I think there's something very Victorian about Rowling's characters, and I actually think a Victorian reader would understand them a little more than we do -- and expect less from them. The characters are not just Victorian in who they are but in the social positions they represent. The Dursleys are a satire on middle-class airs that could have been pulled straight from the pages of Punch. As the warm-hearted matron of a large brood, Mrs. Weasley emboides all the solidity of an idealized working class. And Lily is a model for all gentlemen's wives, the household angel who brings out the best in her husband. Almost all of Rowling's characters could be straight out of a Dickens novel -- Harry too, of course, who's just the latest in a long line of noble orphans (I imagine that Victorian readers would never expect Harry to be anything but noble. Orphan or not, he is, after all, the son of a gentleman.)

What happens, at least for me, is the same thing that happens in a lot of Dickens' novels: the story becomes far more interesting than the characters, women and men. I think it's fandom that expects more from these characters, and has enriched them more than Rowling has or ever intends to. Whether she's doing it on purpose or unconsciously, she seems to be drawing from a very Victorian, Dickensian tradition, so criticizing her characters for being flat seems to miss the point, like criticizing David Copperfield for being dull -- which he is.