I enjoyed it. I didn't want it to end! A lot of things stick in my mind about it.

I wasn't entirely sure about the epilogue. Who was the new headmaster? Was Victoire supposed to be Bill and Fleur's daughter? I also wondered about George, and whether he was rich and famous without Fred. Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione... it's what everybody expected, I suppose. What happened to the Death Eaters? I know it would have been a bit of a leap to have them still talking about it 19 years later, but now my curiousity will never be sated! And the Dementors? How did the Ministry ever control the Dementors anyway?

After learning what deus ex machina means, I think it applies to a couple of bits in the book. Ron speaking Parseltongue, indeed. Possibly the worst bit in the book, I'd say. I snapped right out of it at that point. Surely you can't speak Parseltongue by hissing something you heard someone else hiss once.

Fiendfyre as well! If it's one of the things powerful enough to destroy a Horcrux, how did Crabbe (was it Crabbe?) learn to conjour it? Handily, it destroyed the horcrux. The horcrux that Harry found by remembering a dusty old tiara he luckily stumbled across the year before, in a cathedral sized room nobody else knew was there.

I didn't know whether to think Snape was good or bad until he died, and leaked his thoughts, when I knew he was good. The scenes in the Penseive were certainly impressive, but it still nags at me a little that Voldemort was supposed to have been "the most accomplished Legilmens the world has ever seen". Perhaps Snape was an even better Occlumens.

The Imperius curses didn't bother me. Of the three Unforgivable curses, the Imperius curse seems like the light option. Using it to stop two Death Eaters torturing children and summoning Voldemort to come and kill Harry seems like a reasonable breach.

The bit when Harry spoke to Dumbledore in Kings Cross was surreal and slightly disturbing to me. The flayed baby... what did it represent? the part of Harry's soul he had lost to Voldemort? The part of Voldemort's soul left in him? Was it a part of Voldemort that had died and gone with Harry to the ethereal Kings Cross? Was it perhaps meant to reveal compassion in Harry?

I loved the bit with Aberforth. Throughout the whole series, Dumbledore has been portrayed as a near infallible, brilliant wizard without a blemish on his record. To get such background was captivating. But did anyone else want Rita Skeeter to get gruesomely yet amusingly murdered?

Mostly, I loved it. I was glad they didn't just leap into action with a foolproof plan, or work out where all the horcruxes were as if by magic (although, as I said up there, the diadem was a bit of a stretch). I want to read it again, catch the bits I might have missed and think about it a bit more with everything everyone has said in mind. But that will have to wait until I need to get the train to Scotland again.

I saw the film (Order of the Phoenix) last saturday as well. Certainly the best film yet. Imelda Staunton couldn't have been any more perfect as Umbridge. She actually seemed MORE EVIL than she did in the book. Difficult in a pink tweed two piece. More Snape would have been good. I look forward to the next film... when Harry is supposed to be 16. Ha! Daniel Radcliffe is Harry, but he doesn't really look like a teenager anymore.