Rowling is also quoted as saying that success by RDR in their position would create a chilling effect online, whereby “authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.” This seems a bit of a stretch, since what remains essentially at issue is whether someone is able to profit from a concordance of a copyrighted fictional realm – whether that activity is itself a legitimate creative activity – and less whether, say, slash fan fiction should be driven underground (because it will never die!). Coverage at other sources like Ars Technica (whose article’s title – “Fairuse obliteratus” – pretty much sums up their position) have pointed out that equivalent works have been published about comparable realms like Middle Earth without comparable kerfuffle, so long as they are adequately identified as by a third-party (hence the common “Official”/”Unofficial” delineation in the guidebook aisle). The matter of law is still whether, under the four-fold test, the proposed HP Lexicon publication shows sufficient scholarly or transformative properties as to deserve protection from infringement.

The case also reminds us of the ongoing conflict over the purposes of copyright protection, and whether copyright owners – which are today often not the same as the creators – have nigh-unlimited reach and control over their works. With the public domain threshold effectively frozen at 1923 due to recurring term extensions such as the Sonny Bono Act, and ‘fair use’ provisions under constant attack by the efforts of the RIAA and related lobbying efforts to restrict all media access under narrower terms, our culture is being kept locked away in corporate vaults so that we are forced to rent access to it ad infinitum. Jack Valenti infamously remarked that if keeping copyright intact forever would violate the Constitution, we should consider “forever minus one day.” Whether even the current 70 years extension after the death of the artist truly serves the stated goal of promoting the Constitution’s stated intent to promote “progress of science and useful arts” is a question well worth examining in the public square.

Incidentally, it was reported that “Rowling’s lawyers did not want Vander Ark in the courtroom while Rowling testifies.” One wonders why she would feel this way, and quite honestly, what difference it makes whether the lawyers want that or not. Coverage of today’s appearance gives at least one hint – whereas before the suit (when the Lexicon only operated as a site) Rowling lauded Vander Ark’s efforts and reported using it as a reference site herself to check details, in testimony today she described the material as ’sloppy’ and ’shoddy’ and cited errors in translation and interpretation. She further described the toll the lawsuit had taken upon her creative endeavors, jeopardizing her interest in doing an official encyclopedic work with proceeds to go to charity. As to the meat of the matter, she argues that in contrast with other published works on the Potterverse, the Lexicon provides too little analysis and commentary and essentially only catalogues the names of people, places, spells and creatures (in essence, an encyclopedia). In a nice turn of phrase, she declares, “It takes far too much and it offers precious little in return.” And on that assessment the judge’s decision will hang.

Curiously, Harry Potter also makes an unusual appearance in an unrelated property rights case between Universal and a reseller of promotional recordings that tackles the doctrine of “first sale” vs licensed property – to wit, who owns the promotional discs. Harry’s discussion in Deathly Hallows with Bill Weasley about how goblins view rights of goblin-made objects leads off the EFF’s amicus brief. I wonder if Harry Potter quotations have already supplanted Alice in Wonderland for academic pop references? (Try finding a modern paper on philosophy of language without an Alice quotation.)

Next, while J.K. Rowling herself states “we all know I’ve made enough money,” it appears that the largesse is at least partially shared by Daniel Radcliffe, who is reported to have earned $26 million last year. The blurb mentions that he earned $16 million for Order of the Phoenix, but not whether that contributed to the year’s total. With Deathly Hallows now officially split into two films (oh why couldn’t they have saved Goblet of Fire?), he stands to earn quite a bit more by the time the series finishes up.

Finally, on a more rah-rah note, Amazon is holding a contest to let you spend a weekend with their copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard. The original tome was instrumental in Deathly Hallows, and as a charity bit, Rowling hand-wrote and illustrated 7 copies for auction. The contest winner takes a trip to London (the one in England is specified) where Amazon will let you, under guard, interact with the copy they won at auction. It is not clear whether gloves are provided, or whether the cost for same would be taken out of your expense allowance should you not bring a proper pair. The contest itself is 100 words or less on any of three topics:

1. What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
2. What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
3. What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

If this were a thriving community of avid readers, I might suggest something like “what other questions do you think they should ask?” Lacking that, I will point out that submissions are in two age groups (13-17, 18+), must be submitted by April 22nd, and after being whittled down by Amazon to 20 semi-finalists, two finalists and the ultimate winner will be selected by the public (so, just like American Idol, we can trust that the truly best will make it to the final round, where they will lose out to their lesser counterparts.) Reading the FAQ, it’s not made especially clear, but it does sound like only one grand prize is shared between both age categories. In another spot of confusion, a separate link is offered to “submit your own knock-knock joke, pun, tongue twister, haiku or other whimsical witticism based on Harry Potter or the Tales of Beedle the Bard” but you have to drill down into the product forum to join in. Be warned: low standards are advised.

• In mid-August, under the heading of “Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement” (an idea which will appear again), the NY Times reported on a series of Harry Potter knock-offs released in China. They detail eight titles and their publisher summaries. Even compared to “sour and sweet rain,” excessive body hair, demons named Little Fatty Fortune, Voldemort’s brother, and an endless menagerie of dragons, the true challenge begins in Harry Potter and the Showdown: “Now what will Harry do about his two girlfriends?”
• During an October stop on her Open Book Tour, JK Rowling answered a number of questions – some of them purely logistical (how does she manage autographs and balance work with home life), a few motivational (why Dobbie [sic - boo NY Post!] dies and Dumbledore confesses his failings), and a couple on the controversy the books have created. On the religious outcry about witchcraft:
  

  “I go to church myself. I don’t take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion…I was raised in a Christian tradition. To me, it’s [Christian overtones] always been obvious but I never wanted to talk that openly about it because I thought it might show people just what is the story, where we were going. They’re very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was bound to find biblical quotations on tombstones. Those two particular quotations that he finds on the tombstones of Godric’s Hollow, they almost epitomize the whole series. I think they sum up all the themes in the whole series. But of course, Hogwarts is a multi-faith school.”

  This is notable in that Rowling both declares her own faith while distancing herself from the detractors among them, and emphasizing religious tolerance even within the walls of Hogwarts. The faith of students is never raised in the series, so the notion that the school is not an incidental seminary as is sometimes the heritage of British boarding schools (Latin, Greek, and Bible study) but purely focused on magickal education is laudable.

• The controversy-as-promotion also gets an airing:
  

  “I’ve always taken my annual inclusion on the most banned books list as a massive compliment. You look at the writers on that list, what can I say? There is a place for debate about issues and there’s certainly a place for debate about what we show our children and what we read to our children, but attempts to ban things are always counterproductive. I met more than one child whose parents didn’t want them to read Harry Potter and of course it became the one and only thing they wanted to read and they read it. In a way, it’s great advertising.”

  Other recent examples of this include Bill O’Reilly’s demonizing of the anti-war Redacted, which has drawn thanks from backer Mark Cuban (“anti-American”) and director Brian de Palma (“a true villain in our country”) for raising its profile and piquing interest in a wider audience; and the Catholic League’s condemnation of The Golden Compass, urging that parents not bring their children to the film, because they might then want to read the book, and then reject Catholicism once they realize the Vatican is secretly responsible for stripping the souls from children in order to protect them from discovering sex.

• In another report on the tour (many of the same quotations appear in different order), Rowling spoke more at length about the role of religion in the overall story arc, particularly the significance of the two opening epigraphs:
  

  “Deathly Hallows itself begins with two religiously themed epigraphs, one from “The Libation Bearers” by Aeschylus, which calls on the gods to “bless the children”; and one from William Penn’s “More Fruits of Solitude,” which speaks of death as but “crossing the world, as friends do the seas.” No other book in the series begins with epigraphs — a curious fact, perhaps, but one that Rowling insists served as a guiding light.

  “I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition,” Rowling said of their inclusion. “I’d known it was going to be those two passages since ‘Chamber’ was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I’d cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.”

• And then at the Carnegie Hall appearance on the book tour, where Rowling did a reading and answered questions for the 1000 grand prize winners, she mentioned that other slightly controversial matter – “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” What I expected after this revelation made the headline circuit was a simple progression:
  1. Initial shock, some support from GLAAD and others.
  2. Some fans complain of being ‘betrayed’ by the revelation.
  3. Public outcry from social conservatives.
  4. A scurrilous assertion that Grindelwald is evil for embracing his sexuality, while Dumbledore can only be honorable for having remained closeted.
  5. A deliberate smear campaign suggesting Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry was unwholesome (given that, paralogically, gay = pederast).

  That I have only really run across #1 and #2 to date is either a credit to the overarching popularity of the series, with dissent largely constrained to the usual bywaters, or a willful act on the part of the mainstream press to not seek out the agitators for a condemning pullquote. What I find even more interesting than the revelation itself is the way in which Rowling couched it, and its sole implication on the plot.

  First, she says “I always thought of…” rather than the simple declarative “D = Gay” assignment. This token ambiguity allows us to consider Rowling as perhaps only a more privileged observer of the events in Harry’s world, not the final arbiter, now that the series is finished. This ‘canon view’ would posit that anything not explicitly enumerated in the text of the seven books is left open to each reader’s imagination – including Rowling’s. Contrast this with the ‘revisionist view’ a la George Lucas, where the story is never fixed by past artifact and the author can continue to revise and alter and edit indefinitely, e.g. Han no longer shoots first; or the ‘outline view’ a la Brian Herbert, where a box of unfinished story ideas is tantamount to a final work and the story arc of a series can be definitively concluded by other (arguably lesser) craftsmen. In the canon view, we can read Dumbledore as gay, straight or even asexual, since the text makes no declarations. So when Rowling goes on to elaborate:

  “… Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him.”

  …this adds a new dimension to Dumbledore’s interaction with Grindelwald, putting a new spin on his reluctance to face him in a final duel (although we must still wonder how Grindelwald could have been defeated while wielding the Elder Wand). But, strictly speaking, it is not necessary to understand the plot or even the basic dynamic between the two eventual adversaries – even as kindred minds, equally alive with the prospects of a boundless future available to their joint talents, the betrayal must have been a deep wound for Dumbledore. At the very least, Rowling recognizes the most dire implications of her introspection – “Oh, my god, the fan fiction now, eh?”

  As for the wider response, the most positive reaction is “a gay character in the most popular series in the world is a big step for Jo Rowling and for gay rights.” The polar opposite is sadly predictable, with some complaining that their view of Dumbledore is now “stained” at the least. One woman has campaigned against the series as indoctrinating children into Wicca (having presumably never studied anything about that faith) and holding “an anti-Christian agenda” (for irony, see above). With this new revelation, she warns we must now further caution parents because, “A homosexual lifestyle is a harmful one…that’s proven, medically.” And here, perhaps, is where Rowling’s announcement has the most significance. She has declared her series, in line with critics’ assertions, to have a subversive meaning, with “the Potter books in general … a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that’s it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.” And there is no question that tolerance and independent, critical thought are two trends which most definitely should not be taught to children, lest we imperil our perfect social order. The aforementioned woman who has sued her school district to ban the books asks, albeit rhetorically, “Is this really what we want for our children? Is this really what we want in our schools?” And yet, is that not precisely what we do want for our children to learn in schools – how to flourish in a pluralistic society and think for themselves?

  [And just to show that the Christian Coalition of America was right to worry that Potter fans will all now want to go gay, you can order your Dumbledore Pride shirts. Will "Dumbledore's Army" be the new "Friends of Dorothy"?]

• Perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the above was Rowling dealing out a few more tidbits, such as Neville marrying Hannah Abbott, who takes over the Leaky Cauldron; Hagrid remains a bachelor; some backstory on the early days of the original Order of the Phoenix; and bits on portrait lore and life debts. More of interest to the canon is her discussion of why Molly Weasley faces off with Bellatrix, how things might have been different if she had gone with her earlier plan to kill off Arthur in book 5, and why Harry just doesn’t get the whole story at the beginning from Dumbledore’s portrait (other than the obvious “because then there’s no plot” answer).
• Adding further ammunition to the ‘Harry Potter is a menace to the conservative faction’ argument is French philosopher Jean-Claude Milner’s assertion that Harry Potter is not only politically liberal, but specifically “a diatribe against Thatcherite Britain.” Painted in neo-Marxist colours, Hogwarts becomes a den of unrest against the Muggle middle-class, blowing up Aunt Marge in HP3 is a satire on Thatcher, and (bizarrely) learning pidgin Latin is a defense against American-exported materialism. Conversely, Milner notes that Voldemort represents the opposite extreme of abandoning things for power over people (read: Sino-Soviet communism?), subverting the rise to power of an apparent ‘underclass’ into an elitist tyranny. Of course, this might be easier to accept were Hogwarts more of a Dickensian workhouse where the suffering children of dirt-poor proletariat parents learn to unionize against the moneyed classes, but the themes of class conflict and blood purity, plus the rather nice accommodations and mostly-ready acceptance of ‘middle-class’ Muggle-borns into their midst does tend to muddy the analogy.
• In the more prosaic vein, we have recently learned of a publishing spat between Warner Bros and then JK Rowling vs HP Lexicon maintainer Steve Vander Ark over the prospect of releasing the site as a compiled book. Why is Warner Bros is seeking an injuction against this unofficial tome with so many other Potter-support volumes already in circulation? From Rowling’s perspective, it is a distinction between commentary (“what happens in book 7?”) and compilation of copyrighted details. The HPL’s perspective is that the book deal was in response to requests from fans, not an attempt to cheat them or WB/Rowling out of due compensation; that all appropriate copyrights were discussed with WB and other contributors and approved; and that the lawsuit only appeared after they questioned the uncredited use of their own material in WB-produced DVDs of the Harry Potter movies, which incorporated timelines verbatim from the site, even including mistakes. This makes this a more complex (and for me, interesting) case because the law gets more vague as you involve questions of approved use and compilations rather than appropriation of copyrighted content.A database of facts cannot be copyrighted, nor can “ideas, themes and facts” on their own, yet events in fictional works can be. Precedents on restricting unofficial ‘companion’ books as violating Fair Use include The Seinfeld Aptitude Test (which was ruled infringing) and The Wind Done Gone (which was ruled a protected parody). From a strictly IANAL reading of the decisions, the critical issues for the Lexicon effort are (a) does the proposed book offer substantive commentary, criticism, etc. in addition to re-statement of characters and events from the series?; and (b) how extensive were the permissions granted by the copyright holders to the site owners? Most of the previously released Harry Potter addenda fall into pretty safe territory under (a), with most either engaging in speculation, analyzing themes, or using the texts in a ‘transformative’ manner, e.g. to act as as a lead-in to teaching other subjects such as physics or philosophy. In other cases where (a) is weak but (b) is not secured by a publisher, an ‘unofficial’ companion guide may exist solely at the forebearance of the copyright holder insofar as it’s non-competitive. That is, if the owner prefers to let the unofficial works act as unpaid advertising for the original works, there is no perceived conflict of interest.Here, Warner Bros has at least a couple potential conflicts. First, any claim by the Lexicon to infringement on the part of WB by including material from the HPL site without attribution can open them to potential damages levied against the DVD profits, which one can reasonably assume are considerable. Second, Rowling has publically stated an interest in pursuing a Harry Potter Encyclopedia project at some future stage, and the publication of the HPL could impact the buyer’s market for that type of resource (in some cases, fan-passion-driven documentation can exceed that of an official nature by orders of magnitude – need to compare the Death Star, Unicron and the HALO ringworld?).More perspectives around the Seinfeld book case are provided by trivia polymath Ken Jennings, who approaches it from the perspective of “who owns the trivia?”
• One of the only real concerns I’ve had about the Half-Blood Prince movie has been partly assuaged with the casting of Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn. Ron’s snogging partner Lavender Brown has also been named as Summerhill actress Jessie Cave, dashing the hopes of thousands of girls who turned out for open casting for the chance to mack on Rupert Grint. Now I just have to wonder how disgusting the Gaunt household will appear, and how Bonnie Wright will measure up to the expanded role and intimacy with Dan Radcliffe required of Ginny, since she’s had practically only one line per movie thus far.
• Finally, on an upbeat (and a sort of ‘up yours’ to the ‘no Harry in schools’ crowd) note: a school in Nottingshire (UK) has turned around its academic performance by presenting the material along a Hogwarts theme. As in, “children dress as their favourite Harry Potter characters, chant spells and use their wands in maths classes at Robert Mellors Primary School.” The school was also duly separated into the four Houses (no word on who gets stuck in Slytherin). Over the past three years, “standards and achievement have improved greatly” and students say “It is easier when you are thinking about Harry Potter – and having fun when you are learning.” How dramatic has the turnaround been? “The school has gone from being in the bottom 25% of all schools in England three years ago to the top 25%.” Best keep this away from our schools, or they may suffer the same fate.

That catches us up more or less to present, although no doubt we have many more laps yet to go.

This has been a few days in coming, for a variety of reasons – wanting the book to settle a bit, giving others a chance to finish reading it for themselves, and recovering from the side effects of Harry Potter Week. I had originally envisioned a full week embargo for spoiler avoidance, but I believe everyone I know that was reading it is now finished. Moreover, I really need to start thinking about other things, and instead I keep finding partial analyses of the book rattling around upstairs.

For the record, after the initial overnight recess on Sunday, I picked Deathly Hallows back up that evening with the determination to read it through to the end instead of spending each subsequent day in silent dread of overhearing forbidden information. So I reached the epilogue right about 6:30am on Monday morning, happy but exhausted. Had I been able to ensure a Cone of Silence during the first part of the week, I would have liked to stretch it out over another day or two, and I expect I will do just that when I re-read it in the near future. Also in contrast with the process for the previous books, I did not take notes or pull quotes as I went through, with the exception of a running list of mini-predictions (e.g. what’s in the Snitch?). All of this means that this review will be based primarily on my impression of an extended first reading, drawing from memory, and dealing with the act of reading it as well as what it contained.

Before breaking down the story into its many components and other literary vivisections, I wanted to begin by emphasizing just how engrossing the book was. While book 6 felt at the time, as I wrote previously, unpleasantly like holding one’s breath in icy waters, the pacing and stepped-up danger quotient in book 7 had a much more invigorating effect (Ennervate!). Knowing that the answers awaited just ahead, and recognizing the full sweep of dramatic options available when an author declares the end of a series (cf. Serenity – we miss you, Wash!), the everpresent menace served to keep me much more in the present rather than racing ahead. The change in scenery from familiar Hogwarts, the unleashing of the full powers of the trio as they came of age, and the constant march towards an inevitable-but-imminent confrontation all served to ratchet up the tension and spectacle, without giving up opportunities for tenderness and the mercurial moods of adolescence. I distinctly remember that when McGonagall declared that Hogwarts would be defended to give Harry time to find the Ravenclaw artifact, I felt a fierce happiness burning inside of me and I think I might even have jumped up and down a little bit. For any quibbles and could-have-beens that may come after this, I want to declare just how much I loved reading the book to its conclusion (maybe not so much the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). It is that sort of transcendent reader’s journey that is so hard to communicate, but inspires us to push favorite books on others, insisting, “You’ll love it!” when we really mean “I loved it, and I want you to experience that same feeling of breathlessness as I did when I first discovered it, and then we will share a kinship in its revelry and wonder.”

Now to the story itself. The structure is almost identical to that of Goblet of Fire – a prelude of sorts that shows us where Voldemort is and what he has begun to undertake, and then the now-classic bookends of 4 Privet Drive and Platform 9-3/4. We learn that the protection enjoyed by Harry by virtue of his mother’s blood in Aunt Petunia has a second limitation other than his coming of age – when he leaves for the Burrow with no intention of returning, it will no longer be designated ‘home’ and thus end. That this further puts the Dursleys in mortal danger, for those who might mistake Harry’s only natural family as a sentimental target, is another oversight on my part. The unreadable expression by Aunt Petunia at their parting is consistent with her mixed feelings, since even though she has acted consistently to bedevil Harry’s upraising, the fact remains that she took him in at Dumbledore’s urging with the awareness that to do otherwise would mean his probable death. While we might say that it takes only the basest emotion of sympathy to act to prevent the death of another, it does redeem her slightly that she entered into the contract nonetheless. The great surprise, of course, is that ‘Big D’ Dudley has developed some kind of favorable regard for Harry as well. Is he grateful for Harry rescuing him from dementors two years before? Does he truly grasp that Harry is heading off into danger’s way while the Dursleys are being kept safe by the very world they despise? Or is he, as I originally thought, either Confunded or Imperiused into acting in a totally uncharacteristic way? His concern must be taken as genuine, and if things could not seem stranger, we have yet a long way to go. At least we bow out the Dursleys in as genteel and reconciled fashion as could be hoped, indeed more than expected.

Where we first get the sense that the governor is cut and the throttle is wide open is when the volunteer Harry doppelgangers (and isn’t seven the most powerfully magic number?) first leave the grounds. We have some forewarning that an attack is likely due to Snape’s unnamed source, which contradicts the false trail laid through the crumbling Ministry. But the sheer abruptness of the Death Eaters’ mass appearance and the brutality of the battle and its consequences that follow get the message across clearly: Nothing is safe anymore. Not in Harry’s world due to Voldemort’s influence, and not in our reading because we have no more books in which characters must survive to reappear in. Like the last episode of a television series reaching its scripted end, we no longer have any presumed guarantees that the writer will have to safeguard anyone for the future. Even this early on, certain characters are more at risk precisely because they no longer have any critical role to play and thus become narratively expendable – compare this to the case of the Star Wars prequels, where we know enough about all of the main characters that their futures are essentially blessed, which in turn means that only someone like Qui-Gon can truly be at risk, in a sort of a time-limited predestination bubble. Only Harry has that kind of protection in this book, and then only until he finally faces Voldemort; everyone else is fair game for casualties of war. And so we see the first to fall.

