After reading through Deathly Hallows, one of the things that bothered me the most was how the book handled the passage of time. If the book hadn't included passages on how weeks or months passed with nothing happening, or scenes involving Christmas, etc., I would have thought that only a few weeks had passed from start to finish. THe previous books were in much the same way, but at least those could be explained by the fact that the heroes were still busy with classes and Quiddich in the background, and the villains were simply biding for time since they were still forced to work in secrecy. In DH, not so much.

Here are my main points of observation:

1) Voldermort. LV is supposed to be the baddest, most imaginative Dark Wizard of all time, yet what does he have to show for it? He sent Harry a false dream to bring Harry to the Ministry, he took over the MoM with an imperio curse, and he questioned a few wand makers and dug a grave. Oh, and he manages to jinx his own name, which is used to track down Harry Potter, but only because Harry Potter is apparently an idiot. Yet he apparently doesn't bother to show a picture of Harry Potter and his two best friends to the Death Eaters so that they can all recognize him with ease. Not exactly master planning material. It would be nice if we could see him raining down hell storms upon the muggle community in order to draw Harry out, if he took a more active role in seeking Harry out, or if he had a secondary plan other than simply "I need to find a wand capable of beating Harry's." But he doesn't. He's pretty much the villain who stands still.

2) The Horcruxes. Hermione is so intent on finding out more about the Horcruxes that she decides to steal the darkest books on the dark arts from right out of Dumbledore's office, yet she never thinks to ask Flitwick if he's aware of any Ravenclaw artifacts? Generations of students have asked the Gray Lady about the lost diadem, yet Dumbledore apparently never thought to do the same? And why is it that when Xenophilius and Luna both mention the fact that they've been working on the Diadem of ravenclaw, Harry doesn't immeadiately interrupt them and ask questions? What exactly have you been doing these past few months, Harry, if you haven't been seeking out clues on what the last Horcrux might be at every possible turn? This is made even worse when you consider the fact that Harry apparently has a photographic memory when it comes to remembering that Morfin's ring descended from the Peverell's and that the coat of arms was their sign, yet says nothing when Luna mentions an ancient Ravenclaw artifact that her father apparently knew a great deal about.

3) The bank robbery. The idea of using a stolen wand in order to pass off as the bad guy and failing to account for the increased security might have been more plausible, if JKR hadn't told us that they had been planning this thing for several weeks. Really, after several weeks to think things over, you would think that the fact that Bellatrix lost her wand would be common knowledge, and Hermione should have known that it would be unwise to continue using it. Moreover, that's more than enough time for Bellatrix and Voldermort to ask, "Gee, I wonder why they have a fake replica of the sword?", and for Voldermort to hatch a plan in case Harry and his friends are discovered in the area. It felt like both sides were asleep at the wheel on this one.

4) Parselmouth. Ron can really remember how to speak in parselmouth after hearing Harry say a few words of it from several months earlier?

well lv is very evil and is the darkest wizard of all tym apart from grindelvitch wat eva his name wasa the one who tortured muggles and made a prison for muggles and then got himself thrown into that prison or asomit like that but lv i dunno he does show alot of his evil side like going into dd grave and stealing his wand thats pritty evil like.

The passage of time... now that is an interesting topic.
All the other books had the school year and school events as major skeleton to structure the story with. Lessons, school holidays, Hallowe'en, examns, and visits to Hogsmeade all helped to impart that sense of time. In HBP that changed a little, favouring the excursions into the Pensieve before the sense of a continuous timeline that was so strong in the previous books. And of course when Harry leaves school altogether that neat structure is gone.

In DH, Harry is not going back to school and so the writer had to find something else to keep the story flowing in its moments between the key scenes, or else make the flow different from that of the previous books. Or introduce a lot of waffle to fill the gaps. It's quite natural for that to be difficult! She has rigidly adhered to Harry's perspective (apart from a few opening chapters), so she couldn't show things that Harry wouldn't see or know about in some way. I can think of a few more things she could have done to prevent continuity errors and make you feel the full weight of those eleven months, but overall she did a great job.

After all, a writer's first responsibility is the Story, and I don't think she failed to make a thumpin' good one.

The time did seem to go quite fast and when I found out that it was already May I was so surprised! But I still loved it! And it's not like JKR could have put every single day into the book. Keeping it fast-paced also kept it interesting, I think. I liked it!

