Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows (spoilers allowed)

She killed two of those blokes, then, didn't she?

Dumbledore was necessary for the plot. Standard old, Gandalfish wizard though.

Fred and George were great comic relief.

But Snape and McGonagall were so much more distinct and had more personality than the other teachers and you knew were always holding something back.

Mrs. Weasley was the perfect mother figure.

 

I'll give you Snape, but I can't see how anyone could like McGonagall more than Dumbledore.
Really, I'd say Snape and Dumbledore are, by far, the two best characters in the series.
Dumbledore may be the wise old wizard like Gandalf, but he is nothing like Gandalf (and this is coming from a BIG LOTR fan). He is much more whimsical and even had some character flaws.

 

I'm not saying which are the best characters. I'm saying which ones I think Rowling liked best. McGonagall was always prickly but never wanted to know too much and always stood up for Harry when he needed it.

She also had a big showdown at the end -- like Mrs. Weasley.

 

Along these same lines, am I the only one who really didn't care for Harry?
I didn't hate him, but I'm trying to remember another iconic figure like that that I cared so little for. He spent way too much time whining and it seemed like the majority of what he accomplished was because of the people around him (Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape).
I really liked him when he was walking to Voldemort to go die (because of his attitude, not that he was about to get it). The rest of the time, meh.

 

I think Rowling has said a bunch of times that Hermione, Snape and Dumbledore were her favorite characters. Hermione is basically Jo Rowling reimagined.

 

What does she know?

 

Yeah, he was a bit Frodoish whiny. But that would be expected in his shoes and also maybe the result of having a little bit of Voldemort soul stuck in his tooth.

 

I'm with you on that one. He does whine an awful lot, to the point of where I get aggrevated reading it. He also has a horrible temper. I know he's had it hard, but he's not the only kid in his school to have lost both of his parents (Neville, anyone?).

Obviously, his character works with the overall theme of the story, but the "woe is me" bit got a little old around book 3.

 

As someone who was a bit of a whiner himself at that age, I always thought Rowling fairly accurately captured teenage boyish angst with Harry and Ron.

 

The Sacramento Bee published what happened to Harry on the Sunday after the book was released.
They got some angry responses and the ombud responds...
http://www.sacbee.com/acuna/story/296211.html

Of course the most telling line in the article is that the paper and the editor who made the decision knew that it would ruin the experience of reading the book since the people who worked on that section asked for redacted proofs, ones that didn't contain the spoiler.
The article doesn't say if that happened.

 

Well said.

 

Outing alert? Do we have the answer to a question we never intended to ask?