Hedwig’s abrupt death is the first shock. While I could rationalize it – Harry is no longer at Hogwarts, and his main potential correspondents are already dead, making Hedwig more of a potential hindrance during the Horcrux Quest – I still did not think to put her in the ‘at risk’ circle. It is a major jolt to Harry’s confidence to lose something familiar and sever another skein connecting him to lost ones like Sirius; Hedwig had been his lifeline for outside news and encouragement. It further demonstrates his resolve to act out of expediency, as when he explodes the sidecar containing her cage in their running escape, a cavalier act despite his mourning. An ever greater shock is when Hagrid launches himself off the motorcycle as they approach the Tonks’, plunging to the ground below and lying unmoving at the chapter ends. For a moment I could only think of the selfsame sacrifice that titles the first chapter to the unreleased sequel to The Princess Bride, “The Death of Fezzik.” In it, Fezzik – that story’s friendly giant – falls to his death while defending Buttercup’s baby. Like Hedwig, I had not anticipated Hagrid’s life being seriously in jeopardy, and here we’ve not even made it to the Burrow! Fortunately, come chapter next we get a reprieve, but we are still left to wonder at the fate of everyone else who participated in the evacuation plan. When they take the portkey and find they alone have arrived, we are set to wait and see who else will not return.

Mad-Eye Moody is a safe choice – after Goblet of Fire, Harry has never really spent much time with the real Moody, although he did serve as part of the guard escorting him in Order of the Phoenix, aided in the fight in the Department of Mysteries, and, um, identified a boggart in the dressing room. Still, he can represent a material loss to the Order while leaving the majority of the roster intact for the greater battles yet to come. And the Disapparition of Mundungus lets us wonder at the traitor – could it have been Mad-Eye, whose body is never found? Mundungus, who has always been disreputable but is given credit for the 7-Harry deception that effectively confounds the Death Eaters? The latter’s disappearance has another effect – if he can escape that way, why couldn’t Harry just be taken directly to the Burrow by Side-Along Apparition? A brief mention is made of Apparition being monitored by the Ministry’s Department of Magical Transportation plus the Order’s suspicion that it has been infiltrated, but Remus Lupin says that it is impossible to track without physically touching the Apparator (as happens later to Hermione during their flight from the Ministry). Obviously the pat answer is “because it makes them have to go through a big battle scene and risk everyone’s lives, which is much more dramatic,” but perhaps on a closer reading I’ll run across a better explanation. We also lose George’s ear, although after the initial horror (and Fred’s uncharacteristic moment of shocked silence), they make such light of it that it’s easy enough to accept.

Once at the Burrow, we engage in that most faithful of fantasy tropes, the bestowing of key gifts-whose-worth-we-know-not-yet. Harry receives a flesh-imprinted Golden Snitch, Ron the Put-Outer, and Hermione a runed bedtime story collection. Oh, and the Sword of Gryffindor, except that’s held up in probate court. Harry comes of age, and naturally celebrates by poking his eye out with his glasses and tying his shoes almost permanently. For his birthday, Harry also gets a Mokeskin bag to keep bits of broken trinkets in – although it has nothing on Hermione’s Bag of Holding, er, Undetectable Extendable Charm on her beaded handbag – and a book on charming witches whose advice presumably shows up in Ron’s somewhat smarmy ministrations to Hermione. We learn the seriousness with which both Ron and Hermione are taking their pledge to help Harry on his Quest, to the extent of Ron making his own ghoulish stand-in (a la The Last Starfighter) and Hermione changing her parents’ identities, erasing their memories of her very existence, and sending them off to Australia. Oh, and yes, we learn that Ginny’s devotion to Harry has not flickered in his absence as he gets a very passionate, if tragically foreshortened, birthday present.

Then it’s time for a wedding! Fleur’s glamour and veela heritage is such to make even Bill’s scars disappear as they stand enraptured before the minister. We get some happy and light moments among the assembled throngs, plus salacious gossip on Dumbledore’s past as intimated by Rita Skeeter’s exposé, and observe a curious symbol worn by the even odder parent to Luna, Xenophilius Lovegood. And then Kingsley’s lynx Patronus arrives with its succinct warning: The Minister dead, the Ministry overtaken, and…they are coming. Death Eaters arrive, our trio escapes – fortunately with everything already stowed in the amazing beaded handbag. And now our Quest truly begins.

With all that as warmup, the search for the horcruxes has a somewhat lackluster beginning. With the locket as the only real starting point, and with the trio on the run after happening to encounter a pair of Death Eaters at a coffee shop in Tottenham Court Road, they go to 12 Grimmauld Place. And despite a rocky start, they accomplish – at Hermione’s urging – the remarkable conversion of Kreacher from defiant lackey to genuine ally. She sees to the truth of Kreacher’s behavior, that he does not really heed the pureblood mantra of his former Black masters so much as follow the lead of those he loyally serves who in turn treat him well – Sirius’ mother, Narcissa and Bellatrix, and most importantly, young Regulus. We could have guessed that Kreacher was the one who aided Regulus in retrieving the true locket from the cave, but not that he was used by Voldemort to place it there initially (at the cost of having to drink the potion) or that Regulus sacrificed himself upon retrieving it and called upon the house-elves highest calling to help Kreacher escape. Again, we find a level of magic that Voldemort does not comprehend because he disdains those who use it. And with a simple act of compassion, Harry wins Kreacher’s loyalty and becomes a true master of the house, justifying at last Hermione’s many stymied efforts at improving human/elf relations. It is unexpected, and surprisingly gratifying, to learn that Kreacher was reacting more to Sirius’ disfavor and mistreatment than some affiliation to the cause of the enemy, and is redeemed simply by sympathy and respect.

Kreacher also retrieves Mundungus Fletcher, last known holder/fence of the locket. In turn he tells of proffering it as a bribe to a certain toadlike woman flaunting her Ministry connections, which of course refers to Umbridge. And that means breaking in to the Ministry to retrieve it, made all the more difficult because of the many changes undertaken via Voldemort’s control there. Here we come to another oversight – I did not give Voldemort credit for learning from past mistakes, and taking a different tack in subjugating the masses than just outright terrorism. Where I envisioned the Ministry paralyzed by internal struggles for self-preservation amid a growing mass panic, instead we have the calculated coup d’état of the Ministry by first overtaking the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (the closest to a military branch) by means of the Imperius Curse and then a surgical strike on the Minister himself. This accomplishes a number of aims simultaneously -

• it co-opts the primary mechanism for resistance,
• grants the Death Eaters carte blanche in their efforts e.g. to locate Harry,
• creates a public relations front for these efforts by casting FUD surrounding the events of Dumbledore’s death on the Astronomy Tower,
• provides the pretext for returning Snape to Hogwarts, and even appointing him as Headmaster,
• and most chilling, legitimizes a platform of purging all Muggle-borns from the Wizarding community, through efforts of registration, intimidation, and criminalization.

All of these measures serve to make Harry’s tasks and the struggle of the Order that much more difficult, but the last has ominous repercussions beyond the plot. Here we have the full incarnation of Voldemort’s self-hatred laid bare in his pogrom against those, like himself, guilty of impure birth. While pureblood children are mandated to attend Hogwarts so that the Ministry can ensure their proper indoctrination in the ways of the new regime, all those of ‘inferior’ birth are required to register and be judged. For those proven to be unworthy of wizarding stock, the dementors await with their deathless kiss. The historical examples abound, and have been mentioned in reviewing prior books, but it is in the annals of fantasy that this Muggle-Born Registration Act has even more resonant examples. The superhuman registration acts of The Incredibles, Powers, Marvel’s Civil War, and especially the X-Men’s Mutant Registration Act have all tread this ground of “what you fear and despise, catalog and bury within the pitiless gears of bureaucracy.” The additional replacement of a relatively benign meritocracy with some elements of cronyism within the Ministry with a hierarchy based solely on the twin pedestals of loyalty and blood-purity serves to realign the power base and further distract those within from pursuing any kind of overt or covert action against Voldemort’s plans. After all, per Pump Up the Volume, “your file is under review.”

The perversities of the Ministry were such that, just in considering this section of the review, I felt compelled to go back and watch V for Vendetta and focus on all of its similarities in portraying a government at war with its citizenry and zealously demonizing the Other, or as Valerie puts, “different became dangerous.” The hateful rhetoric of Lewis Prothero, foam-spittled pronouncements of a righteous Adam Sutler, and the simple tagging of those out of the mainstream as ‘undesirable’ all find their parallels in a Ministry in the throes of enacting its own program of “strength through purity” (as it was in the original novel, although changed to “strength through unity” for the movie version). Though they come to power through stealth and manipulation rather than the false catalyst of a staged terrorist attack, the Voldemort contingent does manage to capitalize on the fear spread by Voldemort’s return (effectively playing both sides), as well as demonizing their opponents, especially ‘Undesirable No.1,’ that notorious troublemaker and possible murderer, Harry Potter.

That Umbridge would be the appointed head of such efforts to drag down those of accomplishment in the name of party loyalty retrenches her personification as ‘mundane evil,’ or in the parlance of D&D alignment perhaps, ‘lawful evil.’ Whereas Voldemort and the majority of Death Eaters act solely out of puerile self-interest, Umbridge performs acts of cutting cruelty and revels in the discrediting of others deemed to belong to an underclass (half-breeds, Muggle-born) through the pitiless execution of an evil mandate. The depiction of her feline Patronus, purring as it walks back and forth in a clammy dungeon cell surrounded by dementors, is particularly chilling as she joyfully considers the fate of people guilty only of suspect heritage. That she further aims to bolster her own apparent blood superiority through the misrepresented Slytherin locket reveals even deeper dissympathies – one wonders if she conjures up this unadulterated vitriol, like Voldemort, out of profound self-loathing over her misbegotten ancestry. And it is curious in retrospect that her wearing the locket does not appear to have the profound subversion of mood shown later when worn by our heroes.

Before we embark on the complex, Mission: Impossible style infiltration of the Ministry to reclaim the locket,we first confront an ill-at-ease Lupin, on the run seemingly from his own self-doubt and his responsibilities as a parent. Harry rebuffs his attempts to aid them, and in fact sends him rushing off with his metaphorical tail between his legs, in a staunch repudiation of Lupin’s attempt to make his abandonment seem more noble before rushing towards reckless dangers presented by Harry’s tasks. With that accomplished, it’s off to the Ministry and some judicious use of the Polyjuice Potion to procure the locket. Naturally, everything quickly goes wrong, with Ron off to fix an office rainstorm, Hermione escorting Umbridge down to the dungeons, and Harry left to wander around and thus come across the stunning blue of Moody’s Mad Eye embedded in Umbridge’s office door. I thought at this point that the magical eye must surely have some critical part to play in the story ahead, along with their many other artifacts, since it has been demonstrated as one of the most powerful means of seeing through enchantments and even Harry’s otherwise impenetrable Invisibility Cloak. But instead it serves only to raise the alarm and provoke a panicked escape from the Ministry, locket at least in hand, and a resulting squinch as Hermione gets tagged during Disapparition and shakes off their pursuer at the steps of 12 Grimmauld Place. This in turn closes off their comfortable refuge from future use, and puts them in the wild and truly on their own.

So we embark on their extended sojourn through the many woods and towns of rural Britain as the Quest begins to break down from lack of momentum. The lack of food owing to it being one of the five exceptions to Elementary Transfiguration makes for bitter company, made all the more fractious due to Harry’s insistence that they each take it in turn to wear the will-sapping locket horcrux. With descriptions eerily similar to that of Sauron’s One Ring, the locket acts like a portable dementor, siphoning away confidence and cheer and making the wearer sink ever deeper in despair. Why Harry cannot simply conscience to keep it in the Mokeskin bag (unless it has no more room) or Hermione’s handbag (which certainly does) is a bit of a mystery, unless one resorts to the same rationale as for the initial trip to the Burrow. Still, time drags on and tempers raise as we get no closer to finding another horcrux, or destroying the locket. We get a hint at least that the Sword of Gryffindor, now imbued with the power of basilisk venom, would serve for the latter purpose, if only they knew where Dumbledore might have left it for them. From here, the exact sequence of events becomes a bit murky to my recollection, so these may not all follow in precise order. I’ll try to keep to the highlights and see if we can’t sprint ahead somewhat to the meatier fare.

• Eventually Ron gets fed up and leaves. Hermione stays, but clearly at a dear emotional cost.
• Harry returns to his earlier fixation on the place he had first intended to visit – Godric’s Hollow, home of his parents and, we’ve since learned, that of the Dumbledores and Bathilda Bagshot, his confidante and author of A History of Magic.
• The visit to Godric’s Hollow goes disastrously, with Harry attacked by a giant snake (Nagini?), his wand broken, and no new information about Dumbledore since Bathilda has been dead for some time. We do, however, visit the graves of Harry’s parents as well as a couple of other notables (Ignotus Peverell, Ariana Dumbledore) and get a copy of The Life And Lies of Albus Dumbledore for free.
• The Life and Lies provides one version of Albus’ early years, including the mystery of his sister Ariana and his brief friendship with Grindelwald before his rise to power.
• Harry follows a silver doe Patronus to the sword of Gryffindor, hidden beneath the ice. Ron returns, just in time to save Harry from drowning in an icehole, and proves his valor by retrieving the sword and using it to destroy the locket after some choice taunting over his deepest anxieties.
• Ron tells of being ambushed by Snatchers (a term right out of The Borribles) which nets him a spare wand for Harry.
• We get news of the outside world through a couple of chance encounters – first with the roaming party of refugees including Dean Thomas, Ted Tonks, and Griphook the Gringotts goblin from book 1; and then once Ron finally guesses the password to Potterwatch on the wireless. (The latter has already doubtless been the cause of at least one new podcast, fansite, or other outlet starting to take up the moniker.) The contributors to Potterwatch all take the expedient step of adopting R-titled aliases, although Remus could really have done better than to choose his namesake’s brother, Romulus.
• Harry moons over Ginny, watching her dot move silently around the Marauder’s Map at Hogwarts.
• The trio visit Xenophilius Lovegood to learn more about his curious symbol, which he reveals as representing the Deathly Hallows – three more artifacts to find! Hermione reads the Beedle’s version from her runed book, and Xenophilius fills out the story, which takes on the dimensions of a Grail Quest or something like the secret society which pursued Charlemagne’s chess service in The Eight, alchemical examples all. We have already seen two of the three (Harry’s cloak and the stone of Gaunt’s ring), and Harry now guesses that the third, the Elder Wand, is what Voldemort has been pursuing in hopes of overcoming his inability to kill Harry. We also learn that Luna has been taken hostage.
• Finally Harry invokes the Taboo by saying Voldemort’s name (which Ron had conveniently overridden since their first escape from Tottenham Court Road), arranging for their capture by Fenrir Grayback and henchmen and thus their being ferried to the Malfoy estate for some providential eavesdropping.

A quick aside on the Taboo: it is fitting that such a stalwart notion from both magick and religious history as the ‘forbidden word’ makes its appearance in the commitment of Voldemort’s name as a formal taboo, and frightening that the power of Ministry is such that it can be used to detect the utterance of a single word anywhere within a wide sphere of influence and immediately acted upon. It is like a supernatural equivalent to infamous NSA programs like ECHELON that track for certain keywords, or else daemonic names that conjure up their counterparts from the nether hells to serve or menace those foolish enough to utter them. Like the underage Trace we learn about leading up to Harry’s birthday, one wonders just what other powers of surveillance are available to the Ministry.

Once at the Malfoys, we start off a flurry of events. We find Luna, Dean Thomas, Ollivander, and Griphook sharing the dungeon beneath the floor. Bellatrix’ torture of Hermione takes on new urgency when she spots the sword of Gryffindor among the spoils, and she demands to know how they have infiltrated her bank vault (a-ha!). Harry’s fragment of Sirius’ two-way mirror serves to call help in the form of Dobby. Wormtail redeems himself with the merest moment of hesitation, resulting in his being strangled by the enchanted hand granted by Voldemort. And Harry overpowers Draco, stealing three wands including Draco’s own. Sadly, in the slow-motion conclusion to their escape, Bellatrix’ silver knife flies through the air and claims the life of valiant Dobby. Now at Shell Cottage, Harry endeavors to bury Dobby by hand, which seems to work in his favor in convincing Griphook to cooperate in their planned bank heist. Meanwhile, Harry makes the fateful decision to put horcruxes before Hallows, interrogating Griphook first in seeking the means to retrieve whatever Bellatrix feared they had already discovered. By the time he meets with Ollivander, Voldemort is already well on the way to retrieve the Elder Wand from Dumbledore’s Tomb, although we learn something of the vagaries of wandlore – that wands innately possess some amount of sentience or will, that they choose the wizard (as we had first seen in his shop in book 1), and that the manner of their passing to a new owner affects their efficacy. Having wrested Draco’s wand by force, for example, Harry has earned its obedience in a way he never achieved with the blackthorn, which had been stolen by Ron.

We now embark on yet another thrilling break-in attempt, this time the seemingly impregnable Gringotts and into a high-security vault to boot. The untimely appearance of another Death Eater provokes Harry’s first use of the Imperius Curse, and we learn that goblins have a sick sense of humor in how they trap their vaults against thieves. Griphook makes off with the Sword of Gryffindor, foiling Harry’s plan to pull the “didn’t say when” gambit (which makes me think, of all things, of Prostho Plus – Piers Anthony’s tale of a space dentist who avoids a deadly fate through a similar loophole). Their escape by dragonback is likewise reminiscent of Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame, with its evocative emancipation of the slave dragon. The retrieval of Hufflepuff’s cup thereby takes us up to the limits of our foreknowledge of the available horcruxes – after the locket and the cup, we know only that one more item remains, apart from Nagini. And it is by the simple expedient of reading Voldemort’s mind, in his panic apparently forgetting to employ Occlumency against Harry’s intrusion, that we learn that the final artifact resides at no less a place than Hogwarts, and perhaps even in Ravenclaw Tower.

After confirmation of Aberforth’s identity as the barman of the Hog’s Head (which always smelled of goats), here begins the run-up to the apparent final battle between the massed forces of Good and Evil, suitably enough back at the grounds of Hogwarts. We discover that a defiant Neville has been leading the charge against the oppression within the school, through the adroit use of the full power of the Room of Requirement. The remnants of Dumbledore’s Army await them, and thus emboldened, Harry makes his way with Luna to Ravenclaw Tower in search of the last founder’s artifact. He runs into one stationed Death Eater, then after the arrival of Professor McGonagall, yet another and makes a disturbing display of the Cruciatus Curse in dispatching the latter. But at the invocation of Dumbledore’s name in announcing his intentions, Harry gains the complete loyalty of McGonagall and its staff (Snape fleeing the scene) that Hogwarts can put to its defense to buy him time to complete his task. And so the Battle of Hogwarts begins.

Although Rowling provides tremendous fan service in the ensuing battle (while Harry wanders about, asking questions of ghosts), it seems like nothing would be enough to satisfy our appetite. We get the arrival of the full Order plus Ginny, and the long-awaited return of the prodigal son, Percy Weasley, who announces his failings and joins his brothers. Grawp and Hagrid wreak their normal giant-sized havoc, while Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall demonstrate the most ingenuity in employing the resources of the castle and grounds itself into their defenses: we cheer when the transfigured statues all march off as one, or desks rush from the gates into melee, or Neville rushes past with arms full of Snargaluff Pods and Mandrakes to rain down on the invaders from the ramparts. One wonders just how much an enriled Professor Flitwick is capable of, as he begins casting an enchantment of immense complexity (Protego Horribilis) within Ravenclaw Tower. The house elves make their stand with Kreacher at their head, rushing to fight with pots and a form of magic that has thus far shown no restraints. Perhaps most thrilling is the full force of a mother’s rage unleashed when Bellatrix nearly kills Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley flies to her defense with a cry that is nearly an echo of Ripley facing down the Alien Queen (Aliens) in protecting her own adopted daughter, Newt: “Get away from her, you bitch!” But at some point we may be disappointed as the battle dissolves into the usual exchange of jets of colored light, with the occasional Shield or Disarming Charm thrown in.

Yet amidst all this chaos, Harry manages to identify the location of the diadem of Ravenclaw, and discovers that Ron and Hermione have managed already to destroy the Hufflepuff cup through the simple expedient of having Ron emulate Parseltongue to re-open the Chamber of Secrets (which must have been a hoot to witness). We also get Ron and Hermione’s first ‘on screen’ kiss, when Ron expresses concern for the welfare of the Hogwarts house elves, evidently having learned as much as Harry from the transformation of Kreacher as well as the sacrifice of Dobby. We encounter a not-so-friendly Draco and his thoroughly evil minions Crabbe and Goyle within the Room of Hidden Things, who conveniently manage to destroy the diadem by Crabbe’s unwise conjuration of Fiendfyre. Leaving a cowed Draco in their wake, the trio set off again to the Shrieking Shack, where Voldemort is holed up with Nagini, now the last remaining horcrux (we yet know of). Here they witness Snape’s summoning, and prescribed death by Voldemort in an attempt to gain mastery of the Elder Wand (although it begs inquiry why Voldemort would choose Nagini as the instrument of Snape’s dismissal rather than his usual Avada Kedavra, the better to win the Elder Wand to him, although we must suspect that slow death by poison simply provides the requisite time). In his final moments, Snape extracts his hidden memories (fortunately not hidden elsewhere to protect them against Voldemort’s Legilimency) and thus provides us with the final answers to his true nature, the justification for his actions, and the secret of Harry’s scar that Dumbledore had kept from him.

From this point forward until the story’s end, the ensuing events become somewhat tangled and confusing and describing them is nigh impossible without also critiquing them or making an attempt at forceful explanation. So we will therefore dispense with a straightforward summary of events, and approach them instead with the clues and insight provided us.

