I felt that I had come to the end of a very long journey. Just thinking about how the story begins and how the story ends is thought provoking. There are hints as to what will happen in the final books in the first book, but they are quite subtle.
In the last few chapters, I liked the idea of the "afterlife" beginning at King's Cross. Especially for Harry, this is certainly when his life trues begins. It also matches up with the theme starting in the first book. "Death is but the next adventure to a ... mind" (Dumbledore). I forget te specific line, but the meaning is still there. Dumbledore suggests that "life" still continues after death, and a good place for a new adventure to begin is at King's Cross.
When I Dumbledore comes into the scene as headmaster at Hogwarts, he seems like a bumbling of coot who just has it together enough to keep Harry alive. There are signs that he is a bit of a puppet master because of the way that he always seems to know where Harry is and what he is up to, but he doesn't really appear to be manipulating anything significantly. By the end of the series he turns into this grand master spider - with a little Snape trainee. Snape also goes through a transformation though quite differently from Dumbledore. Snarpe starts out as this villain for Harry to focus on, and turns out a hero which Harry admires in the epilogue.
When the series first came out, people thought of it as a young adult or even a childs book. Upon finishing the series, it can be concluded that is certainly not a child's series. I would still call Harry Potter a young adult, but I feel like it has re-invented the young adult genre. Since Harry Potter there has been an increase in the quiality of young adult fiction, a ready example I have is the Percy Jackson series. It is a similar "coming of age" story, but still lacks the Harry Potter World's vividness.
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