I believe Rowling did an excellent job in creating this series, mostly because of the cleverness and element of surprise the reader experiences after every book. She sets up the story in ways that reinforce our predications and expectations, but end chapters and books by clicking two things together that you would have never considered. Most prominently, the way the Rowling describes Professor Snape in the first book, making him out to be the bad. When I first read the book, I was utterly confused as to why innocent Professor Quirrell would be the one Harry meets in the end to battle for the stone. The other situation that stands out in my mind is in “The Chamber of Secrets”, when Ginny Weasley is revealed as the one who had been the attacker and perpetrator of the strange happenings during that year. I personally enjoy how Rowling creates these characters, so when you are reading, you think nothing of them.
The fact that Rowling raises these expectations and then fails to fulfill them is what makes the series fascinating and so popular. If you think about movies you watch, it seems you always know what is going to happen in the end: who will fall in love with whom, who will win, how it ends, etc. Movies create such an expectation and seem to never fail to fulfill, which people do like, but I think that is what made the Harry Potter movies so different and intriguing. Because they were from these books, you were always kept guessing, and you couldn’t rely on your initial prediction.
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