you know what...I ran across a slight parallell.....

Voldemort was a genocidal megalomaniac who only wanted purebloods in the world altho he was a 1/2 blood....

can anyone think of another real life leader who wanted the same.......?

oh yeah and that, I wanted to say that too:p

I think the comparison to Hitler was abundant. Even the "baby boom" comment earlier was appropriate.

Did you notice that Grindelwald was defeated in 1945? If bad things happen in the Muggle world when bad things happen in the wizarding world there are some definate parallels. You could almost take it to an extreme in saying that Hitler was no more than a pawn for the dark wizard...

While I believe that it is extremely unlikely that she will ever write another HP story or nany spiin-offs, if she wanted to write about the wizarding world again, she could write about the adventures of The Order of The Phoenix.

JKR talked about the Hitler parallel in this 2000 interview.

An excerpt:

Interviewer: Some of the people that you satirize most in this book, the evil people, the Malfoys, they're very classist, they're racist against the Mudbloods. Is it fair to say that these are neo-Conservative or Thatcherite? (JK nods.) Is there a real political axe you're grinding there?

JK: I think in this book [GoF] too, you fully understand… With Voldemort, I didn't want to create this cardboard cutout of a baddie, where you put a black hat on him and you say 'Right, now you shoot at that guy because he's bad.'

Interviewer: Like the Dursleys are more of a cutout bad people?

JK: Yes and no. You will meet Dursleys, in Britain. You will. I've barely exaggerated them. Yeah, Voldemort. In the second book, Chamber of Secrets, in fact he's exactly what I've said before. He takes what he perceives to be a defect in himself, in other words the non-purity of his blood, and he projects it onto others. It's like Hitler and the Arian ideal, to which he did not conform at all, himself. And so Voldemort is doing this also. He takes his own inferiority, and turns it back on other people and attempts to exterminate in them what he hates in himself.

I do think she also said somewhere that conflict in the wizarding world can be reflected in conflict in the Muggle world.

Was the consensus that Neville was the one who "came into their power late in life" because that just seems odd to me? Neville is only 17 years old, I don't necessarily call that "late in life". Plus, it's not like he hasn't been practicing for 6 years, unfortunately Neville just wasn't very good.

I bawled when he was walking to his death with Sirius, him mom & dad. I was like "boo". The only thing I kept thinking, peripherally (spelling issues on that word), was "yeah, I get to see Gary Oldman and his parents in the movie". LOL.

The whole time though I was thinking, OMG this movie is going to be hell to write (script wise). There was so much. You could cut out some of the traveling time of Harry & Co. You cut and make the wedding "boom" like the Quidditich world cup. It's going to be a lot of condensing and thinking "what can we take out". But in reality I think it's going to be more "how can we make this a shorter scene than it is in the book". I can't think of one "major" plot point that could just be cut out of the book completely. Yes, there are little plot points that don't have to be mentioned (i.e. Tonks pregnant), but I don't know. I'm glad I'm not the screen writer, they have a hell of a task in front of them.

It's definitely not Neville.

The statement from JKR that someone would do magic late in life is from an interview in 1999, before Prisoner of Azkaban was published. Here is what she said:

Q. Will there be, or have there been, any "late blooming" students in the school who come into their magic potential as adults, rather than as children? By the way, I loved meeting you, and hearing you speak, when you came to Anderson's in Naperville. I can hardly wait until you tour again.

A. Ahhh! I loved the event at Anderson's. It was one of my favorites. That is completely true. No, is the answer. In my books, magic almost always shows itself in a person before age 11; however, there is a character who does manage in desperate circumstances to do magic quite late in life, but that is very rare in the world I am writing about.

Magic showed itself in Neville before he came to Hogwarts.

The speculation I have heard is that the character she was talking about, if not a character or plot element that was eventually eliminated, was Merope Gaunt. Her father called her a Squib, but after he and her brother were in Azkaban, she created the love potion that made Tom Riddle fall in love with her and got her out of her father's house. She was desperate and she did magic later than the usual 11.

Granted, she wouldn't be called "late in life," except relatively speaking. So maybe it was a plot element that she decided not to use.

I thought it was too predictable as well. Overall, I liked it...still not entirely sure how I like the ending...I think I need to re-read it. I read it between plane flights and while waiting for luggage, so I think I lost some of the effect.

And what was with ALL of Slytherin leaving Hogworts. I can't believe the entire house would leave and slide with Vodlemort. That bothered me. Why bother even having a house of Slytherin in the "new" Hogworts if it only produces evil witches and wizards? I refuse to believe the whole house was evil- even people like the Malfoys had a change of heart(somewhat) in the end.

hijack/ I hate to say this, but as I'm re-reading the book, I'm finding myself skipping over whole parts and chapters, not exactly to get to the end, but just because I don't want to read them (i.e. like during the whole hunt for the Horcruxes with Harry and hermione... i just found it to drag and be kind of painful)
does anyone else do this?

/hijack

Well, it was only the witches and wizards over age 17 who were allowed to stay (plus the few underage students who snuck back, like Ginny and Colin Creevy) -- everyone under 17 was sent to Hogsmeade. So it was only the 7th year Slytherins who could have stayed. We know they were not a particularly nice lot, and of them, Crabbe was dead and Malfoy was doing whatever it was he did.

And Slytherin did produce Slughorn and Snape (and Narcissa Malfoy, who could have given Harry away but didn't).

I don't know why, (perhaps lack of sleep) but I think I interpreted the line about how the 5 Potters walked toward 9 3/4 as five kids fathered by Harry. Oops. But now this makes sense.

And John Williams/LSO did the scores for all films but GoF... which seems to be my least favorite soundtrack. I don't remember who did that one.

Slytherin doesn't only produce bad wizards, but all the dark wizards have come from the house. Not the same thing. (Those kids would just be sorted into another house) I think it's the ambition that the house values that does it, IMO.

But you could argue that those same qualities would have led even the "good ones" to get the hell out of Dodge if only because they didn't want to fight for the wrong side. Not many Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws stayed either.

MysticCat: Some 6th years would be of age as well, Luna stayed and no one put up a fuss, and Ron was of age during his 6th year. I get the impression Harry was actually young for his class, not the norm.

Accordig to IMDb, Jeremy Soule did the soundtrack for Chamber of Secrets, Patrick Doyle did the soundtrack for Goblet of Fire and Nicholas Hooper did the soundtrack for Order of the Phoenix. Of course, all of the movies have used musical themes that John Williams wrote for the first movie.

True. I forgot that some of the 6th years are older than others.

Weird... I could have swore I read on Mugglenet that JW did the OOtP. But... that's Mugglenet.