THE FOLLOWING TEXT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.  DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK OR ARE WILLING TO BE SPOILED.  CONSIDER THIS FAIR WARNING.












That Snape Boy.
We had been right all along.  He was Dumbledore's Man, through and through.  He had acted on Dumbledore's orders, but I knew from the moment he cast that spell that he would die.

Although our favourite character was redeemed, we fans paid a terrible price for it.  JK took this wonderfully ambiguous and seemingly multi-layered character, and flattened him.  Snape turns out to be a weak man - blackmailed and unable to let go of an all-consuming obsession with a childhood love.  He borders on downright pathetic.  His last act alive is to command Harry to look at him so he can die with "Lily's eyes" on his.

I was so frustrated by all of this that I burst out in tears.  But I realised, after thinking it over, that we've seen but a few moments out of the past 30-odd years.  I am clinging to the desperate assumption that we've merely seen some of the worst moments of Snape's life, that in the other countless moments, he COULD have been the Snape we imagined him to be.

On a lighter note, I now have official "I-Told-You-So" rights for life.

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The Last Enemy that shall be Destroyed is Death.
Not if you were a character in this book.  Apart from Snape, I counted at least 12 other deaths of named characters:
- Hedwig
   Dedwig! ovo OvO >v< XvX ;__;
- George Weasley's ear
   van Gogh-ing for some foreshadowing here, JK?
- MadEye Moody
   All they recover is his eye, where the hell is the rest (however little WAS left of the original man) of him?
- Rufus Scrimgeour
   This guy got the lion's share of a bad rep.  I actually quite liked him in HBP, just not his methods.
- Bathilda Bagshot
   Eew... just... eeew...
- Ted Tonks
   Seemed a nice enough fellow... was sad to see him go.
- Dirk Cresswell
   An unknown character, but JK kept HARPING on him, so I feel I should mention him.
- Peter Pettigrew
   He died by his own hand... pun totally intended.
- Dobby
   Like seriously wtf is your problem, JK? ;___;
- Fred Weasley (all of him)
   This death was the worst for me (well, apart from Snape's).  I knew at least one of the Weasleys were likely to die, and since one of the Twins constituted a "spare"... :( Can't believe JK actually did it though.  The family's reaction was heart-wrenching - I'm a sympathetic crier, you get the gist.
- Severus Snape
   I just... don't know what to say about that scene.  He didn't defend himself, I don't even know if he could.  I kept hoping that the next chapter would start with "Snape sat up as the crate slid back into place - the ketchup packets had worked!" but alas. :(
- Remus Lupin & Nymphadora Tonks
   I cannot get over the off-hand way in which their deaths are announced.  They are merely described as "the bodies lying next to Fred".  What were they doing there anyway?  Their child isn't even 6months old.
- Colin Creevey
   This little guy kinda grew on you... like a fungus.  Died like a true Gryffindor - by being where he SHOULDN'T have been.
- Harry Potter
   Don't look at me like that.  She DID kill him, if only for one chapter.  I would have preferred he stayed dead but I'm just bitter.
- Bellatrix Lestrange (nee Black)
   Ding!  Dong!  The bitch is dead!  Which old bitch?  The crazy old bitch!  On a side note, are you allowed to say "bitch" in a children's book?
- Tom Marvolo Riddle (aka Lord Voldemort, Mouldywarts, You-Know-Who etc.)
   Ding!  Dong!  The witch... er.. Evil Dark Lord is dead!  The death we aaaaaall saw coming.  Of course they had to have a very long and convoluted conversation about wand ownership (ie how SNAPE DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE! >_< ) before Harry uses a Disarming Charm to kill Voldemort. *headdesks* The sweet irony is that Snape taught Harry this spell.  Methinks it was appropriate.

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Redemption for:
- Dudley Dursley
I aint touching this one - would the real Dudley please stand up?
- Kreacher
*blinks* ...yeah... I know.
- Regulus Arcturus Black
Bingobango, "R.A.B.".  Seems that JK wasn't as inscrutible as she would have liked to believe.
- Peter Pettigrew
Hesitation is not really helping Harry escape.  I felt Peter was just being spineless as always.
- Percy Weasley
C'mere you Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron! *noogies!*
- Severus Snape
Well... yeah... see above.

