Lo’s Literary Life Lessons: Finding Truth in Fiction: Harry Potter
Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash
Truth # 2: There are different sorts of magic in the world. We choose which kind to wield.
This week our topic is Harry Potter. Now, I will let you in on a little secret. Pastor Laurel saw the first movie before she read the book. This is a great sin in the literary world because the book is almost always better than the movie. I confess I did not want to read Harry Potter as a kid. I was an idiot. Luckily, my mom made me see the first movie when it came out and I fell in love. I begged her to stop at the bookstore on the way home so we could buy the first three books in the series. I preordered book 4 and was at the post office the minute it opened to pick it up. It was the same for books 5 and 6. I read book 7 in one sitting, barely eating for 2 straight days. I turned 11 the year the first Harry Potter movie premiered and 17 when the last book was released. The actors in the moves are the same age as me. I literally grew up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
If you are unfamiliar, the series follows Harry Potter, a boy who finds out he is a wizard on his eleventh birthday. Though Harry has no idea magic exists before that fateful day, the whole magical community knows who he is. When Harry was only a year old the evil Lord Voldemort came to his home and murdered his parents. Then Voldemort turned his killing curse to their infant son, but it rebounded and destroyed the villain’s body. Everyone in the magical world knows Harry as The-Boy-Who-Lived. They expect great things from him and yet Harry has no idea what makes him so special, why the curse didn’t work, and how he was able to defeat such power without even holding a wand.
Throughout the novels Harry’s teacher and mentor Albus Dumbledore claims that the power which protected Harry that night was love. Love, according to Dumbledore, is the most potent magic in the whole world. Voldemort disagrees. He believes that power, the power that comes from dominating with pure blood and which defeats death, is the greatest force. The war between good and evil; Dumbledore’s love and Voldemort’s death magic rages around Harry his whole life. The battle claims some of those closest to him, including his godfather, Sirius Black. After the death of his only real family Harry finds himself in Dumbledore’s office bereft with grief.
“‘There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘On the contrary ... the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.’
Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.
’My greatest strength, is it?’ said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. ‘You haven’t got a clue ... you don’t know ...’
’What don’t I know?’ asked Dumbledore calmly.
It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage.
’I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right?’
’Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human—‘
’THEN—I—DON’T —WANT—TO—BE—HUMAN!’ Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall.”
From the very first time I read this chapter I understood Harry. I too have wished I wasn’t human. I too have believed that things would be easier if I did not feel things so acutely, love people so deeply; if I did not care.
Usually this time of year is filled with excitement and anticipation for me. Growing up, Autumn meant a new school year full of possibilities for growth and learning and relationships. There was so much to look forward to in the coming months; cool weather, changing leaves, classes, friends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I always found myself re-energized by the hope of what was to come.
This year, I am just tired. I am tired of news reports and covid-19 statistics. I am exhausted by an election that is another 6 weeks away. I choke on the smoke of the fires and the failure of humankind. I feel deeply the pain of humanity right now and I am tired. Harry’s cry of “I DON’T WANT TO BE HUMAN” echoes louder than it ever has for me.
Maybe you feel the same. Maybe you too are exhausted; not only by the events happening around us but how much it hurts to love in a world so broken.
In the same scene that Harry claims he wants nothing to do with human emotion he finds out that he has been marked his whole life to fight against Voldemort, not just because he was attacked and survived but because of a prophecy spoken before his birth. For the rest of the series, Harry struggles not only with the pain of human emotion but the burden of his destiny. He has been chosen by fate, by chance, by Voldemort himself to succeed or fail for all humanity. The only real decision left to Harry is what kind of magic to wield in his battle against the Dark Lord.
Voldemort’s magic is based in the fear of death and the desire to evade death at any cost, which leads Voldemort to the relentless pursuit of power.
Dumbledore’s magic is grounded in love and inevitably leads to sacrifice as a way to defeat evil.
Harry must decide whether his life is driven by fear or love. He must choose which magic he will use to conquer Voldemort. What force has more influence over himself and the world.
Harry, ultimately, chooses love. He chooses to give up power, to forfeit his life, to stand tall and take the killing curse he escaped as a baby. He does so because he loves the people in his life so deeply he is unwilling to allow them to die on his behalf. It is a supremely selfless act; one that can only come from deep love.
As Harry goes to meet Voldemort for the last time he sees his classmates and friends. He even has the ability to speak to his deceased parents and Sirius one last time. I was rereading that portion of the book for this post and I realized something I had never really noticed before. As Harry encounters the people he loves he feels nearly every emotion: dread, sorrow, gratitude, desire, regret, even hope. He does not shy away from the feelings raging through his body and, in fact, they lend him clarity. They strengthen him for the last journey he has to take, the final march to confront Voldemort and accept his death. It is his love, his humanity, the thing he desired once to get rid of entirely because it simply hurt too much, that makes his choice to die possible.
