Dumbledore's Death and My Reaction To It

I just realised I wrote "the real Snape"... ^^" Well hopefully, people got the point, and didn't take that literary, because I'll be doing things like that... a lot. It's like when The Dark Knight was coming out in cinemas, and I saw a poster that said "Gary Oldman", and I went: "I wanna see that movie! Sirius Black is in it!"

... Yeah. ^^' Sara, who was with me (and whom henceforth shall be called "Katie" on this blog, because that's her HP-nickname, just like mine's "Hermione" ^^), laughed. A lot.

Random: I want a new layout here. But I'm no good at GIMP, and Photoshop kills my brain. Anyone nice out there who know how to use those things who could whip something nice together for me? *Padfoot-puppy-eyes* Maybe some images of me in some HP-moment, and I could screencap some Pensieve images for them... In fact, I think I'll go do that right after posting this.

*
(Fancy star to indicate big change of subject, that it.)

Anyway. Thought I'd go a bit serious and post something that I wrote for the HP Alliance a few days ago about Dumbledore's death and my reaction to that. They were asking for people's stories, and I just knew I had to write mine. So here we go.

Dumbledore's Death and My Reaction To It

Dumbledore’s death changed the books for me.

The earlier deaths didn’t really have that much impact on me, because I didn’t know the characters all that well. But sure, I cried when Sirius died, I was devastated, because I love the marauders, but I didn’t love Sirius, and there was some part of me that accepted that he was probably in a better place now, somewhere where he wouldn’t feel as trapped and miserable as he had done at Grimmauld Place. And Harry would be all right, because he had others, among them Dumbledore.

I remember reading the whole line of events leading up to that horrible, horrible death scene, being excited and scared while they were travelling to the cave, and then how everything became sort of surreal when Dumbledore drank from that goblet and suddenly wasn’t that old, wise and calm man any more, but someone weak and frightened. And it scared me more than many things have managed to do. I had begun to trust Dumbledore with always being the funny, caring old grandfather-figure that always came up with a solution, and I loved him probably more than I did anyone in the books, just because of him being who he was. Then there was that line… “’I am not worried, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. ‘ I am with you.’”

Such a perfect way to end a chapter. It had me crying, right there where I lay in my bed in the middle of the night, tired from hours of reading, and I just knew this was going to end badly. I couldn’t have guessed, not even in my wildest dreams, however, how badly it was going to become, because my head was not ready to grasp the concept of Dumbledore not being around anymore. It was already the worst that he was as weak as he was.

Someone else needs to be mentioned here, someone I never really paid much attention to before this point, mainly because I just saw him as a really horrible and unfair teacher who held a silly grudge towards Harry’s father (maybe I am slightly biased when it comes to the marauders, though…). Snape really wasn’t anything more to me. I disliked Malfoy more, and I absolutely hated him when he had the nerve to attempt to kill the headmaster as he and Harry made it to the tower.

And then Snape showed up and did Malfoy’s work. And I just couldn’t believe it. While I didn’t put down the book as I had to do when Harry died in the seventh, the rest of sixth were still a blur because of my tears. There are no words to describe how I felt when I read The White Tomb, and when I had finished my book, I slumped down on my pillows and cried myself to sleep.

The next morning I woke up, and I felt empty whenever I thought of Dumbledore, but one thing I was sure of was that I hated Snape. To this day I still don’t like him, even though we now know he was good, but planned or not, what he did was to me unforgivable. And it might be unfair, but after reading the seventh book I was not angry at Dumbledore for what he did.

I was also one of those who refused to believe Dumbledore was dead until Jo confirmed it, and I read through DumbledoreIsNotDead.com so many times I knew parts of it by heart. When she confirmed it… I don’t remember what I thought. I just think I felt as empty as I had done that morning when I woke up after reading the book.

But I think Dumbledore’s death was what made me realise that it was really war. It might have been foolish of me not to realise it earlier, but again there was that comfort of that when Dumbledore was there, nothing too dangerous would happen.

And that’s where the books changed, when the one who had always been there for Harry, and also for the readers who saw everything from Harry’s eyes, disappeared.