Far from gruntled

Well. There's been some discussion going on in the Pet Peeves thread at the Sugar Quill about future fics in which every character ends up married to their school sweetheart. This is certainly a peeve of mine - it just seems so unlikely to happen to everyone we know from the books. One or two, perhaps, but not all of them. Anyway, in the course of the discussion, someone mentioned that JKR is planning to write an epilogue in which she is going to determine all the major characters future lives.

Now that seems to me a very odd thing to want to do at the end of a series of school stories.  Presuming that Deathly Hallows follows the pattern of the other books (and I think JKR has indicated it will), her main characters will still be in their teens at that stage.  And they'll have just come through a major life-changing trauma (no matter what happens, I think it'll fit this category) which will take quite a lot of adjusting to as they finish their growing up in more normal (I'm assuming Harry wins) circumstances.  It seems to me that ten years after the end of DH, Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione will be quite different people, and I find it very depressing to think that they'll still be bound in the same relationships they have as teenagers.  Because honestly, she's spent the whole series building up to these ships and I can't see that changing in the epilogue.

But also, it just seems to me a very mean thing to do.  I'm sure that JKR has her own ideas about what these characters will be like as they grow up and marry and have families - or don't marry and don't have families.  But that's not the story she's been telling.  So why not let the readers enjoy their own futures for these characters?  Whether they write them into fanfics or not doesn't seem to me to be the point.  I love that point when I've just finished a book and I can let my imagination play with what happens next.  I don't want the author to do that for me, I want them to trust me to do it myself.