MAJOR BOOK 7 SPOILIERS

Before we start, I just want all possible readers to know that I am a rabid Harry/Hermione shipper.

And with that out of the way, I can say this: CANNON CAN SOD THE HELL OFF!!!

Deathly Hallows was a good book, much better than the sixth, but not the best in the series. I still think that book four and five were the best.

The final chapter in our favorite wizard’s life was intense to say the least, the whole way through. Harry does some major growing up, Hermione and Ron seem to have started some sort of relationship, but nothing it explicitly said; for that I am thankful.

Of course, the trio go looking for the remaining horcruxes, finding the locket, hidden by Regulus A. Black, a Cup owned by Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw’s diadem (something like a tiara, only it make you smarter), Voldemort’s snake Nagini, and one that no one was expecting.

But before I reveal the final horcrux, we must first ask, what are the “Deathly Hallows?”

The Hallows are, in fact, three magical objects of the most extreme power. A wand of elder wood that make the wand’s master unbeatable, a stone to bring the dead back, and an Invisibility cloak that the wearer truly invisible even so that even the Grim Reaper (Death) could not find you.

These items are… Harry’s invisibility cloak, the Gaunt Ring, and Dumbledore’s wand.

Harry already has the ring and the cloak, but Tom has the wand, but he is not the master. You see, the wand always chooses the wizard, but the elder wand is different, the person who defeats its previous master becomes its new master. You can work out who the real master is, can’t you?

But, as with most books, there is a twist, and I’m going to give you five.

First, Severus Snape was in love with Lily, and even though he never revealed it, he loved and protected Harry, if only in memory of Lily.

Second, if you remember Sorcerer’s Stone/Philosopher’s Stone, you might remember that Dumbledore is famous for defeating the Dark Lord Grindlewald. But what you don’t know is that both Albus and Grindlewald were best friends.

Third, Severus and Lily knew each other before Hogwarts; Snape even lived in Lily’s neighborhood.

Fourth: Dumbledore planned everything that happened in the sixth book. The destruction of the ring horocrux was going to kill him by the end of the year, so he had Snape kill him and become the master of the Elder wand.

Fifth and finally, Harry is the seventh, final, and unexpected horocrux.

Yes, ladies and gents, Harry is a horcrux. When Riddle visited the Potter’s that Halloween, and he filed to kill Harry, a part of his soul was ripped from him and merged with Harry.

And if you haven’t guessed, the all the horcruxes have to be destroyed before Riddle can die.

Yes.

Harry has to die.

Harry goes to face Voldemort and sees Tom use Nagini to kill Snape, and in the professor’s final moments, he gives Harry several memories of him and Lily when they were young, and memories of Dumbledore’s plans.

In fact, Tom does kill him, or at least casts the killing curse at him.

And in death, Harry meets Dumbledore at a dream version of the King’s Cross Station, and the two of them talk about the everything that has happened, the hallows, the horcruxes, and death.

And as it turns out, Harry is dead, and yet, he is not. The killing curse that Tom used on Harry did two things, one, it destroyed the part of Voldemort’s soul within Harry, and two it freed Harry from their connection, leaving Harry’s soul purely his. Harry has a choice he can either go with Dumbledore into death or return to life.

What do you think Harry does?

I won’t tell you the ending, you’ll just have to read it or find it on the internet, but I recommend, for the first time since the sixth book, that you take the time to sit down and read Deathly Hallows.

If not or fun, read for what it symbolizes, then end of an era.

For the last ten years, since June 30, 1997 when Philosopher’s Stone was first published, Harry Potter has been our constant companion through thick and thin. Inspiring us to be better than who we are, opening a world to us, a world of paper and words between covers. Inspiring us, broadening our imaginations.

And so I propose a toast.

To Harry Potter. To Hermione Granger. To Ron Weasley. To Dan Radcliff. To Emma Watson. To Rupert Grint. And to J.K. Rowling herself.

To our heroes, our heroines, our first fantasy crushes.

Without you, our lives would’ve been cold and boring.

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.

Aengus no Kitsune

The fictions that every Harry Potter fan should read.

