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There's a pretty good Potterfic writer who goes by IP82, who's one of the people that have put together a group to sponsor a post-HBP fic contest for this summer, with actual cash przes, which they are simply calling "Horcrux." While I immediately knew I couldn't be arsed to come up with an entry, thinking about why lead me to two realizations:
1. Voldemort is a Liche. Powerful undead and undying wizard, soul stuck in phylacteries, the works. This isn't the important bit.
2. The important bit is, while she lucked onto an intrigiung setting, JKR isn't very good... maybe 3.5/10 where I count 5/10 as an average paperback that I'll want to keep. HPS is meh, COS a bit better, Azkaban okay but still not a reread, GoF the only one I DID reread, OotP I skipped from Harry's first Occlumency lesson to saving Artur to NEWTs, and that was good, but the other half of the book was too whiny and repetetive to do more than skim a few lines per page. HBP... it would have been more satisfying if the only continuations of the series were the fan writing, because the sixth book puts the canon squarely in Ranma 1/2 territory where even the median level of the Pit of Voles makes canon look bad.
What does all this mean? It means for a post-GoF fic, the possibilities are wide pen, practically anything can be done and any character can be either revealed as a scoundrel or revered as a champion. The fact that this allows for lots of HP/DM slash with Snape as semi-incestuous father figure is simply the price that one must pay for options.
Post OotP, you pretty much have to choose between a Dumbledore who is good and one who is competent, but hey, even the best of us have our failings, and while it might be nice fort Harry to have Sirius around most of the prank-war segments in fics that his presence encourages just piss me off, and a dramatic personality change in Harry is easy to blame on the loss.
The problem with a post HBP fic, is that the greasy git's actions can still be explained away to have him come out a good guy, not just one or two but practically the entire cast of characters have been acting like total morons in terms of actually doing anything about the current state of conflict or preparing to, and the quest for seven plot points is so DAMN overused its not even as good as "pathetic."
I mean, I would rather read about a quest for seven cereal box tops that get sent in for Mecha-Shen-Long... and as IP82 (see, it's related!) pointed out in one of his authors' notes, a Dark Lord who wanted immortality should make one phylactery, (I'm sticking to the word out of real myth, now that I've remembered it) enclose it in a rock, and throw it in the ocean, not putz around with flashy historical trinkets that the good guys can research and easily find in a pile of other stuff due to their distinctiveness. Granted, that breaks the convention that Evil means Stupid, and with the quality of opposition you can't have smart bad guys or they'll win, but that's not a positive factor. So to put it bluntly..
JKR? You fail it!
- CD freely admits to being opinionated and obstinate, but is williong to hear differing opinions with the understanding tat his own is unlikely to changeSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

true story, my roomate chanced on a 5-chapter chunk of etext of half-blood-prince.. I read a few pages over his should and asked him where he got the fanfiction, 'cause it's pretty low quality, but I'd still probably read it'
fo' shame.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

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a Dark Lord who wanted immortality should make one phylactery, (I'm sticking to the word out of real myth, now that I've remembered it) enclose it in a rock, and throw it in the ocean, not putz around with flashy historical trinkets that the good guys can research and easily find in a pile of other stuff due to their distinctiveness.

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Um... no. See once the body is kills the liches soul and mind gets sucked into phylactery and then the lich has to work from there. If you pitch it into the sea and get your body offed your going to end up in the bottom of the sea somewhere and if you can only go a certain distance from the phylactery your going to be screwed. Being immortal is going to be very boring at the bottom of the sea.
Also, last thing you want is the sea water corroding it and not being able to get to it in time to fix it.
It may also be that you need an object you have a person connection to... at least enough to declare that object very important to you. If you can't make a phylactery out of any old rock. Remember the first one was some random diarry of his. Not something anyone really knew existed in the first place and he hid it in the plumbing. At least that's what I remember him doing, I may be off.
I think eacch time you make a phylactery your wisdom score drop apoint or two. I think your only suppose to make one. Tom just kept making them until he liked the number... I think he got a little more crazy with each phylactery he made... which is why they keep getting more obvious. His wisdom score kept going down until he thought it was a good idea to torture his own inner circle willy nilly and that he should use his ultimate kill spell on a one-year-old rather that stomping on it or smooshing it under a book case or senting it out a window or feeding it to his familar or setting it on fire or something.
Not that I'm arguing she is an A-list writer. She took a bunch of historical themes and wrote a story with all the classic piece involved. However she did make a prime virtue of a large segment of the Wizarding World inbreeding after all. I'm not expecting them to be smart on the whole. They also make sure that the muggle born that has an interest in both worlds is the smartest in school.
Personally, I'm more annoyed with the GoF movie as they left so much info out of it I spent half the movie explaining what was going on to my brother and father who hadn't read the books... and a little under an hour after the movie also.
I also think that she wants fanfiction to be written and that is why it gets longer, but less satisfying as she goes on. Wishful thinking perhaps.

