DH-rant: So SPOILER for a supposedly leaked copy
Highlight to see. *sigh* If you're (hypothetical unknown entity reading, though I doubt I friended someone fulfilling this criteria) still mad at reading something you didn't want to know - deal. Quietly. Elsewhere. I'm not responsible for other persons being excessively stupid. And I won't feel sympathetic or contrite in the least.
Just read the Snape-parts of the complete leaked copy - I still hope desperately that someone wrote and designed a whole book as a hoax. A very elaborate one. Please let that be true!
And here I thought I'd be ready for everything after reading the leaked epilogue yesterday... As a non-shipper I was only annoyed by the endlessly drawn out banality, the excessive breeding and the fact that House-prejudices are still rampant 20 years later (nice to see that Dumbledore's values prevailed >_<) when I read the epilogue. Little did I know...
She destroyed Snape utterly imo and I'm not talking about the dying. I would be fine with him being dead at the end if JKR instead had chosen to forego warping him beyond imagination.
Is it possible for an author to commit character assassination?
She couldn't have made a worse caricature out of Snape if she tried!
Good heavens, I want to cry over the sheer amount of cliche and this absolutely pathetic Severus who aside from all his wit and intelligence seems to have lost also his way with words, the sarcasm, everything...
I feared the Lily-eternal-crush-scenario would happen (at least he was consistently obsessed with her from age 9 with an existing friendship and had not founded his everlasting one-sided twu wuv on an unfulfilled crush in his 6th year... I can't believe I'm grateful for that, but that's how horrible I feel about the actual execution!).
I even feared lately she'd make this his one reason for turning from the DEs - because Gods forbid that a Slytherin perhaps might have ethics or compassion or a conscience not directly bound by his very own interests and affairs!
But THIS?! It boggles the mind... well, actually it makes my bile rise, literally. Thanks, I would have taken even "most incompetent and idiotic villain to have ever walked the earth and ever-so-evil true DE"!Severus slain by super!Harry over this utter character destruction.
And I didn't think she could make me dislike Dumbledore more than I already did (without having him murdering a Kindergarten-class and litter of puppies to bath in their blood) but wow, she managed. She made him so completely loathsome it defies belief - especially in regards to one of Harry's little brood from the epilogue.
Does anyone have a timeturner? I suddenly have a lot of sympathy for crazed fans who kidnap authors to force them to write stories differently. ^_^ Or not at all, I'd settle for that one too. Hell, I'd settle for "Rocks fall, Everyone dies." It can't be more horrible than this one. The insane fan-protagonist from the Stephen King-book I've never read might have been onto something...
OTOH if this is a - very skillfully done, there are nearly forty professionally done illustrations in the style of the original US-illustrator heading the chapters - fake, JKR is now in the position that she practically couldn't have done anything wrong when writing DH: because anything would be better then this version imo. ^_^