The importance of death /Harry and Cedric

[Rachel]

No: HPFGUIDX 147293

Karen Chuplis wrote:
<SNIP>
> Grief and Harry is a much more private thing. He has always fought 
against a show of grief (it seems to me) in overt ways. It is more 
like it is something SO big, he has no way to express it in words, so 
he shuts down. <

lupinlore wrote:
>  CEDRIC causes such an explosion and Sirius doesn't?  Sorry, don't 
buy it.  And I especially don't buy it because of, of all beings, 
Kreacher.  At the end of OOTP Harry is, quite rightly, full of 
murderous fury toward Kreacher.  Then he becomes Kreacher's master 
scarcely three weeks later and his response is "Uhhh, okay?" Sorry, 
that isn't private. That's catatonic. <

Jez:

I'm afraid I agree with Karen on this one:

I think in terms of Cedric, Harry's reaction is about right; have you 
ever seen/touched a corpse? It is a very weird feeling, even if you 
have no guilt over the death. As such I think being overly emotional 
for a while is perfectly natural (this is his first dead body).

With Sirius' death Harry was not directly the cause but has a 
tentative link to the death therefore feels as guilty as he did over 
Cedric. The difference with Sirius is that he was a major part of 
Harry's life so his death has a much larger impact. And while Harry 
is still reeling from Cedric's death and LV's rise he then looses 
someone so close
 personally, I would shutdown or go catatonic for a 
while. Then on top of his struggle with the death he has everyone 
treading on eggshells around him and asking if he's okay, this causes 
him to become angry at others rather than dealing with his grief and 
almost pushes it down further into the realms of `I'll deal with that 
later'.

It could have gone a few different ways but in terms of the plot this 
was probably the best coping mechanism; bearing in mind that Harry is 
a sixteen year old who has had a pretty rough life up to this point 
and has been forced to just carry on, I think his suppressing the 
grief is realistic and keeps Harry active enough to continue fighting 
LV (where falling into a well of despair or become furious with 
everyone wouldn't). 

Finally I'm going to introduce myself :) I'm Jez, I've been searching 
for a site that discusses HP (for adults) for ages so I'm VERY 
pleased to have finally found one. Sorry if I've got any of the quote 
rules wrong; this is my first post. If there's anything that I've 
done hideously wrong please contact me and I'll try not to do it 
again, thanks!