Noob, Monty Python bandwagon for rabbit of death gets boring after a while. My animals have funnier deaths:

Gerbils kill you when you shove them up your ass.

Guinea Pigs kill you by being so fucking tasty (though a pain in the ass to prepare).

 

Lulz.

Death!bunny would make for a great crack fic.

Imagine:

Harry completes his animagus transformation only to find that he is none other than an adorable white rabbit. Disappointed and ashamed, Harry decides that his form is completely useless and out of embarrassment never shows a soul.

Fast forward a few months... years... what have you. Harry is fleeing from a pack of werewolves/Death Eaters/Voldemort and out of pure desperation decides to transform in a last ditch attempt to escape...

...only to find that he has an insatiable thirst for his enemies' blood.

 

Before you go writing a crackfick...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhmZBMuZ6vE
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060606-crows.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ravens/video-raven-intelligence/1549/

Crows are pretty badass. I'd seriously recommend them, especially since the mundane > mythological (since mythological is overused in fanfiction)... and death bunny is too funny to take seriously.

 

Not so different, but aged so it's due for a comeback. I give you Hannibal Lector's Death's Head Moth:

 

"The Answer"? = 42

And, I had already tried Google Fu, and was not inspired by the results.

In that case I'd recommend not having a gerbil up your ass as you cook your Guinea Pig. Silly Gio.

I admit, I lol'd at that little story.

How could I have forgotten that one, nice. Definitely creeptastic.

 

From my own research of mah original fics, I had to look for the very same thing. I'd suggest using 'Black Dogs' from Celtic/English mythology but that is quite close to the Grim- which is just a rip off of them.

Vultures, crows, buzzards, that type- they're all closely related to death.

Anubis, the Egyptian God of Death, had the head of a jackal and jackals were believed to help guard the underworld.

You could always go with Cerebus, the three-headed dog thing, but JKR used that too.

Ravens are a pretty stark omen.

If you really want to show a bad omen with animals, have Harry or whatever conjure a pride of cheetahs. Those fuckers would gank anybody pretty damn fast

 

Also, I failed to mention... a Pale Horse. Can't get much more symbolic of Death than that. But not so much with the creepiness, but if you made it a pale skeletal horse, however then we are back to being too much like a thestral.

 

Butterflies/moths remind me of that Noah Tykki guy in D-gray man.

 

Frankly, I'm surprised nobody really mentioned the albatross. More of an omen of impending death or doom rather than it straight up, but still commonly used in classical literature.

 

The ostrich. Not only do they NOT bury their heads in the sand, they ensure that you will be buried soon. Because they kick ass. Literally.

 

Yeah, but they don't symbolize death. And only a dead albatross is a bad omen.

I'd personally go with either the moth or the crow.

 

To be honest, I simply didn't read the end of your original post where it said you didn't want to use a thestral. I started with 'lol', because I thought that it was the obvious answer that no one had said anything about.

I realize after looking at your first post again that in light of you saying 'I don't want to use a thestral' it seemed like a jackass comment, rather than a half-serious one. I do apologize.

EDIT: I don't know if someone has mentioned this, but an owl is a symbol of death.

If you want anything that flies, an owl is probably going to be the least conspicuous in the magical world.

 

I'm kind of surprised no-one mentioned spiders, especially the Black Widow.

 

Spiders are more symbolic of the web of life than death. And Black Widows are only symbolic of the death of men by their lovers (their female lovers).

Lest we forget the amendment to Potter Law X (I think, kekeke), Harry can't get a magical sex change into a woman, have Voldemort's baby, and then kill him.

 

you forgot: and inherit EVERYTHING he owned.

Basilisk symbolizes and deals Death quite nicely. Vampires? but they are sentient.

If you wanted to represent irritation and health hazards, i'd suggest blast ended skrewts.

oops necropost.