For the most part, I heartily agree with what you've said. Which is why it pains me to see this...

There is no such beast as 'would of'.
Take a look at the phrase 'I would of liked to see more'.
Remove the 'would' and you're left with 'I of liked to see more'. Does that make any sense at all? No, 'of liked' makes zero sense. 'Have liked', however, makes quite a lot of sense.

Many people have apparently heard others saying 'would've', the contraction of 'would have' and thought they were actually hearing 'would of', then never stopped to think about whether or not that was correct.

This goes for any contraction for 'have', like Would've and Could've, and even ones my spellchecker says doesn't exist, but people use anyway, like May've, Should've, and Might've.

As a bonus, this means that phrases such as 'couldn't of' or 'wouldn't of' aren't correct either, and should be 'couldn't have' and 'wouldn't have'.

--
It's nothing personal, but you simply did it too many times in one post for me to ignore it. This isn't directed at you, as much as it is directed at everyone who could learn from it.

Once again, I agree with most of what you said in your post, though not to the same degree with the thing about classes. What you said about Harry's lack of motivation is dead on and the way she sprinkles in things like vampires and veela, without ever expanding on them, is a great annoyance.

I think the main pitfall JKR had right from the start, was that she was writing a 'simple' children's story and it turned out to have much broader appeal. This, for better or for worse, put it under the microscope, where it just doesn't hold up as well.

Same as my face when I look in a magnifying mirror.

 

The thing is, JKR said time and time and again that she wasn't writing it as a childrens' story, and that she was writing solely for herself. Which I can believe, since she never believed that it would be published anyway. I think it was the publisher who decided to market it as a childrens' book, not JKR.

 

would of, if I could of, but I should of....sorry Warlocke but I had to

Excuse me for derailing this just a bit, but Franki where didn't you see the Arthurian influence?

1. Harry is raised by 'foster parents and treated ill' sounds likes very much like Arthur being raised by Sir Ector.

2. Dumbledore's appearance is almost spot on the modern view of Merlin.

3. What about Harry pulling the sword of Gryffindor from the sorting hat, pretty close to young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone for his cousin.

4. Camelot vs Hogwarts?

There are others of course, but you really have to dig for them. Like Dumbledore's seemingly being a bit insane, where Geffory of Mamouth used two different people to create his Merlin,one of which had gone mad after seeing the horrors of war. There is Emperor Lucius of Rome, that claims Gaul after Arthur conquers it, his attitude is very close to Lucius Malfoy.

Yes, some of these are extreme, but they are there.

 

Not to mention the Arthurian themed Weasley names...

 

A redo would have to see the books become more adult in theme, and instead of any and every side plot requiring the Weasley family as a fuse (like in a plug), involve different characters. Use someone else as Harry's love interest, meet another character that is a dragon handler, let someone else be looking after Pettigrew. It got annoying having the Weasley family shoved down our throats.

 

I probably would've gotten rid of Luna. Don't get me wrong, I loved Luna, but her character was pretty much wasted in the books. That and fanon!Luna makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

Ginny would have died in the chamber of secrets. Either that or been fully possessed by Tom, which would've made her a much more interesting character in the first place and it would've made for an interesting subplot.

Hermione stays a catgirl... No good reason for that, it just amused me.

 

I think she should have dropped pairings all together. She should have spent a little less time on thinking about Harry/Ginny and Harry/Cho (and Ron/Lavender, Ron/Hermione) moments and more time making the last couple of books as good as the first.

Not that I don't like Romance, but I just don't think it fits, since the books starts when Harry was 11 years old. I didn't need the Romance in the first books, why would I need it in the last?

 

My biggest problem, perhaps more vexing than "shove 'em together and watch 'em suck face" Harry/Ginny "romance," was the lack of a good villain. Voldemort was a shallow, comedic character with little substance and virtually no believable motivations. Exactly why did he want to rule the world again? Like Lord of the Rings with the Sauron/Saruman contrast, Malfoy was ten times the interesting villain Voldemort was. So was Umbridge.

It's okay for TMR to be a sort of creepy, ephemeral dread early in the series--kids are scared of the dark after all. But later, as the books migrated toward a more adult audience, she should have turned him into something utterly scary: a villain who is a sympathetic character, one with humanity and desire, one with whom Harry actually identifies strongly. Contrasting such a character with Dumbledore's fall from grace could have made book seven, even with Horcruxes and Hallows, great.

