HArry Potter Essay

A t Malfoy Manor, Snape tells Voldemort the date that Harry’s friends are planning to move him from the house on Privet Drive to a new safe location, so that Voldemort can capture Harry en route.
As Harry packs to leave Privet Drive, he reads two obituaries for Dumbledore, both of which make him think that he didn’t know Dumbledore as well as he should have. Downstairs, he bids good-bye to the Dursleys for the final time, as the threat of Voldemort forces them to go into hiding themselves.
The Order of the Phoenix, led by Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, arrives to take Harry to his new home at the Weasleys’ house, the Burrow. Six of Harry’s friends take Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as Harry and act as decoys, and they all fly off in different directions. The Death Eaters, alerted to their departure by Snape, attack Harry and his friends. Voldemort chases Harry down, but Harry’s wand fends Voldemort off, seemingly without Harry’s help.
Harry arrives at the Burrow, and when his friends get there, he learns that Moody has been killed and George Weasley maimed in the chase. Harry begins to have visions in which he sees what Voldemort is doing through Voldemort’s eyes, and witnesses Voldemort interrogating a wand maker, trying to find out how to defeat Harry.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione assemble the books and tools necessary to embark on the quest that Dumbledore left them: to find and destroy the Horcruxes into which Voldemort placed fragments of his soul, making himself immortal as long as the objects survive. Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister of Magic, delivers to them the items Dumbledore left them in his will. Harry is left the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match, as well as the Sword of Gryffindor, which Scrimgeour does not give him, claiming it did not belong to Dumbledore. Ron is left a device called a Deluminator that turns lights off, and Hermione is left a book of wizard fairy tales. None of them have any idea what the items mean.
The Weasleys host the wedding of their son Bill to Fleur Delacour. At the reception, Harry hears Ron’s Aunt Muriel telling terrible rumors about Dumbledore: that his sister was a Squib (a non-magical person born to wizard parents) kept prisoner by her family, and that Dumbledore had dabbled in the Dark Arts as a young man. The wedding is interrupted by Death Eaters, as Voldemort has taken over the Ministry of Magic and is now in charge of the wizarding world.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione Disapparate (i.e., teleport) to a busy street in London, where they are soon attacked by Death Eaters. They find safe haven in the enchanted house left to Harry by Sirius Black, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. There, they discover the significance of the letters R.A.B. In the previous book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Dumbledore had undergone trials to find a locket that Voldemort had made into a Horcrux, but at the end they found that the locket had been stolen, with a fake locket and note left behind, signed R.A.B. Now, they see that the initials belong to Sirius’s dead younger brother, Regulus Arcturus Black, who had been one of Voldemort’s followers. They remember that they have seen a locket in the house that is now gone.
Harry and his friends summon Kreacher, the house-elf who came with the house. Kreacher explains that Voldemort had used him to test the magical defenses guarding the locket, having borrowed him from Regulus. Afterward, Regulus had a change of heart about serving Voldemort, and Kreacher had helped him to steal the locket and leave the fake one in its place. The real locket had been in Kreacher’s possession for many years, but was recently stolen by Mundungus Fletcher. Harry orders Kreacher to find Mundungus and bring him back.
Kreacher returns later with Mundungus, who reveals that the locket was confiscated from him by Dolores Umbridge, a senior official at the Ministry of Magic. Ron, Harry, and Hermione disguise themselves as Ministry employees and sneak into the Ministry, stealing the locket from Umbridge, while witnessing the Ministry’s efforts to persecute wizards who don’t come from pureblood wizard families.
As they Disapparate back to the house on Grimmauld Place, Hermione accidentally leads one of the Death Eaters inside the protective enchantments, so they are forced to abandon the house and go on the run, moving from place to place and camping in the woods. They don’t know where to look for the next Horcrux, and they don’t know how to destroy the locket, which is protected by powerful magic. Harry has a vision of Voldemort tracking down another famous wand maker and looking for a young man who stole a wand.
One night, in the forest, Harry and friends overhear a goblin saying that the Sword of Gryffindor that had been in the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts is a fake. Harry realizes that the real Sword of Gryffindor has the power to destroy Horcruxes, and that they need to find it. Ron, frustrated at their lack of progress, gets fed up and abandons Harry and Hermione.
Harry and Hermione go to Godric’s Hollow, where they visit the graves of Harry’s parents and see the house where he lived before Voldemort killed them. An old woman named Bathilda Bagshot leads them into her house, and they follow, hoping that she knew Dumbledore and can give them the sword, but she turns out to be dead, her body inhabited by Voldemort’s snake, Nagini. They barely escape, and Harry’s wand is destroyed in the fight.
Harry reads the new (and malicious) biography of Dumbledore, which claims that Dumbledore helped the Dark wizard Grindelwald as a young man and may have been responsible for his own sister’s death. Harry recognizes in a photograph in the book the young man whom Voldemort is seeking, and it is Grindelwald.
One night, while Harry is keeping watch, a silver doe Patronus appears and leads him to the Sword of Gryffindor, buried beneath the ice in a pond. Harry dives in, and the locket Horcrux around his neck tries to strangle him. Ron, who has returned, saves Harry, recovers the sword, and destroys the locket.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to visit Xenophilius Lovegood, because Hermione has discovered a strange symbol in the book Dumbledore left her, and they had seen Xenophilius wearing it. Xenophilius explains that the symbol represents the Deathly Hallows, three objects—the Elder Wand, Resurrection Stone, and Invisibility Cloak—that were made by Death and that give the owner of the three objects mastery over death.
Xenophilius betrays them to the Death Eaters, hoping to free his daughter Luna, whom the Ministry has imprisoned, and they narrowly escape from his house. Harry is tempted to pursue the Hallows and abandon his quest for the Horcruxes. Harry accidentally says Voldemort’s name, which triggers a tracking spell, and they are caught by Voldemort’s followers and taken to Malfoy Manor.
At Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix Lestrange tortures Hermione for information about where they got the sword they are carrying, since she thought it was in her vault at Gringotts bank. She is very concerned about anything else they might have taken. Dobby, the Malfoys’ former house-elf, helps Harry and his friends to escape, along with Ollivander the wand maker, Luna Lovegood, and Griphook the goblin. Harry takes them all to Ron’s brother Bill’s cottage.
Harry guesses that Voldemort has a Horcrux stored in Bellatrix’s vault, since she seemed so worried about it, and he persuades Griphook the goblin to help him break into the vault. With Griphook’s help, Harry, Ron, and Hermione break in and steal the Hufflepuff Cup from the vault, then escape on the back of a dragon.
Harry learns from a vision of Voldemort’s that the final Horcrux is at Hogwarts, so they travel to the nearby village of Hogsmeade. There they meet Aberforth, Dumbledore’s brother, who helps them get into Hogwarts through a painting by summoning Neville Longbottom, who has been organizing meetings of Dumbledore’s Army in the hidden Room of Requirement. Harry asks the members of the D.A., who are all his supporters, if they can think of an important item associated with the school, hoping such an item might be the final Horcrux. The Ravenclaw students tell him about the lost diadem of Ravenclaw.
