And we’ve finally reached the end — the last eleven chapters of the last Harry Potter book, plus the epilogue.
For the past six months we’ve been exploring a different part of Harry Potter canon in sequence. Back in the late 1990s and 2000s, fans read each of these books as they were released, waiting years between each volume. We discussed and wrote and wondered about how the saga would end up, and with these last few chapters of Deathly Hallows we finally found out.
Did Rowling answer all the mysteries and questions she’s stirred up through the previous six novels? Not quite, no. But she certainly cleared up a lot of details, even some that we really didn’t expect to learn about. For example, who could have expected that Kreacher and the Grey Lady would have their stories told?
More importantly, some key questions were answered about the central plot. Harry was a Horcrux (sort of) and Snape was in love with Lily (in a manner of speaking). Neither of these revelations was a surprise to fans — you can read essays written before book seven was released about these very ideas here on the Lexicon. What made this book so wonderful wasn’t Rowling’s surprise revelations so much as the surprising way those revelations fit into the story.
So now let’s dive one last time into our celebration of the Harry Potter canon:
Podcasts:
Obsessive Love by Abby Koop
CC1.1&2: Starting With the Epilogue by Eileen Jones
Feelings About Snape by Eileen Jones
Sort Too Soon? by Eileen Jones
He Did Not Look Back by Abby Koop
Neville’s Bravery by Rosie Payne
Choosing the Deathly Hallows by Ashmita Shanthakumar
A Shout-out to Narcissa Malfoy by Eileen Jones
About Snape and Love by Rosie Payne
Reader’s Guides:
These guides were originally written in 2007 and 2008. Since that time, a few edits were made here and there but basically the text remained the same. To get ready for this Canon Celebration, our editors have been revising each one. We’ve added fan artwork to the Guide which illustrates the text. At the bottom in the Commentary section we’ve added a gallery of additional artwork. So even if you’ve read our guides before, please give them another look. And if you’re doing a re-read of the first book, have the Guide to each chapter open as you go! I’m sure you’ll find a lot of information you didn’t know.
Reader’s Guide to the Epilogue
Calendars
Fitting the books into the real-life calendars isn’t easy! In fact, it’s impossible. But that didn’t stop us:
Day to day calendar of events in the book
Text Changes of the Editions and the Years
Differences between the British and American versions
Essays
Harry and the Horcruxes by Megan Bostelman
Is Harry a Horcrux? by Steven Haas
Snape’s Change of Allegiance by Cherry
Interesting Artwork
We have hundreds and hundreds of pieces of fan artwork in our collection. Some subjects get a lot of depictions — Diagon Alley is a favorite topic, for example, and, well, of course it is! But there are a few pieces which illustrate more unusual moments in the text. Here are a few examples:
Helena Ravenclaw, the Grey Lady, with the Diadem
Lily and Severus just before heading off to Hogwarts, when everything changed
According to Cursed Child, this happened.
Aftermath of battle
Artwork Challenge
Our Artwork Challenge for all you fan artists out there is to depict one of the lesser-known characters and scenes in the series. If we really like your work, we may feature it in the Lexicon! Here are some suggestions from these chapters:
- The posters in Diagon Alley of Harry as “Undesirable Number 1” (DH26)
- The disguised Hermione and Ron with Griphook at Gringotts Bank (DH26)
- Inside Gringott’s – the goblin Griphook using clankers to control the blind dragon, the Lestrange family vault, and catching Hufflepuff’s cup (DH26)
- Aberforth Dumbledore arguing with Harry about his brother Albus (DH28)
- The Dumbledore family and the death of Ariana Dumbledore (DH28, DH35)
- Harry, Albus Dumbledore and the screaming soul of Lord Voldemort in King’s Cross Station (DH36)
- Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione standing with their families, looking cooly at Draco Malfoy and his family at King’s Cross Station nineteen years later (DH/e)
- Harry advising his nervous son Albus about the Sorting Hat and Slytherin House (DH/e)
Send your artwork to [email protected]. By submitting it, you are giving us permission to display your work on the Lexicon. We would like to include your name with your artwork so you are properly credited, so when you send your work let us know what name to use. Please also include a way to get a hold of you so that if we decide to feature your work as part of our regular collection we can contact you for more details. All artwork we display remains the property of the artist and they retain all copyright.
From the Atlas:
In 2008, after the publication of the last Harry Potter novel, I approached Methuen Book in London with the idea of writing a travel memoir about a fan’s journey around Great Britain looking for places similar to the ones found in Rowling’s writing. They took me up on the scheme and for about half a year I traveled around England and Scotland taking photos and having some truly magical adventures. The book I wrote, In Search of Harry Potter, was published in 2008.
A wonderful fan artist and personal friend, Camilla Engleby, created not only the beautiful cover artwork but also several maps showing the places I explored in the pages of the book. Below is the map of London she created. Each of the locations shown on this map have significance in the Harry Potter books. For example, that mysterious door on Charing Cross Road …
… might just be the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron!
Coming up next week…
Back to normal, I suppose. Our editors will just keep editing and adding content. I will be managing some new projects and hunting, as always, for more fan artists whose work we can showcase here on the Lexicon. Thank you all so much for your support, your comments, your nitpicking, your recommendations, and yes, your complaints. The Lexicon has been and will continue to be the most compleat and wonderful reference to Rowling’s Wizarding World found anywhere in any medium. There is always so much more to discover! To paraphrase Dumbledore, “(L)et us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, J.K. Rowling!”