I heard that she wanted to originally kill Arthur because she wanted to kill a parent, which is why she chose Tonks and Lupin. But she had already killed a parent by the time they died: Ted Tonks. Sure, he was the parent of an adult, but Tonks wasn't so much older than Ginny, who was nearly an adult by that time, as well. It's understandable that people needed to die... I just didn't exactly agree upon the ones she chose. Honestly, if she were to go back and rewrite it (I've heard she wants to trim up some of the middle books, so it's theoretically conceivable) to give Snape a better death (not such a lame one, anyway, maybe at least let him make some attempt to defend himself) and let Lupin and Tonks live, I would be far, far happier with the book. Yeah, it's all literary and neat to parallel the war orphan thing, but is it really necessary? I don't think it added all that much, frankly. The epilogue is meant to be the warm, fuzzy happy ending, but I don't consider this story to have had a happy ending at all, because the characters I cared about the most died and didn't even get the send-off bestowed to the house elf.

DH has a few good moments, but overall I was highly disappointed and personally consider it the worst of the series. On the bright side, that, plus the fact that they're planning to make two movies, means that I may in fact like the movie(s) better than the book, rather than wondering why on Earth they keep screwing it up and if they're taking all these scenes out, what the heck is it going to be about?

*tissue* *sniffle* She's a cruel woman.