1. Vox Corporis by MissAnnThorpic, rated M: sexual/adult situations and language violence, complete: 68 Chapters. (fanfiction.net or portkey.org) HHr

2. Hope by Jeconais rated T: minor language. complete (minus a minor epilogue) 12 chapters (http://jeconais.fanficauthors.net/Hope/index.php) Harry/Gabrielle

3. Sunset Over Britain by bobmin rated M: sexual/adult situations and language violence, complete, 25 chapters (http://bobmin.fanficauthors.net/Sunset_Over_Britain/index.php) HHr (you must register)

4.Like a Sister by Jeconais, rated T. OneShot (http://jeconais.fanficauthors.net/Like_A_Sister/Like_A_Sister.php) HHr

5. White Knight, Grey Queen by Jeconais rated T: language and violence. complete 8 Chapters, (http://jeconais.fanficauthors.net/White_Knight_Grey_Queen/index.php) Harry/Pansy

6. An Aunt’s Love by Emma Lipardi, rated M: language and details of abuse, incomplete: 57 Chapters (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2196609/1/) no ship

7. Harry Potter: & The New Life By SilverAegis, rated M: violence, language sexual situations, abandoned: 12 chapters (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2390801/1/) no ship

8. Sunrise Over Britain by bobmin, rated M: sexual situations, language and extreme violence, complete 35 chapters (You must register) (http://bobmin.fanficauthors.net/Sunrise_Over_Britain/index.php) HHr

9. To Fight the Coming Darkness by jbern: rated M, language violence sexual situations incomplete 34 Chapters, (http://jbern.fanficauthors.net/To_Fight_the_Coming_Darkness/index.php) Harry/Susan (you must register)

10. This Means War! by Jeconais rated T: language, complete 12 chapters (http://jeconais.fanficauthors.net/This_Means_War/index.php) Harry/Ginny

I'm sorry if I have neglected to mention you favorite fic, but I believe that these ten are the absolute best fanfictions ever written for Harry Potter.

If you wish to complain about the absence of any slash fics, note, I am not against homosexuality in any way, I just have no wish to read it, I am sorry.

Happy reading.

Aengus

Today was good… not as cool as yesterday though.

In another “mini” city of Tokyo called Harajuku. In this town, only on Sunday, several Japanese girls and boys participate in Cosplay. The kids dress up as gothic brides, nannies, babies, other gothic outfits, or as their favorite anime character. It really was a shame… It was raining really hard here and there were two or three of these kids out and about, but nothing like what the locals told us about.

On a completely unrelated note, you should see how these people use their cell phones here. They’re never not using them, they always have their heads down typing away at some text-message; it’s amazing that they don’t crash into anything.

There really wasn’t anything exciting today, but we did find out that these people make “French Bread” that would put those snobby Frenchies to shame (I hope they loose the World Cup, GO JAPAN!).

This evening we went to dinner with a friend of my dad’s, I won’t even try to put his name here, if I did it would be spelled so poorly that you would think that I was just hitting the keyboard with my forehead.

Dinner was… interesting. First we had a Shashimi (raw) chicken that had probably been butchered minutes after we ordered. Then was the fried fished, followed by Shashimi of tuna, then Shabu-shabu. For those of you that don’t know, Shabu-Shabu is a type of cooking that is done in a community boiling pot, with veggies, tofu, and meat; ours was a special pork from the area that my dad’s friend’s wife, Megumi (Meg) is from. Now that was some good stuff. After the Shabu-Shabu, we were served some frozen custard of some kind, it was really good, but I really don’t know what it is, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned; it’s to never ask what you’re eating until after you’ve finished eating.

Tomorrow I am venturing off into Japan alone while my dad works, wish me luck

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

I'm in Heaven...

There is truly no other city on Earth like Tokyo. This place is so cool. first off there really aren't that many people in all of Japan, but the country is so small it seems that they're all compacted right here, when the sign for the crosswalk goes on its like a sea of humanity.

You should see their cell phones here, they make our look like children's toys, literally. Some of them have cameras that match or out do MY digital camera, if I can get on you'll see it, but I doubt it right now.

