The oh moment?

Great point....with millions of fans, most with net access, spitting out theories, it would have been really hard to throw everyone. I think she wrote the best series ending book of all time. Look at the dissappointments of all the other movie and book series you can think of....LOTR...The Matrix..X-Men...they all went flat instead of really producing an emotional rollercoster like JK did with Deathly Haloows.

I don't think that fooled anyone. It was obvious from Book 1 that Snape, though sinister, was Dumbledore's man and chose right over wrong. Only the youngest of children may have thought Snape was actually on Lord V's side. Likewise, all the people who thought that Dumbledore wasn't really dead probably just didn;t read book 6 very well. JK made it very obvious that he wasn't going to make a "come back from the dead". When his portrait appeared in his office, or when Harry was thinking that he would never speak to Dumbledore again or have his bright blue eyes bore through, that should have been more than enough to let people know that Dumbledore's time with the living was over. Also, in the previous books she forshadowed this event and made it perfectly clear that even in the HP world, death was final...no comebacks. And if THAT wasn't enough, she even made the point flat-out on her website that Dumbledore was, indeed, dead and he would not be coming back to stand beside Harry.
Most veteran readers will aslo tell you that the best hero books will leave the hero completely on his own for the final battle. All of his crutches must be removed (Sirius, Dumbledore, Moody) before the reader can start to feel the desperation that the writer wants to convey before the climax. No one would fear for Harry if Sirius, Dumbledore, or Moody were still around...the reader would be thinking that one of these very strong a nd capapble wizards would come out of nowhere to save the day. But JK was smart and took away the "help" so that the reader knew that he was Harry or Voldemort, win or lose.

Lord of the Rings fall flat? Impossible! Okay, so the thrid book was released before any of our times. Actually, come to think of it, he finished the entire trilogy before it was published. So it wasn't like Deathly Hallows, where fans were making theories for two years. (But the Eagles? Faramir/Eowyn? Denethor? Eowyn slaying the Nazgul King? How can you predict any of that!?)

Well, I think the ohhh moment for me was when Harry talked about Draco having become the master of the Elder Wand, and that Harry had "disarmed" (does grabbing them out of someone's hand really count ?) Draco. That was definetly the climactic ohh moment, although I agree it wasn't as well done as in the other books. But JK only had certain solutions, and the fans sure came up with a lot of them.

Minor "ohh"s were Gregorovitch being the wand maker and the diadem being the tiara from HBP. There were more, certainly, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

Slightly off subject but suicide is NOT always a selfish act.

The "Oh" moment to me was, quite clearly, the entire chapter "The Prince's Tale". It answered so many questions, and I never imagined that Severus and Lily were more than just acquaintances. JKR is brilliant in the way that she never even hints towards it, with the possible exception of the fact that Voldemort gave Lily a choice on living or dying, and then after reading that chapter it's like "How did I not see that???" Until that chapter I was convinced Snape was evil.
It's so brilliant!"

Hee-hee! Sorry but there never was an oh moment for me coz i kept cheating and would always try to read the end of the book when the suspense gets too much for me . With DH, i just made sure that Ron would survive coz i read in a forum before the book came out that he was gonna die, and well, i had to make sure, hadn't i?

but the ending for the goblet of fire was one heck of good writing wasn't it? when voldemort emerged from the cauldron, the wand duel and harry's escape. GOF truly deserves to be the 5th in BBC's list of top 100 novels of all time!

Yeahhhh, LOTR did fall pretty flat. The fun in that book series was actually in the "getting there" but the climax just wasn't a big shocker. Gollum had to be fallowing them for a reason, yes? Common sense when you think about it. To be perfectly honest I thought the return to The Shire was much more emotional and engrossing than the demise of The Ring (of course they decided that part wasn't meant for the screen and omitted it..

Uh, yes...suicide IS an act of selfishness. This is not up to argument, it's been a well-worn phylosophical debate for a long time that any intelligent person can easily see. Some people want to cite suicide-bombings and the like that are so prominant in the news lately, but again...these people do these things because they think they will be rewarded by their god, so again they are really only thinking of themselves. They are ruled by their superstitions and their "brave" act is really a sacrifice to their beliefs that a great afterlife awaits them! Rather like a good 401K plan, eh? lol

I read HBP and DH back to back after my daughter finished them in january this year, so I did not spend 2 years waiting and speculating.

I think JK was clever enough to know that when the last Harry Potter was released it would be read very quickly so that people would know what happened.

For me the oh moments were when Ron came back and saved Harry....and when Harry survived in the woods - Voldemort having broken only the link between them.

And I agree about it being in the best traditions that the hero is ultimately on his own.....

And I NEVER thought that Snape could be a baddy after the first book - when it was proved that he wasn't trying to kill Harry, but protect him from Quirrell.

Dumbledore trusted Snape - that was enough...

Oh yes, I agree! The whole story comes together....
Also, when Dobby rescues Harry & his friends in DH!!!!