To mark the 18th anniversary since the Battle of Hogwarts at the end of
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which took place on May 2, 1998, J.K. Rowling took to Twitter to make her annual apology for killing off a beloved character.
This should come as no surprise, as the author said years ago that she changed her mind about killing Arthur Weasley in
Order of the Phoenix - he was originally meant to die after the bite he received from Nagini before Christmas. Rowling opted to change the deaths from Arthur to Lupin as the Weasley patriarch's death would have long-term affects on Ron (of course) and Harry.
Right after the publication of
Deathly Hallows in July 2007, Rowling
said:
Quote:
“If there's one character I couldn't bear to part with, it's Arthur Weasley,” Rowling admitted for the first time publicly in an interview with TODAY’s Meredith Vieira. Hence, in “Phoenix,” Mr. Weasley survives a snakebite … just barely.
“I think part of the reason for that is there were very few good fathers in the book,” said Rowling. “In fact, you could make a very good case for Arthur Weasley being the only good father in the whole series.”
“I wanted to kill parents,” she said, quickly adding that sounded “terrible” to say. “I wanted there to be an echo of what happened to Harry just to show the absolute evil of what Voldemort's doing.”
“I think one of the most devastating things about war is the children left behind,” Rowling said. “As happened in the first war when Harry's left behind, I wanted us to see another child left behind. And it made it very poignant that it was [Lupin and Tonks'] newborn son.”