Deaths affecting Harry

[jerrichase]

No: HPFGUIDX 183523

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "k12listmomma" 
<k12listmomma at ...> wrote:
> So, the most sad death for me is Hedwig. She dies caged up, 
helpless, and 
> her death is totally meaningless. We see her tired of being caged 
up, and 
> Harry belittling the fact that she's impatient to be free again. 
She didn't 
> even have the ability to duck and dodge, to flee or try and save 
herself. 
> Shelley

I agree that this was a very difficult death for me to accept.  And 
an added reason is that having the real, caged Hedwig with the real 
Harry, but fake, caged Hedwig's with the fake Harry's was a flaw in 
the plan.  The differences between a real owl, who can move and hoot 
and a stuffed one, who just sits on a perch in the cage seems to be 
pretty obvious.  Not that it is a difference certain to be spotted, 
but one that could have been spotted.  Far better to send Hedwig away 
in some way, and to have everyone carry an empty cage or no cage at 
all.  

Since having a real Hedwig was a flaw in the plan to have seven 
identical Harry Potter's, then her death was especially nasty on 
JKR's part.  (And I thought at my first reading that Hedwig's 
flapping or the fake Hedwig's lack of motion would be the factor 
which would tell the DE's which was the real Harry, before the group 
had left the ground, as soon as I read the words "owl cages, each 
containing a stuffed snowy owl" on page 52 of the U.S. edition of DH.)

Jerri