1. Harry is a horcrux, containing a fragment of Voldemort’s soul just as his skin contains the protection of his mother’s blood. Dumbledore foresaw this, and thus arranged for Harry to be prepared for the sacrifice he will have to make in order to truly accomplish Voldemort’s defeat.
2. The protection provided by Lily’s blood magic is infused with Voldemort, as a result of his taking Harry’s blood in the graveyard to accomplish his resurrection at the end of Goblet of Fire.
3. The three Deathly Hallows are reputed to make their owner a “master of Death,” although the exact extent of this mastery is not described, as all mention of it has been corrupted by legend and fairy tales.
4. While Harry possesses 2 of the Hallows (the Resurrection Stone and Cloak of Invisibility), Voldemort holds the Elder Wand, which Dumbledore captured from Grindelwald.
5. Harry chooses the path of the horcruxes over the Hallows while at Shell Cottage, i.e. he seeks to end Voldemort’s reign at the peril of his life. In this sense, he has conquered fear of death, although he can not be said to seek it out willingly.
6. Harry enters the clearing in the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself, both to protect all those he cares about who remain at Hogwarts and to destroy the horcrux he carries.
7. Voldemort casts the Killing Curse at Harry using the Elder Wand, thinking he has won its allegiance through killing Snape, who had killed its former master, Dumbledore.
8. Harry is temporarily free of his body, and meets with a representation of Albus Dumbledore in a place like Purgatory (or Limbo aka Mobil Station of The Matrix Revolutions, a place between two worlds) that appears to him as King’s Cross, which for Harry stands as the interface between the Muggle and Wizarding worlds. With him is the scrabbling fragment of Voldemort’s soul. Harry is given the chance to ‘move on’ or go back to his body to continue fighting Voldemort.
9. Like Aslan exploiting the loophole of Deep Magic in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Harry is resurrected through the purity of his sacrifice, but also by the merit of his soul remaining bound to life through his mother’s blood, and by the inability of the Elder Wand to act against its true master (although his willful sacrifice appears to have allowed it to act to briefly separate his soul).
10. Once his body is again ensouled, Harry’s mercy towards Draco is repaid by Narcissa’s deceit towards Voldemort in declaring him dead.
11. Although feigning death, Harry is not affected by Voldemort’s Cruciatus Curse, again because the Elder Wand cannot harm him.
12. At Harry’s insistence, Neville challenges Voldemort rather than swear fealty (a feint seen recently in 300), and kills Nagini with the Sword of Gryffindor, which has come to one truly worth of it through his Sorting Hat, just as Harry received it in the Chamber of Secrets. This leaves Voldemort exposed in his body.
13. Challenging Voldemort to a duel with Draco’s wand, Harry recites the chain of ownership of the Elder Wand – it was not Snape who defeated Dumbledore, but Draco, who first disarmed him on the tower (probably with Dumbledore’s acceptance, since the Elder Wand is supposed to be invulnerable when dueling). Harry in turn captured Draco’s wand while at the Malfoy estate, and we are meant to believe that a sort of transitive property applies, so that mastery thus passes directly to Harry.
14. In the final exchange, Voldemort’s Killing Curse rebounds on him again, as the Elder Wand still cannot act against its master (and now Harry does not wish for death). Harry’s Expelliarmus succeeds, and the Elder Wand spins to him, reacher its master at last.
15. Harry retires to the Headmaster’s Office, and declares before an astonished Ron and Hermione that he will return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore’s Tomb, where if it remains until Harry’s natural death, the chain of ownership will be broken. Likewise, he plans not to seek out the fallen Resurrection Stone, still lying at the edge of the clearing in the Forbidden Forest, whose shades once drove its first master to suicide. He will only keep his true heirloom, the Invisibility Cloak, and use it perhaps to hide from Death for a normal span of life, ceding it in time to his own offspring.

That’s quite a lot to take in, and hinges on some rather finicky aspects of wandlore and the esoterica of blood magic and the path souls take after death. It takes a lot of emphasis on the mastery of the Elder Wand to make sense of why Harry could triumph over Voldemort and his invulnerable wand while wielding Draco’s, so it makes sense to learn that Rowling had originally considered titling the book, Harry Potter and the Elder Wand. It also still raises a few questions for me, particularly about Harry’s interaction with Dumbledore at King’s Cross. Was he really meeting with the soul of Dumbledore at the antechamber to the afterlife, or was he somehow empowered in a Gnostic fashion to understand the greater pattern once freed temporarily of the trammels of the demiurge’s deception? Was it solely because of his soul remaining anchored to the mortal plane through his mother’s blood in Voldemort’s body that he was able to return to his own body (remembering that when Voldemort was first vanquished by his own Killing Curse, he roamed the earth as little more than spirit, his body having been destroyed by the curse), or through some intervention of the Elder Wand which less-than-killed him?

The issue of remorse and through it redemption also comes into play for many characters, yet not to the one I expected after first learning of Hermione’s discovery in Dumbledore’s secret library. Harry has shown it after harming Draco in book 6, and to some extent when he overcomes his instinctive revulsion and extends sympathy to Kreacher. Ron overcame bitterness and feelings of inadequacy and struggled to return to Harry and Hermione, guided by the Put-Outer for, as said by Harry, Dumbledore foresaw that Ron would “want to find them again.” Draco, Narcissa, and even Lucius at the last show a greater love of family and act to correct their mistakes in serving Voldemort. Remus Lupin returns to his family, and dies alongside Tonks in defense of their right to be a family. Percy overcomes his pride and loyalty to ambition and rejoins his family. But apart from a brief, almost mocking offering from Harry in their final confrontation, the one person who never truly considers remorse and its salvation is Tom Marvolo Riddle. Even though it could reverse the horcruxes’ damage to his soul, and provide him some possibility of an afterlife as more than a pitiable, helpless fraction of a person, his steadfast avoidance of Death to the last is his undoing. As he brought misery, pain, and death to so many who opposed or even served him, his final act is to condemn himself to a wrenching everlasting exile from grace.

In the aftermath, we can briefly mourn the loss of Remus and Tonks, parents to Harry’s godchild Teddy, as well as Fred Weasley and the unnamed 50 others who perished in the battle with the Death Eaters. Still, the toll seems less than we might have feared – Hagrid survives, as do the rest of the Weasleys, and the rest of the Order and staff from what we know. And what of the epilogue? Nineteen years have passed since the events of that night at Hogwarts, and we learn only that our trio are all parents, with significantly named children (well, maybe except for Hugo) on their way to Hogwarts themselves, in a world that seems to have weathered the scars of its past well. The only profession we explicitly hear is that Neville now teaches Herbology at Hogwarts. Yet some of this vagueness can be forgiven if we accept Rowling’s explanation that it was meant to be a gauzy scene showing mostly that life continues, and that the world is brighter and more carefree for all the labours Harry and his friends have undertaken. If I have any real disappointment of what is not shown, it is that moment when Harry finally goes to Ginny’s side, overcome as she is with Fred’s death, and shares with her a look or a silent touch. Something that reconnects them and gives us the hope that the world will indeed heal, and reintroduce those things as love and companionship that will provide the salve to all the pains they have endured. Having them instead only appear together again after almost two decades, with so much now assumed between them as the parents of three, we never get that wonder at seeing each other again when both thought their future lost. (Oh, and those last three words – augh!)

The Prediction

On the whole, I give myself some credit for doing what I could with the facts presented, given that the major plot turn surrounding wandlore is all new to book 7.

The Right

• The identity of the horcruxes is correct, although I can only take half-credit for the diadem of Ravenclaw, not having made the connection to the tiara in the Room of Hidden Things as some did (I forget how we may have already known that it was even a headpiece).
• Harry’s departure from the Dursleys and the subsequent wedding at the Burrow just after his 17th birthday are all valid.
• The Quest indeed starts at 12 Grimmauld Place, with the invaluable assistance of Kreacher, who did retrieve the locket with Regulus (RAB) from the cave.
• Hogwarts loses its Muggle-born population, and Neville leads the DA in a fashion, with Ginny’s assistance (such as in attempting to steal the Sword of Gryffindor) until she is taken into hiding after the holiday. Draco does not return until close to the Battle of Hogwarts.
• Sirius makes no appearance, and Dumbledore does not return to life, although he does appear both in the headmaster’s portrait (as guessed) and in the spectral King’s Cross (maybe a sort of ghost, and limited to providing information).
• Harry does not directly kill Voldemort – he attempts to disarm him, and Voldemort’s curse reflects thus killing himself (again).
• Snape is acting on Dumbledore’s orders, killed him at his command (although I hadn’t guessed that Dumbledore was already dying by other causes), and does so out of remorse for Lily’s death.
• Harry is a horcrux!
• Harry sacrifices himself to destroy this fragment of Voldemort’s soul.

The Wrong

• I did not imagine the Dursleys going into hiding or how dangerous the trip would be, especially the loss of Hedwig.
• The theft of the locket by Mundungus, the whole subsequent trip to the Ministry, reappearance of Umbridge, and the risk of entering the Ministry were all new.
• In fact, I totally whiffed on the state of the Ministry, it becoming a home base for the Death Eaters to act with impunity, carry out their extinction of Muggle-borns, and sever Harry from any outside aid.
• The Muggle world is never really mentioned, so the notion of them discovering wizards in their midst was wrong.
• Hogwarts becomes compulsory, so students do not attend according to their parents’ affiliation (with the notable exception of Muggle-borns, who have no choice).
• Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes sadly makes no appearance aside from the involvement of Fred and George in the Order and on Potterwatch.
• Harry’s Parseltongue has no bearing on the end of Nagini, and is even used against him at Godric’s Hollow (when he is fooled into thinking Bathilda still alive while inhabited by a snake). I did guess partway through the book that it would allow him to open the locket, but Ron emulating him to open the Chamber of Secrets was a complete surprise.
• Nonverbal spells have no significance. At all.
• Madam Maxine does not aid in the final battle, and Charlie Weasley plays no major role (doesn’t ride in on Norbert or anything).
• The final battle is held at Hogwarts instead of the Ministry, and thus the Love Room and Death Room have no role.
• Fred will not be participating in the expansion of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes (sniff).
• Harry does not use any form of blood or binding magic on Voldemort (aww, no Amor Fidelis), and the prevalence of couples among his supporters has no greater import.
• Harry does not die, really.

I cannot say I am either surprised or upset that my ultimate prediction that Harry’s death would be permanent was proved wrong. I thought that Rowling might finagle a Mega-Happy Ending by some means, with Harry’s continued survival and a future full of happy children, but come the end of book 6, the signs seemed to pointing towards her taking the less precedented step of having her hero and titular character become a martyr “for the greater good.” That the “gleam of triumph” seen briefly in Dumbledore’s eyes at the conclusion of Goblet of Fire would amount to a free ticket out of oblivion was more than I expected, after the seriousness with which she seemed to take the march towards the abyss. And what of the careful wording of the prophecy? Perhaps it was only meant to achieve that nebulosity that gave real impact to the unfolding of events – after all, I went into book 7 thinking that there was a very good chance that Harry would die, even while looking to see if she could manufacture a plausible means for his escape from its clutches. Rowling has said, “I was very proud that people thought Harry’s death was a genuine possibility. I was very proud, because my story had to make the possibility of death real. I wanted the reader to feel that anyone might die, as in life.” The first time I realized that she would grant him a reprieve was, ironically, just after his death in the forest – looking at how much of the book remained, I thought, “clearly there is too much remaining to account for just the wrap-up and epilogue.” Harry hadn’t even taken any opportunity to say goodbye, so he would have to get at least one more chance among the living. The relative ease of his return might cheapen the significance of his willing sacrifice somewhat, but as with his decision to seek the horcruxes over the Hallows, and his determination not to rejoin the Hallows, he has shown a sort of mastery over Death after all – like Evey passing through the crucible of imprisonment and torture in V for Vendetta, Harry emerges with his integrity intact and no fear of death, which in turn enables him to embrace life fully. Death is no longer an unknown, and as Dumbledore suggests, it is the fear of the unknown that makes us dread both death and darkness, not the things themselves.

Aftermath

Having released myself from the bonds of self-enforced isolation during the reading, I have already run across several interviews with J.K. Rowling that go some ways to assuage some lingering concerns (for, as she puts, “some people will not be happy until we know the middle names of Harry’s great-grandparents”). As mentioned, the epilogue is meant to be nebulous as if seen from a distance or through a fog. She also gives details on the professions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione (who I imagined would have found something more challenging, such as revitalizing the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures) as well as Luna, and leaves the possibility of a relationship between Neville and Luna open after having scuttled it in the past. We also learn that the characters she spared were not so certain, such as Arthur Weasley being saved at the expense of Lupin and Tonks (creating yet another orphaned godchild), who had been meant to live. We also learn of the effect of her own mother’s death on the books, and her tentative plans to publish an encyclopedia that will fill in the histories and fates of other characters – but not, critically, any attempt to write more stories set in the world after Voldemort’s defeat as Harry and his friends grow to adulthood, which for her “would be an enormous anticlimax.” And I especially should not be one to complain that we are given less instead of more details at the book’s conclusion, having asked for that at the very beginning. And as for what’s next, she has already revealed that she’s working on two new books, outside of Harry’s world – one for children, one for adults. After the success of Harry Potter in bridging that gap, I wonder if it will make any difference to her readers which she releases first.

Vital Stats
Pages: 759 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 36+1
Starts: Malfoys’ Estate
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Cursed in Ravenclaw Tower
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: King’s Cross (Purgatory)
House Cup: n/a
Exams: n/a
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry – 5, Voldemort – 4

About 12 hours after the arrival of Deathly Hallows here, with K finishing it first and my Prediction finally wrapped up, I started it for myself around 2am this morning. The rigors of the preparatory ritual having taken their toll, I made it through 8 chapters before stopping to sleep. Now it is some 16 hours later, and with the lawn cut and dinner served, I am finally preparing to settle in again for a proper focused reading. Yet that strange urge that has kept me writing of this series all week prompted me one last time to reflect on what may come. This, of course, will come of no surprise to t.n.g., who probably suspects my delaying gratification out of sheer habit.

To start, I have to express simply how much I am enjoying the book. Contrary to the experience of book 6, which was rather like swimming underneath an ice floe towards the next airhole, the story so far in book 7 has been just thrilling, chilling and rewarding even after only 8 chapters. The change in tone strikes me as a return to classic quest fantasy, worthy of the word ‘epic’ – a term I am sure to be the first to associate with…wait, no, it’s on the inside front cover. But truly, from terse inside flap to unprecedented flyleaf quotations, and on to the story itself, it feels that we have stepped up the drama and danger beyond all endured so far (cf. Serenity). And the dangers present are in far greater measure than I had expected, having underestimated the limits of the protection left at 4 Privet Drive and overestimated the solidity of the Ministry. We also get compensation in some tender ’shipping moments before launching into the quest proper, to gird us for what must lay ahead. And the heralding of Kingsley’s lynx at the Burrow came as if from Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising, another tale of children caught up in the prevailing struggle of Light and Dark (and I had forgotten that its Will Stanton began his quest (1) once he turned eleven, (2) that his quest was to discover Six Signs, and (3) was called the Seeker).

Next, as far as the Prediction holds so far, I would only mention that with the additional insight provided by Hermione’s research, I can now see how we may resolve the central conflict by an alternative avenue. The William Penn quote, however, still holds the course. I am very excited to see just how wrong I can be!

Finally, while grinding through the death march of the “Green Mile” (our back yard) with a mower hindered by a gimpy front wheel, the iPod Semuta IV fed my slightly hypnagogic state with the following apophenic morsels.

Morrissey’s “Irish Blood, English Heart” became translated immediately to the filkish “Wizard Blood, Muggle Heart” as sung by Harry:

Wizard blood, Muggle heart, this I’m made of
There is no-one on earth I’m afraid of
And no Ministry can buy or sell me

I’ve been dreaming of a time when
To be pureblood is not to be baneful
To be standing by the Muggle-borns not feeling
Shameful, racist or partial

Wizard blood, Muggle heart, this I’m made of
There is no-one on earth I’m afraid of
And I will die with both my hands untied

I’ve been dreaming of a time when
The Wizards are sick to death of part-human haters
And Death Eaters, and spit upon the name of Lord Voldemort
And denounce this pureblood line that still salute him
And will salute him forever

Next was Esthero’s “My Torture”, which contains lines like, ” I want you to stop disturbing my sleep / I want it to stop hurting so bad”…while echoed in the refrain from Garbage’s “Bleed Like Me”, we hear “You should see my scars.”

And last came the brief interlude to Sarah Nixey’s “Sing”:

There are at least two sides to every story.
There are songs that tell of the beginning, and some that come towards the end.
Some of these songs are true, and some tell lies.
One or two are eager for impossible romance.

And if there is a better description of the whole of fiction, well…it didn’t come up in my playlist, anyway.

Now, back to book 7, to revel in the last hours of an unknown End.

When I first finished reading book 6, I spun off a fledgling version of what I felt was due to happen in book 7 (as then unnamed). Sadly I did not take the time to write it out, although the outline is still relatively fresh in my mind. With the recent re-reading and writing, I may endeavor to flesh it out here a bit, although given the above recognition that I am writing into my own reading time…maybe not. Still, I should emphasize that this is not what I want to happen but rather where the signs seem to me to be pointing, based on the rules that J.K. Rowling seems to have set out for herself, much like those in the world of the Princess Bride. Also, in my defense, I should mention at this late stage that I’m usually not very good at guessing the end of movies and mysteries and things like that because I am a gullible sort that follows wherever the author chooses to direct me. So if Draco marries Hermione, you won’t hear it here first.

We get the goals of the early part of the novel handed to us almost verbatim. Voldemort has endeavored to split his soul into 7 parts, via 6 horcruxes, and those 6 must be destroyed before the embodied Dark Lord can be defeated. Two of the 6 have already been confirmed destroyed – Riddle’s diary and Gaunt’s ring. Three others have been assiduously identified by Dumbledore, the Slytherin locket (not the one found in the cave of Inferi), Hufflepuff cup and Nagini. Of those, the locket is quite possibly still at 12 Grimmauld Place among Kreacher’s things, while Nagini is unlikely to be far from Voldemort’s side. The remaining one is presumably tied to one of the other founders of Hogwarts, and since the sword has already been mentioned by Dumbledore as being the last of Gryffindor’s (and has, notably, not already been destroyed as a result), the odds are on Ravenclaw. This last may not in fact exist at all; back to that later.

Harry has declared he is not planning to return to Hogwarts after his requisite final stay with the Dursleys to retain to the protection of his mother’s blood until he comes of age. He has stated he will begin his search at Godric’s Hollow, the site of his attempted murder. Before undertaking that, it is pretty safe to say we will have a wedding, perhaps shortly after Harry’s 17th birthday. Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour are engaged, and as we left them in Hogwarts, Fleur is not in the least put off by a little thing like her fiance being mauled by a werewolf. This is a good way to bring together the members of the Order to the Burrow, and fill in some background on what has been happening in the mounting war between Order, Ministry, and Voldemort’s forces while Harry has been at 4 Privet Drive. Here he can join up with Ron and Hermione, who have stated they will be joining him on his hunt.

We have not been given much to guide the particular order in which Harry can seek the known Horcruxes, so we will have to be provided clues at each station as to where to carry on next. Along with whatever they find at Godric’s Hollow, they may also be able to intuit something from 12 Grimmauld Place or from Kreacher directly, such as whether Regulus (assumed to be RAB) knew the location of any other than Slytherin’s locket.

While this is going on, four other domains will be caught in the ravages of a widening conflict: Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, Wizarding world, and Muggle world. At the end of book 6, the teachers were agreed to take it to the school governors whether the school would stay open. Hagrid had already committed to staying, and presumably Trelawney has nowhere else to go. Population would doubtless be down, such as the Patil twins, out of fear of Voldemort now that Death Eaters have successfully infiltrated its defenses and killed Dumbledore. But some portion of the student population should still see the merit in attending, particularly for Defense Against the Dark Arts training, although who will be free to teach them given the urgent need for all active Aurors on duty (and while Voldemort’s jinx still holds sway) is an open question. Perhaps the vestiges of Dumbledore’s Army will reform, taking advantages of the resources thus far unused in the Room of Requirement, and someone like Neville will find new courage in themselves to act as class leader (Ginny is also quite expert, and not one to shrink from a fight). With Ron and Hermione both gone, however, Gryffindor will be in need of new prefects, and with both Ron and Harry absent, their Quidditch team – if even allowed to take the field – is in for some punishment. Whether any particular other students return are all open guesses – children of Death Eater victims are especially likely to stay away, naturally, while muggle-borns have more to fear. Pureblood families could pull their children out of support for Voldemort, or keep them there because they know Slytherin house is as safe as anywhere. Draco Malfoy is unlikely to return, having been involved in a murder and the means of the Death Eaters entry and may still be working alongside Death Eaters out of fear, or is possibly in hiding with his mother Narcissa with Snape’s assistance.

The Ministry of Magic, despite being taken over by a grizzled ex-Auror, has not shown great improvements in competence, if the pacifying pamphlets sent out last term are any indication. Fudge has been named to continue as liaison to the Muggle Minister, and Arthur Weasley is already in a crush to deal with the trade in counterfeit defense items. Unless Luna is right and the Minister wields a secret army of heliopaths, we cannot expect much from the Ministry except a battened-hatches mentality and an emphasis on preserving the status quo.

The Wizard world at large has likewise not demonstrated any great solidarity under siege. The Order of the Phoenix has been the most active in plotting against Voldemort, although thus far that has been largely defensive in nature (safeguard Harry, patrol Hogwarts). The other surprising source for good news is Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, which has expanded into the military-magic sector and now has a direct channel into the Ministry for selling Shield Charm-enchanted clothing and other more sober items than their joke stock. What we have not heard thus far is any reaction from the International Magical Cooperation department, in the absence of Barty Crouch, as to how they are marshaling aid from other wizarding groups and magical creatures around the world. Surely a Dark Lord is a threat to more than just the UK.

The Muggle world is no longer completely in ignorance as to the source of recent catastrophes, and the knowledge that the grey mists surrounding the nation are a byproduct of dementors breeding is frightening indeed. No indication has ever been given that Muggles themselves, as opposed to Muggle-born wizards and witches, have any real chance of effecting change on the wizard world’s problems, vs just being a source of them. Yet the Convention on Secrecy will be hard-pressed the more public Voldemort becomes, and the more bold his followers are in pursuing their favorite sport of Muggle-baiting or outright Muggle-killing.

We can assume that by whatever means, Harry and co. will eventually succeed in destroying all of the artifact horcruxes (how they will learn to do so is a mystery). Nagini is rather a more dangerous challenge, but while loyal to Voldemort thus far, Dumbledore does mention that use of a living container is risky, and Harry does have the benefit of Parseltongue. The whole series has been leading up to Harry facing Voldemort, without the express aid of an adult mentor, although we can expect the Order in particular to be instrumental in clearing the way and dealing with the Death Eater ranks. Probably by now the recent emphasis on nonverbal spells has made a difference in the main trio’s dueling.We have never really seen the Weasleys in battle apart from Ron and Ginny, but we can expect something dramatic from 2 former Head Boys, 2 genius inventors, and someone who wrangles dragons for a living, not to mention the considerable experience of their parents. We also have a reinvigorated Tonks, a more settled Lupin, and Hagrid’s bonds with both Madam Maxine and Grawp.

