I read the books this year because I wanted to feel pain, basically, and I wanted to be justified in disliking Harry Potter. I was not disappointed. However, I still don't understand how the fuck the end of the book worked. It was so harebrained and convoluted and sloppy as fuck that I don't know what actually happened. Am I stupid or was it a bad ending? And what the fuck happened? How did they actually kill Voldemort?
Harry Potter is definitely a story where the world building can be intriguing and brings up more questions than answers, but it’s 100% plot first world building, which means everything is built to drive the story forward.
Which is why you end up with the seventh book adding huge new layers of important plot devices (the three items that make you master of death), and massive plot holes and problems that result if you try to stray conceptually from the main plot (such as, wtf are the other wizard nations doing about Voldemort? Why doesn’t the love Protection magic constantly come up in crimes of passion, and why does it not effect muggles if it’s some deep magic that doesn’t stem from a wizard? Or, why do books cost money? Why is there poverty in a more or less post scarcity world? Time travel magic basically breaks the whole story)
In other words, the world is built to fit the story, rather than the story being born out of a developed world or lore (people will have different opinions on well developed worlds, but book Westeros as an example is a well developed world that the main story is cradled in).