I too thought that the time went quite slow for the first few months, but quite fast between Christmas and May. I think that because there was no 'lessons' and a structured timetable of events, it made it difficult for JKR to tell us what date it was. She tried to do so by saying that it was Xmas eve when they were in Godrics Hollow. But there are very few dates between Xmas and May that she could mention - only Easter...

So think it was just easier for her to not repeatedly say the date, and just leave us to find out that a lot of time has gone. I quite liked how she had done, but still noticed that time had progressed rapidly.

~ Potters Phoenix ~

I actually thought that time was going slowly. I think that JKR really was able to emphasize that the time they spent hiding in the tent was sooo slow and boring. The fact that Ron got so angry and bored that he left really hammered home that time was passing really slowly for them. I think that if time seems sped up, its because we all read the book so quickly!

If you read the book properly (some people tend to skip over chunks of text, dont ask why) then you will have noticed that JKR pretty much indicated large stretches of time with things like "The next few weeks were..." or "Over the weeks that they spent looking" etc etc. Like bobbie7781 said, JKR did a good job making me feel the time that they had to endure while looking for the horcruxes with her notations of time/days/weeks spent.

The issue isn't the fact that time passed. It's not hard to make time pass. You just add a sentence saying so.

The issue is what the characters managed to do with that time. And whether they spent it in a plausible way.

If Hermione has one day to plot a bank robbery on Gringgott's and thinks that using a stolen wand as identification would be a good idea, then I can be fine with that. It was a rush job that was a simple oversight, and they were hoping that word of the stolen wand wouldn't have reached Gringgotts by then. OTOH, if Hermione thinks that it would be a good idea to use a stolen wand after several weeks of planning, then Hermione and Co. just look like complete idiots. It's like the difference between using a stolen credit card immeadiately after stealing their wallet, and using a stolen credit card several months after they would have been able to report it stolen.

Harry had until may to figure out where that final unknown Horcrux was. He knew how important it was to find them. And yet after months and months of looking, he accomplishes... absolutely nothing. The fact that the Diadem was common knowledge among the Ravenclaw students, and Harry never sought to ask them about it until the final battle on Hogwarts, speaks wonders for his lack of action. As well as Hermione's and Dumbledore's.

What's worse is that he doesn't even express an sort of eagerness when hints and clues are presented to him. If I haven't eaten anything for a week and somene mentions having food to me, I'm going to jump on it in a heart beat. And if I haven't made any progress searching for a Ravenclaw/Gryffindor horcrux for months and months and someone whispers someone about a Ravenclaw artifact, then I'm going to jump on it. This isn't a case of, "Gee Harry Potter, didn't you recall that Neville had a book on underwater plants while you were wondering how to survive underwater?" This isn't a case of being distracted by potions class and quiddich. This is a case of people mentioning exactly the things that Harry has been looking for, when he needed it.

I felt the opposite as certain points. When they were in the tent, it really seemed like it had been forever, but other times, a little quicker....
I may add though< this was a faster paced book by far, so perhaps that was it.

To begin with the time for me went really slow, August just seemed to drag by but then after, for me, everything just seem to whiz by but maybe that was due to the fact that I was so into the book I can’t be to sure to be honest. But the first month did go so slow well for me

I couldn't really realize the weeks and months passing, and I agree with you Potters Phoenix that between Christmas and May it was extremely fast. Searching the horcruxes for so many time, I thought it was only a few weeks.

The explanation could be that we read the book so fast, and with this JK made the events more serious and difficult.
However she wrote how much time passed between the main events, I couldn't believe it was a whole year. In the 4th maybe yes, but in DH it was for me impossible. Everything happened so fast, and I felt that with those comments about the time she wanted to slow down a bit the whole book, but for me this didn't work.

Yes, it did seem to pass very slowly. If JKR hadn't of said that weeks and months have past, I would have guessed the whole boom (excluding the epilogue) would have taken a few months. They just seemed to sit around a lot thinking about nothing. We needed more ACTION from the good guys! Voldemort wasn't waiting for anything.

Yes, I agree, the passage of time was very confusing. Many things about it puzzled me about it, like the polyjuice potion, or the time between December and May. One thing I wondered about what you said, is when did Ron hear Harry speak Parseltongue a few months earlier? He wasn't with Harry and Hermione in Godric's Hollow, so when else did Harry speak it????!??

ron heard harry opened the horcrux (the locket), and then he (ron) tried to say it to open the chamber of secrets...

and I agree with you traptc in everything, and also when they went to me MOM, eventhough Harry mentions it at the time, I mean, they have planning his "trip" for more than a month and they never thought that they mights split up, had to go separate ways, etc... I mean they seem so bright for some things and yet kind of lame for other...