Most to this point does really involve much guessing, more extrapolation. That Rowling could have misled where we were going is of course a possibility, and maybe she has been saving the nick-of-time return of Sirius or a restored Dumbledore for a late-story appearance. As I’ve previously argued, I doubt that either of them can take a direct hand without devaluing the trauma and isolation that Harry has been slowly channeled into ever since the end of Prisoner of Azkaban. Yet something like asking Dumbledore’s portrait for the means to destroy a recovered horcrux is a possibility, since clearly some amount of the occupant’s knowledge is retained (Phineas Nigellus certain knows his offspring, as well as remembering how tiresome he found adolescents). In this fashion, Dumbledore may act as a sort of Force ghost, providing guidance without depriving Harry of all the difficult bits. That said, where things go next is much more out of my head and based more on themes than anything.

I do not think that Harry can kill Voldemort. Not that he will not succeed in destroying the artifact horcruxes, or that Voldemort is unkillable, but rather than when it will finally come to it, Harry casting a jet of green light to destroy the mortal body of the reconstituted Tom Marvolo Riddle goes against all of the qualities he has been attributed. He has felt remorse and disgust at the pain he caused Draco via sectumsempra, and although he has actually attempted the Cruciatus Curse against both Bellatrix Lestrange after she killed Sirius, and Severus Snape after he killed Dumbledore, in neither case was he able to conjure up the necessary bloodlust to make them succeed (well, Snape also helped by cutting him off before he could finish the word). He alone knows the torment of surviving a Killing Curse, and the sacrifice his mother made to protect him from it. He never knew his parents – who despite their youthful transgressions are still portrayed as moral, caring people – because of it. He has lost his godfather and mentor to it. And though the rage may course over him, and he may desperately want to avenge them through the same means, it violates the most basic code of behavior for him to perform Avada Kedavra. The Killing Curse scars the soul of the caster, which is why Dumbledore would not have wanted Draco to perform it, believing him free of those murderous urges. How then can we expect Harry to commit so foul an act, if Draco is too innocent?

But we have been told of a power that can triumph over Voldemort, for which he has no defense and by which he has already been defeated three times: love. It saturated Harry’s skin when his mother gave her life to save him, deflecting the Killing Curse back at him. It protected Harry against Quirrell, thus denying him the Philosopher’s Stone and through it the Elixir of Life. And it prevented Harry’s possession at the atrium of the Ministry of Magic, because Voldemort could not stand to share a body resonating with it. And apart from Harry’s own boundless capacity for caring, so rawly displayed as he choked from the force of it in Dumbledore’s office after the death of Sirius, we have further established a network of relationships that tie Harry and his friends and supporters in the Order more closely than mere companions. Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Bill/Fleur, Arthur/Molly, Remus/Tonks, Hagrid/Olympe/Grawp. Add to these the implied pairs like Neville/Luna and Pince/Filch, all of the Hogwarts teachers or other Order members who may have spouses. Consider even those among Voldemort’s reputed faithful who care for others, rather than just themselves – Draco/Pansy/Narcissa/Lucius (the latter may not care for others, but Narcissa and Draco both clearly care for him). Even Snape had some strong reason to abandon the Dark Lord and swear fealty to the Order at one time, in horror at what the prophecy had driven Voldemort to do, and best guess points to Harry’s mother Lily. He also took an Unbreakable Vow, imperiling his own life, to reassure Narcissa and protect Draco. While he could have done so as part of an elaborate keeping-up-appearances act, it is still a startling commitment to make. And finally, remember that of all the elemental rooms the DA ran through in their bid to save Sirius, the only one whose door has remain locked is that containing what Harry possesses in such great amounts: Love.

How this all fits together is a wonderful mystery. How exactly does Harry face down the fearsome Dark Lord with the capacity to love? Can Harry find it in himself to forgive the man who killed practically everyone he’s ever cared about? Can Voldemort actually be redeemed? To keep it in the realm of magic, I imagined something like the Priori Incantatem or Reverse Spell Effect. Wizarding couples, joined together to stand against Voldemort, hands held to invoke a powerful rite of ancient magic. Let’s call it Amor Fidelis, faithful love. A field is projected within which Voldemort is confronted with that which he cannot face, and reduces himself to nothing as a result.

Or: we still have Wormtail, or even a possible redeemed Snape. Knife in the back, bada-boom, problem solved. I’m not picky.

On the Snape question, I can really go either way. He is portrayed as a complex character, clearly between the conventional track of good and evil. He has expressed a fervent interest in, almost reverence for, the Dark Arts. He has grown up poor, disliked, and singled out by people for his appearance and proclivities. At least at one point, he was a pureblood believer. As an adult, he shows clear favorites in class, torments the children of those who bullied him, and has a generally vindictive nature. Yet…he has shown extraordinary talent in Potions, and in spell creation. He is a superb Occlumens and at least talented Legilimens. He has never actually harmed a student, indeed has acted several times for their protection, nor allowed his childhood feelings to affect the Wolfsbane potion he brewed regularly for Lupin. He saved Harry against Quirrell’s broom jinx, and worked against Quirrell to protect the Philosopher’s Stone (even though he later claims to have done so because he thought Quirrell was acting alone). He has acted as a spy for the Order at Dumbledore’s request, and at some point in the past made a convincing display of remorse and earned his total trust. He belies much of his loyalty to the Order in responding to Bellatrix’s accusations, but of course if he truly does work for the Order, he would have to have a convincing story already anyway (which is always the problem with double agents) – and as he says, if his story didn’t hold up to Voldemort’s scrutiny, it didn’t matter what Bellatrix thought. Even his outright murder of Dumbledore can be taken as a dire measure done under strict orders from Dumbledore himself, either to save Draco or to ensure his role within Voldemort’s ranks. Even while fleeing for his life, he is at some level instructing Harry on the necessities of dueling, and prevents another Death Eater from crucifying him. So we get a very mixed picture, with enough reasons to dislike and distrust him, and perhaps only Dumbledore’s fallible and now absent assurances that he is to be trusted. Still, I think he has a better chance of redeeming himself in some way than remaining as he appears in Spinner’s End, if for no better reasons than it keeps him more interesting and upholds the principle that unpleasant people are not necessarily evil.

But there is one other thing – while I don’t think Harry kills Voldemort directly, or that he himself is slain by violence, (and here’s the hard part for me to face) I do not believe that Harry will survive in the end. So much has been made of the virtue of sacrifice for a greater good, or for the protection of others – Harry’s parents, Sirius, Dumbledore. We have been thoroughly grounded in the idea that death is not the end, and is not something to fear – it is just what comes next, and remains unknown. Why would Harry not survive? First, because the prophecy does not require it – “neither may live while the other survives” makes no mention of “one will live.” Second, because (da da dum!) Harry is a horcrux. Original, I know, but it is the first thing that came to me after I finished book 6. When we learn how a horcrux is created, we also hear how Voldemort chose his victims when producing one, and that he almost certainly chose Harry for that dubious honor. We know that the energy produced by the Killing Curse goes into the effort of splintering the caster’s soul so it can be stored in an object. We know that living things can become a horcrux, because Dumbledore believes the snake Nagini to be one. And then there’s that curious lightning-shaped scar, no ordinary scar, which has been acting as first an early warning system and then a conduit into Voldemort’s mind. We know that something of Voldemort was put into Harry, because he is a Parselmouth, and Harry is not a descendent of Slytherin like Tom Riddle. If Harry can sense Voldemort’s moods, and see through Nagini’s eyes, it certainly seems likely that part of Voldemort’s soul is in Harry. As the result of the Killing Curse being deflected back at the caster by Harry’s mother’s protection, the horcrux transfer would not have been completed, but that soul destined for a horcrux container simply joined with Harry. So when Harry destroys the other horcrux items, then manages to shepherd Voldemort-1 out of his current body, that still leaves one vestige of soul. The prophecy says that “either must die at the hand of the other,” so if Harry has managed thus far not to murder Voldemort in the flesh, that leaves one alternative for him to fulfill the claim, and rid the world of Voldemort forever. He must walk through the veiled archway in the Death Room in the Department of Mysteries.

This allows for much sober discussion and firm resolve on Harry’s part. It allows for tearful goodbyes, and then surrounded by those who love him, he can square his shoulders and walk towards those whispering voices that represent all those who have left before him. The only problem I have is with Ginny, but I cannot imagine her leaving so soon, so she must be standing next to Harry and chide him yet again for the “stupid, noble reason” they must be parted. Those who remain will ensure that he is remembered, and by that measure he will live on. For 17 shining years, he was the Boy Who Lived. After all, as learned in Richard Bach’s Illusions, the life expectancy of a messiah is remarkably short. But likewise as in Charles de Lint’s Into the Green, “Death is a tragedy … but only for the living. We who have died go on to other things.”

(Entering Wild Speculation Territory)

In an epilogue, time has passed and life has returned more or less to normal. Ron and Hermione are receiving their first letter from Hogwarts for their son, Harry Albus Weasley. The gorgeous children of Bill and Fleur are already there, of course, making trouble as usual and maybe Hermione has even taken a position as Transfiguration teacher to take over from Headmistress McGonagall (I’d also accept maybe Hermione as a Healer at St. Mungo’s, while as for Ron…I just don’t know if he could really make it as an Auror). With Hagrid now working for the Ministry’s Department of International Magical Cooperation as Ambassador to Dangerous(-ly Misunderstood) Creatures, Grawp assists as Keeper of Grounds at Hogwarts, while Fred and George have expanded into Hogsmeade by taking over Zonko’s and have been making trips abroad to establish their American and Tasmanian franchises. Draco, the sneering Potions master, still shamelessly favors students in his own House of Slytherin. Neville and Luna Longbottom have opened a miscellany shop in Diagon Alley that specializes in experimental cross-breed plants (the Antivenom Tentacula is especially popular) and Defense Against Not-Yet-Generally-Accepted Dangers charms. Ginny makes a striking Dark wizard-catcher when she’s not practicing as Chaser with the Chudley Cannons farm team. But most still take time in late Spring to travel to the Ministry of Magic and visit the Potter Archway Memorial, where they meet old friends and remember the heavy costs of the war over a decade before. And many find themselves staring at the portrait of a tall, skinny boy, who wore round glasses over brilliant green eyes, and beneath eternally mussed hair had a thin lightning-bolt shaped scar.

I can more clearly remember anticipating book 6 versus all of its predecessors. Having just re-read the first 5 books, just as I have now with all 6, I was full of anticipation and eager to explore the unvarnished return of Voldemort in full force, the meaning of the Half-Blood Prince, and the identity of whoever was fated to die within its pages (although I had a sinking suspicion who it would be). Thus reading it was something of a struggle between my instinct to enjoy the story and the anxiety to rush through its revelations, rather like choosing between savoring and wolfing down a long-awaited sumptuous meal. The anxiety rather won out, and the eventual result was, in a word…disappointment.

This should have been expected. Hyping something up to fever pitch makes it almost impossible to satiate the expectations you have made for it. This effect is worsened when you have had copious time to dither over its arrival, and to overexert yourself in preparation. I have done in myself in the same way with the final Matrix movie, which was intended to answer so many meaningful questions and shied away from almost all of them; the first Star Wars prequel, which had so many years of nostalgia to justify, or even Return of the Jedi, with its sudden onslaught of ewoks; and most any beloved book turned into a movie, the Harry Potter series among them. I am sure many people have felt that hollow feeling at they reach the end of a particular book series, knowing that for all the build-up and investment, the conclusion could not possibly satisfy them. Of course, all of this trepidation applies in even greater amounts to the final volume, for which I did not even know at the time how long I would have to wait. And perhaps that is precisely what made the first reading experience so awkward – as the penultimate installment, Half-Blood Prince could only raise more questions, add more clues, and set the stage for book 7. It could not logically resolve any of the major quandaries or it would diminish the impact of the concluding title, which meant we were destined to be left panting at book’s end. And so it is somewhat disingenuous to blame book 6 for not standing up prima facie to scrutiny, any more than you could have expected a happy ending at the end of Fellowship of the Ring. As in that work, we must lose some of our protectors in order to heighten the struggle of the little against the great. So will we dread what seems must come into Harry’s life in order to set up his final confrontation with Voldemort.

With that buzzing at back of mind, at the time book 6 felt more like a sketchy outline of ‘must have in there’ bits held together with teenage soap opera, as if the bullet points of what the reader ought to learn were only lightly embroidered with story so as to string them together. Nowhere is this more sharply presented than in the sheer scope of Dumbledore’s involvement, and indeed the extent of his dialogue with Harry, who struggles with awkwardness at having hardly ever been alone with Dumbledore without a desk between them. With the economy of Dumbledore’s contributions over 5 years, this explosion of verbiage, confidence, and emotion shared with Harry is not only a bit overwhelming, but also serves to dilute somewhat his magnificent, yet previously enigmatic presence. The reason for all this becomes clear at the lightning-struck tower, since we have a finite window of time in which Dumbledore can impart all of his necessary wisdom and aspirations to Harry before he shoulders the tasks ahead. But at the very first, as they walk from the Dursleys, it seems offputting that Dumbledore should be, in a nutshell, talking so much.

Another unsettling change is in the book’s wraparound structure. In almost every preceding book, with the slight exception of Goblet of Fire, the story begins and ends at the same places – 4 Privet Drive and Platform 9-3/4. Book 4 began with the scene at the Riddle House, which worked as a sort of prologue, before familiarity returned, and the book ended at the Platform per usual. But it is not until the third chapter of book 6 that we revisit Harry, by which time we have already been plied with a gluttony of new ideas – the Prime Minister involved, Fudge sacked, Scrimgeour’s appointment, Narcissa’s despair, Bellatrix’s suspicions, Snape and Wormtail co-habiting, a secret plan, and the Unbreakable Vow. And even from the Dursleys, whoosh we go not straight to the Burrow but to the recruitment of an unsettling new personality, Horace Slughorn who styles himself an eminence grise (or in Heroes parlance, “the wind at the back of history”) with an eye to comforts. By the time Harry is deposited in the Weasley household, he has already secured special lessons with Dumbledore, and been encouraged to share the prophecy with his two friends. And the pace hardly slackens from there, although does at least begin to interject some counterpoint romance to offset the weighty concerns that seem to mount up inexorably throughout the book.

And for all of that, coming to the book now as a prelude to the imminent conclusion, with full knowledge of its contents, and with a sharper eye put to the directions included within, I daresay I find much more to appreciate in Half-Blood Prince. The disappointment of first discovery is diminished by knowing what hard knocks await, although in some cases this sharpens the empathic embarrassment when it looms (e.g. “not the Draco-Is-A-Death-Eater theory again“). The onrush of portents of Voldemort’s efforts are more intriguing now that I am seeking them out as precursors to book 7 instead of indications of what might occur later in book 6. And the foreshadowing of relationships yet to bloom is taken with a lighter heart now that I am reassured that they will arrive in due time. The book is still troubled by its middle child role, since it can only be expected to offer more questions than answers, but accepting that takes away some of its sting (as does knowing that the hopeful answers lie under the same roof, hours away). So with some bitterness sieved away, let us consider just what we learn in Half-Blood Prince.

The book, like the two before it, is not simply about its title. We learn surprisingly little about the selfsame Prince for most of the book apart from his/her prodigious gifts in both potion-making and inventing Dark magic (both of which, in hindsight, should have been dead giveaways). And while Severus Snape, the revealed Half-Blood Prince, does have a critical role to play in the story with his tangled skein of loyalties, the book is much more consumed with Voldemort’s past, and thus clues about his weaknesses, as well as the development of a number of significant relationships. Both are undoubtedly due for even greater prominence in the final year. Before we address each of those in turn, let us dispense with some of the lesser concepts introduced here, starting again with the Ministry of Magic.

The Ministry is clearly in disarray. Fudge has owned up, at least in part, to his own culpability in Voldemort’s return to power, insofar as he does belabor his dismissal when meeting his Muggle counterpart just before Scrimgeour’s arrival. We learn that the Death Eaters have begun committing large acts of public terrorism, such as destroying a bridge and causing such damage to the coast – with possible giant aid – that it has been mistaken for a hurricane. We also receive via Fudge the depiction of two exceptions to death – Voldemort himself, about which Fudge muses “is a man alive if he can’t be killed?”, and the Inferi, the wizard form of zombies or reanimated corpses. Finally, we get a great moment of dark comedy, when Fudge sighs at the Muggle minister’s insistence that as wizards, they must be able to do something to resolve these troubles: “the trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.” Once at the Burrow, Harry hears news of Arthur Weasley’s promotion to the awkwardly-if-precisely named Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects. Just by its existence, plus some examples from Diagon Alley, we know that wizardkind are not above capitalizing on tragedy and preying on fears for profit, as depicted variously in Camus’ The Plague, the mystery series Foyle’s War, and more cynically, innumerable historical efforts in government to sow FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) for political gain and profiteering.

Later the Minister himself visits the Burrow, under the thinly-veiled conceit of allowing Percy to visit his family for the holidays. Harry has wondered at Percy’s continued estrangement, although he hears of Dumbledore’s epigrammatic explanation, “people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” Mrs. Weasley, at least, does not wonder at the pretext, but shows clear joy at his appearance; Fred, George and Ginny show rather less accommodation. Still, the real reason for Scrimgeour’s appearance is to implore Harry’s aid in calming the public during a time of crisis. That is, despite the very real dangers of Death Eater activity, “to the wizarding community at large..it’s all perception, isn’t it? It’s what people believe that’s important.” Harry is not taken in by this in the least, and calmly retorts, “You’re making a Stan [Shunpike] a scapegoat, just like you want to make me a mascot.” The exchange ends with the evident continuation of a feud between the Ministry and Dumbledore, when the Minister asserts, “Dumbledore’s man through and through, aren’t you, Potter?” to which Harry adamantly agrees. While this particularly is no surprise, what is remarkable is how calm and collected he remains during this entire attempted rapprochement, never dissolving into rage, keeping his own counsel, and quite shrewdly intuiting the minister’s intentions before they are ever aired. All of this shows a striking contrast with Angry Harry of just a few months ago, when we left him turning the Headmaster’s office into a shambles. It also, if possible, serves later to draw Dumbledore and Harry even closer when they discuss this recruiting attempt back at Hogwarts.

Yet despite these tensions, the Ministry is clearly no longer the strict antagonist it was in Order of the Phoenix. The Order is still the primary protection for Harry and Hogwarts, but Aurors do escort the Weasleys and Harry to Diagon Alley. They are further offered as protection at year’s end, though rebuffed by Harry. And though Umbridge makes her mendacious appearance at the funeral, she no longer carries any real menace in her, still frightened as she is by the very presence of Firenze. While we cannot perhaps expect much real assistance from the Ministry in future, consumed as they are with maintaining a semblance of safety and order amid the growing threat of outright war, they appear at least to have been benched as an impediment to all that Harry must still undertake. And in one sense at least, I believe they still possess the key to Voldemort’s ultimate downfall.

We are introduced to a new Potions master, Horace Slughorn, whose appointment frees Snape to take his long-desired place as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. This should immediately tell us that Snape must be destined to leave Hogwarts by book’s end, having previously established that the DADA post seems to be jinxed, and confirming partway through that it is definitely so by Voldemort himself in retaliation for Dumbledore resisting his attempts to return as a teacher himself. Surely something so mundane as Snape returning to Potions after a year could not satisfy the running tally we have amounted so far! Meanwhile Slughorn proves to be driven by a curiously twisted motivation, interested not in glory for himself but in the reflection of it from others he cultivates. Like a Gibsonian cool-hunter (Pattern Recognition) or kingmaker, he seeks out with a remarkable intuition those students whose futures are potentially advantageous, generally “because they were connected to somebody well-known or influential” with the notable exception of Ginny, who is singled out for her fabulous and infamous bat-bogey hex, and Harry himself, now anoited the “Chosen One” by the Daily Prophet (and if a prophet calls you the Chosen One, how can they be wrong?). This proves not quite as important as the mere fact that Harry is able to continue studying Potions without an Outstanding O.W.L. towards his goal of becoming an Auror, but it does at least provide the setting for early sparks between Ron and Hermione, and a touching scene with Luna, who we learn from her trademark radical honesty misses the DA especially because “it was like having friends.” We also get a rare portrait of a Slytherin who venerates talent even among Muggle-born, albeit with some reluctance (his praise of Hermione seems genuine enough), who shows fear rather than delight at Voldemort’s return, and shares both the shock of Snape’s betrayal and the grief at Dumbledore’s death. Up to this point, we have never yet had reason to consider a Slytherin as worthy of anything categorically but suspicion or hatred.

Yet it is because Harry continues Potions – and because he did not anticipate needing to buy his own copy from Flourish & Blotts – that he has reason to come into possession of the copy of Advanced Potion-Making previously owned by the enigmatic but talented Half-Blood Prince. This in turn brings him into the favor of Slughorn, wins him the sample of Felix Felicis (deux ex machina in a test tube), reminds him of the antidote properties of a bezoar (which saves Ron’s life), protects him in part against love potions, teaches him levicorpus (his first successful nonverbal spell) and sectumsepra (which in turn teaches him regret), and earns him the chance to be compared to his mother instead of his father for a change. The curious luck potion Felix Felicis (both terms derived from Latin, like ‘felicity’, for happiness and good fortune), which used in moderation causes “all your endeavors tend to succeed,” enables at minimum the end of Ron’s relationship with Lavender so he can take up with Hermione; the end of Ginny’s relationship with Dean Thomas so she can take up with Harry; the consolation of Hagrid; the enticement of Slughorn to join them; the successful casting of a nonverbal Refilling Charm; further confirmation of Lily Evans’ goodness; and the critical unaltered memory on horcruxes, along with the timely return of Dumbledore to review it (for he returns an hour before the potion expires); and possibly the very survival of Ron, Hermione, and Ginny when the Death Eaters attack. Just how a single person imbibing a potion, however complex, can coerce the universe to act favorably to their advantage and specifically their happiness is a great wonder, although it has some parallels to notions of will-over-matter (from thelemic magick, “do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” to Timothy Leary’s “reality tunnels” and even to New Age cash-ins based on the Law of Attraction like current bestseller The Secret). At any rate, like the Time-Turner (which we learn, incidentally, was destroyed en masse at the end of OOTP), it does its job well but likely will not reappear for fear of undoing the seriousness of future obstacles.

