Observations from Chapter 98:

• We might have an answer for what the twins and Floom did to scam Rita Skeeter soon, since Harry just pointed the twins back toward that chain (I'm still betting on Gildaroy Lockheart as the Memorymancer, but Lockheart is probably a terrible candidate for smuggling whatever scary muggle equipment Harry wants).
• I think Daphne has joined Susan in the "SPHEW girls who are not useless comic relief" camp. (Padma can probably outrational both of them, but she doesn't appear to be doing anything useful at the moment. Susan did exactly the sort of thing Harry would have done during SA (see Harry's strategy against Moody in 86 Vs Susan recruiting Tonks).) I don't expect them to be competing with the powerful male characters any time soon, but at least they're doing something and can probably keep it up even if Harry and Draco go off to do something more explody.
• Lord Jugson has been built up as an irredeemable bastard (he was the one who brought up Azkaban at Hermione's trial, is all but confirmed as a Death Eater, and in spite of most certainly being a political enemy of Dumbledore, opposed the security measures put forth by Harry's coalition... and his son beats up 11 year old girls, though his approval of that isn't outright stated anywhere). I can see four likely fates for him, if he isn't ignored outright; two of them involve Harry or one of his allies being some kinda master manipulater (n spite of leaving Jugson out in the current plotting--maybe there was a reason for that beyond Lord Jugson just not being on board?), the others look rather unpleasant for Lord Jugson (and involve less manipulation and more pain and possible humiliation).
• I'm not the only one whose first reaction upon Daphne encountering the figure in silver was "Hermione!". (Other reactions I went through were "A ghost (the bloody Barron maybe?)?" and "Hat-and-Cloak?")
• Dumbledore is not having a good year. Odds that it will get better for him in the final arc are quite slim, so far as I can tell. Still wish I hadn't forgotten that wonderful idea on how him setting fire to a chicken made sense.

I certainly don't expect Harry to be going on a Horcrux hunt in the final arc, though. That took one giant book in canon--that after two had already been destroyed in two separate preceeding books--so I'm counting it unlikely that Voldemort gets wiped out by the end, barring epilogs (including "leaving the Pioneer Plaque alone" endings). But from the looks of it, Voldemort is about to get what he wanted anyway, so the more important questions are whether Harry gets what he wants, and how many stars get torn apart in the process. And how steep the escalation curve for this arc will be; it almost has to escalate as quickly as things did from 87 to 88. All of which is to say "Give me three chapters for Christmas plz". (Which, of course, is internet for "Very good, Author! Have a (secretly IQ-boosting) cookie!")