One minute Harry and company are attending the wedding of Bill and Fleur, the next moment they’re running for their lives and living like vagabonds in the woods while trying to figure out how to take down the second coming of Lord Voldemort. Key to his ‘immortality’ are a series of objects called Horcruxes; these are objects in which part of his soul, split apart through murder, has been embedded. In Half-Blood Prince, we learned about Voldy’s attempt to thwart death by creating one — but in fact, he’s created multiples, possibly as many as seven. Two have been destroyed already — one by Harry, unwittingly in Chamber of Secrets, and one by Dumbledore in the summer between Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. But five remain, and if Voldemort is to be defeated and the English Wizarding world redeemed, Harry will need to track them down and destroy them. Where are they? Good question. How can they be destroyed? Even better. But that is the task lying before Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Deathly Hallows is the conclusion to the Harry Potter series, and in its audio form is a fantastic, emotional experience.

I sometimes fall asleep listening to an audiobook. This was proved to be a mistake in the case of Deathly Hallows, because I’d forgotten how much of this book is PEOPLE SCREAMING. In the first third of the book, we have three teenagers who have fled to the woods because they’re on the new government’s enemies list for various reasons. They’re frequently tired, hungry, scared, and desperate. They have a mission but no effective idea of how to realize it. Combine all this anxiety with normal teenager drama and you wind up with three people screaming at each other a lot — Harry, because he’s being bothered by his Voldemort scar again and is feeling the urgency of issue more; Ron, because he’s super-stressed about his family and emotionally charged about Hermione; and Hermione, who is upset by the boys’ constant angsting. Later on, as the trio get information that gives them leads, they cross paths with antagonists like the foul werewolf Fenrir Grayback and the delightfully insane Bellatrix LeStrange — and I must say, Saffron Coomber does excellent blood-curdling screams as Hermione. Reading that character is being tortured is one thing; hearing the screams and having your own guts clench in sympathy is quite another. The sound design in general continues to be top-tier, with an excellence balance of atmospheric sound, superb voice acting, and music used slightly when appropriate.

Deathly Hallows brims over with emotional intensity, given the stakes. Voldemort has captured the Ministry, everyone sympathetic is in hiding or actively being hurt, and death is common. The book opens with Hedwig and Mad-Eye Moody dying in an attempt to remove Harry to a new shelter after the magic that protected him at his aunt and uncle’s place expires, and before the book ends there will be more deaths. Death marks the book in other ways, too: Dumbledore’s will gave Hermione a book of children’s stories, for some reason, but one story has a symbol in it that Hermione recognizes. The story is a mythical account of three magical artifacts, one of which Harry is staggered to realize he possesses — the Cloak of Invisibility — and the other of which he really wants, the Elder Wand. This is a wand supposedly crafted by Death and gives its rightful wielder enormous advantage — though it also attracts trouble, as the owner of the Wand attracts those who also want the Wand and are willing to kill to get it. The streams of both Horcruxes and Hallows cross at the Battle of Hogwarts, in which Voldy and Harry go mano a mano — but with a twist.

I’ve lived with this story for nearly twenty years now, having read all the HP books through in the summer of 2007: you’d think knowing the ending would deaden the impact, but the sheer grace with which Rowling continues elaborating on themes from the first book — specifically, sacrificial love — combined with the excellent sound design, made Deathly Hallows a riveting experience. I was deliberately trying to hold myself back from devouring this one, since I know it’s the end, and yet at the same time I was listening to it well after midnight and regretting it in the morning. I’d already started re-listening to the FCA productions while waiting on DH to be released last week, and I will go so far as to say that I think the full cast audio books are the ideal, the definitive, way to experience the Harry Potter books. They’re that good.