We also receive confirmation or further deliberation on other aspects of past books.

• The protection implied by his staying with the Dursleys is confirmed to remain effective until he comes of age (conveniently at age 17, the beginning of book 7).
• The two-way communication between Harry and Voldemort is now blunted, as “it appears that he is now employing Occlumency against you” to Dumbledore’s satisfaction. Whether Harry is thereby shielded from Legilimency is unmentioned.
• The Order of the Phoenix indeed communicates via Patronus, as when Dumbledore previously sent ’something silvery’ to Hagrid’s hut in OOTP.
• With the full prophecy revealed, Harry finds himself contemplating that parallel world where Neville was the ‘chosen’ one, and how things might have turned out differently, just as he once imagined if his name had not come out of the Goblet of Fire. For our part, we can wonder what might have happened if Harry had taken the remaining Felix Felicis before embarking with Dumbledore to the cave of the locket, rather than leaving it with Ron, Hermione and Ginny on what seemed a fool’s errand to monitor Draco.
• Dumbledore discusses the predestination paradox invoked by Voldemort’s reaction to the prophecy, asking “If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?…Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress?” This again echoes the message of V for Vendetta, succinctly put that “people should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.”
• As for the collision of predestination and free will, he asserts, “the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything…in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy!” So it is only because Voldemort believed the words, feared their meaning, and acted as he did that Harry must ultimately face him in the end. And then not because the prophecy says it must be so, but because Voldemort will not rest until it does, and so it is a choice between being hunted and “walking into the arena with head held high.”
• Trelawney shows remarkable accuracy in her wandering cartomancy, first with “conflict…an ill omen…violence…a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner” with Harry hiding just around a column, and then most ominously “the lightning-struck tower…calamity, disaster.” Dead on (if unhelpful).
• We get a frank assessment of the plight of the manic blood purist in the cautionary tale of Marvolo and Morfin, who exhibit that “vein of instability and violence that flourished through the generations due to their habit of marrying their own cousins.”
• Answering an earlier speculation about why Harry was reprimanded for underage magic when Dobby levitated a pudding, the Ministry can evidently only “detect magic, but not the perpetrator.” This also happens to explain why Fred and George were able to do so much product research prior to their leaving Hogwarts, since under the roof of adult wizards, it is up to the parents to enforce this discipline.
• The role of Quidditch is again background, despite against strong odds awarding the Quidditch Cup to Gryffindor for a third time (while Harry sits in detention, no less). While the first was for Harry, and the second for Ron, this time is at once a context for Harry to show leadership, endure unwelcome popularity, and attempt impartiality, while serving to spark relationships (e.g. Cormac McLaggen, Dean Thomas as foils to Ron and Harry).
• Despite his cool reception of Minister Scrimgeour, Harry shows just as much stubborn prejudice towards Draco and Snape as ever, desperately trying to twist facts to fit his preferred theory of events where they are the cause of all the ills he experiences, e.g. “Harry clung to this notion, because it enabled him to blame Snape, which felt satisfying.” Yet this entire undercurrent of suspicion and dogged pursuit of their actions ultimately proves justified, as Draco is found to be not only the source of the cursed items but indeed working at Voldemort’s behest in the Room of Requirement. Snape, meanwhile, hardly looks trustworthy after killing Dumbledore and fleeing the grounds, sneering all the way while deflecting Harry’s desperate attacks. Still, Harry has found in himself the capacity to pity Draco, violently regret his use of sectumsempra, and observe Draco’s unwillingness to strike down a vulnerable Dumbledore. These are hard blows to take on a previously immutable hatred.

Moving on, a considerable portion of the book is taken up with both the superficial trials and deep bonding of many relationship formed or strengthened over the year, which serve to connect the characters in ever more powerful ways while also reminding us how so many differ from the notable loner in Voldemort. Perhaps least expected is Pansy Parkinson tenderly caressing Draco in the Hogwarts Express, and Moaning Myrtle consoling him as he struggles with his appointed secret task. We learn that “he’s sensitive, people bully him too, and he feels lonely and hasn’t got anybody to talk to, and he’s not afraid to show his feelings and cry!” This humanizing effect both provides us with a means to pity, if not empathize with his predicament, as well as distancing him from the Death Eater ideal of pitiless, unemotional servitude. Luna Lovegood further endears by announcing Quidditch, showing great affection for the DA and sincere gratitude to Harry for inviting her to Slugworth’s party, and helping Neville at Dumbledore’s funeral – Neville and Luna also being the two other members of the DA who respond to defend Hogwarts. Neville in turn receives powerful reassurance by Professor McGonagall, “it’s high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have.” After Luna points out that the giggling girls think he out to be sitting with cool people, Harry further display his regard for them by insisting “you are cool.” Harry’s offhand joke about Madam Pince and Argus Filch seems to bear out at the funeral as well. Hagrid is reunited with Madam Maxine, and has brought about a remarkable change in Grawp. And the question of Tonks’ changed patronus, mousy appearance, and general misery seem finally resolved as she sits with Remus Lupin, hand in hand (Snape’s taunt that “the new one looks weak” seemingly forgotten).

On a grander scale, we have some of the most poignant moments of the series with three other pairings. The least of these from a character standpoint, yet for me outsized in impact, is the engagement of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. First hinted at in Goblet of Fire, when Fleur gazed at him with great interest, and then transferred to Gringotts to “work on ‘er Engleesh,” her presence and pretention at the Burrows is a source of great aggravation to all the other witches. She is particularly trying on Ginny, who feels she is lectured like a child, while Mrs. Weasley suffers her running commentary on food, music, and everything else she feels is substandard except, of course, for her beloved Bill (who seems quite content to be fussed over). We leave her after the Christmas holidays and hear nothing more until after Fenrir Grayback’s ravaging of Bill during the Death Eater assault on Hogwarts. It is in the hospital ward that Mrs. Weasley laments at Bill’s disfiguring, and the presumed end to his impending marriage. Fleur is incensed, “It would take more zan a werewolf to stop Bill loving me!…What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!” And at a stroke, she is redeemed. Also, I need a tissue. Ahem.

Those stalwart, bickering compatriots of Harry also finally get their time together, although not without some drama (and what is teenage romance if not ceaseless drama?). We have had hints of Ron’s jealousy going back at least as far as Goblet of Fire and particularly the Yule Ball, preparing for which he declares that “hey, Hermione, you’re a girl…” which earns him a venomous, “Oh, well-spotted!” Ron mopes throughout the dance, reverses his good opinion of Krum (a mental gymnastic aped by Harry while watching Cho with Cedric Diggory), and ends up in a blazing row at the Common Room with the ultimate declaration, “Well next time, you know what to do, don’t you?” Yet come year 6, Ron has clearly not yet learned this lesson. He shows early signs of irritation that Hermione seems to be getting on well with Harry (to the delight of some readers still hoping for their hook-up, no doubt), including my personal favorite: after Hermione finishes explaining why Harry is so much more fanciable now – “I’m tall,” said Ron inconsequentially. Fortunately for Ron, his merits have not gone unnoticed by a giggling Lavender Brown, who introduces him to the delights of snogging, probably to the great relief of Ginny, who he has been hounding for switching partners and calls him on his snog-free history. This despite Hermione’s implied intervention at the Quidditch trials to keep Ron as Keeper by Confunding Cormac McLaggen, and her clear distress at their flouting physicality. She responds in kind by inciting Ron’s jealousy, inviting the oafish Cormac McLadden to the Slughorn party at some cost to her dignity, prompting “Harry…to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.” Harry is now put in the position as go-between previously delegated to Hermione when he and Ron were not speaking up through the first task at the Triwizard Tournament. The gift of a gaudy charm bracelet seems sufficient to break Lavender’s spell (so to speak) come Christmas, however, revealing that they “don’t talk much” and thus do not seem to have discovered much else in common other than base attraction. Ron makes good use of his own poisoning to avoid her, but it takes the intervention of the Felix potion to finally drive the wedge between them, simply by having her confront him standing with Hermione. This seems to clear the way nevertheless for their dating, despite Harry’s insightful concern, “what if Ron and Hermione started going out together, then split up? Could their friendship survive it?” So far, at least, they seem much more solidly together despite the demonstrative lack of that “filthy hypocrisy” earned with Lavender according to Ginny.

And then we have Ginny herself. If Order of the Phoenix hinted at her merits, Half-Blood Prince is quite content to dispense with the subtle and go with the outright declaration. Already by the time they ride the Hogwarts Express, Harry has come to expect spending time comfortably with her and feels a “strange twinge of annoyance” when she joins friends from her own year, noting that “long red hair dancing behind her.” She is the only person invited to the first Slughorn gathering purely on ability, and when Harry stows away in the Slytherin compartment, no less an authority than Pansy Parkinson declares, “a lot of boys like her…even you think she’s good-looking” to Blaise Zabini “and we all know how hard you are to please!” My favorite hint comes in the first Potions class, when the smell that Harry cannot identify from Amortentia, the strongest love potion, proves to be Ginny’s scent, as when “he caught a sudden waft of that flowery smell he had picked up [in class].” From there the hints become even less veiled, and Ginny ever more accomplished and desirable, until Harry is wrestling with the jealousy monster and intoning to himself, “Ron’s sister. She’s out-of-bounds.” And so it goes until at last, returning from an anxious detention that causes him to leave his Quidditch team without its captain (and potentially reunite Dean with Ginny), we find that even the Gryffindor password Quid agis? (loosely either “how are you?” or “what’s happened?”) radiates tension. Then Ginny is running toward him with a “hard, blazing look in her face” and it happens. Time stops, then resumes long enough for Harry to confirm that Ron is not about to clock him, before “a long walk in the grounds seemed indicated, during which – if they had time – they might discuss the match.” After this we get a few glimpses of Harry’s bliss, such as the utterly casual way that Ginny sits leaning against his legs in the common room, plus her ability to console him, as when she leads him away from Dumbledore at the foot of the tower. Finally we must face that noble instinct of putting off the girl, as we should have expected from Spider-Man and Peter Parker’s own fiery-red-haired love interest. “It’s for some stupid, noble reason, isn’t it?” she asks, but seems resigned, “I knew this would happen in the end.” I can try to pretend this is not devastating to my hopes for Ginny, but does at least offer one way out of what is otherwise a major conflict in my predicted outcome.

Before turning to the final clues about Voldemort, we should perhaps take a moment for a rather acrimonious relationship, that of Dumbledore and Snape. As is frequently repeated, everyone accepts that Dumbledore trusts Snape’s loyalty to the Order absolutely, and thus the rest take it on faith. Yet we face a much different Dumbledore in book 6 than before, one who is weakened (his withered hand), appearing older and more careworn, and one more cognizant of his own limitations. Snape himself plays on this in reassuring Bellatrix, “you overlook Dumbledore’s greatest weakness: He has to believe the best of people.” The previously virtuous capacity for giving people second chances where others shun them – Hagrid, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin – does have its flip side, that it can blind him to the true malevolence within those who are not repentant. We see through his own memories that he was at some level instrumental in bringing Voldemort to power, where “here, again, was Dumbledore’s tendency to trust people in spite of overwhelming evidence that they did not deserve it.” But at least he is not unaware of this potential failing, as he first described to Harry in explaining why he withheld the prophecy so long, and now when he says, “in fact being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.” Does this mean he was wrong to trust Snape, because of this willingness to believe that people could always change for the better? What evidence do we have as to why Dumbledore is so certain, in the face of so many suspicious activities that Harry relates? We have at least the one recollection, “you have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life and the reason that he returned.” What could drive Snape to feel such remorse? After all, he loathed Harry’s father, and certainly does not seem to hold any great regard for Harry himself. Yet we have a few clues that it is Harry’s mother that makes the difference. We know per Professor Slughorn that she was a genius at Potions at a time when Snape was devoted to the subject. We have seen her come to Snape’s defense in his worst memory, out of general decency, even though he repudiates her as a Mudblood. And we have heard, again from Slughorn, that Lily was tremendously caring as well as gifted. So perhaps it is the death of Lily Evans, a person of some importance to Snape, that has so invigorated Snape to turn away from Voldemort’s service. Perhaps indeed he made another Unbreakable Vow with Dumbledore to demonstrate his penitence and commitment. And now we have one other instance of Snape evidently showing concern for others, in his accepting the Unbreakable Vow – at the peril of his own life – to protect Draco at Narcissa’s urging. As with Draco, any kind of sympathy or caring for others is at odds with the aims and practice of Voldemort, and provides a defense against which he has no recourse.

Next we have the story of Voldemort’s life and his quest for horcruxes. These are clearly so critical to the final book that one might even summarize the series thus far as Hannah of Swindon does:

“By the way, Harry,” said Professor Dumbledore halfway through book six, “a prophecy says that you alone can defeat evil Lord Voldemort. That’s why he keeps trying to kill you. You must destroy all seven pieces of his soul, and you’ve got one book left to do it in. Don’t expect any help from me; I’ll be dramatically murdered in two chapters’ time. Besides that, there’s exams to pass and hormonal stirrings to contend with. Now do you wish you’d gone to that Muggle comprehensive?”

To start, we learn that Tom Marvolo Riddle had a most unauspicious conception – the result of a love potion on a Muggle by the heartsick, downtrodden Merope Gaunt, and the last of the Slytherin line. Rendered to a careless orphanage, Tom grows up cruel, isolated, and awed by his growing abilities to manipulate others. The depiction of him before he leaves for Hogwarts is eerily akin to that of a young Peter Wiggin from Ender’s Game, barred from Battle School for precisely those qualities that Dumbledore finds disturbing in the young Tom. A classic sociopathic personality, Tom learns to veil his true feelings behind a handsome mask of flattery and manners and slowly gathers knowledge and followers during his time at Hogwarts. He takes advantage of his duties at Borgin & Blotts to acquire artifacts of Dark magic as well as heirlooms like the cup of Hufflepuff and Slytherin’s locket, which might have been his own heirloom. By the time he returns to Hogwarts to attempt the position as DADA teacher, his face has been transfigured by his quest into the Dark arts, and when Dumbledore – who exhibits extensive intelligence of his actions and motives – refuses to appoint him, it follows that “we have never been able to keep a DADA teacher for longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Volemort.”

Voldemort’s fear of death continues to show itself as he searches for his ancestry, for he initially dismisses the idea that his mother could have been magical, for she “could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death.” (Dumbledore opines that really, “it is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”) Voldemort’s quest for immortality inspires him to wheedle the secret of horcruxes out of Slughorn, “a Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul…you split your soul…splitting it…by an act of evil, the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage” (cf. Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass and using the explosive energy from severing the bond between human child and daimon to open a gateway between worlds).

He then attempts that which no wizard before ever had (as he had boasted in the graveyard at the end of Goblet of Fire) – split his soul not just in half, but into seven parts – for “isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number?” He lets his arrogance choose the vessels for these soul fragments by their own importance, such as the artifacts of the four Hogwarts founders, and reserving the act of creating them to important deaths, including the attempt on Harry. Yet “Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents’ house with the intention of killing you. He seems to have reserved the process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths. You would certainly have been that…I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death.” This, along with his fear driven by the prophecy, may prove his Achilles’ Heel. We hear Dumbledore’s conjectures on just where these soul fragments may have ended up:

1. Riddle’s diary (destroyed in Chamber of Secrets)
2. Gaunt’s ring (destroyed by Dumbledore, at the cost of his hand withering)
3. Slytherin’s locket (possibly destroyed by RAB)
4. Hufflepuff’s cup
5. something from Gryffindor (only the sword is known) or Ravenclaw
6. Nagini – “to confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business”
7. Voldemort’s current body – “that seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Volemort must attack – the piece that lives in his body”

As for the “power that the Dark Lord knows not,” we have it confirmed that this is indeed love – “‘So when the prophecy says that I’ll have ‘power the Dark Lord knows not,’ it just means – love?’ asked Harry, feeling a little let down.” When Voldemort calls him on this, saying “nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore” his reply is simply “perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places.”

Despite all his wisdom and power, Dumbledore does not survive the trap set at Hogwarts when they fire the Dark Mark above the Astronomy tower. At first reading, this really came as no surprise, and thus did not have as dramatic an effect as some of the uncertain romantic entanglements. But some curious things happen that reinforce ideas, excite hope and raise further questions. First, Dumbledore acts to protect Harry at his own expense – “the second he had taken to perform the spell had cost him the chance of defending himself,” consistent with his emphasis on love of others, and self-sacrifice. Second, he is clearly concerned for Draco’s welfare at the risk of his own and convinced of his innocence, “Draco, you are not a killer.” Third, he pleads with Snape, which enrages him, but never says what he wishes. Finally, the depiction of Avada Kedavra is unlike any previously described. This is reason enough for some to postulate how the entire event was staged, and thus preserve Dumbledore life. I think the evidence is against this, at least as Rowling sees fit to include:

• We hear Fawkes’ lament.
• We see Dumbledore’s body at the base of the tower.
• McGonagall enters the Headmaster’s office, as compared when Umbridge was declared Headmaster by the Ministry and was barred from it. This has several alternate explanations (McGonagall is already deputy headmistress, Dumbledore could have expressly locked it against Umbridge) but it does set the scene.
• We see Dumbledore’s portrait.
• Fawkes leaves the school – “And he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world…had left Harry”

Could all of this have been staged? Certainly, if you allow for an elaborate multi-stage deception. We know that the Killing Curse requires powerful magic behind it, as Moody says in Goblet of Fire, and Snape is shown to be particularly adept at nonverbal spells, so the Avada Kedavra could have been faked along with another spell pushing Dumbledore off the roof. Dumbledore is a master at Transfiguration, so conjuring up a corpse double would not have been too difficult – indeed, that may be what he means when he offers Draco, “Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine” and goes on to suggest that all will think himself and his mother dead. Fawkes has saved Dumbledore several times before, such as helping him escape Fudge’s Aurors and eating a Killing Curse bolt. So the means are there if the intent is for Dumbledore to simply lay low, draw Voldemort out, then triumphantly return. Except…that would totally devalue his death and apparent sacrifice here. By the same logic as Sirius remaining dead, Harry must face the ultimate challenge of Voldemort without recourse to expert adult aid. This is further emphasized as Harry himself realizes, “how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort.” If Dumbledore is just waiting off-camera, this has no significance, and Harry is never really expected to stand on his own two feet and fulfill the prophecy. Plus his real sacrifice can have the same effect as far as confirming Snape’s loyalty to the Dark Lord, protecting Draco from disfiguring his soul, and luring Voldemort from hiding. I think that is why we get so much more of him in this book, to make up for his total absence in the future except as inspiration and, who knows, some small role via his portrait (who knows where else they may be posted).

Finally, here are the questions I took down as raised during book 6, and whether they are adequately addressed:

• When Narcissa first discusses the ’secret plan’, does Snape truly know it?
  At first this seems uncertain, but later he gives more and more away that suggests he knows at least some of the aims. Yet once he accepts Narcissa’s Unbreakable Vow (after some hesitation), he spends a lot of time hounding Draco to let him help, yet Draco will not confess what precisely he’s doing. So it is still possible that Snape did not know the plan, guessed or used Legilimency on a distraught and thus unguarded Narcissa to draw enough details to convince her, then inferred the rest by the time he reached the tower.
• Does Snape fulfill the Unbreakable Vow’s 3 parts?
  By acting when Draco does not to kill Dumbledore, and thus protect him (as he also does when healing him from Harry’s sectumsempra), seems he does.
• What caused Dumbledore’s withered hand?
  Destroying Marvolo’s ring. This bodes ill for Harry if he has at least 4 to go.
• Why is Tonks seeking “tea and sympathy”?
  Distraught over Remus avoiding her.
• What is Tonks’ new patronus?
  A werewolf, presumably.
• What are all of Hermione’s classes?
  She gets 11 O.W.L.s, including 10 Outstanding and an E in DADA. But Ron and Harry are only taking 9 subjects total. She has dropped Divination, added Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, so the remaining one must be Muggle Studies (even though she said she was dropping it after the Time-Turner episode in Prisoner of Azkaban).
• What does Draco show Borgin to frighten him? Is he indeed marked?
  This is never adequately answered, although clearly he is acting in league with the Death Eaters. And contrary to complaints about his age, I doubt that Voldemort really cares whether a follower has gotten his N.E.W.T.s or not.
• Why do Snape and Dumbledore argue?
  This goes to the heart of what side Snape is really playing on, and how willingly he has been serving the Order. It is also possible that Dumbledore did not know that Snape has agreed to the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa, which certainly changes the consequences for Snape if Draco does not succeed.
• Does Harry adequately command Kreacher in tailing Draco?
  Nothing is said about Kreacher betraying him or the Order again, but that doesn’t mean he could not have played some other role.
• When Crabbe and Goyle were lookouts, where does Draco go?
  Room of Requirement, specifically where hidden things are stored, including the broken vanishing cabinet Fred and George shoved Montague into (Harry notices it when hiding the Half-Blood Prince’s book).
• Who sends the cursed items?
  Draco via Rosmerta under the Imperius Curse.
• What does Dumbledore see when he drinks the potion? “don’t hurt them…hurt me instead”
  It would follow that Voldemort would want to concoct a potion that had the maximum effect on the drinker, incapacitating them by making them either relive their most terrible moments (like distilled essence of dementor) or imagine their worst nightmares. For Dumbledore, as someone so committed to the students of Hogwarts and others in general, others being hurt when he could not aid them would be particularly terrifying.
• Who is RAB?
  Best working guess is Regulus Black (no middle name is given on the tapestry at 12 Grimmauld Place), who was a known Death Eater deserter.
• Since “one alone could not have done it”, how did RAB remove the locket? Only a single wizard is supposed to be able to manage the boat.
  Assuming it was Regulus, as a member of the Black family, he would have been able to command Kreacher to assist him (although asking Kreacher for help defying the Dark Lord seems like a good way for someone else to hear about it afterwards).
• Was the Slytherin locket destroyed?
  The note by RAB says that it will be, but we did see a mysterious locket in the drawing room of 12 Grimmauld Place, and Kreacher has been known to collect family artifacts in the boiler room…
• Did the Dark Mark mean someone had been killed at Hogwarts?
  Not at the time. It was a trap to lure Dumbledore, and he was (apparently) killed, as was a Death Eater
• Why does Dumbledore say “Severus…please”?
  A very good question. It is entirely unlike Dumbledore, who has no fear of death, to beg for mercy or to be spared. That he was begging Snape explicitly to kill him, either out of some greater plan or to protect Draco, is a strong possibility.
• Who were the “two bodies lying there, lying facedown in a pool of blood”?
  Never identified, but only a Death Eater and Dumbledore have been confirmed as dead, along with Bill Weasley’s maiming by Grayback.
• Why so much emphasis on nonverbal spells – “some wizards, like Dumbledore, could perform spells without speaking” and Snape’s “blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!” – if they play no real role in the story?
  Harry does successfully cast Levicorpus and a Refilling Charm nonverbally (the latter only due to the Felix effect), but as clearly seen in the running duel with Snape, calling out spells puts you at a serious disadvantage. If Harry has to face Death Eaters and Voldemort himself in book 7, it’s highly unlikely he will get something like Petrificus Totalus out in time to be effective (he can’t even muster up a Crucio without Snape mocking him).

