[Commonmind]

When is any death actually necessary? And if we're talking about the motivation behind certain deaths in context to the story, who are we to assume they were or were not necessary. From the author's perspective, they were, and any argument ends there. Hedwig's death was obviously quite startling, and impacting, but its purpose was not to serve some definable plot-point or to move the story ahead. It's also not likely that J.K. decided to kill the owl simply to shock us, though some would argue that. If you're a writer, you know how naturally some of these things occur, and often to your own chagrin - frequently a story uses the author as a conduit and you can't help but write what's coming through it, because that's how good stories work; they are discovered, not created.