And the interesting thing about this is that everyone already knew it prior to HBP, even the people who claim to hate him. Because otherwise, no one would have bought the bathroom scene, it would have been another H/G thing where people would go on and on about how OOC the whole thing was. But I've yet to see one single person actually say that they thought Draco's arc was unbelievable or badly done. Brilliantly subliminally planted on JKR's part, actually.

Oh yeah--like I was saying above, it's actually all there from the beginning. It's what makes JKR's writing always more satisfying than it might of been, imo, because re-reading always gives you more, not less. With a lot of mysteries there's less point in re-reading because it's all about suspense, but new revelations in JKR almost always are there to make things more interesting on second read. People have certainly pointed out all the stuff used for Draco in HBP before that book came out. A lot of people didn't see it at the time, but I think even so it made the story in HBP work for them in a more satisfying way than it would have if it was out of the blue. Totally different than Ginny, I agree, and I think that's kind of why in my experience when people speak positively about Ginny's "development" in OotP it's more along the lines of, "Well, it's nice to see Ginny getting a personality" or "I like that Ginny gets to kick ass now." It's just very removed from her as a real character or a story.