“And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

Vital Stats
Pages: 652 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 30
Starts: Prime Minister’s Office
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Escapes Campus After Murdering Headmaster
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: Headmaster’s Office
House Cup: unspecified
Exams: postponed
Ends: Beside the lake at Hogwarts

Final Score: Harry – 3, Voldemort – 3

Back to the book. Let us turn our attention to that institution which takes on a far more sinister role than in past books, the Ministry of Magic. We had some inkling of how the Ministry behaves under pressure, both from its flummoxing at the panic at the Quidditch World Cup in the previous year and during the pursuit of Death Eaters in Voldemort’s first reign of terror. We heard tell of how Barty Crouch pushed for more severe measures in the apprehension of Death Eaters, including killing rather than capturing them if necessary, to great popular acclaim – until the unveiling of his own son as one of Voldemort’s undid his rise to power and unhinged his mind. Now with Cornelius Fudge stonewalling on the possibility of Voldemort’s return, and his growing paranoia that Dumbledore means to unseat him in a coup d’etat, the Ministry takes on ever more abhorrent aspects of a totalitarian state.

First, they pervert the rule of law to suit a political agenda. The impartiality of wizard law has already show weakness in accounting for celebrity (e.g. Ludo Bagman) and popular opinion (e.g. Harry’s prior run-in with the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Wizardry after blowing up Aunt Marge, as a sop to public concern at Sirius Black’s public record). Here we see its outright manipulation by the executive powers of the Minister to gain advantage. Having previously severed Dumbledore from the Wizengamot, Fudge himself presides over Harry’s newest infraction of the underage Decree, with a full criminal quorum packed with notable cronies, even surreptitiously changing the trial’s location and time to put Harry at greater disadvantage. He seems especially put out at Dumbledore’s calm refutation of the charges by following actual judicial procedure, which seems like an irksome inconvenience to his clear goal of discrediting Harry, the herald of Voldemort’s so-called resurrection. The provision for ‘reasonable’ exceptions to the Decree provokes him to declare, “Laws can be changed,” and indeed we will see clear evidence of the legislature put hard to work drawing a closer and closer noose around his perceived political enemies. Percy is equally supportive of this view of the supremacy of the Ministry over the vagaries of legal doctrine, opining to Ron that Harry escaped due punishment “by a mere technicality if you ask me,” as if saving one’s life and that of a Muggle is no good reason to allow the use of underage magic.

And the laws continue to change. We first get the suspicion, and then confirmation, that communications between Harry and other ’subversives’ are being monitored without any formal charges. This ‘owl tapping’ and screening of the Floo network are hardly strange notions to us, both in a country still riven over a wide-ranging Patriot Act and the possibly illegal wiretapping for ill-defined ‘enemies of the state’ and its mother nation which saw the passage of a draconian Criminal Justice Bill when I was studying at Leeds. The wartime expansion of powers is more luridly exemplified in Umbridge’s twice attempting outright Unforgiveable acts towards Harry, first ordering dementors from Azakaban to take his life (effectively making her guilty of conspiracy to commit murder most foul) and then planning use of the Cruciatus Curse to ‘loosen his tongue,’ for “sometimes circumstances justify the use…” What is left unsaid, of course, is that circumstances sometimes seem to warrant the violation of basic rights, from detention (Hagrid’s internment at Azkaban on the mere suspicion that he was responsible for the re-opening of the Chamber of Secrets) to torture. Even other criminals can leverage these changes, as when Willy Widdershins turns informant to avoid charges on Muggle-baiting, leading McGonagall to remark, “What an interesting insight into our justice system!” We are made to feel revulsion at these rationalizations, but alas they are not universally shared even outside the hermetic Ministry. All this done in defense of an administration’s inner circle might also give one to ponder examples of due process trampled under for partisan gain, should you choose to seek them out.

And just what does distinguish the Unforgivable Curses first revealed in book 4 as being so particularly taboo? We have the Cruciatus, derived perhaps from the same root as ‘crucifixion’, which tortures the subject’s body. Then there is the Imperius, which siphons its target of volition and autonomy, effectively robbing them of free will. And finally the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, most universally prohibited in societies in codes such as “Thou shalt not kill.” Yet these are not the only curses that severely wound or incapacitate their victims. Akin to the Imperius, memory charms can affect the mind so as to alter the subject’s basic identity, as with Gilderoy Lockhart and Bertha Jorkins, yet they are freely employed by the Ministry in their maintenance of secrecy from Muggle detection. Apart from Cruciatus, sectusempra is also deeply wounding, as presumably is used by a silenced Death Eater on Hermione and will again appear in book 6. And surely their are other ways to kill with magic other than Avada Kedavra, such as a simple inversion of the Bubblehead Charm or the dispersal of Garroting Gas. Yet these three alone are elevated to the status of ‘cardinal’ sins even to cast. And notably, at least two of them have seen use in Ministry hands, the Cruciatus by Umbridge and Killing Curse by Aurors in the past. Clearly ‘unforgivable’ is not strictly that.

The regular threat and use of sentencing to Azkaban also raises a question about the varieties of punishment in the wizarding world. Having established just how damaging even a momentary encounter with a single dementor can be, the notion of a ’short’ stay in the wizard prison like the 6 months received by Sturgis Podmore is indubitably cruel. Yet we have only heard elsewhere of fines (such as of Mr. Weasley for enchanting the Ford Anglia) and bans on magical use (Hagrid’s wand is broken when he is expelled, and Harry is threatened prior to his hearing). Surely an inventive community can have conjured, quite literally, better means to rehabilitate its wayward denizens than soul-wracking imprisonment and effective excommunication from their number.

We also get a brief glimpse into the misuse of Ministry authority to further personal prejudice. Much as Cornelius Fudge uses the weight of his office to discredit Dumbledore and Harry, so Dolores Umbridge has shown no qualms in drafting her loathing of ‘part-humans’ into formal law. Her anti-werewolf legislation effectively cuts off Lupin from any gainful employment, and “she campaigned to have merpeople rounded up and tagged last year too.” This last evokes painful scenes of internment camps such as of Japanese-Americans during WWII and our current struggle over how to address illegal immigrantion, while Britain is no stranger to its own persecutions and immigration troubles. The chilling projection of a post-Thatcher fascist state is explored in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, where one of the key steps of consolidating power by Norsefire during a time of national crisis is by arresting all suspected subversives and undesirables, from liberal agitators to intellectuals, homosexuals, and all those of ‘lesser’ races. They even employ the motto “Strength Through Purity,” a frequent refrain by the pureblood partisans among wizards. Historical atrocities of this sort abound, from Stalin’s purges to Communist China’s “Cultural Revolution” (supposedly driven in part by Jiang Qing’s own malevolence towards minority cultures), the “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge, and too many ‘ethnic cleansings’ of recent years in Eastern Europe and Africa to contemplate. And we cannot excuse our democratic nations, with the systematic massacre, resettlement, and ‘re-education’ of aboriginal populations in both the Americas and Australia. So we should not take lightly these hints of a government creeping towards a monoculture, or preaching the dominance of any one group.

This pro-human slant is particularly lampooned by Harry’s second observation of the central fountain in the Ministry’s entryway atrium:

“He looked up into the handsome wizard’s face, but up close, Harry thought he looked rather weak and foolish. The witch was wearing a vapid smile like a beauty contestant, and from what Harry knew of goblins and centaurs, they were most unlikely to be caught staring this soppily at humans of any description. Only the house-elf’s attitude of creeping servility looked convincing.”

Dumbledore later confirms this assessment after he uses the statues to aid in their defense against Voldemort, “The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.” Yet is it precisely against these prejudices and divisiveness that the Order and young heroes must overcome, as the Sorting Hat warns:

“For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes
And we must unite inside her
Or we’ll crumble from within”

and as Hermione recalls of Dumbledore’s closing remarks in year 4, regarding Voldemort’s strategy for dividing their strength – “His gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.” (I do love Ron’s reaction to her recitation, “How do you remember stuff like that?” asked Ron…”I listen, Ron,” said Hermione with a touch of asperity. First, because it reminds me of how I remember things from books and movies without meaning to. And second, because I had to look up ‘asperity.’) Dumbledore also makes an interesting observation of Voldemort’s conflicted nature showing through, for though he preaches the superiority of the pureblood caste and rejoices in being Slytherin’s heir, when it comes to acting on his limited intel about the prophecy, “he chose, not the pureblood…but the half-blood, like himself.”

The divisive tactics of the Ministry are not limited to their command of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions. They also compromise the impartiality of the ‘fourth branch’ of government, the press as represented by the Daily Prophet. After the exploits of Rita Skeeter and her own skewing of truth in pursuit of a scoop, the machinations over the summer to discredit Harry and Dumbledore are rather more subtle. This is played out to great effect in the fifth movie, where animated headlines link “Potter” to “Plotter” and a newsboy cries out “Dumbledore, is he Daft or is he Dangerous?”, a clever fool’s quandary. The gradual attribution of Harry’s claims to brain damage and attention-seeking behavior are insidious, and undermine any claim to truth he makes. They extend this character assassination to any who would contradict the preferred version of events, such as when Madam Marchbanks resigns in protest, her comment is immediately followed by, “For a full account of Madam Marchbanks’ alleged links to subversive goblin groups, turn to page 17.” The Daily Prophet also comes in for a criticism for being equally fickle in its prioritizing entertainment over news, as when Hermione meets with Rita Skeeter about the prospect of getting Harry’s story out in unvarnished form – “So the Daily Prophet exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?” said Hermione scathingly… “The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl,” [Rita] said coldly.

So, we cannot trust adults, the Ministry, or the press (The Quibbler, while quite willing to carry Skeeter’s exclusive, is hardly exemplary in other areas). What about divination? We get three distinct forms of it throughout the year, starting with oneiromancy (dream interpretation) in Trelawney’s class. While Harry does not seem to learn anything about the subject in class, he makes tremendous discoveries via a sort of clairvoyant connection to Voldemort – “The curse that failed to kill you seems to have forged some kind of connection between you and the Dark Lord. The evident suggests that at times, when your mind is most relaxed and vulnerable…you are sharing the Dark Lord’s thoughts and emotions.” Just as he learned of the deaths of Bertha Jorkins and Frank Bryce, as well as some of his efforts to maneuver Harry through the Triwizard tournament, in the previous year, now he proceeds down the corridors of the Department of Mysteries in search of…what? We are prevented in any progress in actual dream interpretation by the sacking of Trelawney by Umbridge, after showing little practical aptitude in her core subject as well as offshoots like ornithomancy (literally bird-watching) and heptomancy (which I have to guess is something to do with lizards).

Thus we are able to experience the centaur view of astrology when Firenze comes to replace her, a strange and inprecise practice yet concerned overall with the wider wheels of destiny rather than tiny impertubations such as whether you’ll burn yourself on the stove because of Mars. Thus we learn that even the stars show that, “in the past decade, the indications have been that Wizard-kind is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two wars. Mars, bringer of battle, shines brightly above us, suggesting that the fight must break out again soon.” We also get a new approach to pedagogy, moving beyond the basic Remember/Understand/Apply rote lesson format already so familiar to the more complex Evaluate domain in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. In this sphere, “his priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even centaurs’ knowledge, was foolproof.” This critical epistemology or ’seeking knowledge about knowledge’ is also similar to the subversive goal of the original Sophists, who sought by arguing both sides of any idea that truth was far more fungible and nuanced than commonly accepted (an early form of relativity). Alas, their powers of rhetorical persuasion became corrupted in time by arguing for fees, becoming perhaps the archetypes of coercive lawyers out for their own enrichment instead of the pursuit of true justice. Firenze’s own banishment from his herd for lowering himself to the task of teaching humans is at once a sort of counterculture reaction in resisting a dominant society, and an example of the secrecy typically surrounding esoteric teachings. Just as the other schools in book 4 sought to protect the ’secret’ of their particular lessons, so the centaurs view stargazing as a practice to be kept among their kind, like in our history with mystical rites, martial art schools, and secret societies such as the Freemasons.

Finally we have an occasion, not of augury like we have had with all prior forms of divination (where some external symbol acts as intermediary to communicate secret meaning to the augur), but of pure prophecy. Seers, it must be said, have a mixed history. While primitive societies relied upon their shaman or witch doctor to interpret signs (often with psychotropic aids), and empires like Rome and Sparta looked to their priests and augurs to give direction and provide blessings for their endeavors,they generally had the benefit of some kind of omen, portent, or sign to help prop up their predictions. Not so prophecy, where a practitioner is taken over by a greater spirit and unveils hidden wisdoms thereby. The Oracle at Delphi inhaled vapors, while Sibyll Trelawney would seem to prefer a cheap sherry. Compared to predecessors – such as Cassandra, cursed not be believed; Caesar’s soothsayer, who warned futilely of the Ides of March; and Agnes Nutter, and her “Nice and Accurate Predictions” that indeed predict the apocalypse with humorous results – Trelawney’s words are given remarkable veneration. And let’s examine those words:

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.”

This has some of the hallmarks of classic predictions. First, it is notably vague rather than specific. Second, it uses unusual phrasing to further curtail direct reading. Third, it has no particular timeline. The easiest predictions to disprove are those that give a fixed date, like “the UFO will come at midnight of the turn of the 2nd millennium AD.” Oops. However, some of its initial ambiguity has since been resolved. With Voldemort only having part of the message (sort of like the Nazis having only part of the Staff of Moses when trying to find the Ark of the Covenant), he makes an incorrect inference as to the identity of his predicted nemesis, and seeks out Harry rather than Neville, the other qualifying July baby. In doing so, he collapses the implied waveform that had existed, like Schrödinger’s Cat, between the two of them. Further, he commits the common mistake in creating a predestination paradox, causing the prophecy to be true precisely by acting as if it is (cf. Oedipus Rex, Neo becoming the One). Again in the domain of multiple worlds, it’s intriguing to wonder what would have happened had he chosen Neville instead of Harry, or simply bided his time rather than rush into attempted infanticide. But having made his choice, and ‘marked’ Harry as his equal via the lightning bolt scar, the die is cast.

The possible outcomes of the prophecy are still left up to chance. It does not say which will triumph over the other, how soon the struggle must be resolved, or – perhaps most telling – even that one will remain when the other is gone. While Harry may indeed have both “the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” and “power the Dark Lord knows not” (the latter suggested to be the capacity for love), it does not immediately follow that he will vanquish the Dark Lord, or that if he does so he can live on happily, only that “neither can live while the other survives.” And from that we can at least infer that each will remain fixed on overcoming the other until at least one is defeated ultimately, rather than simply walk away and live separately in peace. (One alternate theory is that more than just Harry is implicated in the wording, for the opening line’s “approaches” might apply to those who overheard the prophecy rather than those named in it by birth, but the repetition of the final line makes this suspect.)

One last quick note about prophecies is how many religions rely on them to ground their origins. Time will tell if this is meant as an allusion to any other established tale of a savior from prophecy with a message that love conquers all.

Before turning finally to the remaining clues in book 5, I first want to highlight some of its emotional swells (not necessarily happy moments, just powerful ones). Previously this has usually happened once or twice a book for me, e.g. when Harry gets pictures of his parents as a gift from Hagrid in book 1. But book 5 has at least three that still overpower me a bit even re-reading:

1. When Harry, Ron and Hermione meet in the Hog’s Head, and suddenly 25 people join them at the prospect of learning DADA from Harry. The list seems endless.
2. At 12 Grimmauld Place, after Arthur Weasley is attacked, and they all sit up waiting for news. “If Harry had ever sat through a longer night than this one he could not remember it.”
3. At St. Mungo’s, after meeting Neville and his grandmother, and Alice gives Neville a gum wrapper. “But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the wrapper into his pocket.”

Sigh…okay.

Let’s start with dispensing with those questions that (probably) get answered by the time book 5 ends.

• “Remember my last, Petunia” – We learn Dumbledore refers to the first letter left with Harry, which either has some hold over Aunt Petunia or simply reminds her of the consequences of putting Harry out of doors.
• “As she took hold of him to examine the words now cut into his skin, pain seared, not across the back of his hand, but across the scar on his forehead. At the same time, he had a most peculiar sensation somewhere around his midriff” – Initially considered a possible sign of an Imperius Curse on Umbridge, Harry later decides he was feeling Voldemort’s elatement, not so different from his feelings around Cho. Besides, Umbridge acting under anything than according to her own perverse motivations undermines just how mundane evil can be.
• “The veiled witch sitting alone shifted very slightly in her seat.” – We learn this is Mundungus Fletcher in disguise for the Order, while another of the cloaked forms is Willy Widdershins, the toilet-hexer.
• “We will need…a warning” – Fawkes’ feather would seem to indicate that they are watching for Umbridge to come in search of Harry and the Weasley children.
• “But Kreacher did not answer the summons.” – Indeed, he had left the house to go to the Malfoys and do such damage as he was capable while remaining under geas to Sirius.
• The Pensieve appears to be aid in Occlumency, whereby removing troubling or powerful memories you can further armor your mind against penetration by Legilimency. This works against Snape insofar as Harry actually sticks his nose into Snape’s worst memory, but can help explain how he can act as an effective spy for the Order without risking as much of their own secrets.

The next is a bit more complicated. Sirius is felled by a “jet of light” of indeterminate color. Both Stunning (red light) and Killing (green light) curses are being thrown around with abandon during the melee. Some hope desperately that a combination of it having been (1) only a Stunner and (2) the veil not being true death will allow him to return. However, the evidence is definitely against this. First, Dumbledore seems soberly convinced of his death, to the point of confirming it to his ancestor’s portrait, Phineas Nigellus. Second, Dumbledore calls the archway’s location the “Death Room,” and as we saw in other rooms at the Department of Ministries, each seems to hold one aspect for study – Time, Love, Thought, Fate, and Death. Finally, his death has great significance to the series – Harry must face the loss of someone he cares for (vs Cedric, who was just a student and a rival at that), loses the protection of a father figure, and must face future challenges that much more alone. Were Sirius to suddenly reappear, as anything other than a shadow echo a la the Prior Incantatem, it would undermine this and rob the event of all of its poignancy. Good people die, as much as we wish it not to be so, and the death of Sirius is not the last to come. One other question remains about the archway, other than the obvious (“what is the veil?”) – if it represents a gateway between the living and the dead, it makes sense that Harry, Neville and Luna all hear voices through it, just as they can see thestrals. But why is Ginny similarly entranced?

Quik Quotes

Some of these are clues themselves, others reinforce past themes.

First, I was struck by how Harry’s “thought of the long essay on giant wars and the [ache in his right temple] stabbed at him sharply” was a fair approximation of what I felt when I first surveyed my notes for book 5. I think I have safely now spent more hours writing these impressions about it than I spent reading it, and it is hardly a quick read.

Just to hammer home that the books are no longer about school, but just take place there, no less than that devoted student Hermione suggests forming a DADA club and defiantly pronounces, “But this is much more important than homework!” Several times later, Harry finds himself almost sleepwalking around Hogwarts while life goes on as normal for others, when all he can focus on is, “There they were, talking about homework and Quidditch and who knew what other rubbish, and outside these walls ten more Death Eaters had swollen Voldemort’s ranks…”

Snape snarls at Harry when he equates Legilimency to mind-reading, retorting, “You have no subtlety, Potter…you do not understand fine distinctions. It is one of the shortcomings that makes you such a lamentable potion-maker.” Which is on its face true about Harry, who does tend to lump people and things into general categories – Friend, Girl, Bad – and treat them thereafter according to that broad brush. He is also not one to forgive or forget, or consider evidence against his bias, which will haunt him ever more come book 6. It is also a good reminder that fine distinctions – about people, loyalties, principles – do make a difference.

We receive several more depictions of the connection between Harry and Voldemort: “He had the horrible impression that he was slowly turning into a kind of aerial that tuned in to tiny fluctuations in Voldemort’s mood.” / “I guessed fifteen years ago…when I saw the scar upon your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort.” One that I thought was particularly veiled, if I’m interpreting it correctly, is during a visit to the Headmaster’s office after Harry envisions the attack by Nagini on Arthur Weasley. He consults one of those spindly silver instruments we have heard described but never used, which produces a green plume of smoke that forms a snake. His question and its response are, “Naturally, naturally…But in essence divided?”at which point the smoke splits into two serpents. If this is a way for Dumbledore to scan Harry for possession, the answer seems to be that the serpent – Voldemort’s essence – is divided between Harry and Nagini, or otherwise diluted, so that he is not totally in control of Harry’s mind. Whether this means Dumbledore suspects a different kind of connection, or is the inspiration for some of his investigations come book 6, remains unclear.

In their confrontation, Dumbledore and Voldemort spar with words as well as spells. Foremost of interest is this exchange – “There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!” snarled Voldemort. “You are quite wrong, ” said Dumbledore…”Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.” Here we have a capsule summary of Voldemort’s fear of death, and Dumbledore’s wisdom about moving beyond it. This, as with the fate of Nicholas Flamel, paint a very different view of the nature of life and what is worth most. And we have Dumbledore’s answer as to what might enable us to overcome our fear of death, and act in a more noble fashion:

“There is a room in the Department of Mysteries…kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all.”