While Harry looks for the diadem, the professors and students of Hogwarts rally to his defense, having been warned that Voldemort is on his way. Voldemort and his followers attack the school in a great battle, and Harry finds and destroys the diadem Horcrux.
Harry witnesses Voldemort murdering Snape in order to take possession of Dumbledore’s powerful wand (since Snape killed Dumbledore, Snape is presumably the wand’s true master until someone kills him). Before he dies, Snape gives Harry his memories, extracted for viewing in the Pensieve.
Harry goes to the Pensieve in the headmaster’s office and views the most important moments of Snape’s life. He learns that he has been completely mistaken about Snape, who loved Harry’s mother, Lily Potter, his whole life. Snape had spent his entire adult life spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore and working to protect Harry.
From one of Snape’s conversations with Dumbledore, Harry learns that there’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside him (Harry is in fact the final Horcrux), and that he will have to let Voldemort kill him before Voldemort can die. He goes into the forest and lets Voldemort kill him, then wakes up in a dreamlike version of King’s Cross train station, where Dumbledore meets him and tells him that he hasn’t died, and that the protective charm Lily Potter placed on Harry is kept alive inside of Voldemort, because Voldemort used Harry’s blood to reconstitute himself. Thus, Voldemort could not kill Harry, and Harry can now go back and finish him off.
Voldemort takes Harry, whom he believes to be dead, back to Hogwarts to demand its surrender. The students and teachers defy Voldemort, and Neville uses the Sword of Gryffindor to kill the giant snake, Nagini, which was the last Horcrux keeping Voldemort invulnerable. A final battle erupts, and Harry reveals that he’s still alive, going on to kill Voldemort in a duel.
In an Epilogue set nineteen years later, Harry is married to Ginny and is sending their children to Hogwarts. Ron and Hermione are married, and their families are both thriving. haracter List
Harry Potter - The protagonist of the novel, who turns seventeen during the course of the book. Harry is a courageous and determined young wizard who has decided not to return to Hogwarts school, instead pursuing a quest that Dumbledore left him to find and destroy Horcruxes, magic items that keep Lord Voldemort alive. Harry is consistently faithful to his quest throughout the book, though he struggles with self-doubt and wonders whether Dumbledore truly loved him. He is accompanied on his quest by Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
Read an in-depth analysis of Harry Potter.
Ron Weasley - Harry Potter’s best friend and companion for most of the book. Ron is the same age as Harry and has also left Hogwarts to accompany Harry on his quest. He displays bravery, resourcefulness, and loyalty to Harry, though he also has to overcome his own immaturity and his self-doubt at playing second fiddle to Harry. He is in love with Hermione Granger.
Read an in-depth analysis of Ron Weasley.
Hermione Granger - Harry and Ron’s classmate and companion, and Ron’s girlfriend. Hermione is the smartest and most focused of the three friends, and her meticulous planning and exhaustive research into the quest help them time and time again. She is also surprisingly resourceful under pressure, rescuing them from scrapes in very thoughtful and farsighted ways. She is extremely hard on herself for the few mistakes she does make—as are Ron and Harry. Hermione is a so-called Mudblood, an offensive term meaning a witch or wizard born to non-magical parents.
Albus Dumbledore - The former headmaster of Hogwarts, and Harry’s friend and mentor, until his death, just before the events of this book. Dumbledore is extremely clever and farsighted, having laid the plans for Harry’s quest very thoroughly, but he is very cryptic, and Harry comes to doubt his wisdom. Dumbledore’s character and accomplishments come under attack throughout the course of the book. Dumbledore founded the Order of the Phoenix, a group of wizards dedicated to fighting Voldemort.
Severus Snape - The man who killed Dumbledore, and a professor at Hogwarts, who later becomes headmaster. Before killing Dumbledore, Snape had been both a member of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix and one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters. Dumbledore steadfastly believed Snape to be spying for him against Voldemort, and Voldemort believed Snape to be his spy against Dumbledore. Though numerous members of the Order and the Death Eaters suspect Snape of being a traitor to their respective causes, Snape’s true loyalties are a mystery throughout most of the series. .
Read an in-depth analysis of Severus Snape.
Remus Lupin - Harry’s former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and good friend. Lupin is a werewolf and member of the Order of the Phoenix. He marries Nymphadora Tonks and becomes a father.
Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody - An Auror, or Dark Wizard hunter, and a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Moody is heavily scarred from his battles with Dark wizards and wears a magic eyeball that’s always in motion.
Dudley Dursley - Harry’s cousin, whom we know from the rest of the series to be an overweight, spoiled bully. Harry rescued him from a dementor attack two summers before.
Vernon Dursley - Harry’s uncle, an overweight, angry man who knows that Harry is a wizard but hates to hear any mention of wizards or magic.
Petunia Dursley - Harry’s aunt, the sister of his dead mother Lily, who was a witch. Aunt Petunia has always hated wizards (and Harry) as much as her husband.
Molly Weasley - Ron Weasley’s mother, the formidable matriarch of the large Weasley family, a family of pureblood wizards.
Arthur Weasley - The father of the Weasley family, and an employee of the Ministry of Magic. Arthur has always had a fondness for and curiosity about the Muggle (non-wizarding) world, which has kept him from advancing very far in his career at the Ministry. When Voldemort’s Death Eaters take over the Ministry, his safety is imperiled as well.
Fred and George Weasley - Ron’s older brothers, identical twins whom few people can tell apart. They are highly mischievous but loyal to Harry, who was in their house at Hogwarts and who gave them the money to start a magic shop.
Bill Weasley - The oldest of the Weasley brothers, who lives in a cottage by the sea. He marries Fleur Delacour.
Percy Weasley - The third-oldest Weasley brother, a prig who works for the Ministry of Magic and takes a long time to perceive its corruption and evil. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Percy cut off ties with the rest of his family because he sided with the Ministry against Dumbledore and Harry, and he remains estranged from them at the beginning of this book.
Ginny Weasley - Ron’s younger sister, and formerly Harry’s girlfriend. Ginny is a member of Dumbledore’s Army and has proven herself a tough and resilient ally even before getting together with Harry. Harry broke up with Ginny when he realized that no one would be safe with him as long as Voldemort is alive.
Nymphadora Tonks - A young Auror and member of the Order of the Phoenix. She hates her first name and insists on being called simply Tonks. She marries Remus Lupin and has a son by him.
Ted Tonks - Nymphadora Tonks’s father. He is a Mudblood, and so becomes a target of the Ministry under Voldemort.
Rufus Scrimgeour - The Minister of Magic who replaces Cornelius Fudge. Like his predecessor, Scrimgeour is too obtuse or too cowardly to oppose Voldemort outright, and he does not trust Dumbledore or Harry. He is killed when Voldemort takes over the Ministry and installs his own puppet.
Dean Thomas - Harry’s fellow student and fellow Gryffindor. Dean is on the run from the Ministry for much of the novel, unable to prove that his parents were wizards. He crosses paths with Harry several times.
Griphook - A goblin who worked at Gringotts bank. Griphook is resentful of wizards in general, but sees Voldemort’s regime as particularly bad for goblin freedom and autonomy.
