Have you read The Little White Horse? Someone pointed me to it as one of Rowling's favourite books. At the end of it, the heroine invites everyone - everyone in the book - to a tea party. And the smallest details become important; they all join together, like puzzle pieces into one picture.

Yes, I have. It made me think even more that there was going to be reconciliation between the houses, but it seemed like I just got the whole Slytherin thing wrong. It's unfortunate because I now realize that readings that I always hated in fandom, the ones where things I thought had to be addressed were fine and should be brushed aside, and the Slytherins should just be hissed at--were "correct." But I just can't read it that way.

It's like you said, the puzzle pieces just turned out to be different ones I thought were important, or in different ways. And maybe another part of my disappointing--which goes right back to the central wrong way I was reading--was that I thought it had to come down to Harry making different kinds of changes in himself. So for me the victory didn't seem very complete at all, more like just another fun battle for people to look back on fondly and probably call on the next time all the problems they still have start up again. Even when she did stuff like have Harry forgive Snape and recognize him as DDM, it wasn't in the way I thought was important.