That love is more wonderful is well established, from the protection from Harry’s mother to his repelling Voldemort’s possession simply by possessing it in such great amounts. That is also terrible we feel through the minor heartbreak of frustrated romance, the devastation of finding that the pure love for one’s parents is tainted by their humanity, and then the great outcry that follows Sirius’ death, and Dumbledore’s recognition that “you care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” Thus we receive Dumbledore’s confession, of his failing to act for the harsher good in the future at the expense of the comfortable present:

“For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failngs of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young…I cared about you too much…I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for you peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.”

So we see love, that many-splendored thing, has barbs as well. But the final conflict of Life vs Death, Hate vs Love has been established. Now we will see what more we can learn of these in book 6.

Oh, and the book ends, as did book 4, with yet another beginning. The final chapter? “The War Begins” And so it goes.

Vital Stats
Pages: 870 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 38
Starts: 4 Privet Drive
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Catatonic following Captivity by Centaurs
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: Headmaster’s Office
House Cup: unspecified
Exams: O.W.L.s completed but not scored
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry – 3, Voldemort – 2

Apart from the introduction of several new wizardkind (Umbridge, Luna Lovegood, ancillary members of the Order like Tonks) we get to see many familiar characters in extremis, that famous crucible which reveals our basest nature. Many of these are not flattering portrayals, but they ring much truer to life, providing depth to what could easily have remained more stock-in-trade archetypes. Moreover, they represent the expanding perception that comes with maturing – by age 15, Harry and his friends come to realize that adults are no longer just good or bad, but have foibles and weaknesses of their own; boys and girls are no longer interchangeable; and the intersection of myriad motivations complicate matters when the idea of working “for the best” is no longer a unified thought. As we learn to our cost, doing what seems most straightforward and ‘right’ can have the gravest consequences.

To start, we have Mrs. Weasley’s boggart. As shown in year 3, the boggart assumes the form of what each person finds most frightening. In the DADA class, with 13-year-olds, this is typically monsters – Ron sees spiders, while even Harry sees a dementor, despite it representing ‘fear itself’ to Lupin. Later we learn that Hermione is haunted by a conceptual anxiety, namely (as Ron predicted) failure at school – she sees McGonagall reporting that she has flunked every subject. Lupin himself is almost bemused by the appearance of his moon, which is the bane of his existence but hardly a hairy beastie; clearly fear has a different significance to him, more dread than panic. So when we learn that the drawing room at 12 Grimmauld Place indeed houses a boggart, we do not expect that an adult like Mrs. Weasley will be much affected by it. We are deeply mistaken. For Mrs. Weasley has reason for very great fears indeed, not restricted to a single phantom. She has the latent worries of every mother for her children, including her “as good as” son Harry, but that inherent concern is vastly multiplied by the direness of their situation. Mrs. Weasley fears, more than just the incidental death of one of her prodigious brood, the human cost of bravery against Dark forces. She recalls the toll that membership in the Order of the Phoenix took on so many brave souls while standing against the original rise of Voldemort. We learn of the fate of many in that original group, and the tension of putting so many of her own on the front lines again comes through in the boggart’s cycling appearance – “half the family’s in the Order, it’ll be a miracle if we all come through this.” War is not a victimless conflict, and the price in blood can be high. The sacrifices all must make to resist tyranny are not to accepted lightly.

Sirius and Snape prove that growing up does not mean putting away childish behaviors. During a row with Mrs. Weasley, she exclaims, “He’s not James” – suggesting that Sirius is pining for his best friend at the expense of doing what is best for Harry’s welfare. Later when Harry implores Sirius not to meet them in Hogsmeade, Sirius sulks, saying “you’re less like your father than I thought.” And the occasions of Sirius’ bad moods, with the notable exception of the Christmas holidays, grow ever more frequent and severe. He mopes, paces like a wild cat within a cage in the confines of his mother’s wretched house, seethes at his inability to contribute to the Order and at Snape’s taunting for it, and shows reckless bravado up to his final moments. Meanwhile Snape seems to have focused on Harry as a proxy for his dislike of James and Sirius. His hatred of Harry’s father, enhanced rather than tempered by the event of his having been saved from a run-in with Lupin at full moon, has not mellowed with age and carries on in his ceaseless torment of Harry. Despite all his exhortations to Harry during Occlumency lessons to ‘discipline the mind,’ spitefully continuing his own long-held vendetta is not consistent with this, and his raging dismissal of Harry after the pensieve incident is not the mark of one in control of their emotions.

For his part, Sirius upbraids Mrs. Weasley in turn for excluding Harry from conferences by the Order, retorting “He’s not your son.” And indeed she does act to protect him as she would her own children against the full weight of an awful truth, with the best intentions but not perhaps the best results. We discover later that this protective reflex is shared by Dumbledore, and its ultimate effects are wide-ranging and tragic. Apart from the specifics of these arguments, their very nature is also illuminating – the members of the Order disagree, forcefully at times, over weighty matters and quibble over inconsequentials. Even united by a common cause, and ostensibly pursuing a plan already in motion, individual views still clash and minor prejudices (such as Mrs. Weasley’s dislike of Mundungus Fletcher) are not vanquished.

Through Snape’s pensieve, Harry learns that his own father was no saint. Indeed, “judging from what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him.” This is a crushing blow to Harry’s esteem, for the sanctity of his parents as flawless and noble has been one of the cornerstones of his self-image. “He had been so sure that this parents had been wonderful people that he never had the slightest difficulty in disbelieving Snape’s aspersions on his father’s character.” Through all of this, the message comes through that now is the time in Harry’s life when he realizes that his parents, and indeed all adults, are only too human.

As for Harry himself, we must endure his anger. His frequent anger. Also, his outrage, temper, glaring, nettlement, hot-headedness, and other manifestations of pique. One might even be tempted to call it ANGER (and indeed the dread all-caps makes several appearances throughout the book). I found myself briefly tempted to count just how many times Harry is depicted as becoming overcome with Wrath, and settled for just the times he gets called on it.

• We first get the all-caps at Grimmauld Place, and Fred and George take the measure of his ‘dulcet tones’.
• After his first tell-off of Seamus, Hermione remarks, “it would be quite nice if you stopped jumping down Ron’s and my throats, Harry, because if you haven’t noticed, we’re on your side” with admirable dignity.
• Ron later passes on that “Hermione says she thinks it would be nice if you stopped taking out your temper on us.”
• Hermione gets in another, “will you please stop biting my head off?”
• Before his detention, Professor McGonagall exasperatedly exclaims, “Do you really think this is about truth or lies? It’s about keeping your head down and your temper under control!”
• In detention, Umbridge unctously observes, “we’re getter better at controlling our temper already, aren’t we?” (and it must be noted, for the moment, he had).
• He is warned parenthetically of “inflaming of the braine…hot-headedness and recklessness” by his Potions text.
• He gets taken to task by a picture of Phineas Nigellus, “Has it not occurred to you, my poor puffed-up popinjay, that there might be an excellent reason why the headmaster of Hogwarts is not confiding every tiny detail of his plans to you?…Now if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than to listen to adolescent agonizing.”
• Hermione takes a direct tack, “Oh, stop feeling all misunderstood.”
• After mauling Draco in Quidditch with the help of an equally livid Fred, Umbridge comments (with great satisfaction) on their “Dreadful tempers.”
• During futile attempts to teach him Occlumency, Snape rails at him, “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily…they stand no chance against his powers!”
• …and “Control your anger, discipline your mind!”
• Following his fit of breaking things in the Headmaster’s office, Dumbledore serenely offers, “By all means continue destroying my possessions…I daresay I have too many” (quite the Buddhist at this moment)
• He even suggests that Harry is not furious enough, “because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it.” This is both a testament to Dumbledore’s remorse for his well-intentioned mistakes in judgment, and a brilliant application of reverse psychology. The more he intones that Harry is truly justified in lashing out, even contending that he has not been violent enough, the clearer a picture he draws for Harry of his own actions without confronting him. Harry cannot continue in a mindless fury, seeking the release of acting out of control, with Dumbledore calmly reflecting his feelings back at him through adroit emotional aikido.
• Finally, Harry reacts even to Dumbledore’s quiet, becoming “even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harry wanted to rage and storm at him.” Dumbledore’s response is again to invite the vitriol, “I am going to tell you everything…You will have your chance to rage at me – to do whatever you like – when I have finished. I will not stop you.” And thus we learn of the prophecy, and Harry is so thoroughly stunned by the truth that by the end he can barely speak, cold fury giving way to deep foreboding and dread. We leave them in near silence, Harry distant, and with Dumbledore’s tear trickling down his face into his long silver beard.

But none serve as a final antidote, as we continue to encounter descriptions – “Harry’s temper rose to the surface like a snake rearing from long grass”, “A reckless daring seized him” – which must have tested Rowling’s own patience in finding enough different ways to convey the same idea. We can perhaps attribute some of this to the growing connection with Voldemort, who has frequent reason for frustration, but that is arguably better affiliated with the constant burning of Harry’s scar. Whether we are meant to take the balance of this effervescent rage as an adolescent phase, a new facet of Harry’s personality (combined with his ’saving-people-thing’ suggested by Hermione), or sheerly a reaction to the perceived injustices endured throughout the year is left unsettled.

In striking contrast, Neville at last makes his escape from comic relief into both poignancy (his visit at St. Mungo’s) and competency (his marked improvement in the DA after Bellatrix’s escape from Azkaban). He receives rare encouragement from a teacher other than Professor Sprout, when Professor McGonagall reassures him, “There’s nothing wrong with your work except lack of confidence.” He manages to be the last DA member standing along with Harry during the climactic battle at the Department of Mysteries, still trying to cast Stunning Spells with a borrowed wand and a disfigured nose. He even single-handedly defeats Voldemort’s plan to recover the prophecy, given its being smashed while falling from his pocket, although that is akin to praising Chunk for finding the map to One-Eye Willy’s pirate treasure in The Goonies by dropping the picture frame. Neville also provides a measure of how much Harry matures through the year – when Cho first walks by on the Hogwarts Express he is an embarrassment to Harry (who imagines sitting with ‘cool people’) even without being covered in Stinksap, yet by year’s end Harry is totally at ease sitting in a compartment as Neville strokes his Mimbulus Mimbletonia when Cho again crosses his door.

Ron’s own ascension from out of Harry’s shadow takes some curious turns. The unforeseen assignment as house prefect takes everyone by surprise – and we learn much later than it is truly intended to shield Harry from further trials rather than suggest Ron’s suitability – but the fact remains that he becomes the fourth Weasley to attain the post and takes a step towards that dream first glimpsed in the Mirror of Erised in year 1. He seems delighted, naturally enough, at the chance to upgrade his broom to a Cleansweep, but is less enthused at Moody’s assessment, “authority figures always attract trouble, but I suppose Dumbledore thinks you can withstand most major jinxes or he wouldn’t have appointed you.” And likewise he shows little compunction to assume the actual duties, particularly when they involve telling off the irrepressible Fred and George (the notable exceptions to the prefect legacy). But perhaps most welcome, from my perspective, is Harry’s recognition that it is his turn to support Ron – the simple “well done, mate” is a refreshing alternative to his increasingly self-absorbed tirades. The reversal of “Weasley is our King” is another hard-won achievement, after endless bouts of low self-confidence, the lifelong ban of Harry, Fred and George, and many fruitless practice sessions. It seems to take a shift in perspective, that things had perhaps had gotten as bad as they could get so they might as well not bother him anymore, for him to take stock in himself and rise to the challenge. Whether this inner reserve will return when the time warrants is something to watch. But at least he gets to hold the Quidditch Cup for now, one more piece of his dream in place.

Let us not overlook the Weasley twins, models of entrepreneurship. Much is made even back in book 4 about Mrs. Weasley’s disapproval over their lack of attention to O.W.L.s, and particularly their ambitions of opening a joke shop instead of “a sensible trade.” Harry contributes to their cause by giving them the Triwizard winnings as seed money at the end of year 4. Now they begin to show some of the fruits of their research, such as the various forms of Skivving Snackboxes along with Headless Hats, building up to their Wildfire Whiz-Bangs and finally the Portable Swamp. The lengths they go to produce these products raises some ethical eyebrows, first experimenting on first-years without disclosing the full effects of their Nosebleed Nougats and then possibly slipping a Sleeping Draught in Hermione’s butterbeer so she cannot interfere – “‘Let her sleep,’ said George hastily. It was a few moments before Harry noticed that several of the first years gathered around them bore unmistakable signs of recent nosebleeds.” Of course they choose rebellion against Umbridge over graduation, and fly away to apparent great success in their new venture at Diagon Alley. This triumph is an echo of Ghostbusters, which has been proposed as a Reaganesque fairy tale with private enterprise (“no job is too big, no fee is too big”) overcoming government regulation (Walter Peck, after all, is from the EPA) after being ejected from academia (“You, Dr. Venkman, are a poor scientist”). So capitalism has its noble defenders even here.

And then we have Luna. Ah, Loony Luna. Apart from her idiosyncratic fashion sense, even for a witch, Luna expresses two traits thus far unique – she is an adherent to radical honesty, and “apparently she’ll only believe in things as long as there’s no proof at all.” The notion of faith-based belief being associated with such an odd personality may have no greater significance (and religion is never explicitly mentioned within a wizarding context), but it is worth commenting how many positive attributes Luna seems to possess. She is a member of Ravenclaw house (which prompts her to tell Ron that her housemate Padma Patil, his date to the Yule Ball, “didn’t enjoy it very much”) so she must be clever. She reassures Harry of his sanity (to little gain, of course). She is active within the DA, supportive of both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw in Quidditch, protective of her father vis-a-vis The Quibbler, reverent towards her mother’s memory, and insistent on following Harry to the Ministry of Magic. She keeps a level head in trying moments, like Umbridge’s office, selecting thestrals, and in fighting the Death Eaters. Even when posting notices asking for the return of her possessions she seems completely non-judgmental. If the worst you can say of Luna is that her eyes pop a bit and she has a propensity for insisting on the as-yet-unverified existence of creatures with names worthy of Roald Dahl (Crumple-Horned Skorkacks?), she remains practically a saint.

Cho Chang serves primarily as the examplar for the everpresent conundrum of how to relate to the opposite sex. Early on, Harry finds delight in most anything Cho does in his presence. The first recruiting for the DA takes on added significance when Hermione asks, “What about Cho and you?…she just couldn’t keep her eyes off you, could she?” and Harry realizes he “had never before appreciated just how beautiful the village of Hogsmeade was.” We learn how the sensation of budding attraction is curiously like falling – “Cho laughing and felt the familiar swooping sensation in his stomach, as though he had missed a step going downstairs” – or outright paralysis – “He could not think. A tingling sensation was spreading throughout him, paralyzing his arms, legs, and brain.” Later, despite the risk of nargles, they kiss under mistletoe and Harry seems more confused than ever. If snogging is a good thing, why was she crying? Hermione succinctly enumerates the vast chasm between the emotional landscape of Boys and Girls – “Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?” she asks before proceeding to give an exhaustive summary of the many layers battling in Cho’s psyche. Likewise she intuits all of the behavioral ciphers and proper responses Harry ought to have employed in Madam Puddifoot’s to forestall Cho’s next ‘human hosepipe’ moment. It’s bewildering enough for Harry and Ron to both wish there were some universal decoder, or proper education for how to navigate this secret world: “That’s what they should teach us here, Harry thought…how girls’ brains work…it’d be more useful than Divination anyway” / “You should write a book, ” Ron told Hermione…”translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.” Yet by year’s end, Harry finds he can see Cho without losing composure and hear of her latest pairing without the familiar pangs of jealousy. With the first crush behind him, can he move on to deeper relationships?

Ginny takes on greater significance throughout book 5. She names Dumbledore’s Army, brings in recruits through then-boyfriend Michael Corner, and becomes Seeker in Harry’s place to good effect. We learn she has been secretly learning to fly since the age of 6, and has been inspired by Fred and George to think that anything is possible if you have the nerve. She convinces Harry he is not possessed and reminds him of her own trial with Voldemort (a distinction they alone share). By the time he prepares to return to Hogwarts after the Christmas holiday, she is portrayed more as a peer to Ron and Hermione rather than just a little sister (Fred and George are frequently absent, for example). She asks him forthrightly when things are going badly, insists on helping him contact Sirius, deploys her formidable Bat-Bogey Hex in escaping Umbridge’s office, and then follows to the Ministry of Magic. This is all a far cry from the starstruck Ginny of book 1 and the giggling/mortified Ginny of book 2/3, and she appears even more comfortable around Harry than we saw in book 4. By book’s end, they are slyly sharing jokes at Luna’s dottiness, and she sit ins their compartment along with their other new equal, Neville. And two flattering descriptions reminded me of an essay I found that first gave me hope that Ginny had a future as more than just another Weasley backdrop: first during Christmas – “Ginny was curled like a cat on her chair, but her eyes were open; Harry could see them reflecting the firelight” and then later coming in from Quidditch “looking very windswept.” More grist for the mill of H/G ’shippers (myself among them).

Apart from individuals, we also have several ruminations on the nature of family. For one, we learn about the “noble and most ancient house of Black” with its motto, Toujours pur (“always pure”). Sirius is evidently kin to Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy, even the Weasleys, for “if you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry purebloods your choice is very limited.” This sums up the threat facing any blood-pure movement, where extensive intermarriage without outside parties to add to the genetic pool creates both recessive traits (cf. historical royalty) as well as shrinking opportunities. An extreme example of this is the end result of the Grail’s sacred bloodline from Preacher. Oh, and we also learn of a brother named Regulus who joined up with Voldemort and got killed for his pains after trying to back out. Good to know.

The question of family loyalty is raised several times. In Percy’s prideful ‘advice’ to Ron on hearing of his prefecthood, he insists, “Your loyalty, Ron, should be not to him, but to the school and the Ministry…and I do hope, Ron, that you will not allow family ties to blind you to the misguided nature of our parents’ beliefs and actions either.” Hagrid ponders his own ties, gloomily intoning “Whatever yeh say, blood’s important…” and takes heavy punishment in trying to care for Grawp, his half-brother. Even though Harry’s worship of his father is shaken, Harry and the twins receive their lifelong ban from Quidditch for reacting to Draco’s taunts about their mothers, while Harry’s own rejoinder to Seamus is taken as an attack on his mother. Even Draco shows righteous concern for his father after the capture of the Death Eaters, Lucius included, at the Ministry. Yet while family loyalty is almost universally presented as a virtue, Percy’s note does raise a valid concern about loyalties overwhelming better judgment. Family ties or tribal loyalties (including Percy’s own self-serving devotion to the Ministry) are like an active 4th circuit in Timothy Leary’s 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness, just as Harry’s persistent anger could represent the 2nd. In these terms, adherence to the family/tribe crowds out all other concerns, either for self-interest or greater social welfare. Hagrid’s devotions to Grawp are at the expense of his own health, succor with the centaurs, and the relative safety of his friends. The tribal model of sports fan shows itself in Ron’s telling off Cho for supporting the Tornadoes, insinuating that she might not be a ‘real’ fan. Likewise Harry puts his ‘family’ before logical conclusions he then refuses to accept, such as defending Ron’s performance as Keeper and Hagrid’s aptitude for teaching Care of Magical Creatures in spite of the prevailing evidence.

Finally, for the looming question of Snape’s ultimate dispensation, two tidbits. First – “Poisonous toadstools don’t change their spots,” said Ron sagely. Second – Harry notices that he calls Voldemort the “Dark Lord” consistently during Occlumency lessons, but gets no reply as to why.

(And there we will have to pause for the moment, so I can get some sleep. More to follow on HP5, starting with themes such as the Ministry’s interference with the rule of law, and a large collection of clues pertaining to events to come.)

• Quidditch is becoming a growing sport on US college campuses. “Running around on brooms does appeal to a surprising number of college students.”
• The printer for book 7 has been tentatively identified. Is there any other time when a printing company would actually say, “We have no comment on any title that we may or may not be printing”? (Or that the identity of the printer for a particular book would warrant a news story?) The security measures, including searching lunch bags, are interesting although hardly foolproof (per below). Also notable is that the public library in the small Indiana town is not planning any special events for the book 7 release “because some people have complained about the magic and wizardry contained in Rowling’s series.” Such reports always make me wonder what other books are singled out for their fantasy setting.
• Scattered reports have already come out of premature shipments from unnamed online vendors, leading of course to opportunistic postings on eBay. The mania surrounding the secrecy of book 7’s plot has parallels in the lead-up to various grand reveals by Apple under Steve Jobs – any leaks threaten to undermine the oomph of a “One More Thing” keynote moment (e.g. Time Canada publishing online a day early, ATI issuing an ill-timed press release). One distinction is the comparative lack of concern by publishers in the face of such leaks, as contrasted with hyperbolic protestations by other media groups like the RIAA and MPAA – “None of the leaks are going to hurt sales of Potter.” A safe assumption. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling exhorts all to keep the silence intact until books are scheduled to ship, promising that “in a very short time you will know EVERYTHING!”
• Finally, the question has already been posed, “what’s next for Potter fans?” Like the lull after a final movie in a trilogy, the faithful face a harsh period of withdrawal. More to the point, with no more Potter books, will fans stay readers? “If only the boy wizard’s last trick were to turn them all into habitual and lifelong readers of literature – an endangered species in America.” The publishers have certainly tried to anoit the “next Harry Potter” moniker on a number of series – Eragon, Septimus Heap, Artemis Fowl, Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events – although none of them could really be called a true replacement. But then, we have never really had the “next Tolkien” and seem to have managed alright.

On with book 4. Goblet of Fire starts not at the familiar 4 Privet Drive (shock!), but with a sort of prologue establishing the state of Voldemort’s restoration. Then when we join Harry we find him relatively content, even happy, during his stay with the Dursleys as compared to the abject misery endured in all previous three books. This is our first clue that a significant change in structure is underway. That is something of an understatement, really, as the entire series has been radically altered with book 4, transforming from an episodic ‘new boy at boarding school’ boilerplate to a serious multi-stage epic conflict unfolding across the remainder of the books. Goblet of Fire is not the fourth book so much as it is the first installment of a tetralogy which meditates on the rise to power of a malevolent force and the desperate struggle of a few to oppose it (cf. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings). The three preceding volumes act then as a sort of introduction to the characters, setting, and themes in a more lightweight fashion than we shall encounter hereafter, much like The Hobbit or the first volume of Dune.

