Is "Master of Death" explained in the books? What briefly does it mean? I've seen a few fanfic takes on it. It comes up briefly in Hollow Ash as if it happened in the books though.

 

From a lore perspective, people said that you became the Master of Death when you had all three hallows, and that's what the people who wrote the stories and believed in them took it to mean, but Harry and Dumbledore agree that it's really a matter of no longer being afraid of death.

 

Thanks. Can I ask if Harry gets all 3 hallows in the books, and if anything interesting happens when they are united? I know he had the cloak and Dumbledore had the wand at the start, but don't know what happens afterwards.

 

By the final battle, Harry 'owns' all three Hallows, but IIRC he never has them all in his possession at the same time - he has the Cloak and the Ring, but Voldemort has the Wand until he dies, while Harry drops the Ring in the Forest before his confrontation with Voldemort. In the books, he puts the Wand back in Dumbledore's tomb (again, IIRC), while in the films he snaps it in two.

 

@Harpo the Fool
Worth keeping in mind that canonically the Deathly Hallows aren't actually some legendary artifacts created by death itself. Thats just the story told in a fairy tale, where also the idea of a Daster of Death comes from.
The actual Hallows come clearly short of the legendary ones, the Elder Wand makes you more powerful but not unbeatable(as Dumbledore defeating Grindelwald shows), the Ressurrection stone cant resurrect the dead, but temporarily summon their shades, and the invisility cloak isn't some perfect concealment able to hide from death itself, but just regular invisibility, which can still be detected via things like Homenum revelio, the Marauder's Map, Moody's eye or even just animals with particular sharp senses like cats. There is no special thing that happens for the person who unites and owns them.

Dumbledore himself assumes that the Hallows were created by the Three Brother's themselves

Since Dumbledore is among the most brilliant wizards who over lived, and personally studied all three of the Hallows, I think his assumption isn't really in doubt when the only other source is a fairy tale, not believed by most people in setting.

 

What an entirely muggle interpretation of the Hallows. You sir, disgust me.

 

The world isn't split into Quibbler subscribers and Muggles.

 

What a muggling muggly muggle thing to say.

 

In Hermione Granger and the Boy Who LIved (a rewrite of the Rowling HP series set in the James Bond universe, link below), there is a scene near the end (chapter 185) where Hermione is captured and tortured by that universe's version of Bellatrix Black, but Hermione is then rescued by Harry accompanied by Narcissa Malfoy (using Rowling names). Harry and friends had previously captured Draco Malfoy, so Narcissa agrees to help free Hermione in order to protect Draco.

Question: does something analogous to this happen in the Rowling books? The fanfic is pretty good but this particular rescue seems like a bit contrived. It really seemed like there was no way out for Hermione.

https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-30822

 

I keep forgetting there are people who never read the canon. Hermione and the gang are rescued by Dobby in the canon.

 

Ah yes, Dobby (called Dobbs in the fic) was also involved in the rescue. I gave up on the Rowling books around halfway through, and I generally like fanfic better. This is one of the few fics where what happened in the original is actually of interest. Thanks.

(I'm reminded of the quote, "Master has given Dobby a Glock! Dobby is free!").

 

I really don't understand this.

The books are rather short so it's not like it's a substantial time commitment to actually read the entire series, they also outshine any fanfiction, even decades later.

 

Especially since 99% of fanfics are shit.
Yeah, you might get some that are if similar quality or even better, but why not read the original first?

On the other hand, definitely prefer the first three books with their sense of wonder and magic over the later books.

 

I started reading the books quite a few years ago and gave up in the 4th one iirc, as its writing seemed almost mechanical and I no longer cared what was happening in it. I got into HP fanfic much more recently, and while I'm sure plenty of it is terrible, I like at least some of it much more than I liked the original books. Matter of preference I guess. The main problem with even good fanfic is that it tends to need a lot of editing. The same is true of the later Rowling books. The early ones were well edited, but after a while Rowling stopped listening to the publishers.

 

Do wizards get more powerful as they get older? E.g. Dumbledore is old and powerful. Flamel is even older and maybe even more powerful. And I'm thinking of some fanfics where Harry is effectively immortal and lives for 1000s of years and is extremely powerful. I'm wondering if this is a general principle in fanon.

 

It’s not that being older makes wizards/witches inherently more powerful. It’s just that age allows them to accumulate more arcane knowledge/skill while not taking away from any innate talent they already had. It’s counter intuitive, because martial power is traditionally something physical which inevitably declines with age. The nature of magic means being more intellectual means that older wizards tend to be more powerful.

 

I don't think there's any evidence for Flamel's relative power. If power scaled properly with age, it seems to me that he wouldn't have needed to ask Dumbledore to protect his Stone.

 

Are we sure that NF asked DD to 'protect' the Stone or is there any credence to the idea that DD asked for the Stone specifically to lure out LV?

I mean, once the Stone was inside the Mirror it was perfectly safe and could not be removed, and had Harry not shown up, DD would have just 5-10 minutes later.

 

I'm pretty sure I've read that fanfic.

 

I seem to remember Hogwarts being a part of the reason Flamel chose to give the stone to Dumbledore