Fleur Delacour - A beautiful young woman recently graduated from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic (located presumably in France). Fleur is loyal to Harry, who once saved her younger sister. She marries Bill Weasley.
Aunt Muriel - Ron’s obnoxious and outspoken aunt, who knows all the old rumors about Dumbledore’s past.
Elphias Doge - A member of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s oldest friend. He writes Dumbledore’s obituary for the Daily Prophet.
Rita Skeeter - The notoriously aggressive and deceitful tabloid journalist who tormented Harry and his friends two years earlier during the Triwizard Tournament. Skeeter has recently published a tell-all biography of Dumbledore.
Bathilda Bagshot - A senile old woman who knew Dumbledore’s mother, Kendra, and who started many of the rumors about Dumbledore’s family. She is Rita Skeeter’s source for much of the biography.
Ollivander - A famous English wand maker, who made both Voldemort’s and Harry’s wands.
Gregorovitch - A famous European wand maker, and Ollivander’s only serious competition.
Gellert Grindelwald - A powerful Dark wizard, second only to Lord Voldemort in his destructiveness. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in a famous duel in 1945. Grindelwald is a prisoner in Nurmengard.
Kendra Dumbledore - Dumbledore’s mother, who died during his final year as a student at Hogwarts. Kendra is rumored to have been a terrifying and controlling woman who shunned contact with other wizards out of shame about her imprisoned husband and Squib daughter.
Ariana Dumbledore - Dumbledore’s younger sister, who died soon after their mother. Ariana was kept out of sight of the world, and is rumored to have been a Squib—a person born to wizard parents who has no magical abilities.
Aberforth Dumbledore - Dumbledore’s younger brother. Less intellectually accomplished than Dumbledore, he is rumored to have broken Dumbledore’s nose at Ariana’s funeral and been estranged from Dumbledore since.
Phineas Nigellus Black - A deceased former headmaster of Hogwarts, and one of Sirius’s ancestors. Phineas speaks to various characters from his portraits in Sirius’s house and the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts—which he can move between at will.
Regulus Arcturus Black - Sirius’s younger brother, who was a Death Eater during Voldemort’s previous reign, and who died young.
Kreacher - The bitter and unkempt house-elf at number twelve Grimmauld Place, who betrayed Sirius Black, leading to his death.
Dobby - The former house-elf of the Malfoys; Harry tricked Lucius into freeing him. He has been for several years a free house-elf, which is very rare. Dobby is very loyal to Harry.
Luna Lovegood - A classmate of Harry’s who belongs to Ravenclaw House. Like other Ravenclaws, Luna is highly intelligent and perceptive, but also rather dreamy and otherworldly. She is a devoted friend of Harry, Ron, and Hermione and a member of Dumbledore’s Army, the outlawed Hogwarts club of Dumbledore loyalists.
Xenophilius Lovegood - Luna’s father, who shares her interest in unusual plants, animals, and objects, but who is priggish and pompous in a way Luna is not. Xenophilius wears an unusual triangular symbol resembling an eye.
Neville Longbottom - A student in Harry’s class, who for most of the series has been a pathetic weakling, unable to remember his lessons or perform magic properly. In previous novels we learn that his parents were Aurors (Dark wizard hunters) who were tortured and driven insane by the Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange. In this novel, he transforms himself into the heroic leader of Dumbledore’s Army and the underground resistance to Snape, filling Harry’s role in his absence.
Mary Cattermole - A witch accused of being a Mudblood by the Ministry of Magic.
Runcorn - A powerful member of the Ministry of Magic under Voldemort, and a Death Eater.
Mafalda Hopkirk - A low-level functionary at the Ministry of Magic.
Lily Potter - Harry’s mother, who died when Harry was one. Lily turns out to have played a significant role in Severus Snape’s life.
Lord Voldemort - The most powerful evil wizard who ever lived, recently restored to his body and full powers after fourteen years. When Harry was one year old, Voldemort murdered Harry’s parents and tried to murder Harry, but his curse rebounded upon him and tore his soul from his body, and made him lose most of his powers. Voldemort comes to control the Ministry of Magic and causes the death of untold numbers of Muggles and wizards. He is obsessed with figuring out why Harry keeps defeating him or slipping out of his grasp, and will stop at nothing to find a way to kill Harry.
Bellatrix Lestrange - One of Voldemort’s most loyal, trusted, and fearsome followers, whom Voldemort freed from Azkaban prison. She is the sister of Narcissa Malfoy and aunt to both Draco Malfoy and Nymphadora Tonks.
Lucius Malfoy - One of Voldemort’s followers, and the father of Harry’s classmate, Draco. Lucius was a very wealthy and powerful man during Voldemort’s absence, but now Voldemort routinely abuses and humiliates him for not being loyal enough to find and help Voldemort when he was exiled from his body.
Narcissa Malfoy - Lucius’s wife, the mother of Draco, and sister of Bellatrix.
Draco Malfoy - Harry’s former classmate and nemesis through much of the series. Draco is a thoroughly nasty and despicable boy, but he has not yet done anything heinous enough (such as killing someone) to make him a confirmed villain.
Yaxley - One of Voldemort’s Death Eaters.
Amycus and Alecto Carrow - Brother and sister Death Eaters who enforce discipline at Hogwarts, torturing students and teaching them to torture each other.
Dolores Umbridge - Formerly (and briefly) the head of Hogwarts, and now a senior member of the Ministry of Magic. Umbridge is thoroughly evil, delighting in punishing others and using rules and regulations to persecute people, though she is apparently not one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters. She is in charge of finding and punishing Mudbloods for the Ministry.
Fenrir Greyback - A werewolf who serves Lord Voldemort.
Minerva McGonagall - A professor at Hogwarts, and head of Gryffindor House. A stiff-backed, proper schoolmistress, she is loyal to Harry, Dumbledore, and Hogwarts, and possessed of great courage.
Pansy Parkinson - A student and member of Slytherin House. She is devoted to Draco Malfoy and hates Harry.
Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle - Students at Hogwarts, and Draco Malfoy’s followers. They are brutish, stupid, and cruel.
The Gray Lady - The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower. In life, she was Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw, the founder of Ravenclaw House.
Analysis of Major Characters
Harry Potter
Harry’s defining traits, as they have been throughout the series, are bravery, determination, and self-sacrifice. A true Gryffindor, Harry responds to every crisis with courage and resolve. It would simply never occur to Harry to abandon his quest or to choose some other life. Not that he has any viable alternatives. He has no home and no family to go to, he’s wanted by the Ministry, and he can’t go back to Hogwarts. But more important than these considerations, his destiny—to be the boy who defeats Voldemort—is so ingrained in his identity that he can’t imagine trying to avoid it.
However, Harry is not the most focused or relentless hero, at least not until later in the book. His tendency to stray from his quest is not literal or physical, but mental and emotional. When there are no clear leads and nothing to do, Harry cannot command the sort of focus that Hermione can, digging around in books for clues, racking her brains until something occurs to her. At these moments, Harry tends to lose focus and drift, following his emotions. This happens most dangerously in Godric’s Hollow, when Harry leads them into a trap, his real reasons for going there having nothing to do with the quest and everything to do with his grief and doubt concerning Dumbledore.
