The problem with this one is that, as a reader/watcher/whatever, it affects your experience even when it doesn't happen. I was so convinced that Dumbledore was alive at the end of book six. Fell off a balcony? Point of view character gets dragged to the infirmary so we can't see what happens after that? There's a phoenix, a bird associated with healing and rebirth, conspicuously singing? That guy is pulling a Gandalf in the next book for sure.

So I spent the whole next book waiting for the dramatic reveal that never came...