TBAY: Eureka!

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 72765

Apologies in advance. My books are about three hundred miles away.
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Kirstini pushed open the door of the Royal George and ran in, 
panting. Still disappointingly empty. There were a few people 
silhouetted against the late-afternoon sun, but she couldn't make out 
anyone distinctly. Oh well. She supposed they would do.
She clattered over to the bar, and clambered up onto a stool so that 
she could see over it. 
'I have it, George!' she said, loudly. 'I've worked it out!'
Her fellow customers resigned themselves to listen, as Kirstini 
clearly had no intention of using her indoor voice today.
'Yeah, we heard about that,' George said, eyeing her 
suspiciously. 'Susan here told us that you've been talking to a giant 
insect and decided that Dudley is due to have a crisis in his 
sexuality.'
'Oh, yeah, that's *really* obvious.' Kirstini said, tapping the lager 
pump with her forefinger, as she waved across the bar at Susan. 'If 
you would be so kind - anyway, this is something totally different. 
I've been giving it some thought, and I've decided that I know the 
identity...' (here she paused for dramatic effect) '...of one of the 
people who will die in Book Six.'
She slurped some lager and went on, addressing the ceiling as though 
ruminating out loud.
'There have now been five casualties in the second war against 
Voldemort. Bertha Jorkins, Frank Bryce, Cedric Diggory, Broderick 
Bode, and - and Sirius Black.'
Kirstini's voice cracked a little at this. Someone in the corner 
sniffed.
 'Of the five, only two are significant to the particular narrative 
we are concerned with. The others are just there to bump up the 
atrocity numbers, really. So we want to focus in on Sirius and 
Cedric, as their deaths had marked effects on Harry.
 'Isn't it interesting, that in a war where the objective of one side 
is to gain power for pure-blooded wizards at great cost to Muggles 
and Muggle-born wizards (anyone know of a gender neutral plural for 
that, by the way? My inner feminist keeps taking offense), both major 
casualties so far have been pure-blood wizards? Especially when we 
had a whole array of Muggle-borns conveniently Petrified in CoS, in 
what seemed to me so rather gruesome foreshadowing. By the way, I'm 
assuming that Cedric is a pure-blood, because of Mr D. Malfoy's 
charming comment at the end of GoF (probably paraphrased)"Mudbloods 
will be the first to go - well, the next. Diggory was the firs..." 
Splatch. Anyway, I feel in me bones that Sirius' death has completely 
altered the likely line-up of potential victims that we had before 
OoP. Hagrid? Lupin? I think we can assume that they're safe for the 
time being. The spaces they occupy in relation to Harry are similar 
to Sirius', but next to his, their deaths would lack emotional 
impact. Lupin, I think, is going to take over Sirius' role to a 
certain extent. James' last best friend can finally exert some 
positive influence. As for Hagrid, his former paternal role was 
rather undermined and played down in OoP, partly to up the impact of 
the loss of Sirius, partly to emphasise Harry's growing up and away 
from him. I don't think Harry could lose another parent figure after 
Sirius, certainly not in Book Six. Such a death would lack punch,  
its rightful space to Bang overshadowed by Harry's experience of 
grief in the last chapters of OoP.
No, I feel that the next death has to come from Harry's peer group. 
Someone like Tonks, Bill or Charlie could generate a lot of narrative 
impact, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a similar sort of death 
to Cedric's. Harry was three years younger than Cedric, and this 
point was continually emphasised. Of course, eventually he achieved 
equality with him, but Cedric was necessarily three years older that 
this area of Harry's development could be stated.
And I don't include the Creevey brothers as "peers" either. Although 
I don't think both of them will be on platform 9 3/4 at the end of 
Book Seven. 
 'Now, with the device of the DA introduced in OoP, many more 
characters, and from different houses, get page time. And they might 
all spring to Harry's defense on the train, but they aren't really 
individually developed, are they/ Of course, JKR might be setting one 
of them up like she did with Cedric - why did she move Michael Corner 
from Hufflepuff to Ravenclaw rather than having Ginny go out with 
Anthony Goldstein, for example? However, Harry hasn't known them for 
years. He would be saddened by a DA death. He would probably be 
directly affected by it, as he'd doubtless end up witnessing it. But 
it wouldn't change his life immensely. He already feels guilt over 
Cedric, and this sort of death would result in a similar situation.
So, I started to look directly at Harry's Gryffindor class. As I've 
already stated, I believe that there's got to be some Muggle-born 
blood spilt at some point. And don't say Hermione. She has a destiny 
to fulfill, and they don't make sixth years Head Girl.
Well, there's Lavender. But we don't know for sure that Lavender is 
Muggle-born. JKR's screen grabs would seem to suggest otherwise, in 
fact. Lavender's only in the running because she and Dean Thomas were 
the only people in Divination not to know what a Grim was. And 
besides, she's never really developed into anything other than 
Parvati's giggling shadow, has she?
 'There's Seamus. His dad's a muggle, and he had lots of character 
development in OoP. However, if anything happened to Seamus, his 
mother would be proved right about not wanting to send him back to 
Hogwarts. Besides, there's lots of interesting not-quite resolved 
tension between him and Harry now, that would make for even more 
interesting scenes if what I suspect comes to pass.
 'Aahh, Dean Thomas. Lovely young, artistic, peaceable Dean. Dean, 
whose profile has been significantly raised over the last year. Look! 
Dean tries to act as peacemaker with divided loyalties between Harry 
and Seamus! Look! Dean answers Umbridge back and proves himself to be 
quite intelligent, really! Look! Dean gets a speech! A whole speech 
to himself! And what does he say? (something along the lines of) "My 
parents don't know nothing about any killings, because I'm not stupid 
enough to tell them, mate." Dean was just about the only featured 
Muggle-born not to get himself Petrified, too, so his parents 
wouldn't know about that, either. Ahh. Dean's parents are probably 
still as enchanted with Hogwarts and the WW as lickle Harry was in 
his first couple of years. And look what happened to him. 
 'The eagle-eyed amongst you' (here she gestured vaguely at George 
and Susan, not being incredibly sure if anyone else was still 
listening)'may have already guessed where I'm going with this one. 
You sharp little cookies, you.'

George looked vaguely affronted. Kirstini finally paused for breath, 
then continued:
'Yep, Dean Thomas is for the chop. Think about the potential 
narrative impact. He's a constant. Everything about Hogwarts may be 
changing, but Harry's dormitory and the boys who sleep there retain 
their familiarity. Oh look. There's Dean's West Ham poster on the 
wall. That's been a constant too, mentioned in every book... And just 
imagine if it was still there, and -sniff- Dean wasn't. Imagine 
having the empty bed in front of you every night. And I'm not even 
going to start on the fact that Ginny Weasley appears to be making a 
red-jumper man out of him. Even if Dean doesn't end up as Ginny's 
next boyfriend, her naming him out of the blue there certainly raised 
his profile a bit more, didn't it?. Yeah. I'm telling you. Doomed.'

Kirstini sat back in triumphant silence, finishing off the last of 
her pint. George raised his eyebrows at her.
'Mmm. But Kirstini, are you sure this hasn't got anything to do with 
the consignment of knock-off West Ham strips the Souvenir Shack took 
possession of this morning?
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Kirstini