Oh lord, here she goes again...
I'm sure by now that you are all sick and tired of me continually banging on about the theory that Sirius is not really dead, but rather traveling in time.
Well, too bad. This is my journal. ;-P
Let me start off by saying -- once again -- that this theory does not spring from the wild hope that Sirius is actually alive because I'm in denial about his death. I promise you, I'm not. I've never felt any particularly strong emotion about Sirius's life or his death, and I've been saying that from the moment I finished reading OotP. I just love to play with various theories that put together the clues we've been given in canon.
So. Some of the most common objections I've had to the time travel theory include the following:
I spent a shitload of time looking up interviews this afternoon, from both the pre-OotP and post-OotP time periods, but it's perfectly possible that I missed an interview somewhere that throws this theory straight in the trash. If I have, and you can provide a link or other reference, please, please, please let me know. And then I will happily eat crow in front of the entire fandom.
And finally, since we don't know anything about Bode's heritage, is it possible he's the half blood pri....
Nah. No reason to go completely overboard with this thing. ;-)
ETA: Jossed!
Well, too bad. This is my journal. ;-P
Let me start off by saying -- once again -- that this theory does not spring from the wild hope that Sirius is actually alive because I'm in denial about his death. I promise you, I'm not. I've never felt any particularly strong emotion about Sirius's life or his death, and I've been saying that from the moment I finished reading OotP. I just love to play with various theories that put together the clues we've been given in canon.
So. Some of the most common objections I've had to the time travel theory include the following:
- "Remus tells Harry Sirius is dead."
Well, no. Remus tells Harry Sirius is "gone." There's a world of difference between "dead" and "gone."
- "Dumbledore tells Harry Sirius is dead."
This is true. However, canon!Dumbledore is not as omniscient as fanon!Dumbledore. Canon!Dumbledore actually screws up quite a lot. He didn't know the Marauders were unregistered Animagi, he gave the Ministry incorrect information about Sirius being the Potters' Secret Keeper, he didn't know Mad-Eye Moody was an imposter through most of GoF, and he kept vitally important information from Harry that could have changed the entire outcome of the series. He may just be wrong about Sirius being dead, too.
- "JKR has repeatedly said that Sirius is dead, that dead is dead, and people are going to die meaningless deaths because the wizarding world is at war."
OK, this is the part where I have stumbled, I must admit. I mean, how can one argue with a bold statement like this made by the ultimate source of the Harry Potter books?
And then a thought occurred to me this morning (which I will get into in a moment). So I put out a call on my LJ for links to JKR interviews regarding Sirius's death, and spent the better part of eight hours searching the web today for the interview where this was supposedly said.
Guess what?
I couldn't find it. The closest I got was an excerpt from this interview with Stephen Fry, which was done at the Royal Albert Hall shortly after OotP was released:
Stephen Fry:
Now we're not going to go into the business of who dies, because not everyone has read the book, but it did cause a bit of a stir when you admitted it caused you great distress. Do you feel a lot of these emotional things with a lot of the characters you write.
JK Rowling:
I do. I think what I was trying to do with the death in this book was show how very arbitrary and sudden death is. This is a death where you didn't have a big death bed scene. It happened almost accidentally and that is one of the very cruel things about death and they're now in a war situation where that really does happen, where one minute you're talking to your friend and the next minute he's gone. It's so shocking and so inexplicable… "Where did they go?" I found it upsetting to write, because I knew what it would mean to Harry.
This got me very excited, because it fits so perfectly into the Sirius as time traveler theory. Everyone assumes from this passage that the death JKR is referring to is Sirius's. But what if it's not?
What if it's Broderick Bode?
- "Broderick fucking Bode?! Have you lost your mind??"
Maybe. But just bear with me for a moment while I lay this thing out.
- Bode's death fits all of the criteria JKR outlined in the quote above. He's dead, dead, dead, and there's a body to prove it. There was no big deathbed scene. It was designed to look like an accident, and even though it appears that it actually wasn't, it can be argued that if Sirius is dead, his death wasn’t an accident, either. He was, after all, involved in a duel with Death Eaters at the time.