Then there is this other "mini" city within Tokyo, Akihabara: The Electric Town, also home to the largest Manga store in all of Tokyo. Inuyasha is up to volumes in the 40s and Bleach is to vol. 28! There are five floors to this store, all of it filled to the rafters of Manga. In other places there are models of all kinds, toys of every description, video games, DVDs, CDs, basically anything electronic that a person could want, and I mean anything.

That was yesterday, now for today.

Today we went to the outskirts of Tokyo, a little place called Kamakura. In the city/village was a shrine containing the third largest Buddha in all of Asia, the Daibutsu, or the giant Buddha of Kamakura. It was made entirely of Bronze and had to be 20+ meters tall.

But other than that we were too tired to anything more than go to the Sony building in the Ginza. This is the place where Sony shows off all its stuff that is about to release or had recently released. I even saw a PS3, I don’t think that it will stand up to the Wii or the Xbox 360, but what do I know?

We’ve crashed in out hotel, we’re dead tired.

Cheers

Aengus No Kitsune

Right now, everything here in Japan sucks. Ya' know why? It's raining. It's not a hard downpour, but a lasting hazy drizzle with heave intervals every now and then.

Despite the rain, dad and I went to see a couple of things here in Nagoya. First was the Nagoya-jo or the castle here. There really wasn't much to the castle, it's a reconstruction because the original was destroyed around WWII. Mainly the castle was the HQ for the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo period. Inside were tons of relics from the time and other things that put alot of the relics and reconstructions into perspective.

Next we got lost trying to get to the Tokugawa art Museum, that took us an hour to find it, not including the walk to it, another twenty minutes. This was the coolest museum I've ever been to, forget all of the art and authentic kimonos from the shogunate, there were 30+ swords, including a O-Dachi, a sword that was over three meters long! This sword was HUGE!!! I'm so glad that I found a flier of it to show ya'll (there's my Texan English again).

We skipped lunch, there really wasn't any where to eat and we were to exhausted to do anything else.

After we got our second wind, about two hours later we ventured out again into the streets to search for dinner, let me just say that I'm glad we did.

A few blocks from our hotel was the greatest place that I have ever eaten: "Slevy Surfboarders" (we're guessing that it lost something in translation). This restaurant is a place were the bring hot coals to your table and set them beneath a grill screen, then after the the grill gets hot, they bring the meat and/or veggies. O!M!G! This was so-o-o-o-o-o-o-o good. The two final meats we had were both beef, one was domestic Kobi beef that literally melted in your mouth. The other was marinated in sweet brown miso (Drool), its this kind of food that puts every other food to shame.

Now we're in the hotel watching the World Cup. Tomorrow we go to Tokyo for five days. Nothing more.

Cheers

Aengus No Kitsune

Now, I don;t know it if mentioned it, but my dad has told me many times that we were going to get lost in Japan, well... today we got lost... about four or five times. It was really sad, that and all the maps we got from the information stations around the city that spoke English had to be really out of date.

For the things that we did get to see when we weren't lost, we saw Kiyomizu Temple, a beautiful temple high in the hills surrounded by a beautiful forest. I really can't describe it you'll just have to wait and see the pictures when we get back.

Okay... it's official I have the weirdest dad in the world. The lady came up to us in the temple and asked us to take her picture. The weird part is my dad could tell were she was from, that she had just gotten out of the army and that she was well traveled. The lady, named Hen (use the "chet" sound in the back of your throat when saying the "H" in her name" was Israeli, spoke Hebrew, and had been all over the world and had spent eight months in Peru backpacking in the mountains.

Now after we parted ways with Hen, we got lost... twice, all on our way to the Golden Pavilion. We left Hen at around one or so and by the time we got to the Pavilion it was nearly four, sad ain't it?

Okay, about this Gold thing... the entire building is covered in gold and I mean all of it, even the roof of the place. I got another gift here from the priests, a little talisman for one of you, but you'll have to wait and see. ;)

Also, for those of you who don't know, part of my SN is Japanese for Fox, "Kitsune." Today I saw the shrine devoted to Inari, the fox god of Japan and the God of rice, wine, and foxes, even though my dad didn't notice it was really cool.

