I think the anticlimax comes from the fact that Harry has basically no agency in the story at all. We get 4 lines of internal monologue, but really, this is Quirrelmort’s story, not Harry’s.
This isn’t because he wins, so much as it is because his winning suddenly in this manner basically invalidates the entire rest of the story. While this might be an accurate rendition of events according to characterization, it ignores almost every subplot, begs the question of why this didn’t happen at any other earlier event in the story, and doesn’t really fit Quirrell’s wistfulness over Harry’s similarity yet difference from himself. Obviously that could all have been a lie, but even assuming everything done recently was to bring Harry to the point of matching Quirrell enough for the spell, this doesn’t seem like the cutoff. The loss of Hermione’s body shouldn’t be the Despair Event Horizon for Harry—he was dedicated to getting to godlike power so he could just will it to happen.
Quirrell’s knowledge of Ringmione also puts him in the reader’s shoes really, it is something he could not have known, unless we assume a lot of things about the story were false.
I suppose a better term to describe the ending is “unsatisfying and plot ignoring”.
Changed the ending, better now?
I think the anticlimax comes from the fact that Harry has basically no agency in the story at all. We get 4 lines of internal monologue, but really, this is Quirrelmort’s story, not Harry’s.
This isn’t because he wins, so much as it is because his winning suddenly in this manner basically invalidates the entire rest of the story. While this might be an accurate rendition of events according to characterization, it ignores almost every subplot, begs the question of why this didn’t happen at any other earlier event in the story, and doesn’t really fit Quirrell’s wistfulness over Harry’s similarity yet difference from himself. Obviously that could all have been a lie, but even assuming everything done recently was to bring Harry to the point of matching Quirrell enough for the spell, this doesn’t seem like the cutoff. The loss of Hermione’s body shouldn’t be the Despair Event Horizon for Harry—he was dedicated to getting to godlike power so he could just will it to happen.
Quirrell’s knowledge of Ringmione also puts him in the reader’s shoes really, it is something he could not have known, unless we assume a lot of things about the story were false.
I suppose a better term to describe the ending is “unsatisfying and plot ignoring”.