I have always admired Harry for making the sacrifice needed to save his friends. I have never so deeply appreciated what he felt as he prepared to do so. His courage does not arise from duty or hopelessness. It is rooted in the love he has for his friends and family. His love is so deep that it is unthinkable in Harry’s view to consider anything but saving them at any cost. Harry is unwilling to allow the fear of death to overcome his desire to save them.
I hear the word fear a lot lately. I and everyone I talk to are awash with anxiety about absolutely everything. Despair comes in waves when we leave the house or watch the news or go on social media. There is a lot to be afraid of. I’m not denying that. Fear is often a healthy response to a realistic threat. The key is not allowing fear to run our lives. We, like Harry, are not supposed to be driven by it. We must be brave. We must trust that God is with us and act accordingly. We can all agree on that. There is a certain rhetoric telling us that changing our lives because of this virus is an act of cowardice. That shifting how we spend our time, use our resources; what we wear or do, who we see and touch, is giving in to the evil forces in our world. This rhetoric would have us believe that change is an act of cowardice.
I wonder, though, if not changing our lives is the fearful choice. If ignoring the advice of scientists and experts is the more cowardly act than wearing a mask or keeping social distance. What we are truly afraid of is not a virus. We are afraid that if we face how bad things really are; how much we need to change everything about our lives in order to care for our neighbor, we will collapse. We will be so overcome with the frailty of both the individual human body and the collective system of this country that hopelessness will overwhelm us to the point that there will be nothing left, not of us, of our communities, or of the world.
So, what is the greater act of courage?
To allow the fear of losing our lives as we know them drive us to cling desperately to “normal”?
Or
To change how we live because doing so ensures that others are cared for?
Perhaps Jesus can shed some light on the question:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
Jesus makes it quite clear in this passage that love is a sacrificial thing. It asks more of us than just kind words. It demands sacrifice; giving up our lives. In this passage Jesus explains that we are not blindly following what we do not understand. We know that God is at work in the world, making the Kingdom of Heaven an earthly reality. God invites us into that work through this command to love the neighbor, to give up one's life.
I always believed that love was the greater magic. I agreed with Dumbledore’s pronouncements that the best lives were selfless and compassionate. The whole idea resonated deeply with my beliefs about God’s unconditional love and the commandment Jesus gives to us to love our neighbor. The more I learned about the world, about the bible and the church, the more I was convicted by the power of love. It was love that brought God into relationship with the broken world over and over again. Love that drove Jesus to the Cross. Love that fueled the early church to spread the word of God and serve those in need. Everything was about love.
For Harry Potter, the moment the prophecy about him is spoken, he is a boy marked to fight against Lord Voldemort. It takes seventeen years for him to fully understand what is required to defeat evil. It isn’t escaping pain. It isn’t pure blood. It isn’t ultimate power or raw strength. It isn’t stubbornness or pride or individual identity. It is not cleverness or witty retorts. It is sacrifice. Harry is willing to impose limits on his life in order to expand the possibilities for everyone else’s.
Because really, that’s the bravest thing love ever does. It feels all the immense pain of caring for other people. It is exhausted by the force of evil. It encounters the fierce desire to preserve ourselves and our way of life, and it faces those things head on. It embraces them. It keeps giving of itself. It continually forfeits a known life for an unknown future. It constantly fights for others more than it preserves itself.
That is the kind of love that Jesus commands his disciples to have.
That is the kind of magic that Harry needs to defeat Lord Voldemort.
That is the kind of life that God is calling us to live right now.
My understanding of love has been exponentially deepened this year. I saw the lack of love in how we treat those of least value in our society. I hated love when caring about the world and the people in it exhausted me in ways I had never known. I felt a deeper love than ever before when I saw people wearing masks, protesting oppression and fighting illness and fire. All these things expanded what I knew of love so much, it hurt. I didn’t even realize how much I had learned or how painful that was until I started writing this post.
Maybe that’s why I was so hesitant to read the Harry Potter books originally. Maybe some part of me knew that if I had seen the length of the journey I would go on with Harry I never would have started it. If I had known the love it would teach me, the choices it would ask me to make, the magic I would find; I would never have gone into the theater, never begged my mom to stop at the bookstore, or never waited outside the post office. The same way that Harry would never have chosen for his parents to die or to be the one destined by the prophecy. I didn’t know what these books would teach me or what the stories would do to my heart. I just read them. I learned and I grew. I didn’t know what 2020 would bring but I’m still here. I’m still preaching and talking to friends and family. I’m still posting this obnoxiously long blog. I’m still learning and growing. As i do that. As we do that; continue to live and work and exist in a broken world it comes down to one question. In fact, after all these words and all these stories it comes back to the same question:
Which magic is the most powerful?
Fear or Love?
A desire for power and control or a willingness to sacrifice and surrender?
I can’t answer that for you.
As for myself, I think I’m with Dumbledore on this one. I think Jesus is too.