[PTeppic]

I found the story entirely rivetting, but as I've said in one of the other threads, apart from Dobby the deaths were very casual. Yes, it's a genuine magical battle, but so many of the "main" character deaths were either merely mentioned in passing (oops, Fred's still on the ground) or could have been one of several people (it's someone red-haired out of a group of three red-haired people - pick a straw and they're it). I felt no compassion or emotion, or even sympathy. It's almost as if they died because they had to. We couldn't have so much fighting without including deaths, and so many deaths without it being people we knew would be unlikely (e.g. LOTR trilogy, perhaps even OotP finale), so "lets just pick a few of those we know and happen to mention they died".

It's the same with Ace's point: "and fifty others". Let's think who was there: staff, students (should only be 17+), house elves, the Order, and the Death Eaters. Just typing aloud here, but, we've been introduced to most of the Order, so presumably it was mostly not them. There're probably only about fifteen staff at Hogwarts and you'd expect we'd be told about them. Assuming each year is as per Harry's, then it's 40 strong. Everyone in 7th year is "of age" and on average half the 6th too, though some others below age crept in: say 75 pupils (likely to be a lot less since most Slytherins aren't likely to have stayed and maybe many of the of-age too). But of those, two thirds are Harry's year, and most others are either the year below or are likely to be DA members: most of whom we've been introduced to in the series (e.g. was Lavender Brown dead, or "just" mauled, like Bill?). So, of the humans fighting against Voldemort, we'd have to assume that the vast majority are actually people we know and have come familiar with, and so since they're not named, can it be any of them? Many faceless house elves, perhaps, late pawns who fall in high numbers? Or, finally, do we assume that the majority to fall were Death Eaters? In which case, unless they were killed by cross-fire from Voldemort or their colleages, you have an army of 2/3rds pupils killing on a wide scale... not likely... She doesn't make many but I think this was a small error on JKR's part, not thinking through the implication of a tiny little thought: "not enough deaths for the scale of the battle, so let's add some: and fifty others" without double-checking who was there, etc.