And I agree with Neisseria that Horcruxes and Hallows were "bolt-on" plot elements which needed foreshadowing throughout the series. They aren't bad ideas, so much as insta-conflict that just suddenly appear as a sort of deus ex machina for the bad guys. It wouldn't have required much beyond some basic advanced planning to pull off, though without said planning, she should have realized that neither was appropriate for her tale.

 

The problem with foreshadowing the Horcruxes in all but the vaguest of ways was that, with the attention the Potter books gained, people would have figured it out easily by book 7. The only way for Rowling to bring something new to each book - the only way for her to keep the plot unpredictable - was to bring in elements out of nowhere.

Which then has the downside of feeling like those bolt-on plots.

However, I do feel that the bolt-on plots were better than would could have been. Deathly Hallows was already utterly predictable. The only elements that I wasn't expecting were those that came out of nowhere: the Hallows, and the Dumbledore/Grindelwald element.

It's a bit of a no win situation.

 

You make a very good point, Taure. Probably no other series of books (excepting the Torah, perhaps) has had as much scrutiny as JKR's.

However, I do think that had she wished, she could have done at least a little bit of subtle foreshadowing of what's to come. A carefully chosen word or phrase here and there could, on rereading, have presaged some of the finale without giving everything away. Since the thread is titled "How would you redo..." I assumed from the get-go the existence of the series and commented on what I think could have improved it.

Part of the disappointment I think I and a lot of readers have is that she actually does do this foreshadowing very well within her books. Particularly with the first few, where the story centers on a mystery (her forte), she sprinkles clues into the text in such a way that after the fact you think, "Yeah, I should have picked up on that." This subtext, I'm convinced, is a large part of the genius that led to the books' popularity. Had she done the same with the series writ large, there'd be little need for a thread like this one.

 

I wonder if I would have liked the last couple of books better if I didn't read fanfiction. It's has been kind of hard to get exited over the new books, when you've almost read every possible outcome there could be.

 

I agree with a lot of points I've seen. Very little magic actually used, Hermione being the heal all, cure all for just about every situation, Weasley's rammed down our throat every oppourtunity.

But it all could have been forgiven, save for one thing.

THE CRAPALOGUE

Rowling pissed me off beyond all reason with that piece of Hippogriff excrement. She could have been interesting, added something for us to work off of, like making his wife Fleur and mentioning it had come to be through a series of conflicts. We could have filled in that blank.

But no, she went and pulled off the move that probably slashed her fan ratings in half. Harry with Ginny, which was basically a shotgun romance that reeked of Mary Sue-osity so much my teeth ached.

And Hermione could have broken up with Ron after a while, started the first technomagic company, or a House Elf rights organization, instead of being a ambition-less cum dumpster for yet another Weasley.

Something new. Something other than the basic 'Oh, the hero hooked up with the semi-attractive (Not even semi-, in Gin-Gin's case) Mary Sue he met in school, and named all his kids after his parents, got a respectable job'.

Something INTERESTING, God fuck it all into angel babies. Like, 'Harry came into his wealth as heir of the Potter family, and used his money to create a independant self-defense company of wizards, used for personal defense of wizards wealthy enough to hire them (incidentally, this was also how he met his wife, Fleur, when she was targeted by former Death Eaters)'

Or, 'Harry became the most dangerous and sought after hit-wizard in all the magical world'

SOMETHING I WOULD NOT EXPECT!

Man...you didn't want to see me after I read that...ugh...I am completely unashamed to say I threw a teenaged hissy fit, before my eyes lit up with Rock Lee fires and I swore to venture into the realm of Harry Potter fanfiction.

And that's how I got here.

 

Thing I would change is Harry's lack of drive to learn anything outside his school work. JKR wanted to make Harry into a realistic character by caring more about sports or hanging out with friends, but let me ask you guys this. If someone came up to you one day and told you that magic was real, that you could use this magic and that you were going away to a school to learn about it wouldn't you try your best to learn as much as you could?

It makes no sense that Harry, coming from a family that dislikes him for what he is, would not be interested in the world he just entered. Any real person would have went nuts buying up books and learning as much as they could about that new world. Instead he becomes like a normal High school teenager who is like "bleh, school work, I will put that off for later."

 

Yeah... I can see why a Pureblood would think that - magic is normal for them, and anything without magic is sub-normal. But for a Muggle raised like Harry, he really should be much more interested. In a realistic scenario, all Muggleborns would be like Hermione lol.

 

Well, Rob Zombie wants to redo all the movies in his own image. So I figure 7 HP movies filed with blood, gore, gratuitous nudity and perverse situations would pwn in uber amounts.

 

Oh where do I even begin to vent...

First off, No pairings for harry. Just Harry, anyone else can pair up. people can flirt with him and he can show interest but once he chooses the story gets lamer and lamer.

