Well, my take on it is that Tommy-boy, like all fictional supervillians, just likes drama WAY too much for his own good.
Something I realized just the other day:
Harry should be more wracked with guilt than he already is about Sirius’s death. If he had remembered at any time (before he accidentally rediscovered it while packing at end of term) about that magic mirror that Sirius gave to him, he wouldn’t have had to break into Umbridge’s office to find out whether Sirius was all right, and he wouldn’t have gone charging off to the Ministry. I mean, Sirius gave it to him with the words, “I want you to use it if you need me”…what an oversight.
Max Torque, he did realize all that at the end of OotP, and broke the mirror when he found he couldn’t use it to talk to dead Sirius. What is with that kid anyway? What are his thought processes? The whole time he was sneaking into Umbridge’s office I was thinking, “didn’t Sirius say you can communiate with the thing he gave you?”
Yeech.
Well, to some extent, the forgetfulness and faliability of its characters is one of the series strong points. And in most cases, she does do a great job of relating exactly how her characters think wrong, miss clues, and so on. Sometimes characters even DO get clues, but only in passing fancies which they reject for some other reason, often because their emotions steer them in other directions. That’s a big key to both good tragedy and very real, human characters.
For the mirror, Harry decides to put it out of his mind, because he fears that it is just yet another thing that will drive Sirius to do rash things: he resolves never to use it, and hence forgets all about it. This is quite well set up, in fact.
And do you realize that in the three latest books, a huge tragedy could be averted if only Harry and Snape were friendly and exchanged even the meagerest amount of information with each other?
Book 3: Sirius would have been cleared and Petter Petigrew would not have been able to escaped to raise Voldemort.
Book 4: Snape would have known that it was fakeMoody stealing his ingredients, not Harry, and that these ingredients are those of polyjuice, leading to further realizations…
Book 5: Sirius would still be alive.
I noticed alot of people saying that all Dark Wizards came from Slytherin. Correct me if I am wrong, but I remember the line being “more dark wizards have come out of Slytherin then any other house” (sic). Yes, Slytherin does represent the vast majority, but not all. This might lend creed that James Potter did come from a Dark Wizard family and his rebellion from it. Or even Percy Weasley for that matter.
With Neville, I think rolling is setting him up to kill Bellatrix, estentially distracting her so Harry can go for the main kill of Voldemort.
And I hope that Harry ends up with Ginny (okay this is my inner-shipper speaking here). This is mainly for the fact that Harry will finally end up being a member of a real family - the Weasleys and Ron will be his brother.
At first I was against Percy being a turncoat or at least having the Imperious Curse on him. But now I am really warming to it. It was be good fiction having a lifelong ‘good guy’ turn out to be the baddy (ala Evil Willow from Buffy Season 6 - heck I am still hoping Miss Moneypenny turns out to be evil in the next Bond Film. 
Plus it makes perfect sense in a weird JKR sorta way.
“Harry should be more wracked with guilt than he already is about Sirius’s death. If he had remembered at any time (before he accidentally rediscovered it while packing at end of term) about that magic mirror that Sirius gave to him, he wouldn’t have had to break into Umbridge’s office to find out whether Sirius was all right, and he wouldn’t have gone charging off to the Ministry”
What annoys me more is that he didn’t think of using the room of requirement for a fireplace instead of breaking into the office, especially since he’d been using it a lot anyway, unlike the mirror.
I don’t think James Potter’s family is dark. As was mentioned, it would make no sense for Sirius to run away from dark wizards to live with more dark wizards. The way he describes the Potters is highly laudable. So it just doesn’t seem plausible.
The room of requirement, like the Time Turner, is also one of those things that seems too powerful: that could provide a solution to any number of problems.
Agreed. They’re like Star Trek’s infamous “particle of the week.” If used sparingly, the Room of Requirement is great. If overused, it will turn into a ridiculous deus-ex-machina.
Still, I wish that Rowling would have come up with a better way to “disqualify” the Room of Requirements. Like have it turn out that Filtch is mopping the floor right outside the door, or something like that.
As for the time turners, it’s entirely possible that they’ve been destroyed. This would, IMHO, be the best thing that could happen. Time travel is far too convenient a solution.
See, I thought about that, but I’m not sure that would work. The books have made mention at times of a “floo network”, to which, it seems, a fire must be connected before it can be used. It might not be possible for the Room to conjure up a fireplace connected to the network. Even if it can, Harry would still need to distract Umbridge before using it, as she was watching the network, and surely the fact that a rogue fireplace was rapidly connected to and then disconnected from the network would have raised some alarms.
The Weasleys: Why can’t they share textbooks or pass them down?
I was listening to the CoS CDs while doing my holiday driving, and noticed that Ginny ended up with new(used) books like A beginner’s guide to transfiguration. They’re all in the same house, and it’s not as if they have class at the same time. Why not buy 2 sets when there are four of them at school, and why couldn’t Ron’s first year books be passed down to Ginny? And then why do they need to buy 2 sets for Fred and George? They’re in the same classes, at least the standard ones, at the same time, so why can’t they share?
Percy: I don’t think we’re done with him, and I think he’s going to have a hard time accepting that the ministry now admits that Voldemort is back AND with admitting that he was wrong. But I don’t think he’s going to turn dark, just that he will be estranged from his family for at least half of the next book.
Ginny: She is going to be a significant factor in the next couple of books. There have been a couple of things said that indicate she’s a pretty strong witch, and I wonder if her having been possessed by Voldemort is going to come into play again - whether she can be used by him in some way.
