02-03-2014, 08:10 PM
I think Rowling was just writing for herself to begin with, working issues out on paper, and then the books snowballed faster than her ability to adapt. The execrable epilogue was written very early, and then she just had to bend everything to fit. There was a far darker and more adult narrative struggling to get out by the later books, and the tone got uneven. Frankly, you can't make child abuse amusing, once you move out of a Dahl-esque suspension of reality and try for something more complex. And whilst she aimed for a Merlin/Gandalf type in Dumbledore, he just came over as a closet sociopath.