10 Reasons The Harry Potter Movies Were A Massive Waste Of Potential

Sirius' death is the point where there's no going back. The series had already made a sharp turn into the dark and there'd been several note-worthy deaths already, but this took things to the next level. Harry's closest thing to a father figure has been killed, forcing the responsibility of stopping the insurmountable dark on the younger generation. And both the movies and books convey that part neatly.

However, there's another key element that's not adapted fully - the confusion over the death. In the film, Sirius is hit by Bellatrix's killing curse, his body disappearing through the "veil", but in the book there's no avada kedavra, with Black simply knocked through the mysterious portal, leaving his fate vaguely uncertain and making the loss much harder to deal with.

Harry has struggled accepting death throughout the series. In The Prisoner Of Azkaban he becomes convinced that his father is alive after seeing a stag patronus, before realising it was in fact himself time travelling, and Sirius only amplifies it. This is ultimately paid off when he comes into possession of the Resurrection Stone in The Deathly Hallows, reuniting with those he's lost and turning that struggle into the self-power needed to sacrifices himself.

At least that's how it should be; in making the death more cut-and-dry in film five, you hurt the climax of number eight.