Amanuensis's Journal

I thought OotP tied itself together in very much the same way the previous books had--teensy things planted here and there that just made the reader scratch her head and say, "Huh. Wonder what that's about?" all were strung together at the end. I'm thinking of, for example, in GoF, how the Quidditch World Cup is this big chunk of the book and it's there for two particular things: to introduce portkeys and to have Winky sitting there all by herself. Which all fall into place at the end, and which you can't really "get" until they're explained, they're so subtle. OotP did that for me as well. HBP had it in places--the main plot of the Half-Blood Prince's identity, for example--but I had the Snape-Dumbledore-Draco plot semi-sussed almost right away, and still can't figure where the pensieve jaunts were going.