Jet of green light in D.O.M. battle

[lucianam73]

No: HPFGUIDX 142255

O.M.G.
I was just re-reading the D.O.M. battle scene before going to bed 
when 
I figured this passage could have a meaning I'd never thought of, 
before:

'Nice one! shouted Sirius, forcing Harry's head down as a pair of 
Stunning Spells flew toward him. 'Now I want you to get out of _'

A jet of green light had narrowly missed Sirius; across the room 
Harry 
saw Tonks fall from halfway up the stone steps, her limp form 
toppling 
from stone seat to stone seat, and Bellatrix, triumphant, running 
back 
toward he fray.'

Of course I always had understood this scene as Bellatrix killing 
Tonks. BUT!!!!!!!!!! Please notice (what I've just noticed):

- The 'jet of green light' and Tonks's fall are in the same 
sentence. 
Why use a ' ; ' mark instead of a ' . ' ?? Probably doesn't mean 
anything and is a choice of just punctuation. But still.

- Whatever punctuation JKR used, she chose to write two apparently 
unconnected bits of info in a straight, unbroken sequence. Could she 
have had a reason to do that? Throwing in info about Tonks in that 
specific moment seems weird!

- The jet of green light misses Sirius. We are not told what it hits 
_ it IS bound to hit something eventually or it just would go on 
forever.

- Sirius is next to Harry, who is across the room from Tonks. 
Therefore, the jet of green light that narrowly missed Sirius could 
have continued its trajectory in Tonks's direction (of course all 
directions are possible!).

- We are not told of any spell Bellatrix might have cast upon Tonks. 
We are simply told Tonks falls and Bellatrix is happy about it.

- If the jet of green light indeed hits Tonks, Sirius might have 
seen it happen. He never finishes his sentence ' Now I want you to 
get out of _' : 
either because he ducked the jet of green light or because he was in 
shock to see Tonks get hit, or for both reasons.

In short: the jet of green light that missed Sirius could have hit 
Tonks. Avada Kedavra is green. Tonks might have died in OotP. She 
could have been THE death in OotP.

Now, JKR's interview just before OotP's release, about the death in 
B5 (we all know that one of course):

"Yeah. Well I had re-written the death, re-written it and that was 
it. 
It was definitive. And the person was definitely dead. And I walked 
into the kitchen crying and Neil said to me, "What on earth is 
wrong?" 
and I said, "Well, I've just killed the person". 

She re-wrote and re-wrote the death. Possibly because it was a 
tricky scene to write? If the death in OotP was Tonks, then it was 
definitely super-tricky.

Now for the odds against it... huge ones I know. Sirius. Veil. 
Sirius is a more important character and she cried over the 
character's death, she wouldn't hve cried if the death was Tonks's. 
Tonks seems sort of alive in HBP. Oh boy.

It's late (almost midnight here!) and writing a big case would make 
this such a long post. Of course there are arguments that overrule 
the odds above (most of them found in previous posts here). But I'll 
wait and see if anyone's interested, and of course I'll have some 
more time to write the thing properly!

Yawns hugely
Lucianam