be incredibly lucky, or incredibly dead. This is another reason that it would have made more sense for Harry to go abroad, where he wouldn't have to live off the land so much. 



These are only a few problems I had with Deathly Hallows, but they are the main ones. These problems aren't difficult to spot, and in outlining aren't difficult to fix. However, lot of these failings would have required considerably more work and book length to repair that Rowling seemed willing to put into the work. Rowling is more talented than she shows in Deathly Hallows. Overall, her work in her finale was lazy, and not only could have used considerable more work, but needed more work. 

Origins: Open-end for "Half-Blood Prince"

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was released on July 16th, 2005. I remember the date because it was also my sister Carrie's birthday. We had a "Carrie-Harry" party later that week, but the day of, for reasons I don't fully recall, wasn't a convenient day for it. Just as well, because everyone wanted to read the book. I remember there was a local spoiler. Near the nearest Shopko there's a highway overpass with a chain-link fence, and somebody Dixie-cupped "SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE" into it. My sister was outraged, but I was not... because I had already read it by the time I saw it.

We-- me, my father, and my brother-- obtained our own copy at one o' clock that morning, and I sat down immediately and began to read. I couldn't put it down. I was intrigued by the situation with Draco Malfoy, fascinated with the unfolding Horcrux story, and pleased with the growing Harry/Ginny Ron/Hermione romances. Finally, I was absolutely stunned by Snape killing Dumbledore at the end.

I finished the book and went to bed at around three in the afternoon (I would have finished it earlier, had I not been called away to help my grandfather fix his roof), but I didn't sleep long, because I kept turning everything over in my head. What would happen next? Where would the Horcrux hunt take Harry? How long would it take him? Whose side was Snape really on? What would Ginny be doing? What if HARRY were a Horcrux? So it went. I wanted answers, but I remembered the two-year gaps between previous book releases and I was too impatient to wait for that long.

In her introduction to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley made the remark, "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it." In other words, regardless of what formalists would have us think, imagination does not come out of nowhere. Something always conditions it, then inspires it. It was no different for me.

One day, while re-reading a portion of HBP, I had the image of a battle-worn Harry Potter standing at the parapet of a tower on a hidden island, looking out to the sea as he carefully plans his enemy's downfall, training daily for it, no longer innocent. He has taken lives, and has resigned himself to it, to doing whatever it takes to put an end to the awful evil, depravity and bloodshed happening in his home country. Meanwhile, he wonders about her, his beloved, fighting on the front line, but he has little further knowledge of her. Meanwhile, she undergoes her own journey, fighting for him but with no knowledge of his whereabouts or if he is even alive.

That was my prompt. And unable to wait for Book 7's release, I built a story around that image. I slowly developed an ending to the series, the way I would end it, were I J.K. Rowling. Many things helped me build this world. I felt it doable. During high school (and later university) I had studied World War II and Nazism extensively. I had seen fascist propaganda, had read extracts from their literature. I had read extensive (and disturbing) details from the concentration camps and the battle fronts. I took special interest in Germans who opposed Hitler, and were often killed for it. I was especially touched by the stories of the White Rose and Helmuth Hübener. They became part of my inspiration, both for this story and the novel I intend to later base on it.

My father worked in a university library, and I'd spent many hours of my childhood there, encouraged to read in any genre or area that struck my fancy. I'd always had an inquisitive nature, and in addition to modern history I'd also grown up learning about physics and natural science, and later philosophy and religious thought as I progressed in my education. When I began developing this story, I studied the classical elements and the medieval theories about the humors. I learned a little bit about alchemy. I read fantasies and became particularly fascinated with dragons, faeries, goblins, and the World War II folk story of the gremlin.

I also harbored a guilty enjoyment of computer games, typically from the science-fiction and fantasy genres. As a teenager one of my personal favorites was the Myst series, which offered a wonderful blend between the two genres. I also loved The Elder Scrolls and Halo, among other games.

I was equally drawn to literature, reading classics in all time periods. My favorite was Pride and Prejudice (and remains so), but I also loved the works of Goethe (particularly the first part of Faust), and the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Siegfried Sassoon. In popular literature, I also loved The Lord of the Rings and Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" stories. I read whatever crossed my fancy, and of course, all that my history, German, and literary studies classes required.

All of these provided ideas that enabled me to write this story, one that currently is a Harry Potter-themed story, but which, after its completion, I intend to rewrite as a publishable series of novels. The key to being able to write well is being able to write and read well. I had wanted to be a writer since I was very young, but it was this idea, what became the "Penumbra" series, that really put me into practice.