'He was never free.'

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being the final book of the Potter septet, is perhaps Rowling's finest work, written at the peak of her literary power.

In this post, my aim will be to contrast what I see as the dramatic success of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows as a book, and the dramatic failure of the film adaptation. Chiefly I shall focus on what I should like to call the 'quiet climaxes' of The Deathly Hallows; three moments in the book the importance of which to the plot are pivotal, but which are not spectacular, so to speak.

Of course The Deathly Hallows is a book the pacing of which is excellent, and which is also tense, exciting, and literally spectacular; the menace of Voldemort and of death leavens the whole work. Critics who disparage the part of the book in which Harry, Ron and Hermione travel fruitlessly across Britain seem to forget that it consists of but two chapters and just over thirty pages, just over one-twentieth of the book; this suggests that, far from the pace flagging, Rowling's use of pacing is masterly given that she is able to create such an impression with so small a segment of the work.

To return to the 'quiet climaxes', there are, I believe, three such moments in the book; I shall describe them in greater detail below. As I said above, these three moments are pivotal to the plot of the book, and, what is more, are immensely important in terms of developing or representing the character of the agents. They are also, in addition, aesthetically excellent. The film version, on the whole, does not adapt all of them uniformly well, and it is my contention that the films suffer dramatically as a result. I should note that I will be providing any details I deem necessary to explicate my point, so you may wish to avoid reading this post if you have not read The Deathly Hallows in its entirety.

On we go! Or, as Dumbledore said in The Half-Blood Prince (HBP3, 59), 'let us... pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.'