[HPforGrownups] Re: Is Sirius Really Dead?

[Erin Hamilton]

No: HPFGUIDX 72359

At 01:25 PM 7/22/2003, you wrote:

>But I guess the question that keeps coming back to me is, why did she
>kill him off *this* way? -- Why didn't she just have Bellatrix AK him?
>Why did she have Sirius fall through the Veil and guarantee the
>lack of a _corpus delicti_ (Sirius' dead body)?
>
>*Something* seems fishy about the whole thing...
>
>--
>D


Me:

Well, sadly, not if you look at the scene in terms of a battle or natural 
disaster. As we all know, not every body that goes into a battle comes back 
out again--not since the advent of artillery anyway. And people disappear 
in tornados, etc. all the time. First a person is there, and then he/she is 
gone. I think Rowling deliberately did it this way--almost as an accident. 
There's no body because she didn't want to give Harry (or the readers) 
closure because there isn't always closure. It's a brutal lesson in 
mortality. It reinforces the tragedy and I imagine she has plot reasons for 
doing it this way, also. It'll probably affect Harry is ways we haven't 
seen yet.

Not that I'm happy about it one bit, but it's just what I've gathered from 
the text and her interviews.

Erin