Even getting back to the hotel was another adventure, we got lost again.

That's it for today, tomorrow we go to Nagoya (Na-goy-a).

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

Today was our first day in the beautiful city of Kyoto. I must say that things here are so poorly set up that it is almost impossible for any foreign tourist not to get lost. My dad and I have gotten lost so many times it isn't funny.

We left Nara at 10:39 on a bullet train and it took us an hour to get to Kyoto. Once in the Kyoto station, my dad made us eat at a Kaiten-sushi place, or a place where the sushi is served to you on a conveyor belt, a style of restaurant that is particular to the Kansai region.

Next we went to tour hotel...

If you think a Ritz was a good hotel, then think again. We're staying at The Westin Miyako hotel and five star hotel. This place is even better than the Ritz and is way classier than anything else I've ever been in, not to mention we getting it for two days at well under 50% of the asking price.

There really wasn't time for us to do any sightseeing today so we went to Nijo Castle to see the place where the Shogun would stay during his rule of the country from about 1600-1800 (if memory serves me right...). At the castle we met these four or five junior high school girls who wanted to ask us some questions for their homework. Quite nice you people and the their teacher was ready to help translate for us if their was something the girls didn't know how to say in English. Then after all of the questions were done, they took a few pictures and we got some too and parted our ways.

On a completely separate note, you have not lived until you've had a coke or a pepsi from over here. Oh my goodness, there about twice as sweet as the ones in the U.S. and four times as good.

um... yeah... that's it for today.

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

Today was a little odd, we had to walk everywhere. We have never been so tired, we literally walked the entire length of the whole of Nara twice, though we didn't go through all of it, we just walked a half of it twice. The half that we walked was the area where the sights were the other half is all industrial.

In Nara there is this huge park, called Deer Park. Inside this park there are many shrines and temples, but due to time constraints we only visited Todaji Temple, Kasuga Taisha Shrine, and Kofukuji Temple. All throughout this entire place there are deer, lots and lots of deer. These deer aren't like the timid things that we have in Austin. These deer are big and certainly not afraid of people, I have pictures of me and the deer trying to get food from me, but you'll have to wait and see those.

In Todaji Temple, there is a Buddha that was almost 50 feet tall and made entirely of Bronze, it was truly amazing to see in real life, nothing can compare to seeing this in all it's glory.

For dinner we had a Japanese "pizza." I must say, staying here in Asia will ruin me eating anything back in the states, everything is better here. This pizza, called "Okonomiyaki," made of two eggs and tofu and some other things that we didn't know. The restaurant was very traditional, with half of the costumers sitting on tatami mats and the other half in chairs. In the middle of the table is a griddle on which the majority of the food is cooked. I don't think any of the people there spoke English. I have never been so uncomfortable in my life, if I could have I would've jumped out of my skin and ran from the place ASAP. So to order my dad had to use his limited Japanese to order the okonomiyaki. The waitress recommended that we have pork and cuttlefish, I must admit, the cuttlefish was the best part of the meal. We demolished the food in under 30 minutes, and my dad made ME pay. I mean 1390 yen, about $12-$13; but in the U.S. I suspect that it would cost $20-$30 EACH not for two.

Um...

Nothing more for right now, but if you hadn't had tempura before, I recommend that you go out and have it right NOW!

Cheers.

Aengus no Kitsune.

Now this one is for today.
This is our second day in the "land of the rising sun," our first day was the worst of the whole trip in Asia. When we arrived here our plane was twenty minutes late then the customs line was longer than the lines for roller-coasters at Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure. The first 40 or so people in the customs line were Chinese in origin and the Japanese were detaining most of them, plus the fact that there was only one person checking passports in the foreign nationals lines. The whole customs thing made us about two hours late and we missed our first train into Osaka.

Osaka...

