Names and Memorials (Deathly Hallows Spoilers)

I'm going to start with the very end, since that is the freshest in my mind. J. K. Rowling has always been very deliberate about the names she gives to her characters, so I paid especially close attention to the names of the next generation of Potter and Weasley children. My first thought was disappointment that among three boys, none was named Fred. Perhaps James or Hugo's middle name was Fred, or perhaps Ginny and Ron had agreed to reserve that honor for George, assuming he eventually had children. But I wanted to see some concrete sign of remembrance, and I felt especially acutely the fact that we never really got to see how George dealt with the death of this brother who had been so completely a part of him.

I found the names Ron and Hermione quite curious, and eventually I settled upon a theory: that in the spirit of their playful sniping with one another, they'd named the children after old crushes - Rose after Madam Rosmerta, Hugo as a more veiled reference to Viktor. Perhaps it's a stretch, but I can see them having a laugh about that, and the kids wouldn't have to know the origin of their names...

Lily and James is pretty obvious, not surprising at all, but my heart gave an odd little leap when I saw the name Albus Severus. What a mark of Harry's maturity, to name his son after the teacher he'd so long loathed and the professor he'd venerated, only to learn all sorts of deep dark secrets about him! I was very glad for those conversations with Albus Dumbledore at the end of the book, since before that point I was starting to think the whole book had been one big smear on the good name of the headmaster I so adored. Certainly there were many revelations about him that made me deeply uncomfortable, but once Harry had the opportunity to forgive Dumbledore personally, it was like a great weight had been lifted. I wish he'd had more of a moment like that with Snape, but there was at least a glimmer of recognition in that final moment, and one of the lines competing for my favorite in the book is "Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew." If only he'd known a little sooner...