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Originally posted by James
2. Did everyone see the Harry/Ginny thing coming except me? I though Rowling was going to write the normal path of the hero and have Harry meet someone totally out of his circle of friends.
In te first book or two I thought Hermione/Harry might play out . . .
Oh, and didn't Ginny give him up at the end of the book kind of easily? She is already going to be marked by the death eaters regardless of whether she stays with harry or not.
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Oh James, this is why I could never take your romantic advice -- you are clearly blind to details.
JKR has made Hermione/Ron pretty obvious from at least book 2 or 3 if not before. I think she's actually said something about how she's surprised that ANYONE would think Harry and Hermione would ever end up together because she's hinted heavily at Ron/Hermione forever. I think Ginny/Harry was more in doubt, but honestly I thought that one was pretty obvious by around book 2 as well.
I did think the ending was a cop-out, but I wasn't surprised by it. To keep the momentum of the story flowing, I was betting that she wouldn't throw any of the major couples (basically amounting to Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny) together for real until at least halfway through the last book. Otherwise, in order to keep readers interested in their romantic pursuits, the author would inevitably subject us to their endless drama and arguments, and really, who wants that?
Personally, I think that it's clear that Harry and Hermione would make a horrible couple -- they are both too intense; they need people to lighten them up. Likewise, Ron and Ginny need people to ground them.
As for this book being backstory-full -- I agree, but I definitely don't think that's a bad thing. I definitely preferred this book to Order of the Phoenix, which I thought was badly edited, boring and lacked too much of the trademark humor that kept the earlier books from getting too dark. This improved on all of those points, at least to me (I suppose the "boring" one is debatable).
A friend and I discussed this: what do you think of the "final battles" in the books? He and I were both sort of let down by this one (Dumbledore's death aside), and I was definitely let down by the final battle scene in OotP. I guess it's because I prefer the puzzle-type battles where something important is finally revealed to the "everybody shoots unforgiveable curses at everyone else" scenes, but I thought that the endings were at their strongest in Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire. How about you guys?