Ways to kill a wizard

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 31061

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "cindysphynx" <cindysphynx at h...> wrote:

> Hmmm.  There seems to be conflicting canon evidence about whether 
> wizards can die in the usual way.  For instance, when Harry falls 
off 
> of his broom in PoA, a student says she thought he had died.  The 
> fact that Quireldemort tries to shake Harry off of his broom is 
> further evidence that wizards can die from falls.

I have always found it puzzling that Neville could survive being 
dropped out of a window unharmed, but the history of Quidditch is 
full of injuries and even deaths.

One way out might be that children are magically protected against 
normal accidents (not against magic, of course, otherwise the whole 
edifice of Harry surviving Voldemort's attack falls to the ground), 
and this wears off as they get older.

Adults may be able to take specific magical precautions against 
specific threats such as car crashes, of course, without any 
guarantee that some other non-magical cause of death will not carry 
them off.

Automatic protection against non-magic fatality would in general mess 
up the plot of the books good and proper: Harry could just walk on 
the bottom of the lake without drowning, for example.  Eventually the 
inability to die from natural causes would become irksome and 
Dumbledore would be deprived of his next great adventure, short of 
asking McGonagall to AK him.

David, thinking that there's a filk here: There must be fifty ways to 
kill a wizard.