This doubt is what leads him astray in his quest. Harry is first concerned that Dumbledore was not forthcoming about his own life, and now cannot ask him about it. Then he thinks that Dumbledore didn’t tell him enough to help with the quest, and questions his motives. Finally, he comes to believe that Dumbledore didn’t love him, and that Dumbledore didn’t deserve his love. Harry’s journey is an emotional one, in which he learns to come to terms with the dead, and learns to believe in Dumbledore again so he can complete his quest without his doubts getting in the way.
Severus Snape
Chapter Thirty-Three brings us the long-awaited truth about Snape, beginning with his childhood and stretching almost to his death. After reading his life story, we see the explanations of many of the mysteries and enigmas that have surrounded this character, and yet he remains full of intriguing contradictions.
As a child he both is and is not an appealing and likable character. We want to take his side, because he has a father who doesn’t love him and a mother who dresses him, to his humiliation, in ugly rags. Also appealing is his obvious devotion to Lily, his urgent desire to make her his friend. And yet he has already developed unattractive qualities out of his reaction to the obstacles he faces. He is secretive and closed to most people, and resentful of most of the world. He wants to be special, and wants to have a special friend in Lily, scorning her Muggle sister. And in his secretiveness and desire to be special, he is somewhat sneaky, opening Petunia’s letter and telling Lily about it.
These contradictions continue during his school years at Hogwarts, and come between him and Lily. He continues to adore her and stay loyal to her, but his contempt for the Muggles who mistreated him and his desire to be special lead him into pureblood views that are offensive to Lily, and lead him to associate with other Slytherins who see themselves as special and superior. His need to cling to Lily, which is the downside of his loyalty to her, leads him to jealously resent James Potter. He develops a mixture of bad qualities partially redeemed by his loyalty and love.
After Lily tells him that they’re no longer friends, Snape joins Voldemort and becomes a Death Eater. The one unforgivable thing he does is to tell Voldemort about Professor Trelawney’s prediction regarding the boy who can destroy Voldemort, unwittingly putting Lily Potter’s life in jeopardy. Yet Dumbledore offers him a chance to redeem himself, and Snape remains true to his promise even after Lily dies, staying faithful to her by protecting her son. Thereafter, the mixture of bad and good qualities is more a matter of surface appearance. On the surface, Snape appears to be greasy, sinister, and vindictive, but he is in reality the bravest and most reliable of Dumbledore’s supporters.
Ron Weasley
Ron is tested and forced to evolve in this book in a way that Hermione is not. His abandonment of Harry and Hermione in the forest is an act that we really don’t expect from him, and in order for us to forgive him and accept his return, we need to see, as with Harry, the visible proof of what his struggle really is.
Part of the reason for Ron’s departure (aside from the negative influence of the Horcrux, which only exacerbates problems that are already there) seems to be simple immaturity. Ron has always been well fed, both at home and at school, and is quite greedy about food. When they’re on their own, he expects Hermione to feed him and take care of him, showing that he’s still basically a child. The same dynamic applies to the quest. Ron is brave and loyal enough when he’s along for the ride on one of Harry’s adventures, but the idea that Harry doesn’t know what he’s doing makes him very uncomfortable, because Ron needs to be told what to do.
When Ron comes back, however, and we see his fears manifested by the Horcrux before Ron destroys it, we see that his problem runs deeper. Always playing second fiddle to Harry, Ron does not believe that he could actually be loved—not by his girlfriend, not even by his own mother. When he accepts that he is loved, he is able to grow up and take responsibility for his part in the quest, no longer needing others to prove their love by coddling him. hemes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Difficulty of Loving the Dead
Harry spends the entire book struggling to complete a quest that his friend and mentor, Dumbledore, charged him with before he died. Harry consistently does his best to do what Dumbledore has asked of him, but the hardest thing about the quest is not its danger or mystery. Instead, it’s the doubts Harry feels about whether Dumbledore really loved him. When Harry learns that Dumbledore had a mother and sister buried in the same place as Harry’s parents, Harry wonders why Dumbledore didn’t tell him. When he can’t figure out what to do next, he wonders why Dumbledore didn’t give him the information he needs to complete the quest. Faced with the constant presence of Rita Skeeter’s malicious biography, he even starts to wonder whether Dumbledore was worthy of his love and respect at all. The struggle to keep faith with Dumbledore is every bit as important to the novel as the struggle to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes.
Harry’s story demonstrates that the reason it’s so difficult to love the dead is that it’s hard to believe that they love you. They can no longer explain their actions or profess their love, and it’s easy to believe that they are simply gone, past caring about or loving anyone. This perception overpowers Harry on his visit to his parents’ graves. He is drawn to Godric’s Hollow because he longs to find some connection both to his parents and to Dumbledore, but all the trip brings him is the sense that they are gone and cannot hear him or answer back, ever.
And yet the book’s message regarding dead friends is extremely optimistic. The epigraph from William Penn declares that friends cannot be separated by death, though it takes Harry the entire book to find the truth of this. When Harry finally lets go of his fears that Dumbledore didn’t love him, he is rewarded with an inner Dumbledore—a Dumbledore in his own mind—who is so vivid and realistic that he is in a sense the real thing. Only then does Harry recapture his own love for Dumbledore.
The Importance of Second Chances
Much earlier in the series, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, various characters speak of Dumbledore’s unusual, even extravagant belief in second chances. When people mention this about Dumbledore, they usually mean to imply that he is somehow gullible or imprudent. Harry and Ron refuse to believe that Snape might once have been a Death Eater but has since reformed—so Dumbledore’s belief in second chances is simply the explanation for how Dumbledore must have been fooled.
In this book, we see in a number of cases how wise Dumbledore really was. Most dramatically, we see how Snape turned his entire life around after he placed Lily Potter in danger, becoming Voldemort’s most trusted servant so that he could spy on him and protect Harry. Snape’s efforts proved indispensable to Harry and Dumbledore time and time again. Dumbledore remarks casually that “we sort too soon,” meaning that Snape might have been erroneously sorted into Slytherin house as a young man, and implying that his bravery might make him better suited to Gryffindor—if only the Sorting Hat could have taken into account how much Snape changed for the better.
We also see the reason why Dumbledore learns to give second chances, when we learn of his true early history. Faced with a sister irreparably damaged in an attack by Muggle boys, and with a father imprisoned for life for attacking those boys, Dumbledore briefly dreams of a world in which wizards rule Muggles for their own good. He quickly repents and spends a lifetime trying to repair his mistake, but he also retains a tolerance for others’ mistakes and a perception that love is a powerful motivator, capable of redeeming a person’s worst misdeeds.
Finally, we see that Dumbledore is wise enough to see the flaws in Ron’s character and foresee the mistake Ron will make, giving up on Harry when things get too tough and there’s no one to lead Ron or provide for him. So Dumbledore arranges for Ron’s second chance ahead of time, bequeathing him the Deluminator that will lead Ron back to Harry and Hermione when he’s ready to rise to the occasion.
