Rowling's Death Prediction: Thoughts

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115751


daughterofthedustwrote:
> 
> Okay, so Rowling has divulged that another main character will meet
> his/her end in book six... <snip>


Carol responds:
Forgive me if I make a small correction here. JKR has made no such
revelation. All the articles now appearing on the web and elsewhere
stem from her answer on her website to the question, "Are you going to
kill any more characters?" which was, "Yes, sorry." So it's not that
one major character will die in Book 6, it's that characters, plural,
will die in Book 6, or Book 7, or most likely both. As an article on
HPANA states, this two-word phrase is old news to HP fans:

"Fans of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series aren't shocked by wide media
announcements that the author has warned of additional deaths in her
final two stories.

"In fact, the author hinted as far back as 2001 that there would be
deaths in the series: "There are deaths, more deaths coming," she told
the BBC then. 

"Recent widespread media attention of this very old news is the result
of updates Rowling made on her official site last week:
'Are you going to kill any more characters?'
'Yes. Sorry.'. . . ."

http://www.hpana.com/news.18338.html


We already know that "the war has begun in earnest" (JKR's own words
from, I think, the World Book Day chat) and that one death per book
does not a war make.

I think we need to expect several deaths in both books, both major and
minor characters, on-page and off. (Harry, after all, can't witness
the death of an Order member if he's at school, and though he's not
the narrator, the narrator still relates the book from his POV.) As
JKR told us long ago, not everyone is going to survive the war.

We know from an interview that Snape will make it at least to Book 7,
and we didn't need JKR's assurance that Harry will. Of course he will,
and so will Voldemort. Chances are extremely good that Hermione and
Ron will survive their sixth year as well. Their seventh is a lot more
iffy. Lupin or an adult Weasley seems more likely to be the first of
the H-BP deaths, simply because they are outside the (relative) safety
of Hogwarts and directly fighting the war. Or JKR might start with
relative strangers, Tonks or Kingsley Shacklebolt, maybe, but it won't
end there.

Anyway, the silly little poll that appeared on CNN naming five or six
characters, all of them students, and asking "Which one do you think
will die?" misses the point altogether.

This is war, and more than one person is going to die. It will most
likely be Order members in Book 6, but students will die, too, most
likely in Book 7. If you're writing children's books, says JKR, you
have to be a ruthless killer. And it's not going to be one death per
book, as in GoF and OoP. It will be multiple deaths, some of them
painful for the readers. Voldemort and the DEs will at last show why
the WW lived in fear of them for so many years. Because this, at last,
is war.

Carol, who does not want or expect a bloodbath, only a sense of what
Harry and the WW are really up against