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NO redemption for:
- Pansy Parkinson or indeed Slytherin House as a whole
All Slytherins are bad.  End of story.  Way to go JK.  You've really shown us the value of giving people the benefit of the doubt.  Apparently "school unity" (which was touted as the ONLY way to defeat Voldemort since Cedric's demise) does NOT include Slytherin.
- Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
I am most shocked by the way JK butchered this character.  I had never particularly liked him, but imagine my distress when I found out he is the calculating and manipulative old bastard I had always thought him to be, but worse.  JK now paints the twinkly-eyed, annoying but knowledgable old coot as oscillating between downright cruel and malicious (see his dealings with Snape), and utterly immature and selfish (see his dealings with his family).  I will talk more about this later.
- The Malfoys
They all remain selfish, self-serving, spoilt, sulking and spineless.  I had hoped for so much more (and this is ME saying this).
- Petunia Dursley (nee Evans)
One line.  She could have just said what she wanted to.  Denied.

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Squeeees & Squawks:
- Squeeees
   - Snape, and lots of him. :)
   - Ron, for once, is the hero, a real one.  Not just comic relief.
   - p. 360: "...but the fact remains he can move faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo when he wants to..."  I'm sorry... this was going to be a squawk, but I just had to laugh.
   - Luna continues to be her calm, matter-of-fact self.  I love how perceptive she is eventhough everyone expects so little of her.
   - Aberforth's goat obsession. XD I must admit I find it deliciously dirty!
   - Neville, you rock.  No really, fer serious.
   - Trust talk of House elf rights to break the sexual tension between Ron and Hermione!  SHAG ALREADY, fer Merlin's sake!
   - Narcissa grows a cartilaginous spine... for 2 pages.
   - Molly - you go, girl!

- Squawks (these deal mostly with the blatant fanservice and liberal use of deus ex machina JK employed in this joke of a manuscript which read more like a badly written fanfic than the work of a professional author... but I digress.  This section will be cut for time.)
   - Tonks and Lupin not only get hitched within a few short months of discovering their decidedly one-sided love affair, but pumps out a sprog within a year AND makes it an orphan.  Move fast, die young and all that.  Lupin acts so out of character that for a long while I sincerely suspected him of being a Death Eater in Polyjuiced disguise.
   - Harry finally remembers the Mirror after... what?  Two years?  And Aberforth coincidentally bought the other one off Dung and promised Albus he'd keep an eye over Harry?
   - References and characters from ALL the other books.  Everyone Harry has EVER met comes to his aid and DIES.  What is this?  A Who's-Who parade of the Potter series?
   - Automatic spells from certain holly wands... and speaking of spells from holly wands - why is it perfectly okay for the good guys to use Unforgivables left and right?  Did JK forget that they were UNFORGIVABLE?
   - Previously kickass characters are made utterly one dimensional (see Ginny)
   - A Potter Statue... how... lovely.
   - Harry breaks his wand.  A wand Ollivander, a maker of wands, with experience all the way back to 382BC behind him, says can NOT be mended.  Evar.  Nuh uh.  So Harry quickly Reparo's it with the Deathstick at the end. *facepalm*
   - The Deluminator (known as a Put-Outer before JK got all hoity-toity on us) doubles as a GPS of the heart? o_O
   - Hermione manages to hang onto her purse when they are captured but NOT her wand... great going, Hermy.
   - Wand ownership laws?  WTF?
   - The real "Sev" and "Dora" would've hexed the person who called them that into the next millennium.  Been reading too much fanfic, JK?
   - The Grey Lady's story... I don't even know where to begin.
   - Ron & Hermione go collect Basilisk fangs which they access by Ron doing the impression of a flat tyre?  They lie... they were snogging!
   - Bad, JK!  BAD!  No cookie for using Fiendfyre when we have perfectly good Basilisk fangs lying around!  Or did you forget?
   - Harry gives Dumbledore cuddles for admitting he didn't care whether Harry lived or died.  Now, doesn't it feel better to let it all out?
   - The Epilogue.  Full stop.

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All was well... or was it.
The wild mischaracterisation I've seen in HBP and DH can only lead me to one conclusion: JK's kids killed her off 4years ago for her money, and her 14-year-old daughter wrote HBP and DH.  Being a huge fan of fanfic and the movies, the girl strived to get the characters more in line with the visions of the writers and film makers she admired.  Gambon!Albus is so much better than Harris!Albus, anyway!  Right? RIIIIGHT?! :)

THE END.