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Finished, about an hour ago. Mostly very satisfied. What a good quest!

I found the entire quest delicious, tantalizingly scary and convincingly desperate. The Trio's trek through fields and forests, towns and secret hiding places, long lost days in the snow, feeling ever more hopeless by the day. The snow. Harry's wand breaks. Ron leaves. Harry and Hermione, alone, search now, even more hopelessly, for the horcruxes, and now the Hallows, desperate to find them, to solve the mystery, to conclude the quest armed and ready for the upcoming battle -- all good stuff, atmospheric, heart-wrending, sad. The wizarding world, torn at the seams. The doe patronus. The sword. Potterwatch on the radio, the last vestiges of civilization among the madness, the scurrying, the desperate evacuations, the imprisonments, the war raging. Beautiful, I was swept along and swept away.

I set out on a quest, to read about a quest, and as it turned out I felt satisfied, both by the quest itself -- at times thrilling, at times hopeless and sad, at times dangerous, at times aimless, but constant, and desperate, and driving -- and by the quest of reading the quest, which I devoured in five hours, a page-turner, that was.

Dumbledore's trust in Snape, and Snape's selfless protection of Lily and her lineage, and Snape's trust in Dumbledore that, though unspoken, his agenda was to ensure Harry would live, when in fact Harry was built, and raised, to die.

And all the elements were cohesive and perfect. The final battle should, of course, take place at Hogwarts, where each former student did what he did best, and Harry, the seeker, finally found what he sought, in the form of the tiara horcrux, which he nabbed, like a snitch, while flying his broomstick. Hermione, reading the book, learning about the Hallows and yet disbelieving. "I had counted on Ms. Granger," said Dumbledore. To not let Harry's heart lead him blindly after the Hallows, that Hermione's empirical intellect would hold Harry back. And Ron, whose talent is love, came back, to share his love, to allow it to help them finish their quest. He learned Parseltongue from Harry, encouraged by Hermione to use his wizard's brain to find a way to help, and altogether, the Trio came to a sound and solid conclusion, to steal from Lloyd Alexander we get the Knowledge (in Harry), the Truth (in Hermione) and the Love (in Ron).

The quest was a quest, befitting a book of this scope and this scale, and I lived and breathed with every minute of it.

Then the battle came, and heroes emerged, in Luna, in Neville, in McGonagall, even in Draco whose wand, at the end, proved to be the one that would bring Voldemort down.

And Harry's death, crossing the veil, joining Dumbledore and Sirius and his parents as I predicted for the last year of book-anticipation, the Star Wars Ghosts standing by him, helping him on his way, down his path.

But his, it turned out to be, was another path. A way to force himself to move on, for the people he'd lost, to live on and protect and fight.

Beautiful. All of it, beautiful, satisfying and sad.

And then --

Harry came back, and killed Voldemort, and helped Narcissa save her son, and then for some reason Molly Weasley got to kill Bellatrix while we all know it shoulda been Neville's kill, but this whole book is an ode to the greater Weasley Clan, a new Wizarding family to pass its lineage on into the next generation of wizards.

And somehow Neville got the sword (how?) and cleaved Nagini, the final horcrux, and the deed was done. Harry passing down his knowledge to Neville much as Dumbledore passed his on to Harry. And it was Snape's doe patronus that saved them, the doe form his patronus took on out of love for the deceased Lily Adams, that same doe that helped Harry find the sword in the lake.

And then there was an epilogue, for whatever reason, that did some things I didn't particularly care about (which is not the same as things I didn't care for -- the only things that fit that category was a lack of good Neville narrative, the crazy heteronormalization of Tonks and Lupin (que?), and a sound lack of honorable and noble deaths -- even Fred's death was glossed over and in the end we mostly all lived happily ever after) --

Which is to say, I coulda done without the epilogue. I mean, if I'd had my druthers Harry would have slain Voldemort and stayed dead, beyond the veil with Dumbledore and the rest, and only Ron and Hermione would live to tell the tale, to their children, of the Brave Harry Potter who gave up his life to defeat the Dark Lord, and in doing so, sealed the prophecy and healed the world. Let the children of Ron and Hermione Weasley be the next generation at Hogwarts and we don't NEED any of that Harry/Ginny business, which struck me as pastede on yay, particularly because I believe Harry should have stayed dead.

In conclusion: I loved it, and found it a satisfying and emotional quest which I gladly went along with, page after page, in one sitting, unable to tear myself away, like Bastian in that attic reading The Neverending Story. I cared, I cried, I'm satisfied. Good book, Jo.