It happened with Cho, it happened with Ginny... Anyone else I fear would get the same treatment. The only reason I think we still embrace cho is because she was dumped. Otherwise she might have turned into ChinChang the oriental fiesty she tramp blah blah ect.

Keeping his options open for a story like this seems reasonable. I mean he doesn't need ginny in the end to stop voldemort; all she is is just a place to plant his seed at the end of the day.

Second thing, Time turners... So fucking useful, but never truly utilised. She created this great plot device but uses it once and forgets about it.

If I were harry and I was desperate for a way to survive the fight I'd look into getting one. And no I'm not saying time turneres would save the day or that they should but the issue should be addressed. He could learn why you don't mess with time instead of having hermione tell him why.

Imagine hbp where harry creates a paradox instead of sitting on his ass and mooning over ginny and draco. He might need to find a way to correct his mistake and learn the proper respect for the tool.

third... Arthur Weasley would have died. I say this because I love him as a character and I feel his death like she had originally intended would have been one of those key moments we all look back on the series with reverence.

Someone said this already and I've agreed with this sentiment from the very begining. The hollows should have been alluded to early on, instead of popping up out of no where like they did.

"There are these magical things called hollows... and gee wilikers, my invisibility cloaks one. Thats super keen and fortunate for me. YAyS"

Forth Show things from other characters perspectives. She talked about a seen where we visited malfoy manner while Draco's talking with Nott. That would have been much better than the regular Dursley's spiel. They don't like him, he doesn't like them...

They Yell, he becomes disrespectful and moody. It's been done a lot.

Fifth, This touches on my second point. If you write something mysterious and fantastical and alude to its importance int he plot, revist it.

Time turners, the Arch, the secret room, The prophecy spheres that the recipients can pick up but aren't informed about. Spell creation by Snape, Awesome feets of magic by dumbledore, the animagus, ritual/potion/technique.... The founders and there items.

I'm not saying reveal all their secrets, just revisit them if only to kill off the plot point. That annoyed me so much. I was hoping hbp or even Deathly hollows would atleast reference these issues.

Trust me theres more, but I'll leave it at that.

 

This was addressed, way back in PoA, where JKR established that it's impossible to change the past (which is indeed the case IRL).

Disagree with this. If you involved other points of view then you have one of two scenarios:

1. What the reader learns in the other point of view spoils the mystery (e.g. all those manipulative Dumbledore fanfics where all of Dumbledore's manipulations are announced in the very first chapter by having Dumbledore narrate them to his empty office).

2. The reader learns either nothing or only enough to hint at the unknown. The first is useless, the second is both annoying and lazy story telling (resorted to when the author couldn't figure out how to impart the information to the reader via the main character).

Also, because the reader only knows what Harry knows, tension is maintained, and we identify with Harry all the more for it. Having a consistent narration from Harry's point of view, rather than skipping around all over the place, also strengthens his characterisation.

 

First, my greatest peeve has got to be this: In the Philosopher's Stone, Rowling said Harry at least tried to read ahead. I don't remember exactly how it was written, but I do remember this, Harry read at least some of his textbooks.
Hell he named Hedwig after some witch from his history book and I doubt he was looking through it just to name his owl. And he did want some advanced books when in the bookshop, though that was just a book on hexes which might have been for revenge.
But after he meets Ron, we don't see any of that anymore. Its like he simply lost his interest!
On a side note, that was a plot idea I toyed with for a while, but dropped it because it would have turned into another rewrite attempt, and that would be pointless.

Secondly, character development. Seriously, all other characters aside, she should have at least developed Ginny some more, especially since she intended her to be a more involved character right from the beginning.

Third, in GoF she showed us that her magical world did in fact extend beyond the Great Britain. She really should have worked on that more.


There are many more, and I can go on, but most of it has already been said.

 

That would have been nice, but I have the feeling that it would have ended up as one of those scenes where Hermione dumps information and no one listens. We hear everything from Harry's perspective, and can you imagine reading:

"There are more then three schools of magic, you know..." The rest of Hermione's sentance was ignored by Harry, who had spotted a bird flying around outside. He wondered if a Thestral would get it....

I think that the little she showed us was realistic since Harry doesn't really care, and there is very little information that the reader is privy to that Harry isn't. This brings us back to the 'Harry should show more intrest' argument.

I personally would like to see an informational book where Rowling expands on the wizarding worlds culture. Some short stories about the Harry's life after the seventh book would go great in there too. It would be sort of like a replacement epilouge, as long as she spent more then the five minutes writting it.