OK, I know I have been saying I would do this for a long time, so here it goes.
There is currently a drive in the entertainment industry (at least the book and film bits) to convince everyone that the Twilight series will replace the Harry Potter series in terms of pop cultural and monetary importance. There is also a movement to make people choose between Harry and Twilight, creating an artificial conflict between fans of both. For the record, I read and enjoyed both to various degrees. I like Twilight, and had fun reading it.
Twilight is not The Next Harry Potter. And anyone who tells you otherwise has not been paying attention. Twilight, enjoyable though it may be, features some of the worst writing in recent memory. As an example, the number of times the word 'beatutiful' is used to describe the heroic Edward is almost laughable. This is to say nothing of a serious lack of mythology and substance to anything pertaining to the back story. In fact, it is not until the fourth book that Meyer begins presenting a universe full of vampires and lore.
Contrast this with Potterverse, where we know from the beginning that there is more to this world than just Harry, and we meet all of the various characters present in the climax of the series along the way. The writing in Harry is also clearly superior, with the introduction of various concepts and plot hypotheticals throughout. Rowling's use of the word 'basilisk,' for example, without any nod toward the fact that the word means giant snake, shows her respect for readers' intelligence and curiosity.
The main reason, though, that Twilight is not a worthy successor to Harry Potter, more than anything, boils down to the final books in the respective series. The Deathly Hallows serves the rest of the series remarkably, offering closure to every major issue presented, and inviting the reader to see his favorite characters settle in to a comfortable and peaceful future. Characters we know and love suffer and die, not to eccess, but realistically. Breaking Dawn, on the other hand, devolves into a gory, bizarre alternate universe, different thematically, tonally, and every other way possible from the other books in the Twilight series. A slew of new characters are introduced, expanded upon, and then dropped... clogging up the narrative and giving zero closure to fans who have followed the important people throughout. Not a single character suffers or dies or sacrifices to produce the desired happy ending.
To even compare the Twilight to Harry Potter is completely innappropriate-- not just because of their differences in quality, but because in the narratives themselves, they are completely different from one another. This is probably the source of most of the heated debates between fans, as well as the source of the idea that readers must choose between the two. This is not the case... we simply need to agree that one is vastly superior to the other.
