Harry Potter Spoilers

Agreed. There's a rather obvious RedShirt in book 4, though (details omitted for obvious reasons)

Would you mind putting the details on HarryPotterSpoilers?? I'm not sure who you mean.

Yes, I meant Cedric. There only to get killed. Yes, the author's too good to introduce him 5 minutes before the act, but still a RedShirt in my view, in that he had no other significant part in the story. Perhaps PlotToken would be a better term). It was obvious to me - I guessed Cedric was there to die - but on the other hand it was widely leaked that someone died in the book, so I was expecting something.

Trying to compete in any way with HarryPotter is bad news for any character. They will suffer some misfortune shortly afterwards - Cedric's is just the worst. HarryPotter is a jinx.

: Malfoy has survived 4 books so far without serious harm....

OK, I'll give you Malfoy :-)

: I won't. Malfoy gets seriously humiliated everytime, and I suspect that it is probably only a matter of time until something worse happens.

Potter may be a jinx - look at the trouble the Neville (the kid with the toad) has had, and he's never ever competed; however, Malfoy has not suffered any more than Ron w/r/t humiliation.

: Not to mention Voldemort...

Ahem. Voldemort's "died" at least twice - as Professor Quirrell at the end of book 1, and as (the memory of) Tom Riddle at the end of book 2. I'd call that "serious harm"

: ...who seems to get stronger with each book.

Oh, come on. You expect the series to end with Voldemort's triumph?

Not at all. Nor do I expect Harry Potter to die in the series. Software Development and Architecture are not the only endeavors to make use of patterns. If you remember that it's a work of fiction, it's rather silly to debate about whether the protagonist is a jinx or not. If nothing happened to anyone, the book would be rather boring.

Well, of course it's silly. You were taking this seriously?

I don't see Cedric as a RedShirt. He was developed into a character that the reader could actually care for. We even got to meet his parents. As for real RedShirts, I propose the Tom Riddles family gardener and the witch Bertha: both of these people die without much ado and I doubt many readers felt sad at their deaths.

Cedric is probably not a redshirt, mostly because he is Harry's rival for Cho Chang, and Harry actually grieves about him in Book 5. The comment about him being a PlotToken is moot. Of course he is, it's a work of fiction, Everything is a plot token ...