You'll note I said to ENCLOSE the phylactery in a stone, not make it form any random one - that's good point about the corrosiveness and leack of rescources at the bottom of the ocean, though, various more or less feebleminded sea-creatures aside - octopi and dolphins should be plenty intelligent enough to possess, I would think. Even so, I'd stick that puppy in a lump of ordinary rock, pop it in a case with a suitable label with a bunch of other ordinary chunks of rock, and make sure to be reasonably public in a habit of amateur geology so it's not suspiscious. An additional benefit is that rocks tend to be fairly durable, so if the unthinkable occurs and by some ridiculous trick my enemies manage to kill me and destroy my Dread Fortess, the phylactery is mor elikely to remain unharmed. Still and all, a nice reef in an octopus breeding ground seems like a better position for recovery than buried under the remains of my Dread Fortress... That is not dead which can forever lie, eh wot?
I will recant just slightly - there is ONE good thing floating around in the puddle of festering dog's vomit that otherwise composes HPB: Dumbledore telling Harry that the prophesy only has as much power as the people who hear it attribute it; so if Voldemort had simply ignored it he'd likely never have been defeated in the same way, and there's none of this business aout harry - or for that matter, Voldishorts himself - being unkillable to any but each other.
- CD has been watching too much British TV the past day or so
ETA: Floo acces had never existed to the fireplace, and the one door was heavily warded - not that anyone would dare disturb the sanctity of his private time. The room was silent save for the gentle sussuration of Nagini's scales against the carpet, and the quiet scrrtch of the Dark Lord's quill, filling otu a survey on one page of his secret vice, Teen Witch Weekly.
"Name: Lord Voldeshorts... Sign: Scorpio... Blood type: Enemy, unwillingly given... Occupation: Dark Lord... Favorite spell & what it does: .... Hmmm." He paused for a moment, tickling one nose slit with the tip of the quill, eyes squinty in contemplation. "Crucipantsu, tortures the victim with the pain of one million wedgies..."SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

You could also put it in a rock and bury in the center of some town. Or in a school yard or b the road side or something. Its better to put a lot of security measures and the like around a fake one and then take paraniod care of the decoy. Probably make a back up golem body near the real one. Nothing like risking your life to destroy a well hidden target and the pay off is finding a claymore mine with anti-magic wards on it. Half a second before it goes off in your face.
Then again I'd do things like set up an epic dungeon that had the total treasure of one copper piece that had an illusion of a treasure hoard cast from it. Or put people in a cell that was surrounded with those annoying screaming mushroom things and have cure deafness as continious effect in the cell. That and set up pit traps that you have to dodge into or be covered in halucinatory, itching powder. Or make a long hall way that launches summoned rust beasts from a balista at you from down the hall every 5 feet. Or traps that when disarmed make you draw from a Deck of many things or that kind 50/50 rewarded/screwed effects things. Or make levels where if you die your instantly hit with a random reincarnate effect. or long ladders where a random rung is lit up and then delit over and over again... if you touch the lit one a gelatinous cube is summoned and falls down from the top of the ladder. !0,000 pounts of goey, acid, paralitic death... as a rapidly approaching hat of doom.
Basically dungeons that contain no treasure, until someone dies trying to raid it... then the hoard would be full of the treasure brought in by people that died or got captured raiding the place. Have to remember to put up signs that inform people this dungeon contains no treasure... and big, red, shiny buttons that activate an area effect spell that makes you press the button again. Figure I can starve a few idiots to death with that kind of thing.
I still say Voldemort is crazy from making too many soul splits... that would explain a few things. The crazy leading the inbred. The crazy would explain why he is going out of his way to hear a prophecy that won't effect him unless he hears it. And it could still be Neville that kills him.

