Ingenious

To those of you who know me, you know I love Harry Potter. To those of you who don't know me, you can't possibly understand the depths of my love for this book series. I've left a few scattered hints across my little niche of the internet, here on DevArt and on Fanfiction.net, but there's no real words to describe my loyalty and devotion to the books that kept me going during a very hard time in my life and continue to be my little escape when things get a little too real.

I have something to say, obvious enough that I took time away from doing homework to type this up and post it, and what I have to say is for those of us who are still mourning. Mourning the book series, mourning the movies, mourning The End of an Era… mourning a few very important characters that did not survive to see the end of the series: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Hedwig, and Severus Snape, among others. However, there is one name from this long list that seems to rise above all the others, the name of a certain favorite, red haired twin whose death seemed to have rattled us the most.

Fred Weasley.

His death seems to have both shook and shattered the fanbase. Many stopped reading right there, unable to continue, and many more immediately labeled Mrs. Rowling heartless and cruel. How dare she take away one half of a whole? Fred Weasley was untouchable; he and George were the light and laughter of the fifth year! How could she hurt the Weasley's like that, shatter poor George! The reactions have been sad, angry, infuriated and insulted… which I think simply solidifies my claim that Mrs. Rowling is a genius and should immediately, if she hasn't already, be listed next to Shakespeare as one of the greatest literary minds the world has ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Please, no pitchforks, and mind that torch. You might burn someone. Allow me to explain.

How would the story have changed if Fred had been allowed to live? It would have been subtle, and non writers may not have even noticed it, but as an aspiring writer, I would have (or so my ego tells me). I would have lost all manner of respect for her. When Fred was struck down, I was shocked and angry, upset and sobbing, but I still respected Mrs. Rowling and her capabilities as a story teller. Many people said it was unnecessary to kill Fred, just cruel and bloodthirsty. I disagree.

It was absolutely necessary to kill him.

You, in the back, please put that brick down. I was very good at dodge ball in school, and it probably won't reach the stage either way. Thank you. As I was saying, it was absolutely necessary to kill Fred. From a literary stand point, if she hadn't, it would have entirely changed the tone of the story. Death can touch all these people, Harry and Neville in particular, but not the Weasley's. They're safe, because they're loved. This is possibly why many people wished Draco dead instead of Fred, but I digress. The story would have lost its realistic and dark tone (talking paintings notwithstanding). The bad guys lost, the good guys won, everything's wonderful.

No. This is not how it works in the real world, and in cases like this art should imitate life. It hurts, yes; it hurts like hell, but simply denying there's any pain won't make it go away. In war, as in life in general, no one is spared the hurt or the suffering. No one gets a free pass because they are witty, well liked, intelligent, charming, or aligned with the good guys. Speaking from very painful personal experience, bad things will always happen to good people. Being pretty or smart will not spare anyone, and therein lies Mrs. Rowling's genius. She understood how that worked and implemented it in such a way that she received from her reader's the very reaction they would have had had the loss been a real individual from their family. And it made the scene all the more effective.

You were shocked, completely and utterly flabbergasted and many went into complete denial. You felt the pain, the loss with poor George, and you felt maybe a little guilty, but couldn't say why. You got angry, a good, proper kind of anger that bubbled and broiled and you lashed out at the only person you could: J.K. Rowling. She took him after all. She killed him. This brought on the depression, the knowledge that now George's twin was gone and he was only the half of a whole now. Somehow you managed to feel all these things before Fred had even hit the floor, and for the more observant of you you'll notice I just detailed the first five stages of grief. Somewhere between there and the ending of the book, some of you may have gone through the final two, others may not have, but the point is you went through at least two or three of these… which is important to my defending Mrs. Rowling.

For those of us who had never felt grief before, it was scary. It was raw and wrong and left a little gap somewhere in the gut. It felt real. You mourned, right there with George, which gave you the ability to feel empathy and sympathy for him and other characters that'd lost their loved ones. Without that, the book's ending would have been hollow. If Fred hadn't died, there wouldn't have been that bittersweet feeling of victory and loss. Because that is war and that is life. You lose no matter what, both sides do. There is no winning a war because someone, somewhere, would have lost a very dear loved one to the cause. Fred's living would have left too much happiness in the reader, when they should have been feeling that hollow victory Harry and Hermione were.
It is this that makes J.K. Rowling a genius; this understanding of human nature and war and violence, and the cost of fighting. Without it, Harry Potter would have been just another book.

Because how many of us can say that they truly know death? This does not include the death of a family pet, despite being loved members of the family; the loss is simply not the same. Not many, at least in the Harry Potter generation, can. We're a young bunch. The first book was published in 1997, when I was six years old. I personally didn't start reading the books until the movies brought well deserved attention to them in 2001, when I was ten. I am twenty now, as of August, and have enjoyed a lovely ten years being surrounded by all the magic Hogwarts could supply me with. Now, there are older fans, of course, and younger, but the generation that has truly made Harry Potter it is: is mine, or at least close to mine in age.

Not many twenty year olds know death, or disease, or true, crippling despair and unhappiness. By giving us that little slice of what George was feeling, of what Harry and Ron and The Weasley's and all of Hogwarts was feeling she made the loss all the more powerful. It struck the nerve it was supposed to, and left us a little shaken. It's doubtful she intended to strike this nerve, or thought this deeply on the subject, but it is possible.

She is after all, a genius.