- JKR has the following to say about the death in OotP in an interview with Katie Couric done at the end of June, 2003:
Couric: “You said when the last book came out that the death of one character was quote, ‘the beginning of the deaths.’ Yikes!”
Rowling: “Yeah, that’s nice, isn’t it. There’s going to be a blood bath [laughter].”
Couric: “Warm and fuzzy. What does that mean?”
Rowling: “It’s a war. Essentially a war has broken out again and when I say the beginning of the deaths, I mean the deaths that are meaningful, I suppose, to the reader. In this book, what I consider to be a major character dies. It was awful to write. It was absolutely awful. And literally, well I did, I cried after doing it, and then, er, walked into the kitchen afterwards in tears. And Neil said to me, ‘What’s the matter?’ And I said, ‘Well I’ve just killed the person that I’m going to kill.’ And he doesn’t know who it is. And Neil said, ‘Well, don’t do it then.’ Which showed he completely didn’t understand that you need to be very unpleasant and vicious to your characters to write heart-warming children’s books. (KC: laughs) He’s a doctor, he just doesn’t get it. He’s you know, more into saving people than killing them.”
OK, a couple of points emerge from this bit. My first thought upon reading this was, "Neil, just how stupid are you? How could you not know who the person she killed was?" This can be read in three ways, I suppose. 1.) It was Sirius and Neil is just that clueless about the books (which, being married to the author, I find incredibly hard to believe); 2.) It was Sirius and JKR didn’t tell Neil who she was planning to kill in the book (which is another imagination-bender for me personally, but plausible, I guess) or 3.) It was Bode and Neil had never heard of Broderick Bode before, which is, IMO, the most logical assumption given that Bode had only been mentioned once before, in GoF.
Then there is this business about the person who died being a "major character." Lesser theorists than I (*ahem*) might think that negates the whole premise here, since Bode can hardly be called a major character in the series.
Yet.
But! How famous is JKR for her clues and red herrings? Pretty damn famous, I'd say, if you didn't recognize from the beginning that Scabbers was actually Peter Pettigrew, or that Sirius Black was actually innocent, or Barty Crouch, Jr. was actually Mad-Eye Moody.
And then there's this bit, which is another excerpt from the Royal Albert Hall interview:
Stephen Fry:
Now Order of the Phoenix. It's 766 pages long. That is a big book by any standards and as I have to sit in front of a microphone and read it all for hours and hours I'm very cross with you [He was joking kids…] but on the other hand it's extraordinary good value as you planned seven books in the series and you could have written eight just with the words you've done in the first five. Did you know it was going to be this long?
JK Rowling:
No I didn't. I will say this. I had to put in some things because of what's to come in Books Six and Seven and I didn't want anyone to say to me: "What a cheat. You never gave us clues." Because if I didn't mention certain things in Order of the Phoenix, you could have said: "Well you sprang that on us." Whereas I want you to be able to guess if you've got your wits about you. There are a few surprises coming.
There it is, folks. There are more surprises coming. Isn't it possible that Bode is going to take on more significance as books 6 and 7 unfold? He seemed pretty damn interested in Harry when he ran into Harry and Arthur Weasley in the lift at the MoM (he was staring at Harry with an "unfaltering gaze"), so perhaps it's possible that he's a "big fan" of Harry's, as JKR apparently hinted in an early interview discussing the death in OotP (I was unable to find this interview anywhere, by the way).
JKR has done this to us before... a passing reference in one book turns out to be a full-blown character in another. To repeat, JKR said in the Couric interview: "In this book, what I consider to be a major character dies." That's very carefully worded, don't you think? Could it mean that it was a character she considers important -- even if we don't -- because she knows the whole story? And his death is going to have a very important impact on Harry at some point in the next two books?
- More interview material on this point:
From a Bloomsbury interview:
(JKR says) "This book is a bit of a departure. Harry is very angry. Very angry. And he's angry for most of the book. But I think that is fair enough given what has happened to him and that he hasn't been given an awful lot of information. So it's not a very gentle tale. And there is a nasty death in it as well. Nasty because it is someone I care about as a character."
