Tightly Wound

Thank goodness someone else is wondering that, too. Makes me think I didn't just miss something like always. It was just described, not named, but that's clearly what it was supposed to be. At least by my reading. After my, "Neville! Yeah!" moment, I had to re-read that a couple times to see if what I was seeing was being seen.

I too was wondering how the sword got to Hogwarts, but I'm also wondering what the deal is with the Elder Wand. If anyone can explain exactly how the "wand transfer" happens, I'm all ears. Big Arm and I talked about it this morning and I'm still confused as to the rules.

Re the sword, I think the only way Neville got it was because Voldemort brought the Sorting Hat into play by using it to torture Neville. Per Chamber of Secrets, the Sorting Hat has the ability to provide the Sword to Gryffindors who need it.

Re the Elder Wand, the best I can figure is that the Elder Wand changes its allegiance whenever its current master is disarmed in a duel - hence all the setup byplay regarding Harry's preference for using the Expelliarmus charm. Apparently, any wand may suffice in the disarming process, the previous master doesn't have to have been using the Elder Wand at the time.

Just my take on it, your mileage may vary.

Roxanne -

Those explanations make sense - the weird thing to me is the reader's having to fill in all those blanks...in the first 6 books Rowling was almost too explication-heavy, then suddenly in 7 there's nothing, which made me wonder if either a)I was missing something, or b)she was forgetting something.

Dang, I thought this was going to be about the Boy's toilet training.

I just took another read of that bit, and it does specifically say that Neville "drew from its depths" -- those depths being those of the Sorting Hat -- the sword. So, I guess we're supposed to accept the whole time of need stuff just like in "Chambers". Still oddly cryptic from a writer who likes, when revealing something, to explain the hell out of things.

I just want to know how the sorting hat survived the fire so that it could still be used 19 years later...

The Elderwand stuff was very confusing, and when I finally thought I had it figured out we had that scene with Harry tricking Voldemort through the story about Draco robbing Dumbledore's grave.

I was really getting geared up for there to be a big duel in the end involving Snape (who I was sure would be using the Elderwand) -- though to J.K.'s credit I wasn't sure until the end if the duel would be Snape v. Voldemort or Snape v. Harry. The Prince's tale was fairly moving, but Snape's death was still anticlimactic.

And Albus Severus Potter? I don't think so. Poor Ginny did not seem to have much input when the young Potters were thinking up names for their children. Why no Fred Potter?

Poppleton -

Yeah, the Elderwand thing was too convoluted for the explication to come when it did--it was the middle of the final battle, and the whole "see, you have to disarm or defeat the wizard for the wand to work and Snape didn't get the wand because Draco--yadda, yadda--pretty much dragged the pacing down to a slow crawl.

So I was all, "Yay! Huh? Wait, who with the what now? Oh, Voldemort's dead. Um, yay."

And I concur with the Albus Severus thing. Frederick Albus, maybe.

I dunno. It all made sense to me. Of course, we have a tradition at my house of reading each of the Potter books aloud as a family. When my wife and I get confused or forget who some minor character is, our teenaged daughter calls upon her encyclopedic memory of all-things-Potterverse and fills us in. While each of us had our minor disappointments (I think everyone had their ideas of how the story should go) we had a great time reading the story.

Rowling gives the sword answer here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20035573/