Poor Molly? Poor Molly! / Unlikeable dead characters?

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 95915

While reading several posts of the last days, I must admit that I was 
really surprised, about how much some people here seem to dislike 
Molly. Of course she's not perfect, and her remark about Sirius not 
being there for Harry during the last sixteen years was pretty mean 
(but in no way anymore mean than Sirius telling Harry, that he was 
less like his father than he expected), but that just makes her more 
believable, IMO. The twins, likeable as they are (and I really like 
them), endanger the life of other people repeatingly because of their 
recklessness, and it's Molly's good right to tell them off for that, 
especially in the time, when they weren't off-age. She was not happy 
to see the twins making deals with Mundungus Fletcher. I wouldn't be 
either.

Molly is in a stress situation. Voldemort is back and her surrogate 
son is his prime target. Ron and Ginny are very close to Harry and 
therefore in big danger to fall victim to an attack, that is meant 
for Harry. The oldest family members are all in the Order and Percy 
is in the ministry, therefore all of them are possible targets as 
well. Add to this Percy being a git, the twins being reckless to a 
point, where they endanger themselves and other people and Molly 
constantly worrying about everyone's safety (the death of her loved 
one's is her geatest fear), and you might have a feeling how 
difficult the situation for her must be.

When Remus Lupin, maybe the nicest character in the series, doesn't 
tell anybody that Sirius' is an animagus, (while he thought Sirius 
was a dangerous murderer on the run), he endangered the life of 
Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus out of purely egoistical 
reasons. But this is normally seen as an example of a well-rounded 
character, because he has his faults. Sirius sends Snape straight to 
a werewolf, and many fans excuse him, saying that everybody has his 
faults. Yet Molly isn't even allowed to snap when she's under 
enormous stress? Of course Molly isn't perfect. Nobody is. She was 
still able to raise seven intelligent and likeable children (okay, 
Percy was not so likeable, especially in OotP, but I think he'll come 
around), and considering how much Arthur had to do during the first 
war, I doubt she had much help. 

I actually agree that Sirius was mostly right about how much 
information Harry needs to have. But that doesn't make Molly a 
control-freak, because she has another opinion and wants to protect 
Harry. 

The other thing that surprises me, is the suggestion, that JKR made 
the characters who are supposed to die more unlikeable before their 
deaths. I just don't see it. So far, we have two deaths of good (semi)
important charactrs, Sirius and Cedric. While I agree that Sirius' 
faults were shown clearly in OotP, we also saw much of his strength, 
including his love for Harry. I think this was because JKR knows, 
that this book is the last chance to really develop Sirius, and 
therefore she did it and showed him with all his strength and 
weaknesses. 

But while I can see, why people think she made Sirius a bit more 
unlikeable to make his death a bit easier for herself and for us, I 
have to wonder, if the people who think the same about Cedric, read 
the same book as me. Cedric was perfect! He was decent, intelligent, 
capable, nice and even good-looking. Did he have one fault? Yes, 
Harry was jealous of him, because of Cho, but from a neutral point of-
view, there wasn't a single scene in which Cedric was unlikeable. He 
also died right after his finest hour, when he refused to take the 
Triwizard Cup alone. In fact, he was so perfect that I hated him. 
>From this point of view it was easy for me to let him go, but I doubt 
that that was, what JKR intended. Add to this, how much backstory she 
gave about Frank Bryce, and we have another semi big-death, of a very 
likeable character.

Hickengruendler