For a book series initially created for kids and later morphing into a mature young adult series, there were a lot of significant deaths in the Harry Potter series. For a family movie franchise, many of those deaths carried over to the films with frequently heartbreaking and devastating manners.
Who dies in Harry Potter? Of course, the entire story started with violent deaths, as both Harry Potter's parents died, and he left marked following the attack by the evil Lord Voldemort. As an orphan whose aunt and uncle adopted him and then treated him horribly, the entire series built on a tragedy and played out to the bitter end, with no one safe from death's grasp.
Updated on February 1st, 2022, by Shawn S. Lealos: The saddest deaths in the Harry Potter franchise hit many readers hard. Whether it was a student that readers and movie viewers had grown to love or warriors that fell in battle, they were all characters fans had grown to love.
This has continued to cause problems for the characters in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Anyone and everyone could die in the Harry Potter movies and the sacrifices have already started to rise in just two movies in the new spin-off series. All the deaths, regardless of how small the characters, affected the story in tragic and unexpected ways. Who died in Harry Potter changed the main characters forever.
Aragog
Aragog was a giant spider creature. He was large and scary and could have easily killed Harry Potter and his friends when they were young. However, Hagrid had a relationship with the giant spiders and he was there to care for them and protect them as best he could.
Aragog ended up contracting a deadly illness and there was nothing that Hagrid could do to help him. He wanted to ensure that Aragog had a proper burial and he was able to get the body back before the spider's children devoured it. When he buried Aragog, it was a hard moment for Hagrid.
Charity Burbage
The death of Charity Burbage was one of the most horrific in the Harry Potter franchise. She wasn't killed instantly like many others. She didn't die in battle like the most heroic of the witches and wizards. She was tortured by Voldemort and put on display for the Death Eaters to mock and laugh at.
Ms. Burbage was a Hogwarts professor who taught Muggle Studies. Because of his intense hatred for Muggles, Voldemort made an example of her for polluting the minds of the children. Even when she asked Snape to help her, he could do nothing and Voldemort killed her and fed her to Nagini.
Irma Dugard
Irma Dugard was part of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. She was a half-elf who worked for the Lestrange family. It was her job to care for the young Credence Barebone and it was her who signed his adoption papers.
Sadly, it was her job as a caregiver that led to her eventual death. Credence wanted to learn more about his family since he learned that he wasn't who he believed he was. Before he could get any real information from her, Grindelwald sent Gunnar Grimmson to her residence and he killed her.
Gellert Grindelwald
Gellert Grindelwald is the villain in the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, but this was not the first time Harry Potter fans met the evil wizard. He was a prisoner in Nurmengard in the original series of movies. He was serving time when Voldemort arrived to learn the location of the Elder Wand.
While Grindelwald was an evil man himself, he faced a monster worse than even he and stood defiant. He stood up to Voldemort, refused to give up the location, and mocked the wizard, leading to his death, defiant to the end.
Leta Lestrange
Leta Lestrange was one of the heroes in the Fantastic Beasts series, a former girlfriend of Newt Scamander and current girlfriend of his brother Theseus. Sadly, she would never marry Theseus because she was one of the people who stood up to Grindelwald.
Leta joined Newt, Theseus, and others in an attack on Grindelwald at a gathering and she served as a distraction to help her allies escape. She then destroyed Grindelwald's skull hookah, disrupting his plans, and died in the flames in the ultimate sacrifice and one of the saddest deaths in the Harry Potter prequels.
Ariana Dumbledore
Ariana Dumbledore was killed in the past, but it was a loss that was felt hard by Albus Dumbledore. Since fans loved Dumbledore so much, his loss hurt others, and when he talked about his beloved sister, it was clear the hurt was still there.
The fact that Dumbledore could have killed his sister while in a duel with Gellert Grindelwald made it even worse, as she fell in a three-way battle that included brother Aberforth Dumbledore as well.
Lavender Brown
Readers and movie fans watched Lavender Brown grow up in the world of the Potterverse. She made her first appearance when she started school alongside Harry Potter. She then went on to become a part of Dumbledore's Army and was an ally all along.
Sadly, she died in the Battle of Hogwarts when the savage werewolf Fenrir Greyback attacked her. Friends tried to save her, but they were too late, and she succumbed to her injuries.
Colin Creevey
Colin Creevey might be the most senseless death of them all. He showed up late when he came in as a wide-eyed new student. His innocence and enthusiasm were on display immediately when he showed up with his camera to take a picture of Harry Potter, a wizard he had the utmost respect for.
There was no way fans couldn't fall in love with the little guy. Sadly, he died during the Battle of Hogwarts, killed by unknown Death Eaters.
James Potter
The most significant loss in the Harry Potter books when it came to the Boy Wizard's family was his mother, Lily. The pain that it left in Snape was heartbreaking in every way.
However, while Lily's death was hard to take, there is no discounting Harry's loss of his father. Yes, James Potter was a jerk as a student, but he was still Harry Potter's dad, and he was always there to help Harry from the afterlife when his son needed him.
Hedwig
When a pet dies, it is a genuinely tragic death, yet it happened so fast that many people might have forgotten it amongst the in-your-face deaths of the franchise. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry was escaping from Death Eaters, and he was in flight when they started firing Killing Curses at him.
Harry was able to dodge them, but one curse intended for Hagrid slipped by and struck Hedwig, Harry's beloved owl, and it fell dead during the fight.
