Driving south yesterday from West Yellowstone to Colter Bay in the Tetons, we were listening to the last few CDs of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, read by Jim Dale. I don’t think HP7 is Rowling’s best work, it feels like she had to pull stuff together to make the storyline work, and some of her inventions feel like plot gimmickry.
For example, how could Ron Weasley mimic Harry’s parseltongue to get the chamber of secrets to open to get the basilisk fangs? Ron hadn't heard Harry say those words for five years. Where did “fiend fire” come from all of a sudden? Supposedly either Crabb or Goyle starts it, and they are both no-talent dolts, little better than trolls.
If what happens to Harry while he is getting over being Arvada Kadavra’d by Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest, seemingly talking to Dumbledore in 'Kings Cross Station,' truly is all happening in Harry’s head, then everything Dumbledore says is stuff Harry already knew, but didn’t know he knew. Rowling has Dumbledore say things Harry couldn’t have known, so it isn’t just happening in Harry’s head. Some sort of ghostly Dumbledore is actually talking to Harry in a “near-death” experience. All of this feels contrived.
Also, how could Dumbledore have known a priori Harry would have access to Snape’s dying thoughts, in order to learn he, Harry, is a horcrux and needs to die? Or did he trust that Harry would go to his death anyway, never knowing he’d been a horcrux? There are too many plot holes in this book.