Keeping Faith with the Dead
The only person capable of planning and orchestrating Voldemort’s downfall is Dumbledore, because no one but he has the wisdom or knowledge to piece together what Voldemort has done and figure out how to undo it. And yet Dumbledore knows that this difficult work will only be completed after his death. Not only Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but also Snape, Lupin, Moody, and all the members of the Order of the Phoenix have to keep doing their part after Dumbledore’s death, carrying out his vision. As we have seen, believing in Dumbledore’s quest after he is dead is not easy for Harry, nor is it for any of the others.
But Dumbledore is not the only dead character who needs the loyalty and love of the living. Snape is a loyal follower of Dumbledore, but his loyalty and bravery are really a manifestation of his need to stay loyal to Lily Potter, keeping faith with the woman he loved after her death. Dobby the house-elf gets himself killed saving Harry and his friends from Malfoy Manor, and the process of burying Dobby helps put Harry into a better frame of mind about his mission. There is no mystery about Dobby or his death: Bellatrix kills Dobby for helping Harry, and Dobby dies in Harry’s arms, and all Harry can do is honor the house-elf’s memory and try not to let that memory down. This experience snaps Harry out of his ambivalence toward Dumbledore, reminding him that he made a promise to his dead friend that he needs to honor.
Motifs
Rumor and Gossip
Rita Skeeter’s malicious biography of Dumbledore pops up throughout the book, beginning with its advance press alongside Dumbledore’s obituary in Chapter Two. True to form (as we have seen in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) Rita Skeeter is ruthlessly exploitative in getting her story, and she distorts the truth when she digs it up. Apart from Skeeter, Aunt Muriel is a similarly malicious gossip, as is the busybody Bathilda Bagshot, the original source for all the Dumbledore gossip. What is most remarkable about the blend of half-truths and lies that make up Skeeter’s writing, and gossip in general, is that it’s so hard for the characters not to believe. Harry has seen with his own eyes stories by Skeeter that he knows to be false from start to finish, yet her lies about Dumbledore work on him until he breaks down and doubts Dumbledore.
Mastering Death
References to “mastering death” occur throughout the book. The inscription on the gravestone of Harry’s parents reads “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” reminding Harry that Voldemort’s chief ambition, and that of the Death Eaters, is to master death. The Deathly Hallows are supposedly objects that will allow the owner to master death. The meaning of this phrase is ambiguous and changes in different contexts. What Voldemort seems to want, and what the Hallows as a whole seem to promise, is immortality—freedom from ever dying. Being able to kill others is another way of being master of death, as exemplified by the Elder Wand and by the green rays of the Killing Curse. Still another way to master death is by resurrecting dead loved ones, as the second brother in the Hallows does, as Dumbledore tries to do, and as Harry himself longs to do. Ultimately, the only true way to master death is to continue loving and believing in those who have died.
Avada Kedavra
Avada Kedavra, the Killing Curse, is used again and again in this book by Voldemort and his followers. When we first learn about it, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we are told that it is one of the Unforgivable Curses, and its performance is rare. With Voldemort in power, it has become ubiquitous, demonstrating Voldemort’s disregard for human life. Harry casts the other two Unforgivable Curses (Cruciatus and Imperius, torture and mind control), but he never casts or tries to cast this curse, not even when Lupin urges him to, and not even to kill Voldemort. Voldemort’s death is ultimately brought about by his own Avada Kedavra backfiring upon him.
Symbols
The Resurrection Stone
The Resurrection Stone, one of the Deathly Hallows, represents the desire to bring back the dead. More specifically, it represents the danger of that desire when pushed to the point of actually trying to resurrect the dead. Dumbledore ruined his hand and eventually brought about his own death by trying to use it to speak with his parents and sister, and the brother in the Hallows story found himself drawn to suicide after using the Stone. This danger is further symbolized by the fact that it is cracked, that it is cursed (having been one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes), and that it appeared on the ring of the wicked Marvolo Gaunt.
The Elder Wand
The Elder Wand, the first of the three Hallows, is a wand that ensures that its master will win any duel. No one can truly possess it without defeating its former owner. Since defeating the owner in a duel is impossible, this feat is always accomplished by stealth, murder, or surprise attack. Thus, the Wand symbolizes both the thirst for unbridled power and the folly of believing that power and violence can keep you safe. From the first possessor of the wand onward, the wand has brought death to those who owned it.
The Locket Horcrux
The locket Horcrux that Harry and his friends recover from Umbridge is, like all of the Horcruxes, cursed. It tries to kill Harry by strangling him when he’s underwater, it burns itself into his flesh when he’s fighting Nagini, and it keeps him from summoning his Patronus by exerting an almost imperceptible negative influence on the emotions of those who wear it. Nevertheless, its main function in the plot is not as a magical item or one that can act to produce serious consequences. Instead, it seems to symbolize whatever is within each of the characters that they have to overcome within themselves. With Ron, it helps exacerbate his discomfort and childishness until he abandons Harry. When Umbridge has it on, it brings out her own characteristic flaw—her penchant for lying.
Epigraphs–Chapter One
Summary: Epigraphs
The novel is preceded by two epigraphs. The first, a passage from Aeschylus’s play The Libation Bearers, laments the violent death and torment that humans are subject to, but holds out the hope that the children of those who suffer may live to triumph.
The second epigraph comes from William Penn’s More Fruits of Solitude and states that friendship is immortal, able to survive the death of one of the friends.
Summary: Chapter One: The Dark Lord Ascending
Snape and the Death Eater Yaxley meet outside of Lucius Malfoy’s house and proceed inside, taking seats at a table where Voldemort and his followers are already assembled. A bound figure dangles upside down above the center of the table, hanging by a rope.
Snape tells Voldemort that Harry Potter is to be moved from his place of safety on the next Saturday at nightfall. Yaxley claims that he has heard contradictory intelligence, and that Harry is to be moved later, on the thirtieth of the month. Voldemort indicates that he knows the source of Snape’s intelligence, and he makes it plain that he believes Snape rather than Yaxley.
Yaxley, still seeking Voldemort’s approval, reveals that he has corrupted a member of the Ministry of Magic, a wizard named Pius Thicknesse. Yaxley reports that several Death Eaters are also positioned within the department of Magical Transport, making them better able to track Harry if he tries to travel by magical means. Voldemort announces that he plans to capture Harry while he is being transported.
A loud wailing, seemingly arising from below the floor, interrupts the gathering. Voldemort sends Wormtail out of the room to quiet “the prisoner” (presumably not the one above the table, since the sound comes from below and Wormtail has to leave the room to quiet the prisoner in question).
Voldemort makes Lucius Malfoy lend him his wand. Voldemort taunts Lucius and the rest of the Malfoy family, accusing them of being uncomfortable with his presence. Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy’s sister, declares that his presence is the greatest possible pleasure, but Voldemort taunts all of them about the fact that Narcissa and Bellatrix’s niece (Nymphadora Tonks) has just married Remus Lupin, the werewolf.