O.W.L.s - Harry will have done well enough to focus on being an Auror. Duh. This means, of course, that he will still have to deal with Snape. He’s supposed to be able to drop Divination after O.W.L.s, but Firenze is going to continue to play a role, so I wonder if he really will get out of Divination.
A question: in CoS, Colin Creevey is petrified early in the school year (November, I believe, because it’s after the Death Day party). If the year runs until June and he stayed petrified, he missed most of his first year. Since he is muggle-born, he doesn’t have any real background in Wizardry, but he is still identified as a second-year student in the next book. Seems to me that he’s missed any grounding in the fundamentals that they get their first year. Does he just lose out on that (that’s what it seems like) and have to play catch up during his second year? Doesn’t seem like a great way to turn out wizards who know what they’re doing to me.
Speculation: At least one of the Creevey brothers will die in the next two books.
Nah, they were introduced into the story for a reason. Like a lot of things that were introduced on a small scale in the first few books (e.g. Polyjuice Potion, Animagi, Sybil Trelawney’s occasional ability to make real prophesies), I think they’ll come up again in a big way.
And I’m willing to bet a few Galleons that it will happen at the end of Book 7 and involve a trip back to Godric’s Hollow on October 31, 1981. You heard it first from me 
“And I’m willing to bet a few Galleons that it will happen at the end of Book 7 and involve a trip back to Godric’s Hollow on October 31, 1981. You heard it first from me”
Is that a real place (in the books… obviously)? Am i being stupid? I think i need to read these books again soon.
Yeah, it’s a real place – it’s where Harry’s parents lived. I think we’re going to go back to the day they were murdered and discover something important.
I don’t know - the day they were murdered is important, because Harry has “heard” his parents dying too many times for there not to be something beyond just the fear factor of it.
The problem is, if Harry goes back to that day, how do you keep from trying to stop Voldemort from killing his parents (likely by killing V) and then making it so that none of the events of the book happened? Is that even possible with the time turner?
Perhaps he will be able to view it in some way through a Pensieve, so that he is only an observer and cannot change anything.
Definitely an interesting thought though.
Well, time to stop being so coy about the details of my pet theory I suspect Harry is going to go back in time with every intention of stopping Voldemort from killing his parents … and discover that somebody else was there that day. Let’s call this person X. It doesn’t matter exactly who X is (my best guess at this point would be Remus Lupin, but you could also make a case for either of the Weasley parents, or, given a very specific and highly improbable turn of events in the last two books, Snape). What does matter is that X has the following characteristics:
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Somebody who is about to save James and Lily at the expense of his or her own life;
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Somebody Harry cares about very much, and who we care about;
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Somebody who is going to keep his or her own counsel about what really happened that day (this knocks out Hagrid, who would otherwise be on my short list);
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Somebody who would otherwise survive the series and live a reasonably productive life. (Scratch Sirius.)
I think Harry is going to be faced with the choice of whether to save X or his own parents, and he’s going to pick X. The distinction between family-by-blood and family-by-choice strikes me as one of the subtle underlying themes in the series, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter won out in the end. James and Lily haven’t been made “real” to us in the way most of the living adult characters have, and in some ways they aren’t real to Harry either, as much as he thinks he longs for them.
For your first point, I think that some of the teachers use new textbooks, (esp. with DADA and the changing teachers) for example Ginny had to get an entire set of Lockhart books which Harry didn’t. For the rest of the textbooks, was it ever specifically mentioned that Ginny and Ron had to buy new books?
As for Fred George sharing textbooks, think about it, that would be really annoying. What if they had to study for a test at the same time, they’d have to read the book at the same time etc. Besides they aren’t exactly the best students, it’s probably best to give them separate textbooks.
About Colin Creevy, maybe he just caught up during the summer, but what’s more likely is that JK forgot.
Another thing-apparently, Tom Riddle was the heir of Slytherin. However, he was a descendent, so why weren’t his other relatives the heirs? The only thing I can think of is that he’s the first one to be a parselmouth.
Or else he’s the reincarnation of Slytherin.
Another thing-are the pets the Hogwarts students buy different from regular pets? I mean, are they “Magic” versions of our Muggle species? I think Crookshanks is supposed to be part Kneazle, and that’s how he recognized Wormtail/Scabbers.
I wondered about Crookshanks, too. For all her reading, surely Hermione would at least suspect that he wasn’t a cat, or at least not all cat. And if she knows, why wouldn’t she share that information with Harry and Ron, especially since Crookshanks was so determined to take a chunk out of Scabbers?
That’s a good question about Tom Riddle, Guin. I hadn’t thought about that. Apparently there were many generations between Slytherin and Riddle, so why wouldn’t someone from any of those generations have “accomplished” what Riddle did? The thing about him being the heir to Slytherin AND being half-muggle bugs me no end, since Slytherin himself would have objected to his admission based on his “mixed race.”
They are magic versions of our muggle species. When Ron brought Scabbers to the pet store to be checked out in PoA, he was told that his rat couldn’t be expected to live for very much longer, as it was a non-magical animal, and that he should buy a magical rat instead.
Well, we don’t know a whole lot about how inheritance works in the wizard world. (I hope we learn more – it would make a particularly neat plot twist if Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place turned out to be entailed on the nearest male heir, i.e. Draco Malfoy.) Maybe Slytherin left everything to his forty-nine-times-great-grandson or something.