My youngest brother, who’s ten, just looked at me and said, “You know, when I first read the fifth book, I didn’t understand how she could kill Sirius. But then I realized that the whole book is about things being taken away from Harry. They try to take Hogwarts away. Umbridge takes Quidditch. Harry starts working with the DA and feels good about it, so she takes that too. They take away his communication with people who are important to him, twice. They take the good idea he had about his dad. So of course Sirius had to die. He had to be taken away too.”
