Finally, Voldemort turns the room’s attention to the bound prisoner above the table, revealing it to be Charity Burbage, a Hogwarts professor who taught Muggle Studies and promoted the view that Muggles are not so different from Wizards, and that the increasing prevalence of Mudbloods is a good thing. Charity Burbage appeals to Snape, who does nothing to help her, and Voldemort kills her with the Killing Curse.
Analysis: Epigraphs–Chapter One
The two epigraphs are a startling way for the book to begin, because they’re not what we might expect of the Harry Potter series. While the books in the series have steadily evolved, with the first three being clearly children’s literature, and the subsequent ones being longer, darker, and featuring more challenging and ambitious themes, the epigraph from Aeschylus goes a step further in this direction, associating the new book with great literature, specifically tragedy. The series has not abandoned its roots, and it will indeed contain a lot of action, with wizards in black masks zipping around on broomsticks, shooting green death rays that miss Harry by millimeters. But the epigraphs alert us to the fact that the book presents themes and conflicts that run deeper than the action-oriented plot, and the epigraphs tell us exactly what those themes are.
As in the Aeschylus passage, Harry will have to confront the death and suffering of those he loves and struggle with the question of whether that suffering can somehow be redeemed by his own struggles. Harry has already lost very close friends, most notably Dumbledore and Sirius, and he will spend much of the book wrestling with the question of whether those friendships have been extinguished forever, or if he can somehow commune with the dead. The quote from William Penn clearly expresses that dead friends are not lost to us—though it will not be clear to Harry for a long while how to achieve the perfect communion that Penn describes, which truly seems to banish death.
The first chapter shines a spotlight on Severus Snape, that most fascinating of characters in the series. Throughout the previous books, Snape has intrigued us by showing contradictions that have never really been resolved. He has always seemed to hate Harry, and he cuts a very villainish figure, with his icy manner and association with Slytherin House. Later, we find out that he was a Death Eater—a servant of Voldemort. Yet he saved Harry’s life in the first book, and we’ve seen that Dumbledore’s trust in him was virtually unshakable, and that he supposedly spied for Dumbledore on Voldemort. At the end of the last book, we saw Snape kill Dumbledore, apparently settling the question once and for all. And yet we expect more of this mysterious and complex character—we feel that we don’t know him and the reasons for his actions, as compared with clear-cut villains like Bellatrix Lestrange.
The first chapter follows Snape’s point of view but does not take us inside Snape’s mind or show us his emotions. Snape’s actions seem straightforwardly evil: he delivers excellent and damaging intelligence against Harry and the Order of the Phoenix, he is treated as Voldemort’s most trusted servant, and he lifts no finger to save his fellow Hogwarts professor. But because his point of view is presented objectively—from outside of his head—we are left to speculate what his motives are, and whether he still might not be what he seems.
The casual humiliation of the Malfoys is a final feature of the first chapter. This family (Draco’s parents) has always seemed rich, powerful, protected, sinister, and not particularly secretive about their longing for Voldemort’s return to power. But in the first of many reversals of this book in relation to the other books, the Malfoys, having gotten what they wanted, have had their house taken over and are themselves humiliated and disrespected, taunted about their discomfort and about their relative’s marriage to Lupin. Apparently, being a Death Eater does not pay. Voldemort himself is obeyed only out of fear, but he seems almost insecure about this fact, berating his followers for their lack of true loyalty and accusing them of disliking him or being uncomfortable in his presence. We know from previous books that the major thing distinguishing Voldemort from Harry is that Harry has love—he loves others and is loved back. Voldemort cannot love, and no one loves him, and he does not seem particularly comfortable with this arrangement.
Chapters Two–Three
Summary: Chapter Two: In Memoriam
Harry stumbles out of his room at the Dursleys’ house, clutching his bleeding hand. On his way to the bathroom he steps on a cup of tea inexplicably left outside of his bedroom door. After treating his finger and cleaning up the broken tea cup, he returns to his room, where he has spent the morning sorting the belongings in his school trunk into things he’ll no longer need, and a smaller pile of things he will keep with him now that he’s left Hogwarts and is about to leave the Dursleys’. He has just cut his finger on a shard of the mirror that Sirius gave him in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, of which all that now remains is the single shard.
Harry reads two newspaper articles commemorating Albus Dumbledore. “Albus Dumbledore Remembered,” by Dumbledore’s schoolmate and longtime friend, Elphias Doge, describes Dumbledore’s brilliant career at school, despite his having a father imprisoned at Azkaban for attacking Muggles; his relationship with his less intellectual younger brother, Aberforth; his struggles following the deaths of his mother and sister; his triumph over the Dark wizard Grindelwald in a famous duel in 1945; and his brilliant career as headmaster. Harry feels regret that he knew so little of what there was to know about Dumbledore’s life and wishes he’d asked Dumbledore about himself.
The second article is an interview with the journalist Rita Skeeter, who has just written a biography of Dumbledore called The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. In the interview, Skeeter indicates that her book debunks the supposed accomplishments that Dumbledore is famous for, reveals dark secrets about his family, and depicts Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry Potter in a sinister and unhealthy light. Disgusted by Skeeter’s lies, Harry puts down the paper.
Harry picks up the broken mirror shard, turning it in his hands as he thinks bitterly about Rita Skeeter’s lies. He catches a flash of bright blue in the shard, which reminds him of Dumbledore’s blue eyes. He decides he must have imagined it, because there’s nothing blue in the room that it could have been reflecting.
Summary: Chapter Three: The Dursleys Departing
Harry’s uncle Vernon summons Harry from his room. Harry goes downstairs to find all three Dursleys—Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley—sitting in the living room dressed for traveling. Uncle Vernon announces that he’s changed his mind: He doesn’t believe Harry that Uncle Vernon and the Dursleys are in danger, and he’s not going into hiding with the help of the Order of the Phoenix. Repeating a discussion they’ve had many times already, Harry explains that once he turns seventeen, the protection charm that keeps them all safe will break, and Voldemort and the Death Eaters will torture and kill the Dursleys. The Ministry of Magic cannot protect them because the Death Eaters have already infiltrated it.
Dudley breaks in and announces that he’s going to go with the representatives of the Order, so Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia have no choice but to acquiesce as well. Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle, members of the Order of the Phoenix, arrive to take the Dursleys into hiding. Dudley surprises his own family and Harry by inquiring where Harry is going to go. He surprises them even further by declaring that, in contrast to what Harry believes the Dursleys think of him, he does not consider Harry to be “a waste of space,” and declares that Harry saved his life. Harry realizes that Dudley actually is grateful for Harry’s saving him from the dementor that had attacked him the summer before, and that the tea cup outside his bedroom must have been put there by Dudley in a clumsy attempt at solicitude. Harry shakes hands with Dudley, and the Dursleys depart.
