What Did Bellatrix Do to Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter?

Although the battle of Hogwarts had many witches and wizards turning more aggressive while fighting one of the most memorable ones was Molly Weasley. After losing one of her children she was even more determined to fight her way out of the battle. However, this cumulates once she encounters her daughter Ginny fighting Bellatrix which urges her to kill Bellatrix. This begs to question what did Bellatrix do to Ginny to cause molly to act so out of character?

While Bellatrix was fighting Ginny, she was the most prosperous in the feat. This caused Bellatrix to focus on taking out Ginny so she could deal with Hermione and Luna easier. To achieve this Bellatrix shot the Killing cure at Ginny urging Molly to get involved.

This was an interesting showdown so if you’d like to know how and why did dis duel even come to be and how Ginny managed to survive the Killing Curse keep reading.

What did Bellatrix do to Ginny? 

Although it is not shown well in the movies, the book actually describes the Battle of Hogwarts in detail. Rather than a few shots of witches and wizards fighting the Deatheaters, the book actually lets us know who was battling with whom.

This way we know that Bellatrix Lestrange was fighting Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, and Hermione Granger. It is clear that Bellatrix thought Ginny was the biggest threat among the young witches she was fighting, which is why she mainly focused on fighting Ginny.

The three witches managed to combine their powers to hold back Bellatrix; however, even after they joined forces, they were barely holding her back.

Although the three girls were extremely well at dueling, Ginny was much more skilled than the other two. After all Ginny managed to escape the battle in the Ministry without getting hurt and managed to hold her own against many notable Deatheaters.

She was very knowledgeable and had a lot of experience dueling. What made her more dangerous than an average witch of her age were her quick reflexes and her agility.

Did Bellatrix almost kill Ginny?

While they were fighting Bellatrix was actively trying to fight off Ginny and at one point used a Killing curse and shot it at Ginny. At this point Ginny’s mom, Molly got involved in the fight.

Bellatrix taunted her for a while, even mentioning her son Fred. This angered Molly and she continued to duel Bellatrix in place of her daughter.

Ultimately this duel led to Molly killing Bellatrix. Although this seems out of character for the matriarch of the Weasley family, Molly was urged after Bellatrix tried to kill Ginny.

As they dueled Molly managed to overpower Bellatrix, mostly because Bellatrix did not consider her a valid opponent at all. Driven by her intention of protecting her family Molly’s magic became stronger making it easier for her to defeat Bellatrix.

What curse did Molly Weasley use on Bellatrix?

Molly’s curse hit Bellatrix straight in the chest which killed her immediately. There is a bit of discussion on which curse Molly used to do this, however, we can’t effectively determine that since we don’t have enough information on it.

One thing we can do is disprove the popular theory that the curse was Avada Kedavra. Using the Killing curse would be out of character for Molly and we can’t even be sure that Molly and the ability to produce it, since it does require a lot of skill, and Molly is never shown as anything beyond an average witch.

One thing that definitively disproves this is the fact that the Killing curse is always described as producing green light when it’s shoot, both in the book series and throughout the movie franchise. Since Molly’s curse is not described in such a way or portrayed this way in the movie, we can rule the Killing curse out of the discussion. 

Why did Bellatrix try to kill Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter? 

The obvious reason here is that they were in the middle of a battle. The winner of the battle would determine whether or not Voldemort would take control of the world.

Since the battle already escalated at that point and everyone realized Harry was actually alive, Deatheaters started fighting in a much more aggressive manner.

Seeing that Bellatrix was Lord Voldemort’s most loyal follower it makes sense she would be determined to do anything to achieve her goals. 

This being said, Ginny was the biggest threat to her since she was the most experience out of the three witches she was fighting, and eliminating her first would make the most sense strategically.

Beyond that, we could find a few reasons that go deeper than the surface reason for Bellatrix and Ginny being in the middle of a battle. The reason for wanting to hurt Ginny could also be that their ideologies are opposing.

The Wasleys and the Blacks are both old pureblood wizarding families, however, the Blacks, for the most part, were known as a family with high regard for their blood status, and the Weasley family was known as one of the wizarding families with the least regard for the blood status of witches and wizards they associate themselves with.

The Blacks have devoted followers of Lord Voldemort and some of his most loyal followers. In addition to that, the Black family was one of the oldest wizarding families and a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, a group of wizarding families that remained truly pureblood after the 1930s.

Being raised with the belief that pureblood wizards are superior to any other kind of magical folk and joining Lord Voldemort explains why she would consider anyone who didn’t share her opinions on the subject an enemy.

This could also translate into Bellatrix wanting to hurt Molly. Since she had a close bond with her children and valued her family above all else it would hurt her most if Bellatrix hurt or killed one of them, especially after she already lost one of her children.

In addition to the clashing ideologies, the Weasley family, especially Ginny and her brother Ron, were known associates of Harry’s. With Harry’s significance in the war, it would make sense that Bellatrix would want to eliminate people who are closest to him.

This would also allow her to distract harry which could possibly be crucial to overturning the course of the battle that was going on at the moment.

The last one is pretty self-explanatory and that is that Bellatrix at her core is evil. It is usually overlooked since she is on the antagonist’s side but once you compare what she has done over the course of the series to what other Deatheaters do she is exponentially more evil.

She clearly took pleasure in killing her brother Sirius and takes pride in torturing Neville’s parents, Frank and Alice. Taking this into consideration it would not be a stretch to think she wanted to kill Ginny or any other witch and wizard he came across in the battle for that matter, simply for the sake of it.  

How did Ginny block the Killing Curse?

As it was already mentioned, before Molly got involved, Bellatrix shot the Killing curse at Ginny. Bellatrix was a known user of the Killing curse. This act does beg to ask the question of how Ginny didn’t die.

The killing curse can not be blocked or deflected. It doesn’t depend on the level of skill the wizard or a witch has. Once the curse strikes its victim there is almost no way of surviving it, besides through sacrificial protection.

The only way to survive the Killing Curse is to either doge it, the way Dumbledore does by operating out of the way or hiding behind a physical object.

This being said, Ginny did not block the Killing Curse since no one can do that due to the way the curse itself works. Ginny managed to avoid it because of a trait that she possesses and is often attributed to her expertise in dueling and that is her agility. Ginny managed to dodge out of the way of Bellatrix’s Killing Curse at the last moment, which is how she managed to survive it.