Lily Potter
For much of the Harry Potter franchise, fans only knew about Lily and James Potter dying many years before the story began. Harry Potter was a baby when Lord Voldemort came into the Potter home and killed both parents before a charmed Harry survived, and Voldemort was banished.
However, when Severus Snape's real backstory and role in the tale played out, fans finally saw the death of Lily and James and how Harry's mother's death destroyed Snape was heartbreaking itself. While this heartbreak was years in the past, it molded Snape into the hero he eventually became.
Mad-Eye Moody
The Mad-Eye Moody that most fans of the movie saw was not the real one for much of his screen time. Remember, Moody was locked away in a box and replaced by Barty Crouch Jr. However, once Moody was back, he became a valued ally once again.
Moody was part of the second Order of the Phoenix and was there to battle Voldemort's followers in the Second Wizarding Wars. Moody became very protective of Harry Potter, believing him to be the key to beating Voldemort. To protect Harry during an attack by Death Eaters, he led Voldemort after him while Harry escaped, and the Dark Lord blasted him with a Killing Curse.
Remus Lupin
Remus Lupin lived a rough life since he was a werewolf and had to hide that fact from those around him. He attended Hogwarts and was a close friend of Harry's father James, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew -- the three known as the Marauders.
An original member of the first Order of the Phoenix, he was the sole survivor of the Marauders, losing James to death, Sirius to a life sentence in Azkaban, and Peter to a betrayal. He became Harry's Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher until he resigned in shame when Snape told everyone he was a werewolf. Lupin finally died fighting at the Battle of Hogwarts, murdered by a Death Eater after watching his wife die as well.
Nymphadora Tonks
Nymphadora Tonks was Remis Lupin's wife. She was a half-blood witch who was an Auror at the Ministry of Magic, learning under the guidance of Mad-Eye Moody. This led to her joining the Order of the Phoenix while working undercover in the Ministry of Magic.
Tonks and Lupin, despite his life as a werewolf, married in 1997 and the two ended up having a son -- Harry Potter becoming the child's godfather. However, there was no happy ending for Tonks and Lupin. It was Tonks' death that was the most heartbreaking, as Bellatrix Lestrange murdered her niece, Lupin dying shortly after, and the two laid to rest beside each other.
Cedric Diggory
Through the Harry Potter franchise, many of the significant deaths were to older wizards who set out to protect and fight alongside Harry Potter. It was unfathomable that students -- teenagers studying to become wizards -- would die as well. That is exactly what happened in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
In that story, Harry joined a tournament that had students from three wizarding schools face off in competitions to win the title of Triwizard Champion. However, thanks to trickery, two different Hogwarts students took part. One was Harry and the second was Cedric Diggory. When Voldemort lured in Harry to kill him, Cedric arrived as well, and Peter Pettigrew killed him in front of Harry.
Fred Weasley
While the death of Cedric Diggory was sad, as he was just a teenage Hogwarts student, there was another death of a young wizard that shook up audiences even more. One of the most heartbreaking deaths in the Harry Potter franchise came when one of the Weasley children died.
While Ron was safe, as one of the key protagonists and Ginny was safe, as Harry's future wife, one of the saddest deaths in Harry Potter was that of Fred Weasley. Fred and George were twins and were jovial wizards, more interested in their joke shop than fighting. However, they never backed down when it came time to protect Hogwarts and Fred died in the Battle of Hogwarts when he was caught in an explosion while fighting alongside his brother Percy.
Albus Dumbledore
Albus Dumbledore was the one character outside of Harry Potter that no one expected to die. However, when following the hero's journey, he had to die to give Harry the strength and determination to move on and defeat Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore's death was also self-sacrifice worthy of the great wizard.
Voldemort sent young Draco Malfoy to kill Dumbledore, and the great wizard knew that the young wizard had no choice. To save Draco's soul, he signaled Severus Snape to kill him, which Snape did instantly. It was one of the most heartbreaking deaths Harry faced.
Severus Snape
For most of the Harry Potter franchise, Severus Snape seemed evil, angry, and a vindictive wizard. He treated Harry with contempt, and it seemed crazy that Dumbledore kept him teaching at the school, considering the way he handled the students. However, with His strict and ordered teaching, he made everyone better wizards.
When Snape killed Dumbledore, Harry made it his mission to kill his former teacher. However, as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows proved, Snape was working for Dumbledore all along, a wizard sent undercover to work for Voldemort and beat the Death Eaters from the inside. Snape gave his life helping to save Harry and he realized that everything Severus did was out of his love for Lily Potter.
Dobby
It seems crazy how sad the death of Dobby was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When the House Elf first appeared, he was a mischief-maker who did everything he could to make Harry's life a living hell. However, over time, it was proven that he did it out of loyalty.
When Dobby soon worked with Hermoine to help free the other House Elves from lives of servitude, it made him even more loveable in the books. While his appearances in the movies were not quite as pronounced, his arrival to save Harry and his friends and then his sacrifice and death to protect them, left no dry eyes in the theater.
Sirius Black
While Dumbledore was a depressing death for Harry Potter to face as his only real father figure, the death of Sirius Black hit him the hardest. When Sirius first showed up in the pages of Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban, Harry thought the man was responsible for the death of his parents and wanted him dead.
However, once he learned that Black and James were the closest of friends and Harry was Sirius's godson, the two grew close. Sadly, Sirius had to remain hidden but still watched out for Harry. When it finally looked like Harry found his family in Black, Sirius died during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries and Harry lost the closest thing to a father he ever knew, one of the most devastating losses of who died in Harry Potter.