This Tragic 'Harry Potter' Theory About Hedwig Will Blow Your Mind

Well, this is just about the saddest thing I've ever read.

If you're like me, when you finished the last page of the last book of "Harry Potter," you were filled with approximately 300 million conflicting emotions.

You were happy the “core three” survived, hopeful for their children to have relatively calm lives and incredibly sad for the people who died to get them to this safe point.

No character's death made more of an impact on your Kleenex supply than Hedwig's, though.

She was, arguably, Harry's most consistent connection to the Wizarding World and as faithful as literally anything could be.

In fact, it was this faithfulness that led her to be killed during The Battle of the Seven Potters -- making this fan theory about why Hedwig HAD to die that much more difficult a potion to swallow.

Brutal.

OK, let's recap for a second and flesh this all out.

Hedwig was clearly attached at the hip to Harry.

While this was good in some circumstances, like for companionship through Harry's early wizarding days, this didn't exactly help give Potter a low profile later on when the Death Eaters were hunting him.

When the group flew as the seven Potter clones, Hedwig circling near the real Harry was a dead giveaway.

Snape, who still needed to pretend like he was a Death Eater and not secretly helping the Aurors, recognized this and realized the only way to keep Harry safe was to kill Hedwig and get the target off his back.

Take a second. Hell, take a whole day if you need it.

Citations: http://www.bustle.com/articles/126247-this-clever-theory-might-explain-why-hedwig-had-to-die-in-harry-potter (Bustle)