A few things that were promised in various interviews with JKR did not surface in the book. Among them...
* the flying Ford Anglia
* the marital status of the professors and its importance
* someone who does magic late in life under desperate circumstances - several of you have asked me about this since it was pretty widely reported. I think this is something JKR said recently, so I was surprised that it was absent from the book. Mom suggested that maybe it referred to Molly Weasley, who we've seen do household magic but never dueling magic.
* what Dudley saw when attacked by the dementors. This topic was skirted but not addressed, and it was an insight into that character that I was really looking forward to.
* I still don't understand why Sirius had to die, although she's promised that we would know by now.
* who else was in Godric's Hollow. This topic has been bandied about a great deal in the fandom. JKR directly refuted that Snape was in GH under the invisibility cloak, but suggested there was someone else. Are we supposed to think it was Bathilda Bagshot??
yah it was totally good to see molly finally put the fight on- though i think her yelling BITCH! was a little too siguordey weaver in aliens... but whatever.
also i was oddly touched that bellatrix loved voldermort so much-is that weird? did we ever get to hear her story? bcs i was like huh. really. hmm.
also i find it odd that though harry knows it's "war" he and ron and hermoine do everything they can not to kill their opponents- and i think rather untrue to life this fails to bite them in the ass as it should have. because they're still chosing to let people who do evil live- like reform malfoy or not. people don't usually stay ambivilant for life. and if you don't deal with people who have some serious issues the consequences are usually that someone gets burned?
oh sorry also- is there a reason hermoine had to be hysterical and crying thru the ENTIRE novel!?! it was ridiculous. the girl has some fight in her and i agree, sure, shed some tears but come on. everytime!?
oh! and i like that ron started to come into his own as a man but saw no real change in hermoine or harry- like how could she not believe in godric's hollow still- after all that- which in retrospect i thought would be more spectacular... and okay why was harry naked on the table in his mind? that was just odd.
sorry i jUST finished reading it and i'm a little hyper.
I apparently should have read this before I posted comments below. Sorry!
I was thinking that maybe it was Neville who did magic? I know that he has been magical all along but never really good at it and now he is?