This shift is reflected first in the reversal of Harry’s predicament, where instead of starting in despair and ending in hopeful optimism as in each of the past three years, Harry begins hopeful and ends quite the opposite. Second, Goblet of Fire shows a huge jump in girth (GoF is over 2/3rds longer than PoA), complexity, and maturity in theme, all of which carry through from here forward. Third, major plot points that have been critical in the past, within the “the continuing adventures of a cheeky boy and his friends at school” trope familiar in other young adult fiction, have been either demoted in severity or excised altogether. The prospect of exams, the thrill of Quidditch, even the ongoing struggle to master varying subjects all become background or secondary to more dominant themes. For example, Harry’s performance in Potions class has more to do with his antagonistic relationship with Professor Snape than any worry over future O.W.L.s, and the rare appearance of a Charms class usually presages a need for a new spell like Summoning to serve in the Triwizard Tournament. All of this together progressively de-emphasizes Hogwarts as an end in itself, or the anxieties of school as paramount (even Hermione’s manic studiousness, such as her pique at missing exams in year 2, seems to have peaked with her over-exertion using the Time-Turner in year 3). This is no longer a story about a boy who learns he gets to go to a school for wizards, but about a boy wizard confronting a growing menace who happens to go to school. This progression, incidentally, mirrors the development of another boy-with-glasses who discovers he’s a powerful magician, who has an owl familiar, and who must prepare for the prospect of a climactic battle with the forces of darkness – namely Neil Gaiman’s Tim Hunter after he leaves the White School (at age 17, no less). Although comparisons have been made between the series, both authors insist it is just a case of parallel evolution, like when we suddenly get two movies (Armageddon/Deep Impact) or TV series (30 Rock/Studio 60) about the exact same thing at once.

One consequence of this expanded palette is the invocation of all of the Seven Sins over the course of the story (whether intended or accidental, as some of these are admittedly a bit of a stretch to categorize).

1. Avarice – We begin with the vice of gambling at the Quidditch World Cup, which continues to haunt Ludo Bagman and consumes the Weasley twins for practically the entire story. (I do find it curious that Fred and George would commit all their savings to such a bizarre wager, i.e. Ireland winning even though Krum gets the Golden Snitch, which violates the basic rules of Quidditch scoring.) Ron is affected not as much by greed per se as fixation on lacking wealth, e.g. “Why is everything I own rubbish?” at both his dreadful dress robes and the impetuous Pigwidgeon, and later at the revelation of the leprechaun gold, the matter-of-fact “I hate being poor.” He also briefly imagines using the niffler for monetary gain, and dreams of the Triwizard winnings (“a thousand Galleons!”), as does Harry for that matter although he later observes that he doesn’t need it when he presents to the twins (an act of Charity, the corresponding Virtue).
2. Envy – Foremost shown through the actions of Ron, who feels again slighted by Harry’s popularity, as Hermione explains. Harry also falls under its baleful influence whenever he confronts Cho together with Cedric, from the Yule Ball onward. The Virtue of Kindness, meanwhile, is embodied in Professor Dumbledore, who stands by Hagrid just as he has for Lupin and others in the past who are deserving of a ’second chance.’
3. Gluttony – Perhaps a thin allusion, but the plight of the house-elves is closely related to love of food throughout the novel. Whenever their treatment at Hogwarts is raised, the standard defense (“they like it”) results in Hermione casting aspersions on their motives, saying that people just don’t want to give up their comforts of guilt-free food and treats. She directly associates eating at the Great Hall with vice, “That’s what made this dinner. Slave labor.” Plus each visit to the kitchen is highlighted with Harry and Ron being plied with sweets, or Fred and George contributing treats to a Gryffindor bacchanalia. Whether this is is the same as overindulging is debateable, of course. The Virtue of Temperance or self-restraint might be seen in Hermione’s reaction to taunting over the Witch Weekly character assassination.
4. Sloth – The most direct example is Harry’s resistance (with Ron’s support) to starting work on the second task, up until literally the last minute. He engages in evasion, lies, and diversion to maintain this avoidance, further driven by envy of Cedric’s relationship with Cho, and it is only Dobby’s intervention (at Moody-2’s arranging) that saves him. By contrast, he endeavors quite zealously to prepare for the third task, earning the Virtue of Diligence.
5. Pride – The second task is also affected by pride, as Moody-2 tells that he did not anticipate that Harry would be ‘too proud’ to ask Neville’s help and thus learn of gillyweed through the book lent to him. Amos Diggory is also boisterously prideful of his son Cedric, from their first meeting at the World Cup portkey to later appearances during the tournament. And Barty Crouch Jr’s pride at being the only ‘faithful’ servant to Voldemort during his absence makes him incautious, failing to note the approach of others through his Foe Glass. The Virtue of Humility is shown at least by Dumbledore, such as his allowance that he might have failed with the Age Line in protecting the Goblet of Fire from underage students, and by Cedric who feels his father overstates his victories against Harry.
6. Lust – Harry’s burgeoning attraction to Cho, the varying pairing in the rosebushes at the Ball (e.g. Fleur and Roger Davies ‘looking quite busy’), Hagrid’s mooning over Madam Maxine, Krum’s pursuit of Hermione (triggering Ron’s envy, natch), even the talk of superficial attraction by Ron as they contemplate finding dates all seem to qualify. As for the Virtue of Chastity, er, perhaps that is an exercise for another reader (Harry’s relationship with Hermione is chaste and Platonic, nevermind the hope of H/H ’shippers, but she does kiss him on the cheek at book’s end).
7. Wrath – Again we have a wealth of alternatives: Voldemort’s rage at Wormtail, indeed at almost all of his followers (e.g. Avery’s Crucio). Barty Crouch when confronted with his own son’s treachery. Snape and Sirius. Harry’s reaction to Hagrid’s outing as a half-giant, and Hermione’s vendetta against Rita Skeeter. Even the befuddlement of Cornelius Fudge at the news of Voldemort’s restoration to power fits the definition of “vehement denial of the truth.” Conversely, Harry accepts Ron’s apology for their estrangement up through the first task, achieving the Virtue of Forgiveness.

Some more discoveries:

• We learn in due course that Voldemort’s followers are called “Death Eaters,” although no explanation is forthcoming as to why they chose (or were given) this appellation. It does resonate at the surface of danger (ooh, Death, eaters of!) but also reminds us of the overarching obsession of Voldemort at overcoming mortal death – to ‘eat’ death would be to overcome it, in a sense. Whether it has a more literal, sinister sense – such as the suggestion of cannibalism implied by the name – is also unmentioned. The spell to conjure the Dark Mark, Morsmorde, is also essentially a compound of terms for ‘death’ and ‘eat’ – Mors from the Latin, Morde from French for ‘bite’ – just as Voldemort contains a Scandinavian form of ‘death.’

• We also get a more extensive perspective on the wizard variants of a tabloid press and muckraking in the person of Rita Skeeter and her mixture of purple prose and yellow journalism. Her focus on fame (Harry eclipses all of the other Triwizard champions in her first article) and scandal (Hagrid’s parentage, Hermione as ’scarlet woman’) echo our own media’s fixation on celebrity and drama over hard news. What I did find surprising is that her hatchet job on Hagrid is quite frankly well-researched to the point of uncovering Hagrid’s giantess mother’s name (Fridwulfa) and the origin of the Blast-Ended Skrewts (a cross of manticore and fire-crab).
• As another parallel to our world, the treatment of athlete criminality is equally lax as shown by Ludo Bagman’s acquittal for conspiring with Dark Wizards or, as he puts it, “being a bit of an idiot.” His affable charm and performance for the Wimbourne Wasps and English World Cup make him effectively beyond prosecution, and all charges are dropped simply out of deference for his Quidditch prowess.

I have been wondering about the continuing significance of Halloween thus far in the series. We began book 1 on that day, recounting the events of Godric’s Hollow and the “boy who lived.” Ten years later, Quirrell releases a troll in Hogwarts, fatefully ensuring that Hermione becomes friends with Harry and Ron. The next year, we learn that Halloween is also Nearly Headless Nick’s Deathday – his 500th in fact, dating back to the time of Columbus in 1492. That same day the Chamber of Secrets is opened (again). In year 3, Sirius enters Gryffindor Tower in search of Peter Pettigrew. Now in year 4, on All Hallow’s Eve the Triwizard champions are selected by the Goblet of Fire. Despite all of these coincidences, both the Halloween feast and its significance do not seem to continue in coming years – but then a war (first cold, then open) will have broken out. Yet we now know a Deathly Hallows lies awaiting us in year 7, bearing some critical importance, and it makes me wonder if all of these prior Hallow’eens foreshadow another momentous occasion at the end of October.

I also realized that while re-reading Goblet of Fire, it was diverting to play the Sixth Sense spotting game with Moody-2’s behavior. He continually acts on Harry’s behalf, which is consistent with his overall mission for Voldemort. He is elated to find the Marauder’s Map, as it gives him the edge in arranging events and re-capturing and then executing his father (and also prevents Harry from using it to unveil his subterfuge). But his averse reactions to Draco, Karkaroff, Snape – are these meant to convince others that he is the ‘real’ Moody, or are they really Barty Jr’s own feelings? After all, in his moustache-twirling monologue to Harry, he expresses deep disdain for the disloyal Death Eaters who escaped or avoided imprisonment at Azkaban and had not remained devoted to the Dark Lord’s service. Snape is implicated as one of those missing from the circle at the graveyard, as is Karkaroff who also openly testified against his compatriots. Draco may have earned his disfavor due to Lucius remaining free and pretending to have been under the influence of the Imperius Curse, although it also goes a long way to secure Harry’s trust by turning him into the incredible bouncing ferret.

Ah, the Pensieve. Apart from being a brilliant means of exposition without conventional flashbacks, just as Riddle’s diary provided in Chamber of Secrets, the pensieve as described is a succinct analogue to this very blog:

“I sometimes feel, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind…One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind…and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”

And so I continue to catalogue the random impressions from my reading, using the crucible of posting here to provide a means to establish patterns that I would not have considered had I just been reading the books alone.

Quik Quotes (sorry)

Nearing the end, we have another insight into the ongoing connection between Harry and Voldemort:

“I have a theory, no more than that…It is my belief that your scar hurts both when Lord Voldemort is near you, and when he is feeling a particularly strong surge of hatred.”
“But…why?”
“Because you and he are connected by the curse that failed,” said Dumbledore. “That is no ordinary scar.”

We also explore Voldemort’s mortality and his efforts to combat it, such as reminding the Death Eaters they should have recalled “the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death.” Plus later, in recounting his earlier defeat,

“My curse was deflected by the woman’s foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself…I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit…What iIwas, even I do not know…I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked…for I had not been killed.”

In passing we also learn of Quirrell’s ultimate fate, which had remained untold in the first book – “the servant died when I left his body.”And further, a clue to why Harry has been consistently returned to the torment of life with the Dursleys – “Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the boy’s protection as long as he is in his relations’ care.”

(I still find it jarring when the ghost echoes come out in the incorrect order during the Priori Incantatem, with James preceding Lily, although this has been acknowledged as an error and fixed in later printings.)

Of course, we have that enigmatic line, following Harry’s description of the use of his blood – containing his mother’s protection – in Voldemort’s recovery: “For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.” We strongly suspect that some of Voldemort was put into Harry; what could it mean that some of Harry has been put into Voldemort?

And then we have the blunt foreshadowing of the book to come: “Dumbledore…was staring hard at Fudge, as though seeing him plainly for the first time.” “You are blinded…by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius! You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood!”

Finally, come the end, we find the final chapter named “The Beginning.” Thus with Voldemort’s return, Fudge’s refusal to accept it, Snape’s reinstatement as spy, and Dumbledore’s commands to recruit the ‘old crowd’ and seek out alliances for the war ahead…we begin the ensuing battle for influence in a nigh-certain Great War to come. Harry Potter is no longer out for the Quidditch Cup, Inter-House Championship, even revenge against Draco Malfoy and the Syltherins. He is the pawn in a larger conflict between elemental forces in an increasingly complex wizarding world. And we have two more installments to go before anything can be truly resolved.

Vital Stats
Pages: 734 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 37
Starts: The Riddle House, Little Hangleton
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Bound in a Trunk/Polyjuice Doppelganger/Dementor’s Kiss
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: Headmaster’s Office
House Cup: Moot out of respect for Cedric Diggory
Exams: Harry is exempt as a Triwizard champion
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry – 3, Voldemort – 1

In his first interaction (although second meeting) with Cornelius Fudge, Harry learns more of this flexible nature of law enforcement in the wizarding world. Despite his prior warning, Fudge laughs off the notion of punishment, saying “we don’t send people to Azkaban just for blowing up their aunts!” Compare this with both the aforementioned ‘hover charm’ warning following Dobby’s intervention, and Fudge’s own justification for jailing Hagrid the year before, “the Ministry’s got to act!” We find other examples of this political approach to law enforcement (justice is never voiced as a primary concern) later in the book in how Sirius Black’s planned punishment after his subsequent recapture is handled, as well as the entire case of Buckbeak – a trumped-up charge by the scion of a major political contributor and the forthright manipulation of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. This cloud of coercion will hang heavy over the side of Good in future events, particularly book 5.

Harry also has his first encounter with Cho Chang during the Quidditch match against Ravenclaw. After she smiles at him before the kickoff, he feels “a slight lurch in the region of his stomach that he didn’t think had anything to do with nerves.” Apart from the mandrake ‘pot swapping’ and Percy’s having a secret girlfriend in Chamber of Secrets (and excluding infatuations like all the giggling over Gilderoy Lockhart and Ginny’s fixation on Harry as a first-year), this is our first real depiction of attraction between the sexes. It’s laudable that Harry, Ron and other male students are never described in the first two years as having any aversive opinions of girls typical of pre-teens. Indeed, no explicit mention is ever given of witches not having an equal position of respect among wizarding society (although it is called ‘wizarding’ instead of ‘witching’, natch). While the current Minister of Magic and Headmaster of Hogwarts are both wizards, Hogwarts has a large population of witch faculty, and the Ministry appears likewise to employ witches throughout its departments. In a world riven by blood mania and species bigotry, a semblance of gender equality is welcome. And of course we have Hermione, the wunderkind, a paragon of academic achievement; even when Draco expresses his consternation at her achievement, it is always framed in the context of her ancestry, not that she’s ‘just a witch’ or anything similar. We will also discover through later installments of Harry’s interactions with Cho, as well as other Hogwarts relationships, that girls appear to hold the reins in these pairings, as well as understand their feelings in much more complex fashion than the boys ever seem to muster.

The rise of Quidditch in prominence through the series reaches its zenith in Prisoner of Azkaban. Structurally, this makes perfect sense. First, when Harry begins at Hogwarts, he is a boy without any background in learning magic, and for balance needs to find something in the wizarding world he can enjoy instinctively (as he clearly struggles with many of the lessons). This turns out to be flying a broomstick, a natural talent inherited from his father, which also gives us an opportunity to explore the culture of sports within the magical community. And we know the importance of this from the Princess Bride, where the grandson whines as he first enters its magical world, “where’s the sports?” But while Harry can be allowed to join the team at an impressively young age, and even win a game with daring feats of flying in the first book, the Quidditch Cup is withheld for two years. To this end we have interruptions in play from jinxed brooms, cursed bludgers, and now dementors – plus absences due to other trials in Harry’s life – so that the Cup can stay out of reach without Harry actually having to lose a game in the normal fashion. This prolongs the rivalry with Slytherin, and particularly Draco, who in a sense buys his way onto the team as Seeker by offering them mechanical steroids (the Nimbus 2001s). This raises the bar for Harry, who has had the advantage of a superior broom due to McGonagall’s investment towards a Gryffindor victory. After the dementor attack results in the Whomping Willow reducing the Nimbus 2000 to matchwood, we up the ante with the mysterious Firebolt, previously seen only in prototype form in Diagon Alley. This in turn leads to a calculated victory in a brutal game against the cheating Slytherins, capturing the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor in Oliver Wood’s final year and at the expense specifically of Draco, who Harry beats to the Golden Snitch. So Harry has in only three years already managed almost all of the potential achievements in the sport (he gets the captainship later), and thus at this apex it is set up for gradual decline in both accomplishment and import over the reminder of the series. From book 4 on, it will no longer have the prominence it has held thus far.

Meanwhile, the treatment of Professor Lupin demonstrates the stigma of lycanthropy. A blood-borne ailment, transmitted through accidental means or risky behavior, and only recently treatable (but not curable) by the means of a complex potion…the werewolf in this world suffers like early victims of AIDS. The issues raised of a “were-positive” individual in a public environment, specifically school, are a near mirror of those explored in the first Mock Trial I participated in. I played the plaintiff, a boy who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and wanted permission to attend regular school and participate in activities like sports. But ignorance, misinformation, and general hysteria turned parents of other students against the school and they demanded that their children be protected from any theoretical exposure (e.g. I was supposed to have suffered a nosebleed during gym class). Poor Remus, however, seemed almost destined to be cursed as a werewolf, given his unusual name – Remus referring to one of the two legendary founders of Rome, who were raised by wolves; and Lupin, being both derived from ‘lupine’ aka ‘wolflike’ and from a French variety of werewolf characterized by shyness, in contrast with the aggressive ‘loop garou’ exemplified in the series by his attacker Fenrir Grayback (the latter also being the naming inspiration for the band Loop Guru). Nevertheless, he suffers from the popular view of werewolves as unrepentent, dangerous, and certainly unfit for any kind of profession. Only through the extraordinary intervention of Dumbledore is he first able to be educated at Hogwarts, with the refuge provided by the Shrieking Shack and Whomping Willow; and then teach for a year until Snape’s enmity boils over after Sirius’ escape, resulting in his being ‘outed.’ As with his patronage of Hagrid, who also gains employment at Hogwarts despite being expelled and (as we find out later) his mixed-giant parentage, Dumbledore shows great accommodation for those at the edges of accepted wizard culture. Even Trelawney benefits from his largesse of spirit, retaining a post as Divination teacher despite having had perhaps only two accurate predictions.

Not much more need be said about the actual divination lessons given to Harry. Hermione and Professor McGonagall both show disregard for their usefulness, while Dumbledore explains after their return from using the Time Turner that “the consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.” This is just as well, since a world prone to predictability is almost certainly one with a dearth of free will. For an exhaustive examination of the widespread effects of prophetic vision on society, consult the original six volumes of Dune. It is, nevertheless, somewhat amusing that Hermione is so dismissive of divination while a great admirer of arithmancy…which is simply another form of divination based on numerology (such as the Hebrew Gematria) instead of symbology (seeing patterns in crystals, palms, tea leaves, entrails). Arithmancy has the advantage of being a more rigid, reproducible system which gives the practitioner a reassuring sense of correctness, but that just means it can produce precise but wrong predictions rather than vague but wrong ones.

One other thought related to futurism is the alternate future as offered by Sirius during the brief period between his being revealed as an innocent man and his return to fugitive with the escape of Wormtail. Harry has the chance to imagine a different life, a home away from the Dursleys with Sirius as both a caring guardian and someone who knew his parents. Whether that idyllic scene would have endured, given the immaturity shown by Sirius in later books, is unknown. But in a multiverse of parallel worlds, bifurcating with each possibility event, perhaps we can conceive of a splinter existence where that came to pass. Sadly the fates of the series seem set on progressively depriving Harry of adult guidance, stripping away his parents first and now depriving him a happier life imagined. More will follow.

Time travel, and its nemesis in paradox, show up with only two chapters left. We of course are given clues throughout that something is afoot given Hermione’s impossible schedule and occasional lapses. Yet when the Time-Turner is produced, the only guideline for its use is provided by Dumbledore’s insisting they “mustn’t be seen.” No prohibition on interference is given, and clearly they are meant to act to affect events during their ‘three hour tour’ in the past. Hermione does note the potential for the Grandfather Paradox, stating that time-traveling wizards have managed to kill their past or future selves, but no suggestion is given as to what effect this has on time/reality/etc. Their subsequent actions during their own trip conform to the Novikov self-consistency principle, using time loop logic to solve the varying predicaments of Buckbeak’s survival and thus Sirius’ escape from a locked tower window. Just like Ted’s revelation regarding his father’s keys in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Harry realizes that it was himself casting a corporeal Patronus to drive away a throng of dementors from extracting his younger-self’s soul, so therefore he has the confidence to produce it. This narrowly avoids the ontological paradox, since it is only the knowledge that he can produce the Patronus that is carried within the time loop, not the ability itself which was already demonstrated during the fake dementor attack by Draco et al. All of this demonstrates the finesse required to employ any time travel device, and why it represents such a Pandora’s box for writers. This must act as the latent deterrent for why the Time-Turner is not employed more regularly in the series; thus far it has made only one other appearance, in the Department of Mysteries, and then only as window dressing.

Finally, we have Wormtail’s blood debt.

“Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt…When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them…This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me…the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew’s life.”

This is primarily a wait-and-see, although it amuses me that the first parallel I recall is a 70s Disney movie called The World’s Greatest Athlete. I only read the novelization, like several others of its ilk (Gus, C.H.O.M.P.S., Condorman, and Unidentified Flying Oddball), but still remember the title character being discovered in a jungle by a sports coach. After observing his amazing physical acuity, the coach conspires to lure the wonder boy back to civilization to become a sports star. This is accomplished after learning from the local witch doctor about the ‘life debt’ that is incurred whenever you save someone’s life – except in this case, rather than the saved being beholden to the savior, the savior would become responsible for the saved person’s life forever after and so must follow them. The agent feigns a life-threatening illness, and asks jungle boy to fetch some aspirin. Voilá, he is cured, and off they go to play basketball. That doesn’t really give us any insight into Wormtail’s future, though.

One last great line from Dumbeldore: “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?” This is in response to Harry despairing at not having seen his father (when he conjured the Patronus at himself), although given events to come, we can certainly wonder if it has a more wide-spanning significance.

Vital Stats
Pages: 435 (Scholastic Hardback)
Chapters: 22
Starts: 4 Privet Drive
Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher: Lycanthropy/Resigned
Dumbledore Explains Everything In: Professor Lupin’s Office
House Cup: Gryffindor
Exams: Yes
Ends: Platform 9-3/4

Final Score: Harry – 3, Voldemort – 0