This is true, all the prophecy says is that the one marked as an equal will have the power to defeat Voldy - then it says that either must die *by the hand of the other* - and Nev is "the other one" after all, the potential that didn't get marked. Good thing for Harry it doesn't much seem as if he's on Neville's shit list, ne?
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I think you won't find anyone who will claim that Rowling is some sort of literary genius or that her take on things is extremly original. Also I think everyone here will probably agree that Voldemort makes a classic Evil Overlord error by his choice of soul-shard-containers it is not even his only mistake along those lines.
But I think that judgeing JKR's work on the basis of how easily you can make fan-fic contiunations from them is not very fair. I would expect that as any well plotted series nears its end the option would grow fewer and fewer. Writing a fic that branches of after the first 10 or 30 chapters of a seventy chapter story is different than deviating after 60+ chapters. Ambiguous characters get rounded out and motivations become clearer towards the end. That is what you would expect.
Whining because it gets harder to hook Harry up with your favorite character or because you can't bash characters you dislike the same way you used to is really unbecoming. You might as well blame JKR for finally clearing up the confusion over Blaise Zabini's true gender, because it robs you of the option of writing a female!Blaize story.
And its not really like you can't write a story in which Dumbeldor is manipulative anymore past HBP. You just have to try a bit harder. Sure you can't have D be motivate by lust for power or the desire to steal harry's inheritance without making a server retcon of the events of the final chapters, but those were rather stupid motivations anyway. If you have him manipulating everyone from Harry to Snape for what he belives the greater good you can easily include certain sacrfices that he had to make in order for his plan to succeed as part of his masterplan.
HBP does not mean the end for Manipulative!Dumbledor or Redeemed!Draco or Light!Snape. It just slightly constrains in how you write them.
The criticism that Voldemort is tupid makes even less sense. If all charcters acted inteligently you would not even have a story. The curriculum at hogwarts makes no sense. The rules for quiditch make no sense. The whole magical comunity makes no sense if you look at things to closely and to logically. You have to suspend your disbelief here instead of going constantly "If they can do X, why don't they simply use that to do Y?" all the time. You have to keep yourself from doing the math everytime something unlikely is mentioned. (Try multiplying the number of students in Harry's year at hogwarts with the estiamted average lifexpectancy of wizards and witches to get an estimate for the total british wizarding poulation. Contrast that number with some of the background of the wizarding world we got. It doesn't make any sense.)
The fantasy world of Harry Potter is impossible and unlikely. The charcters that poulate the world don't act like real people but like charcter populating a fantasy world. They act in cliches and stereotypes and not how a normal person would act in the same situation.
If the fact that Voldemort is an idiot bugs you this much you can always write an AU where a young Tom Riddle gets a magical message with the heading "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord" or something like this. Write a story about a Voldemort that like Ozymandias is not a "Republic Serial villain". There could be a good fic in such a premise if it can be made to work.

... what if Voldie is _that_ paranoid. He becomes a Lich, _doesn't_ split his soul, puts it in a phylawhatever and _then_ makes several 'Red Herrings' in the form of Horocruxes, which basically pretend to be pieces of his soul.
He makes sure to ask around about them as well as leave some more or less obvious traces. Because, let's face it, you'd have to be more than just somewhat stupid to _aks your teacher_ about something like that.
He also makes sure to make getting them/destroying them a tricky at best and lethal at worst proposition, placing curse triggers, illusion enchantments, etc. on them to make them _seem_ like actual bits of souls. Hell, maybe he bound the corrupted essences of some newly slain wizards to them, just to make them seem more authentic. The possibilities are endless, and when a Horocrux is found the finder will, in 90% of the cases, end up very very dead upon trying to get rid of the damn thing.
Meanwhile, the phylactery is sitting out for all the world to see ... and ignore ... as one of the less memorable exhibits of the British Museum's Egyptian section.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

Loki, you, ah, kind of missed the point... The only characterization I specifically mention as impossible OotP+ is a Dumbledore who lives up to his reputation as the ultimate in good and competence. As for suspending disbelief, that's all well and good, but after HBP I have too much disbelief for the booster rockets to take... starting with disbelief that any of the main cast is bright enough to tie thier own shoes, all the way through not believing how cntrived and two dimensional the romance elements wereSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

For the record I said Voldomort was crazy (related to wisdom), Not stupid (related to intelligence.)
Also, the Horecrux are obviously booby trapped look what happened to Dumbledoor's hand.
If I want to question elements of the story that don't make sense... I'd go with Dumbledoor's death in the first place. Snape shot him at a downward angle... and it dragged him up and over the wall... It should have squished him into the wall. It's backwards force in the other cases they use it... Snape's looks more telekinetic, less death ray. The event looks like the drama was taken from a movie for noncritical audiences.
The WW itself is wonky... designed to make the populous not want to leave and not make people curious about the outside world. Its considered a bad thing to be involved with the muggle world. The WW is a dying society. They are withering under the strain of hiding from the outside world. Most of their bizzarre and illogical actions can be accounted for by this.

CD said:

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This is true, all the prophecy says is that the one marked as an equal will have the power to defeat Voldy - then it says that either must die *by the hand of the other* - and Nev is "the other one" after all, the potential that didn't get marked. Good thing for Harry it doesn't much seem as if he's on Neville's shit list, ne?

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god. After reading that fanfic "At the hands of the other" what is this is the reason why Harry and Voldemort can't kill each other O_o
CD may have inadvertantly stumbled across the ending of that series _______________________________
We are the swords in the darkness, the watchers on the walls. The fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn. The horn that wakes the sleepers. The shield that guards the realms of men. -The Brothers Black
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.