Am slowly making my way through a reread of the series, and I recall really enjoying this one the first time around - it was the last of the Harry Potter books I did really enjoy, and while I don't know yet if the latter impression will remain correct the first certainly has. Don't get me wrong, this book isn't perfect: it suffers badly from bloat, which is something I find myself ever less patient with in fantasy. But I enjoy the ever-growing sense of threat, the increased roles for Neville, Ginny, and Luna, and I liked the death at the end, in the sense that I found it fitting both for that character and for Harry's development in this volume.

Let's be realistic here. He kind of earns that ending. Part of it is certainly down to Dumbledore's ever-terrible decision-making (seriously, WHY are fantasy mentors always so shite? If I'm ever transported to some strange alternate universe with a supernatural psychotic loon who wants to kill me, I want a mentor who has the sheer bloody common sense to sit me down and explain EVERYTHING instead of self-indulgently handicapping me from the get-go) but part of it is down to Harry. It doesn't much bother me how angry and whiny he is in this book - I expect some sort of PTSD after the incident with the Goblet of Fire and enjoyed the relative realism of it - but he's always so goddamned lazy. Of all the HP books, this is the one I read and sigh wistfully at, wishing that Hermione was the main character of the series. Hard work, intelligence, and the willingness to proactively use that intelligence... I would love to have had her in the title role with McGonagall as her (competent!) mentor, instead of lazyboy and the armchair producing moron who made him.