Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [27]
What is the most shocking moment in the series?
Voldemort’s Return (GoF)
When Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby, the killing curse rebounded, destroying the Dark Lord’s body and reducing his soul to the size of a microbe. Everyone knew he would return someday, bigger and badder than ever, but nobody was quite prepared for the way in which it happened.
Voldie’s first attempts at reanimation, by possessing Professor Quirrell and Ginny Weasley, both fail. The third time is the charm, so to speak, and the one that disgusted and shocked readers everywhere. Voldemort’s most faithful servant, Wormtail (aka Peter Pettigrew), finds the Dark Lord in Albania and is able to get him halfway to bodily form by animating a deformed baby (the magic used to create this baby is never described in the books, but the author said in an interview that she grossed out her editor by explaining it once [JKR-PC1]).
Peter nurses the horrible creature with snake venom to nourish Voldemort’s soul inside so that it will be prepared to find its true form in the climactic graveyard scene of GoF. Readers were caught off guard by this scene because one moment they’re reading breathlessly as Harry navigates the maze of the Triwizard Cup, and the next—after Harry and Cedric Diggory touch the Portkey—they’re in the graveyard surrounded by Voldemort’s Death Eaters. Suddenly, Cedric Diggory is dead and Harry is bound and gagged at the mercy of Voldemort. But nothing could prepare readers for what came next. Wormtail shockingly tosses the deformed baby into a boiling cauldron. He then throws in a bone from Voldemort’s dead father along with some of Harry’s blood before sickeningly cutting off his own right hand and throwing it into the disgusting boiling brew. From that noxious cauldron of dark magic, the Dark Lord rises again, just as evil and snakelike as ever, giving readers their first terrifying glimpse of Voldemort back from the dead and ready to begin a new reign of terror.
The Death of Sirius Black (OotP)
The biggest shocker of all time is the deadly moment when Sirius Black suddenly falls through the Death Veil at the Department of Mysteries. Few expected Sirius to die, and nobody expected his death to be so sudden and anticlimactic! Who would ever think that such a major character so attached to Harry would just suddenly disappear off the face of the earth without warning? Sirius had everything to live for. He was handsome, funny, and intelligent. Being Harry’s godfather gave him a family and brought him joy. He had wasted so many years in Azkaban for a crime he never committed, and after that he was trapped as a fugitive in Grimmauld Place. Everyone hoped the Ministry would clear his good name so he could have a real life and watch Harry grow up. The fight at the Ministry was his first real chance in years to get into some dueling action for the Order of the Phoenix, zapping the Death Eaters right and left. Then BAM! Cousin Bellatrix gets in one lucky shot and Sirius, Harry’s mentor and father figure, falls backward into the Veil of Death [OotP, p. 806].
People still can’t believe it happened—it was the worst surprise in all the books. By the time Lupin kept Harry from jumping through the veil after Sirius, people realized he was really dead. Many fans were sobbing at that point. Others threw their books at the wall. How could it happen? Maybe it was just a trick and Sirius would return in the next book. Maybe Harry would figure out how to use the magic mirror that Sirius and James used to use during detentions to bring Sirius back. Maybe Harry would return to the veil and find a way to revive him. He couldn’t really be dead, could he? But no—it was over for the ex-Marauder. The Order lost a warrior hero, the wizarding world lost the last of the Blacks, fans