A friend I know on LJ has stated that the epilogue feels a little different because it was written years ago by JKR and kept under lock and key. She only made minor tweaks to it for publication.

God, I couldn't stand Bonham Carter in the movie. Between the OTT cackling (which is canonical, but is SO much more risible and jarring onscreen) and the comedy teeth, not to mention the fucking vocal work and accent choice, my eyes just about rolled out of my head. She's not even a little bit scary or badass, she's just a joke. Which is a shame. (And I don't dislike Bonham Carter in general - I'm quite fond of her.)

Holy mother of blimey, yes, Neville Actor Guy cleans up nicely. Good job.

wrt school, education at Hogwarts does indeed seem to be modelled quite closely on the UK system, with the 2 years' worth of work culminating in GCSEs OWLs and then a further 2 years' worth of work culminating in A Levels NEWTs. And, no, we don't have all this Graduation Kerfuffle. You graduate from University, not from High School. (And you aren't 'promoted to the next grade' either - you just get a year older. Different mindset.) Our GCSE = US Grade 12, pretty much, whilst A Level is 1st year University standard.

But I agree that I can't conceive of Hermione failing to go back and sit her exams. I'm sure she must have done.

....I'm increasingly unsure how I feel about all this noncanonical canon of Rowling's. It's a bit irritating, from a fanfic point of view. Hmm.

Oh! Patronuses - I did the test thingy. My Patronus is a peacock (or an Eagle). In honour of which I think I'm going to go and get a lifesize tattoo of a feather on my back right n..... oh. Huh. Too late.

Meanwhile, anybody have any use for a Small white T-shirt with 'Neville Longbottom: BIG DAMN HERO' painted on it? See, I bought fabric paints with the intention of HP-ifying my workout T shirts, but the box came with a free T shirt included, so I practiced on that. 'Course, since I'm in Thailand, and the average Thai person is about a size 8 (no, seriously, SO not joking), this T shirt is quite emphatically too small for me. It claims to be size 'F'. After consideration, I have concluded that this must stand for 'Frodo', as only a particularly slender hobbit would be able to fit into it.

So - any slender readers, or readers with medium-sized children (who wouldn't mind a 'damn' on said child's T shirt) fancy said T shirt? I'll try to post it to the first person who expresses an interest.

I did the patronus test and came up with tiger.

Not that I don't love Neville and think he's adorable, but ML, errm, cleans up pretty well?

Holy cow.

Brits:

Might someone sit their exams without the second year of study?

I mean, under normal muggle circumstances you'd likely fail by studying only one year, but they were off saving the world with magic so that might have been a pretty kick-ass independent study.

Might someone sit their exams without the second year of study?

I can't imagine it, at all. I mean, you've skipped half the subject matter. Even with real world experience, you'd need graders willing to give you points for saving the world.

Which mightn't be the hardest to find--but I can't imagine Hermione settling for that.

Our copy finally arrived from England Friday, and I finished late yesterday afternoon, though I read so fast toward the end that it amounted to skimming. I'm sure I'll catch all kinds of details I missed when I re-read.

Overall, I thought it was great, a fitting end to the series and a far better book than 5 or 6. I loved the fact the final battle is at Hogwarts, and everyone showing up for the fight made me tear up. That said, if it had been my story, I would've killed Ginny, just to get a death closer to the inner circle and because I always thought it was too pat and cloying for Harry and Hermione to BOTH become Weasleys-by-marriage. And I would've preferred an epilogue that talked more about what the trio was doing professionally and what they'd done to make the wizarding world a better place where any future Voldemorts would have a harder time rising to power. The kids could've been waving from their pictures on Hermione's desk--in my vision of the future, she's something like liaison to the Muggle prime minister at that point in her career. It's funny. I normally like happily-ever-after epilogues, but this one was too sweet for me and didn't give me the parts of the future I was most interested in.

But. It's not my story. It's not the first time I've second-guessed an author's choices, and I only do it when the story is good enough overall that I care what happens. E.g. I still haven't quite forgiven Bernard Cornwell for killing Teresa, but I still love the Sharpe books. Just one of the side-effects of writing for me--I think, "Why did s/he do it THAT way? I would've done X, Y, and Z." And then I remember that I write my own books at least in part to have the power of making the deaths, romantic pairings, etc. exactly to my tastes!

Anyway. Loved the book.

On both patronus quizzes, I got wolf, though DH and I long ago agreed my spirit animal is a border collie because I'm driven to make order out of chaos. Works for me.

The thing that struck me about the ending was that it was very clearly not a "Never Again" sort of ending. We've seen that it's already happened once -- Grindelwald was defeated, but it took only a few decades before Voldemort rose -- and there's nothing to tell us it won't happen again. Ron's "Grandpa Weasley will be heartbroken if you marry a pureblood" tells us that words like "pureblood" are still around and still mean something to someone -- if it's still something to joke about, then there's got to still be someone taking it seriously. There's still the Slytherin/Griffindor rivalry, for all the same reasons. I kept waiting for, somewhere in the middle of a paragraph of brief descriptions of people around the platform, a disheveled boy standing by himself -- just like Harry, and Tom Riddle, and Snape -- a kid who could go either way, depending on what happened in his next seven years.

That would have been a nice touch.

and there's nothing to tell us it won't happen again.

In the interview where JKR alludes to Harry and Ron becoming aurors she talks a bit about how they restructured the Ministry of Magic.

I think she was trying to strike a balance between what was appropriate for the ending of this novel, and knowing that she'll be publishing her backstory materials about the Potterverse which will go into greater detail about everybody's life.

I think she said Luna would be something like a magical naturalist.

Anyway, it strikes me as being similar to the choices that were made with the LoTR movies. Things were shot knowing that they wouldn't be in the theatrical release, but that they would be in the DVD extended editions.