Analysis: Chapters Two–Three
Chapter Two establishes one of the main conflicts or problems of the book—one that has little to do with the fight against Voldemort. Harry has just lost someone he loved very much: Dumbledore. It’s bad enough that he no longer has Dumbledore’s presence, and can’t enjoy Dumbledore’s friendship or seek his help. What’s worse is that now that Dumbledore is gone, Harry feels doubt about what he actually had with Dumbledore. Clearly, there was much about Dumbledore that Harry never knew. But now those gaps loom large in Harry’s mind, and he wonders if he really knew Dumbledore at all, and if Dumbledore really loved him. Dumbledore might have been lying to him, or manipulating him, or he might not have been the man Harry thought he was. Harry doesn’t want to have these doubts, of course, but he can’t seem to shake them. The riddles and omissions in what Dumbledore told him, and even the obituary written by Dumbledore’s friend, all exacerbate these doubts and make them grow stronger. As Harry embarks on his quest and tries to fight Voldemort, the real struggle in the book will be the internal one, with Harry struggling with himself to trust Dumbledore and accept that Dumbledore loved him. This theme makes the book immeasurably richer, and justifies the presence of the lofty epigraphs that preface it.
Chapter Three brings us a familiar sight: the annual parting of ways with the Dursleys. Every book in the series has started in the summertime at the Dursleys’ house, with the Dursleys being the first problem to be overcome. This repeated structure is a literary device that not only establishes continuity across the series, but also allows us to mark how much the characters have changed from year to year, giving the series a greater sense of depth. But this time, all of the usual situations are reversed. Instead of Harry leaving, and the Dursleys keeping him from the magical world that they hate, the Dursleys have to flee, kowtowing to the wizarding world and being thrown to the mercy of wizards. The series has always maintained the irony of Harry being important in the secretive magic world but scorned as a waste of space in the Dursleys’ Muggle world, but this time the magical world has subordinated the normal world. Things are out of balance, and the reason is Voldemort’s rise to power. We get no reassuringly familiar spat with Dursleys, followed by Harry’s exit. This time, the Dursleys are the ones who exit first, their normal lives as they know them over.
Chapters Four–Five
Summary: Chapter Four: The Seven Potters
Harry looks around at the house, remembering sadly his younger self and the life he led in that place. Suddenly, an unexpectedly large contingent of wizards arrives in the backyard to escort Harry to his new place of safety. Hagrid is there, as well as Ron, Hermione, Fleur Delacour, Mad-Eye Moody, Fred and George Weasley, Bill Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, Tonks, Kingsley, and Mundungus Fletcher. Moody announces that they’ve had to change plans because Pius Thicknesse has gone over to Voldemort and all Ministry-regulated means of transportation are dangerous to them.
Moody’s new plan is to send Harry to Tonks’s parents’ house while six decoys go to other houses. Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Fleur, and Mundungus will take Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as Harry, and each of them will fly with one escort. Harry protests at putting his friends in danger by using them as decoys, but since everyone accepts the risk, he reluctantly agrees. Harry provides hairs for the potion, which the six designated decoys take, changing them into copies of Harry. Harry gets into the sidecar of a flying motorbike driven by Hagrid, and the entire party rises into the air.
Almost immediately, Harry and Hagrid find themselves surrounded by at least thirty hooded Death Eaters. They flee, with the Death Eaters in hot pursuit, shooting Killing Curses at them, one of which kills Harry’s owl, Hedwig. Harry tries to fend their pursuers off with spells, but when Hagrid shoots dragon fire out of the back of the motorbike, the sidecar splits off. Harry recognizes Stan Shunpike as one of the pursuers, and a Death Eater whom he does not recognize somehow identifies Harry as the real Harry Potter. The Death Eaters immediately depart, but quickly return with Voldemort himself, who is intent on killing Harry personally. Hagrid leaps onto a Death Eater’s broom and crashes to the ground. Threatened by Voldemort at close range, Harry feels his wand hand come up involuntarily and deliver a warding spell he doesn’t even recognize or know how to cast, shattering Voldemort’s wand, then Harry crashes the bike into a pond.
Summary: Chapter Five: Fallen Warrior
Harry wakes up, the injuries he sustained in the chase healed. He finds that he’s at Tonks’s parents’ house, and that Ted Tonks has healed both him and Hagrid. The protective charm on the house kept Voldemort and the Death Eaters from following them inside its boundaries. Harry promises to send Mr. Tonks word when he finds out what happened to Tonks (the daughter), and they use a Portkey to travel to the Burrow, the Weasley family home.
Hagrid and Harry find an anxious Mrs. Weasley awaiting them at the Burrow. None of the others who helped transport Harry has arrived yet. Lupin arrives with George Weasley, who has had his ear cut off by a curse from Snape, who was among the attackers. Realizing that they must have been betrayed, Lupin tests whether Harry is who he appears to be by asking what animal was in the room when Harry first met him in his office. Harry answers correctly that it was a grindylow. Lupin and Harry discuss how Harry must have revealed to the Death Eaters that he was the real Harry when he cast a Disarming spell on Stan Shunpike, not wanting to do mortal harm to a pursuer who may be under mind control. Lupin urges Harry to stop pulling punches, particularly when Disarming seems to have become Harry’s predictable signature spell. Kingsley and Hermione arrive safely, then Mr. Weasley and Fred, then Ron and Tonks, then Bill and Fleur. Bill and Fleur describe how they saw Mundungus Fletcher panic and Disapparate, leaving Mad-Eye to die by Voldemort’s curse, right at the beginning of the chase.
The entire party discusses how their plans might have been betrayed to Voldemort, noting that Voldemort apparently did not know of the plan to use the six Harry decoys. Harry wants to leave the Burrow, frustrated that his presence puts his allies in danger, but his friends won’t hear of it.
His scar throbbing, Harry goes outside to get some air, and as the pain in his scar reaches its peak, he can hear Voldemort berating and torturing his prisoner, the famous wand maker Ollivander, who had told Voldemort that the connection between Harry’s wand and Voldemort’s could be circumvented by Voldemort’s attacking Harry with a borrowed wand. Ollivander’s proposed scheme did not work, and the wand Voldemort borrowed from Lucius Malfoy is now shattered and useless. Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his vision, and Hermione angrily urges him to keep the dangerous mental connection between himself and Voldemort closed.
Analysis: Chapters Four–Five
The arrival of the Order of the Phoenix in Chapter Three sets aside for the moment Harry’s internal conflicts and doubts and sets up a fast-paced action sequence: the flight from the Dursleys’ house. This sequence establishes that the danger from Voldemort is very real. Voldemort has become powerful and unafraid to attack Harry openly and in force, and he and his followers will continue pursuing Harry, keeping him on the run for the rest of the novel.
Moody’s comments about the Ministry recall the Death Eaters’ meeting that we witnessed in the first chapter, demonstrating that the Order is well aware of the betrayals of Pius Thicknesse and the corruption of the Ministry that Yaxley had reported to Voldemort. More troubling is the fact that we can now see how good Snape’s intelligence was—Snape knew the true date of Harry’s departure and saw through the false trails the Order had laid. In other words, Snape’s (and thus Voldemort’s) intelligence is better than the Order’s. And indeed, from the moment they leave, it’s clear that the Death Eaters have the advantage, and things do not go according to plan.