This is a really good topic, and it is something that I am pretty sure we have all been thinking about since we first read the book.

Firstly, I completely agree with most peoples' opinions on the Ron-Parseltounge thing. I mean, throughout the whole series it is shown to us that parseltounge's are the only ones who hear snakes, and that, atleast in Harry's case, it is spoken without the speaker even realizing they are speaking a different language. If it was that easy to speak than many people would be able to do it, and it wouldn't be thought of as a dark art.

However, in the bank robbery, they are so focused on the difficult task once they get inside that the wand just wasn't a big deal, I mean, whether she used Bella's wand or not, the Gringotts goblins were going to notice they were intruders eventually.

Also, with the ministry of magic break-in. The task they were doing inside of the ministry was so difficult and took so much planning that they just hadn't planned it if they got split up yet. I say yet because, let's not forget, they weren't planning on going into the ministry so soon. If you remember, when Harry mentions he is ready to go, Hermione tells him that they are not nearly done planning. SO, if they would have taken more time to plan appropriately they may have planned what to do if gotten split up.

yes probably, but what ws the rush? I mean, obviously they needed to get it fast and everything, but wasn't it best to have it all well planned? I mean it was not just a trip to London, it was breaking at the ministry and trying to take something that was hanging from an important woman's neck, I think they should have at least talk about how they supposed they could do it...

I would have to say that I agree with the way time passed in this book. I think that it wasn't very clear how much time had really passed and it definately didn't seem like a year had passed. I thought the book was really lacking in the time element.

I feel the passage of time was represented perfectly. During all of the other books, they had the school year and everything to keep you updated on the passage of time. Throughout the DH, I think you weren't really suppose to know how much time has passed. Harry, Ron and Hermione even would lose track of time. I think by not showing the passage of time consistently, it created a much better picture in my mind.

See, I was thinking this same topic, as I just finished rereading DH yesterday. (I got it like, what, 3 days ago, haha) To me, it seemed like they were only in March or something. I think I was so focused on the Horcruxes that I may not have focused on the time... maybe by rereading it again, I can focus more on the time passage.

I don't think the passage of time was done that poorly. I mean Dumbledore destroyed the ring and Harry the diary but other than knowing Nagini was a horcrux they really had NOTHING to go on. Obviously a lot of time would pass before they would be able to figure out where a horcrux was or how to destroy it or whatever and they make much mention to this(eg. Ron and Hermoine being disappointed, their lack of food etc) so really the passage of time wasn't done poorly at all.

As for your other things, you have to Remember that Harry is only 17. He has no experience outside of school doing anything concerning the mission he is on. The fact that he is struggling is more realistic than him being able to get everything right perfectly. I like it better that way. If he would have been able to do everything he did in the book with ease then it would have been unrealistic and annoying. Everyone was struggling, not just Ron, Hermione, and Harry, but everyone in the wizarding world.

LV is sort of just a symbol of fear for everyone, but I think that in a way, that shows just how smart he is. He's also ruthless and will kill anybody and do anything to get what he wants...which is said in the book.

I do agree about the security thing though. If it was as easy as confunding or imperizing(or whatever haha) a gaurd to get in then the security was not as top notch as they made it out to be.

1) you've got a good point, i noticed that too, but i guess he's killed so many people that he's considered that, but he might have done more creative stuff before he started hunting harry. JKR didn't really mention too much about that time period.

2) harry can be stupid, so that's probably why he didn't notice, or possibly he did notice but he didn't think x. lovegood was knowledgible about teh diadem because of the replica he saw.

3) haha "Gee, I wonder why they have a fake replica of the sword?" you're right it does seem like both sides fell asleep at the wheel!

4) i noticed that also! i wondered about it, maybe ron has a good memory, or he heard harry speak parseltongue so much that he could mimick it?


but overall, i think the time went by pretty well, it feels like the wedding and last battle of hogwarts was about a year apart.

I enjoyed the flow the of DH.It was interesting to see how she would write this book with out Harry being in school. The time flow was probably confusing since you didnt have the school year or quidditch to follow. Some parts needed to surge while others needed to trickle.Like the wedding. i thought the whole opening moved pretty quick and that they seemed to jump int the wedding.

The tent scenes needed to be slow since they showed how tensions grew and how they eventually worked out plans. I do think the christmas part moved a little to fast. But later i like how ron came back and gave them in formation about the outside world. I think from there it moved smoothly to when they arrived at Hogwarts on the dragon. I believe DH has the most interesting time flow.