Let me just say that our hotel in Osaka SUCKED! It was a nightmare from the fifties rejects of America. Man it was so small and bad... Oh! There was this on street vendor near our hotel that was making Yakitori (kabobs)... Oh my goodness, I thought my mouth had dies and gone to heaven, it was so good, the beef was melt in your mouth tender... eww... I'm drooling all over my keyboard just thinking about it. My dad was weird and tried the FRESH wasabi, let's just say that it cleared up his sinuses

Today we went to Himeji-jo Castle, A.K.A. Osaka Castle, from the movie/mini-series Shogun. That place was huge, and one of the coolest places that we've been on this whole trip. When I get back I'll show you pictures, 'cause LJ isn't cooperating with me.

I should mention, as told to me by my dad, that the people are so nice and will go out of their way to help you, all you have to do is say sumimasen and ask them politely in simple English and they'll do everything short of giving you their first-born son for you. In the train station, I'll get to the train here in a minute, but in the station we had to eat lunch. So we went to to a real Japanese noodle house. To order wee had to lead our waitress outside and point at the wax sculptures of the food that we wanted. I got some tempura and rice with a bowl of so-ba, we don't know what my dad got... I will never be able to eat tempura in the states again, the fresh stuff was so-o-o good, it should be illegal for something to taste that good.

The trains. I can now say that I've been on some of the fastest trains in the world, the Japanese Bullet Trains. These things move really fast, and there are three speeds: local, the slowest about 50 mph, rapid fast about 100-150 mph, or S. Rapid 150-??? mph really fast. The latter we were one for about three hours on our way to Osaka from Tokyo where we landed from Beijing.

One more thing, on our way to thew station after checking out of the hotel with all our luggage we decided to get a taxi. Man, these have to be the most technologically advanced taxis in the world. Our driver was most definitely a smoker, we could tell from the tree packs of cigarettes he had on the dash. The poor man was coughing so much, we were thinking "please wait to die until after we've gotten to the station, please..." I know that sound bad but he was hacking up a lung.

Well, right now we're going to go eat somewhere and tomorrow we'll go see some of the biggest Buddhas in the world.

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me-ee
Happy Birthday to me

I do know that this entry is late but the wireless in China was all screwy and there was no time to update. Today is our last day Shanghai, so I got to do whatever I wanted... I got a couple of things including a jade Buddha pendant...

Well... that's it

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

We've just been walking about Shanghai, down Nanjing Road. This place is much more modern and Western that Beijing. I feel much more at hom in this city than I didn in Beijing. The people dress alot like they do at home, with the cool styles and very expensive clothing. You might see a guy in very shabby clothes with some Gucci shoes, shoes are a status symbol to these people.

We were sitting here in the hotel waiting for my dad's friend to get off of work, and the most awkward thing just happened, one of the maids came in and started to clean the place. I got kicked off of the bed were I was sitting and writing this entry for the entire time that she was here. This place may be five stars, but it's pretty wierd.

I must say, looking around at the people here, I can see a ton very obvious similarities with how I act with other people and how they do, its kinda funny.

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

This is a post for all of yesterday and this morning, its about 8:12 am here on Thursday June 8th.
SO yesterday we checked out of the hotel and our guide took us to the Temple of Heaven. There really wasn't much to see there just a HUGE tower and some other buildings. Most of the historical places in Beijing are being renevated so there are many places that we didn't get to visit.

For lunch, my dad has a friend, one Dr. Wei Chen, the head of technology and co-founder of Xinwei. This company's technology is going to be used in the Olypmics in 2008, and he even showed us (my dad and myself) a prototype of something that will change digital media in people's homes forever. I have seen the future and Apple is screwed. Dr. Chen (or as he told us to call him, Wei) treated us to lunch, food that was native to his home town in the south of China, or in other words very spicy. All in all Wei was a cool guy.

AFter all of that we had about an hour and a half to shop at this "pearl market." This place was not only for pearls, which I did get, but for everything else. This was the counterfit venders safe haven, there were even fake iPods! I finished most of my gift shopping there, I'm not telling you who I got stuff for you'll just have to wait and see, and I got something for myself, again wait and see.

