[HPforGrownups] Character Given A Reprieve

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 175423


SnapesSlytherin at aol.com:
> I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm upset with JKR about how she 
> portrayed the character who got a reprieve.? It sounded to me as though 
> she meant a character who was supposed to die *in the last book* would not 
> die after all.? JKR said that Arthur Weasley was supposed to die in OoP --  
> how did he get a reprieve in DH?? I think that she was really misleading 
> (possibly deliberately misleading...) in order to confuse the fans.
>
> IMNSVHO (in my not so very humble opinion lol), it does not count as a 
> book seven reprieve if Arthur received it in book five.


Shelley:
I have to agree, but then again, when you look back at all of her quotes, 
quite a number of them were misleading. I think at all times she was being 
vague, and for many of them (she didn't want to give away that the character 
would have died in Book 5), she really wasn't hiding anything really 
significant. So, if we knew that it was the Order of the Phoenix, we could 
have guessed Arthur because of that snake bite- would too much have been 
revealed? I don't think so, because I could not think of even one fan theory 
that would have changed with the revelation of Arthur's reprieve. Everyone 
thought a Weasley was going to buy it, and sure enough, one of them did. The 
people who died for Mr. Weasley weren't in the family. The only thing that 
would have changed is everyone would have started spinning tales about how 
Mr. Weasley would change the ending, per se, to play a very significant 
role, but in the end he didn't really make a difference past book 5, did he?

Frankly, I think that Mr. Weasley's death would have made more sense in the 
long run than Lupin and Tonk's death. That whole "orphan boy suffering due 
to Voldemort" was an already used theme, imho, in both Harry and Neville. 
The death of his best friend's father would have given Harry just one more 
reason to kill Voldemort, as if he didn't have enough already. To move the 
deaths to Book 7, and at the end, just appeared to me to be more useless 
carnage. I don't think a thing would have been changed if Lupin and Tonks 
hadn't been exchanged for Arthur- if Arthur had just been allowed to live, 
and no hostages in exchange. One thing that has always bothered me about 
Rowling is with her quotes that "someone has to die", as if she possibly 
couldn't find a way to write a decent story without offing another loved 
character. I wonder if she gets some sort of perverse pleasure with their 
deaths. Or if those deaths provide an avenue of healing for her (the loss of 
her own mother) that somehow doesn't come across well to us readers.