I would have killed Cedric Diggory at the start of the book rather than the end.

 

Yes your completely right, thats what any normal teenager would do. Thats the thing though, I dont want to read about what a normal teenager would do. And yes i know that this might not be the best point for a change to happen but i think that somewhere in the fourth book, preferably earlier on, there needed to be a change that made him work harder and such. PoA showed a lot of promise with Sirius excaping and harry's patronus but book four was quite anti-climatic in my opinion.

 

Elvin has a very good point. By Book IV, the reader has pretty much inserted himself into the position of Harry Potter or at least taken a vested interest in him.

It's probably why Harry Potter is so successful - we can see ourselves in Harry's shoes, and while there's magic, we can relate. But we also want a winner - we want someone who's progressive, not a pacifist and who knows when it's time. We've grown up with him and we want to see him become something.

Oddly enough, by Book VI, most of us were wishing he'd die in Book 7, just to spare us from such a sappy ending. If Rowling does what I think she will - write OBHWF (One Big Happy Weasley Family) - it'd be such a depressing end to a series with so much potential. People need to die. Harry has to learn you can't win all the time. The Deus Ex Machina endings are getting too repetitive and are unsatisfying.

That's not how life works and once again, reality needs to be apart of the book.

Book IV - the middle book - should have seen Harry step it up a notch. The death of Cedric Diggory was a good start, but by the end of Book 6... we've still seen what? Three deaths of significance. Having cannon fodder die off left and right's a good element to add but we need to see more people close to Harry die.

 

My change would be a relatively simple one: Harry actually has some cojones, and uses them.

 

I saw this thread, and thought, "Whoa, practically everyone has covered everything of value. Several times. Can I add anything to this?" The answer was no, so I decided to post anyways.

First of all, at least try summoning the egg. Bloody hell. Second of all, if there was only one change that one could make to the book . . . either

A. have Harry be less apathetic when he sees Frank die

or

B. Have voldemort rip Frank's head off, instead of a killing curse. I'd imagine that it's easier, anyways, given his debilitated state, and the fact that all signs point to that the unforgivables are tricky to pull off. THEN Harry will care.

From there, Harry has some motivation to stop Voldemort.

Oh, right, and have Voldemort kill Cedric instead of Pettigrew. Massive plothole there. Was that cleared up in later editions? I know that big papa Potter coming out of Voldemort's wand was, but I never heard if this one was.

 

Voldemort couldn't because he wasnt reborn yet, but didnt pettigrew use voldemort's wand?