Eight ways they could have improved... Harry Potter
— Either make Snape a lot less of a cruel bully, give him a far more legitimate reason to hate James and his little gang, and make his betrayal of the Potters more of an unintended act... or keep him as he is and remove all the undeserved sympathy that he ultimately gets in the narrative. (Seriously, I can write essays on how much Snape sucks.) — Remove the terrible notion of Dumbledore having been a magical proto-fascist. Just make it explicit in the books that he's gay and was in love with Grindelwald, and that this blinded him to how evil the guy actually was. Instead of having actually been a fascist type for a bit, the source of his shame is that he realised the truth too late, and when he finally did confront Grindelwald, his sister got killed during the fight. — On that note, also remove the implication that Dumbledore knew perfectly well that Harry had to die, and was basically leading the boy like a lamb to slaughter. Dumbledore is supposed to be the paragon of virtue,...