I nod along as I read this as well as the two replies you'd received when I logged on. I may have begun to mistrust Rowling before DH, during the hapless mess of HBP, actually, but so much of DH was a total, well, I won't say betrayal of the fans, but it was sloppy. Slapdash. And the way she treated Tonks and REmus?? Horrible.

There was no point. And that's the worst way for a character to die. Remus, Tonks- both pointless deaths. They didn't move the plot along, they didn't turn the tide of battle, they didn't slap the reader in the face and cause us to gasp - not the way Sirius and even Snape's deaths were treated. They happened off-screen. Horrible. As I writer I know I have to kill of favorite characters, but I also know that I MUST make their deaths count. Make them absolutely necessary.

We are fanfic people, so, of course we care about these characters. It's kind of a given, a necessary part of our psyche. I will never be less than bitter about Cordelia's "character arc" in Angel. (It's hard to even type that) Or DiNozzo's constant belittling and off-hand character assassination in NCIS.

For me, Rowling lost my unfailing devotion when she tried to have her cake and eat it, too. Would Harry live or die? The fans were teetering on the edge of that knife blade until DH came out. Instead of making a choice, she had Harry live and die. Trying to please everyone. With little to no backstory/foreshadowing/build up of the Deathly Hallows to explain it. Heck, they never entered the narrative until the last book.

But, Remus? His death, and Tonks', is irredeemable.