After we were doen shopping we had to head to the ariport to catch a plane to Shanghai (pronounced Shan-High). The plane ride was cramped and filled to te rafters of people, We could count the number of people who were not Asain on two hands and use one hand to count those that spoke English. After that hellsih plane trip we grabbed our suitcase and got in line to get a taxi, which took us about an hour. Finally once we had a taxi, we set off to the hotel.

The hotel...

A five star Ritz-Carlton. You should see this place, its amazing. There marble every where of every color and beautiful stained wood, in the lobby there was even a live jazz band. Everything you could want is provided for in the hotel, and I mean everything. There's even little bottles of liquor for the vistor. Did you know that the drinking age over here and in Japan is 18? I turn 18 on Friday...

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune.

It has been a very interesting second day in China.
Today we climbed the Great Wall of China, or at least a very small part of it; my legs have never hurt this much... ever! The whole climbing thing was okay I guess, but not really what I enjoy doing on a long term kind of basis.
After the "Wall" we went to a shop for tourists, this place was huge! And there was so much Jade of all calibers, for my lady friends that means some very special gifts. ;) I was going to get a sword but in the end decided not to because I didn't know if it would fit in my suitcase.
After the shop and lunch, which was very good, we toured a rural part of Beijing called a Houton. According to Eric, our guide, not many tourists go to the Houtons because of, one: the families who live in the Houtons don't want people comeing into thei homes or two: most tourists are too stupid to know that the Houtons are even there. In the Houton that we went inside there was this one older gentleman, apparently his son is a very famous chef in Japan and he himslef is a champion cricket fighter. Yes, crickets... wierd huh?
Then we left back to the hotel and rested for about two hours.
figuring out what we were going to do for dinner was the hard part. My dad's friend Dr. Wei Chen invited us to eat with him and some Chinese Government officals, but we thought it best to decline. After all, we wanted duck. Again another friend of my dad's, Rufus, took us out to a famour peking duck restaurant. This place has been making duck since 1864, its called Quanjude Roast Duck, and our duck was number 115,217,131 of all the duck that the place has ever made, they even gave us a little card with the number on it and everthing.
Tomorrow we go to Shangha after visting the temple of Heaven and doing some more shopping in another market.

Cheers
Aengus

Well... I've just had my first day in the city of Beijing, China. We (my dad and myself) toured the Forbidden City, or the place were the Emperor lived before the Cultural Revolution. Let me tell you that place was huge, and we didn't even see all of it because a lot of it is being renevated.
Then we went to the summer palace, the place were the Emperor would relax as much an Emperor is allowed; which wasn't much. Our tour guide, a young man named Eric, tole us something very interesting, the life span of an Emperor was shot for three reasons, one: killed by the family, two: killed in a revolution, or three: to much sex!
The people here are very similar to the people in the U.S. bar the language difference. So far China has been great. The food here is some of the bast stuff that I've ever had in my life, and the tea... OMG! The tea is the stuff of the gods. When I come back all of you are going to try some of the tea.
The final plce we went to tour today was the Lama Temple. The HQ of Tibetan Buddism in China and the Dali Lama goes there every once in a while (I don't remeber how often right now).
The venders are very aggressive here and if you're looking at something, maybe thinking about buying it, they realy don't want you to leave without buying it.
Most of the city is under construction, they're already getting ready for the Summer Olympics in 2008. There are signs every where advertiing the games.
I mentioned Eric, our guide and translator, earlier. He's cool... He was asking me about American girls, because the girls in Beijing have very strong personalities. I wish you could be here...

Cheers

Aengus no Kitsune

Well... its almost that time. The time were students shed their chains and leave the oppresion of school. In just seven more days, not counting weekends, we'll be free, or at least in my ISD.

The cool part about this summer is that I get to goto China and Japan for the most of my summer Vacation. That's the main reason that I started this LJ, so that all you good people and those of you who are my friends can read about my adventures there.

Something else, Prom was last Saturday, 5/13. You people should've seen my date Ari, holy cow she looked amazing! I can't stop thinking about how great she looked, not that she needed prom to do so...

Um...

I'm out of stuff to say so... cheers

Aengus no Kitsune