I think that the reason Hermione is in Gryffindor rather than Ravenclaw is because of her attitude towards learning- which is highly competitive and she must always be the best. If Luna is a good example of Raven claw - learning/knowledge is more important.gryffindor plays to win, but how they win matters (No blood doping). I would want to be in Ravenclaw.

which is highly competitive and she must always be the best.

That sounds more like Slytherin than Gryffindor.

how they win matters (No blood doping)

And that's Hufflepuff.

that's sorta the point - the combo of traits pulls her into gryffindor

IIRC, Tonks says in OotP that she was in Hufflepuff, sometime before they go to Hogwarts, I believe.

Did we find out what Neville's Patronus is? I'm thinking it was a bear, but maybe I'm getting that confused with Ernie's boar.

Ok - I just came across something in my re-read. Check me on this:

Harry's cloak came to him from his father via Dumbledore. The cloak is thought to have come down through the Perevell line, and Harry deduces that he is a descendant of Ignatos Perevell, one of the three brothers. Male line dies out, eventually becomes the Potter line.

Marvolo Gaunt tells the Ministry guy in HPB that *he* is a descendant of the Perevell's - one of the oldest wizarding families. Perevells die out, become the Gaunt line, hence Marvolo has the ring with the sign of the Deathly Hallows on it.

Wouldn't that make Harry and Voldemort cousins? Maybe that's why it was so easy for Harry to become a horcrux? That part of Voldemort's soul recognized something "like" in Harry's soul? And also explain the Slytherin pre-sort?

It's possible I think WAAAAAAAAYYYY too much about this stuff.

Aimee, as soon as Harry realized he was a descendant of Peverell, I kept waiting for him to realize that he must be related to Voldemort, but he never did, and not even Dumbledore bothered to mention it. But, yes, they'd have to be cousins of some sort.

Yeah, but the wizarding world seems fairly incestuous anyway. A blood link that goes back centuries really isn't going to be that unusual I suspect.

No, it's not. Sirius tells Harry on OotP when they are looking at the Black Family Tree that with as few purblood families left, everyone's related. I'm pretty sure there are Potter's in the Black family tree, along with Weasley's and Bones'.

Okay, I finally got to spend all of Tuesday reading the book since I finally cleared my last art deadline. Anyway, my thoughts -

When the 7 Potters appeared I immediately started to imagine how much fun this will be in the movie. When they started stripping, I immediately thought of Aimée. Then I started to think of a bunch of Potters getting undressed and some of them having to get out of the bras they were wearing. Then I wondered whether Dan Radcliffe in a bra would leave Aimée confunded...

Anyway, when Potter left Privet Drive the way he arrived - Hagrid & the motorcycle - I knew we were going to see a lot of circles closing. I suspected a revisit to Gringotts since there hadn't been a major scene there since book 1. Later I suspected we'd see the Chamber of Secrets again (when it was mentioned that the diadem was lost in the bowls of Hogwarts). Of course, I never expected it to just be Ron & Hermione running off to the chamber on their own, and there was still the Basilisk corpse? Whuh? Are you really telling me no one considered the discovery of the chamber worthy of a major wizarding expedition in the last 5 years? Bloody odd, if you ask me.

I, like nearly everyone, took the death of Hedwig to be official notice that All Bets Were Off.

One troubling plot point - Snape gets Harry's departure date from 'the usual source' which is never actually revealed. It probably was Mundungus as I got the impression that when Dumbledore was telling Snape to plant the 7 Potter plan in Mundungus's head, meetings with Mun were not uncommon, but I felt that this fact could have done with clarification.

By the way, I really liked that it was seven Potters - one for each book.

With all the callbacks, I really feared that the beaming blonde thief in Gregorivitch's place was going to be Lockhart. Soooo glad that we didn't have to see that prat again - insane or otherwise.

I also thought at one point that when Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, he left him pretty nuts and completely harmless, and that Grindelwald had been put out to pasture as the harmless Xenophilius Lovegood. The notion of Luna being the daughter of a great dark wizard was also rather amusing.

I had no problem with the long camping sequence. I actually found the (much shorter) Rimmauld Place section more tiresome because they were too comfortable; they were well-fed and were able to plan at their leisure. Sure, there were Death Eaters almost on their doorstep, but I think the bleak struggle to simply stay fed and ahead of their enemies in the camping section was a more applicable mood for the book, and more compelling.

I think the journey from the Gringotts atrium down to the Lestrange vault was way too quick. It made the place seem very small and not the labyrinthine vault that I always imagined.