She adds: "This time it is someone I consider to be a main character." She cried when she wrote the death scene, as she did twice when writing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
"...someone I consider to be a main character." Hmmm. There's that careful wording again. Is there anyone in the fandom who doesn't view Sirius as a main character? Be honest now. Regardless of your personal opinions of the man, he is a driving force behind the books. So why would she have to qualify her thoughts on his death by saying he was someone she "considers to be a main character”?
And this, from an interview with a reporter from the BBC::
JEREMY PAXMAN: Is it going to upset people?
JK ROWLING: Yes. It upset me. I always knew it was coming, but I managed to live in denial, and carry on with the character and not think about it.
This points to Sirius on the surface, as he has a bigger role in OotP than any of the other books. But! This is also true of Bode. He shows up a number of times in OotP, and while the passages aren't long, we have no idea how long it took JKR to put them together. She may have had to "not think about it" while she was writing them, as well.
And finally, this bit from an interview with staff members at Barnes and Noble (done in 1999):
Q: You've said in interviews that there will be casualties in the Harry Potter series. Now, everyone at a web site I visit says someone (probably Hagrid) will die in Book 4. Will someone die or is this a terrible rumor? I love Hagrid!
A: It is true that there will be deaths in Book 4 for the first time. It is likely that the reader will only care about one of the deaths. I can't say who it is, but I have certainly never told anyone that it's Hagrid -- hint, hint.
If it is true that she has many more deaths planned for the next two books, how likely is it that the only death most of us will care about has already occurred? (Note: I'm willing to budge on this point, given that the interview is already five years old and it's possible she's changed a few things in the plot since then.)
- What's with this? From the World Book Day Chat (March 2004):
SiriuslyLovinSirius asks: If we ever see Sirius again, what form will he be in?
JK Rowling replies -> I couldn't possibly answer that for fear of incriminating myself.
WTF? If he's dead, why not just say no? She doesn't have any trouble confirming Regulus's death, or James's, or Lily's. Things that make you go hmmm.
- Finally, I would like to point out that JKR has not -- to the best of my knowledge -- ever mentioned Sirius specifically when discussing the death in OotP. The closest references I have been able to find are the following:
Again, from the World Book Day Chat:
Cookie246122: Why did you kill Sirius? It made me very sad :(
JK Rowling replies -> I'm really, really sorry. I didn't want to do it, but there was a reason. If you think you can forgive me, keep reading, you'll find out. [I feel really guilty now].
From a Newsweek article published in June, 2003:
Yes, a major character dies, but no giving away the ending here. In place of a spoiler, let's pause for a message from the author: "I know that a certain number of my fans are going to be pretty upset with me by the end of the book. I really apologize to them. But it had to be so. And I am sorry because I know what it's like to lose someone, albeit a fictional person, that you were quite attached to."
And from the Royal Albert hall interview:
Stephen Fry:
Yes, for all his [unintelligible], Sirius was so loveable really.
JK Rowling:
And we've just given it away [bursts into laughter].
Note, please, that in none of these interviews does JKR come right out and say "I KILLED SIRIUS." She is, instead, reacting to the fact that HP fans are going to believe the Big Death in OotP is Sirius and will be saddened by that idea. Given how secretive she is with her plots, is it really likely that she's going to correct that perception? Or is she sitting back in her chair rubbing her hands together with glee at the idea that she has duped HP fans all over the world?
You're a deceitful bitch if this theory is true, Jo. And I love you for it.
- Bode's death fits all of the criteria JKR outlined in the quote above. He's dead, dead, dead, and there's a body to prove it. There was no big deathbed scene. It was designed to look like an accident, and even though it appears that it actually wasn't, it can be argued that if Sirius is dead, his death wasn’t an accident, either. He was, after all, involved in a duel with Death Eaters at the time.
I spent a shitload of time looking up interviews this afternoon, from both the pre-OotP and post-OotP time periods, but it's perfectly possible that I missed an interview somewhere that throws this theory straight in the trash. If I have, and you can provide a link or other reference, please, please, please let me know. And then I will happily eat crow in front of the entire fandom.
And finally, since we don't know anything about Bode's heritage, is it possible he's the half blood pri....
Nah. No reason to go completely overboard with this thing. ;-)
ETA: Jossed!