I don't really care one way or the other about the Harry/Ginny romance, but in the interest of keeping otherwise canon compliant, I think Rowling should have actually made her into a character when she was introduced in CoS, rather than wait three more books.

Fix the tasks during PS so they are actually hard. Snape's and McGonagall's are actually good, assuming that they can't actually get past McGonagall's test without playing.

Let Neville kill Bellatrix. It would have nicely completed his character arc.

Have Harry's parents greet him when he dies in the forest. Of all the people that could have met up with him, Dumbledore was probably the one I didn't expect or even want there.

The rest of what should be changed is really a result of poor planning on Rowling's part and writing simultaneously for adults and kids. Introduce the three brothers earlier, etc. and make Death Eater's less comically evil and the OOtP more... more.

 

Let him have more than one girlfriend. He's a hero, not a fucking monk. And let him use his fame to try to get laid more, that's what all these sport jocks do in highschool, anyway.

 

I rather liked him meeting Dumbledore, in hindsight. Lots of kids were orphaned in the war, many had it worse, like Neville. In the end, Harry wasn't given any more of a special meeting than the few minutes with the Resurrection Stone, to set him apart from the others.

Besides, I feel Harry has always associated death with his parents. Sacrifice and love, sure, but his earliest memories of them all involve their death. He's immensely surprised by the quote on their headstones. And he's never really known them, which would make it quite awkward for him. Dumbledore had unfinished business with him.

 

Worse? It's not that his Grandma was anything like the Dursleys.

 

In the parents department alone, Neville had it off worse than Harry. While Harry would certainly feel an orphan's pain and wonder what his life would be like/wish they were there, Neville actually could see his parents. It was just that they were so insane that they couldn't recognize their own son or have any conversation with him at all. You know that at least a few points in his life a Neville too young to understand what was going on would try to have a connection with his parents; talking to them about his life/himself, asking questions, desperately begging for a response while they drooled and giggled. Seems to be a bit worse than them not being there.

Plus his Great Uncle Algie dropped him out a window to see if he was a Squib. That alone seems to indicate he didn't have a wholesome home life either.

 

They're different kinds of abuse, if you can call it that, but they're both abuse nonetheless. Believe me, I'm Asian. It may not sound like much from an objective perspective, but living up to genius parents is a terrible prospect all on its own. Your entire family expects you to be this model person, pressurizes you to do what they want and you just want to take a leap out of the nearest window. I speak from experience. Couple of kids here have taken their own life because they couldn't deal with living others' dreams.

 

Helluva bump, but I thought of this minor change and needed to put it somewhere.

I think Harry should have cast the spell that repelled the Inferius in the cave in HBP.

It would be a good climax and nicely parallel his repelling of Dementors in PoA. It would not take much at all to get to that point, have Harry actively research some spells. Perhaps the potions book inspires him to learn new spells, or maybe he is curious after seeing Dumbledore and Voldemort duel at the end of OotP. Anything. I think that the most frustrating thing about HBP is that Harry is so passive in regards to his education. He's bad at nonverbal spells, he hasn't tried to improve at Occlumency. Give him something. At least in every other book, Harry has tried to solve the mystery, learned new things, taught. Give us the Harry that was trying to survive the TWT. Make it so that Dumbledore is right to say “I am not afraid because I am with you” because when shit goes down, Harry steps up. What we get is a Harry scrambling to stun Inferius and futilely casting Sectumsempra and Dumbledore has to save the day. Fuck that, give us a Harry that has read that things of the dark hate fire because his favorite subject is DADA. Give us a Harry that when his godfather's soul was at stake could repel a hundred Dementors. The Harry that stuck his fucking hand in the mouth of a basilisk. Because if it's one thing Harry has a track record of, it's repelling magical beasts. Let him cast the spell, have it so that Dumbledore was right to bring Harry because when the stakes are high Harry comes through.