Harry getting killed off

[catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk]

No: HPFGUIDX 15482

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Doreen" <nera at r...> wrote:
> Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer wrote:
> >
> > Hi --
> >
> > Doreen wrote:
> >
> > > It really disturbs me that JKR has said before that she would 
never
> > > kill off Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend, but she has teased 
several
> > > times about, "How do we know that Harry will survive the 
series?"
> > > Does anyone else have a problem with this?
> >
> > Actually, she hasn't said "never" with respect to killing off Ron.
> > She's said that she finds it funny that kids are always asking 
her not
> > to kill off Ron.  She said they know enough to recognize that the 
hero's
> > best friend often dies.  She's bothered by the fact that noone 
seems to
> > concerned about whether Hermione will die or not.  Everyone just 
assumes
> > she'll be fine.
> 
> At the risk of starting up the gender-equality discussion all
> over again, I suspect this is because  Hermione is female.
> Heroines and/or love interests are =much= less likely to die than
> (male) heroes' (male) best friends.
> 
> Note that I'm talking about reader expectations here, not any
> assumptions about what JKR might or might not do!
> 
> 
> --Margaret Dean
>   *****************************************
> You are right ... she did not say "never" ... but she did say, in 
Time
> Magazine, 10/30/00:
> 
> "It's great to hear feedback from the kids. Mostly they are really 
worried
> about Ron. As if I'm going to kill Harry's best friend. What I find
> interesting is only once has anyone said to me, "Don't kill 
Hermione," and
> that was after a reading when I said no one's ever worried about 
her.
> Another kid said, "Yeah, well, she's bound to get through O.K." 
They see her
> as someone who is not vulnerable, but I see her as someone who does 
have
> quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality. Hermione is me, 
near
> enough. A caricature of me when I was younger. I wasn't that 
clever. But I
> was that annoying on occasion. Girls are very tolerant of her 
because she is
> not an uncommon female type--the little girl who feels plain and 
hugely
> compensates by working very hard and wanting to get everything just 
so."
> *****************
> I guess that I just took the "as if" to mean that she would never 
do that.
> In the US, "As if" means "that is the last thing in the world I 
would do."
> Doreen
> *****************

The "as if" can be taken either way these days in England.  It can 
mean "the implication being" or "yeah, that's likely - not".  So I 
guess it's another great JKR ambiguity.  (By the way, was this from 
an article or live interview - the way she said it should give the 
answer).

Catherine