Harry Potter Challenge: Day 21

If you could bring one of the characters back to life, who would you choose?

Fred Weasley. For me, Cedric's death was sad, Sirius' death was terrible, Dumbledore's death was devastating... but not one of all the Harry Potter deaths has been as devastating as Fred's for me.

What makes this so horrible is the fact that he was a twin. Twins have an odd conection to each other. One of my favourite books is The Secret Life of Bees. In this book, there is one character called May, who gets altered rather easily. It is later revealed that she had a twin, called April, who killed herself when she was eight. Since then, May can feel her pain.

Notice that Fred is a nice guy, but somewhat cruel. He makes fun of his brothers and almost made Ron make an Unbreakable vow - granted, he was seven. But when George is attacked, he goes completely out of character.

See this from George's point of view. George is definitely nicer than Fred. He is much less likely to make fun of Percy or Ron, and he's the first one to worry about the family issues. According to Rowling, his boggart is actually Fred's dead body, and so is Molly's, which means their worst fear became true. Not only that, but every time he looks in the mirror, he sees his dead brother. Every mirror is a Mirror of Erised for him. It's even worse if you considered that, by the end of the books, one of the Weasleys is dead, another is a half werewolf and a third one is missing an ear. Poor Weasleys.

Consider how it happens: Ron, Fre, Percy and Harry are battling. They get rid of the Death Eaters, then Percy makes a joke. Fred and Percy finally make up, and then the wall falls, which leads us to think Percy's dead, because Redemption Equals Death. And then - it's Fred.

The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind wsa in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying-

Fred Weasley is the last person you would expect to die. Death is sad, and he is the opposite of sadness. See, this is the top reason why I like Harry Potter so much better than Twilight. In Twilight, you never see any of the main characters die. In Harry Potter, characters you've begun to love meet their end, because it's a war and war is unfair. As you can see by the subtle foreshadowing Mrs. Rowling is so good at, his death was planned from the beginning (i.e., he was singing a funeral song one time, and Molly told him in book 4 that she wouldn't stand the thought of him dying), and she still let us grow a fondness for the guy. Praise Fred! He's so awesome he's Neville's boggart!