JK Rowling Almost Killed Off Arthur Weasley in 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'

Even though the Harry Potter series has been finished for years now, fans are still grieving the loss of some of their favorite characters. So many of the series' favorites had to die, such as Sirius Black, lovable Fred Weasley, the secret protector Snape, and of course Dumbledore, but luckily author J.K. Rowling stopped there and didn't kill off many other major characters, when she could very well have.

One character that was on Rowling's potential hit list was one of the book's most patriarchal characters, Arthur Weasley. Could you imagine Arthur and his son Fred dying? That'd be rough. But thankfully, the acclaimed author changed her mind in the nick of time, and we were all spared another heartbreaking death.

Weasley's time was almost up in the scene where he's attacked by Nagini, Voldemort's horcrux/pet snake, while guarding the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix. Voldemort was just beginning to rise to power again, so Arthur's death in this scene would have made sense in a way, and would have marked the first death since Cedric Diggory in Goblet of Fire.

But in interviews, Rowling said that while she wanted to kill off more parents to show more fear in the Wizarding World, she also wanted to keep the one father figure.

"If there’s one character I couldn’t bear to part with, it’s Arthur Weasley," Rowling told the Today Show in 2007. "I think part of the reason for that is there were very few good fathers in the book. In fact, you could make a very good case for Arthur Weasley being the only good father in the whole series."

But since Arthur was staying, Rowling knew she had to cut off other characters, unfortunately.

[h/t: Pottermore]