As the extent of the deaths and injuries sustained in the chase are revealed in Chapter Six, a conflict simmers between Harry and the other members of the Order over their right to risk dying for him, and his right to fight the battle on his own terms—without killing people like Stan Shunpike. Nominally, Harry (and Ron and Hermione) are now supposed to be joining forces with the Order of the Phoenix and fighting Voldemort as adults, without being protected and shepherded like students or children. However, even though nobody in the Order openly calls him a child, the transition is not a smooth one. Harry is younger, weaker, and less experienced than characters like Lupin, and yet Harry is at the center, in a sense is even the leader, of the struggle now. Lupin, a powerful adult, visibly chafes at what he perceives to be Harry’s timidity. The dynamic here is not unlike that in Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings, in which the relatively weak and inexperienced hobbits shoulder the destiny of completing the quest and banishing the Dark Lord, while more typically heroic and formidable characters like Aragorn are forced to restrain themselves and get out of the hobbits’ way.
Chapters Six–Eight
Summary: Chapter Six: The Ghoul in Pajamas
Harry wishes he could put Mad-Eye Moody’s death behind him by embarking on his quest to destroy the Horcruxes—the objects into which Voldemort has placed fragments of his soul, making him immortal as long as those objects survive. Harry wants to discuss the quest with Ron and Hermione, who agreed to accompany him in the previous book, but Mrs. Weasley interferes, first by approaching each of them in turn and trying to dissuade them from leaving Hogwarts, then by keeping them busy and apart from each other by having them help her prepare the house for the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur. Finally the three friends steal a moment to meet in Ron’s room, and Ron and Hermione reveal the lengths they’ve gone to in preparing for the quest.
Hermione has enchanted her Muggle (non-wizard) parents into changing their names, forgetting that they have a daughter, and moving to Australia so that Voldemort will not be able to find them. Ron has given the household ghoul a pair of his own pajamas and enchanted the ghoul with red hair and pustules, so that when Ron fails to return to Hogwarts, his parents can give out the information that he’s ill with an infectious disease called spattergroit, which would cause him to look somewhat like the enchanted ghoul does. Anyone who checks in on Ron will see the ghoul in his bed, assume that Ron’s really sick, and flee before becoming infected.
Most important, Hermione reveals that she used a spell to steal the books on Horcruxes, which Dumbledore had removed from the library for safekeeping, out of Dumbledore’s office after he died. She explains that Voldemort is unlikely to try to reassemble his own soul by destroying the Horcruxes himself, because doing so requires that the person who made the Horcruxes suffer the pain of remorse for their actions, which seems contrary to Voldemort’s nature. But for Harry and his friends to destroy them will be very difficult, because only very destructive and dangerous items, such as the basilisk’s fang that Harry used to destroy Tom Riddle’s diary (the first of the Horcruxes) in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, can be sure to do the job.
Mr. and Mrs. Delacour, Fleur’s parents, arrive, and Harry feels guilty about the strain that his presence, and the added security, is putting on Mrs. Weasley.
Summary: Chapter Seven: The Will of Albus Dumbledore
Harry dreams that he’s walking in the mountains looking for a man who holds the answer to a problem that’s bothering him. Ron wakes Harry and tells him that Harry was muttering the name Gregorovitch in his sleep. Harry realizes that he was seeing through Voldemort’s eyes in his dream, as he has done before, and he thinks he recognizes the name Gregorovitch, though he can’t place where he might have heard it.
Harry perks up when he remembers that it’s his seventeenth birthday, and the Trace (a spell with which the Ministry of Magic can track any spell cast by an underage—meaning under seventeen—wizard) is broken, allowing him to practice magic freely. Harry’s friends and Ron’s family give Harry presents. Ginny draws Harry into her room and gives him a passionate kiss, but Ron breaks in angrily and interrupts them, afterward scolding Harry for toying with his sister. Harry promises not to kiss her again.
Harry’s birthday dinner is interrupted by the arrival of Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister of Magic, who insists on speaking to Harry, Ron, and Hermione in private. Scrimgeour has brought each of them a bequest from Dumbledore’s will. Dumbledore has left Ron a device called a Deluminator, a device that can suck all the light out of a room or turn the light on again. He left Hermione a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of fairy tales familiar to virtually everyone raised by wizards. To Harry, Dumbledore bequeathed the first Snitch he ever caught, saved from his first Quidditch match. Dumbledore’s will also bequeathed to Harry the sword of Godric Gryffindor, but Scrimgeour maintains that the sword was not Dumbledore’s to give. (Presumably he’s about to say it belongs at Hogwarts in the headmaster’s study, where in fact it is; they interrupt Scrimgeour before he can finish.)
As Hermione forces Scrimgeour to admit, he has kept these items for the full thirty-one days allowed by law for the Ministry to study and test willed items for Dark magic or curses. Having failed to find out anything about the items, he questions the three friends closely about why Dumbledore might have left these seemingly frivolous, even inappropriate, bequests. Harry, Ron, and Hermione put Scrimgeour off with flippant and unhelpful responses, but in truth they are as mystified about the bequests as Scrimgeour. Scrimgeour guesses that there is something inside the Snitch, and that it will open only at Harry’s touch, and he watches closely as Harry takes it in his hand. The Snitch does not open, and Scrimgeour departs, frustrated.
After Scrimgeour has gone, Harry reminds his friends that he caught his first Snitch in his mouth, though he avoided mentioning this fact in front of Scrimgeour. Now he places the Snitch in his mouth again, and though it does not open, words appear on it: “I open at the close.”
Summary: Chapter Eight: The Wedding
On the afternoon following Harry’s birthday, the Weasleys host the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. To keep secret the fact that he’s hiding at the Weasleys’, Harry takes Polyjuice Potion to disguise himself as a red-headed boy from the village, passing himself off as the Weasleys’ “Cousin Barny.”
Among the guests who attend are Luna Lovegood and her father, Xenophilius Lovegood. Both are dressed in vibrant yellow robes, and Xenophilius wears a chain with a pendant shaped like a triangular eye. Luna sees through Harry’s disguise effortlessly, though Xenophilius is not as discerning as his daughter.
Viktor Krum, the professional Quidditch player with whom Hermione was briefly infatuated in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, arrives as Fleur’s guest, much to Ron’s consternation. After the wedding ceremony, Krum takes a seat next to Harry and asks him about Xenophilius Lovegood. Krum is infuriated by the symbol Xenophilius wears, recognizing it as a symbol associated with the Dark wizard Grindelwald, who had terrorized the Continental European magical community before he was finally defeated in a duel by Dumbledore. Krum’s grandfather had been among those murdered by Grindelwald, and Krum had seen the triangular eye symbol at his school, Durmstrang, where Grindelwald had carved it into the wall. In his agitation, Krum takes out his wand and taps it menacingly against his own leg, prompting Harry to remember where he had heard the name “Gregorovitch”: the name belongs to the famous wand maker who made Krum’s wand, as Harry had learned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
After the wedding ceremony, Harry recognizes Elphias Doge, the author of the sympathetic obituary to Dumbledore that he read in Chapter Two. Harry sits next to Doge and strikes up a conversation, hoping to discover whether there is any basis to Rita Skeeter’s accusation that Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts as a young man. Doge vehemently denies this, but Harry feels as though Doge is not giving him the whole story. Before he can pursue the subject, they are interrupted by Ron’s obnoxious Aunt Muriel, who sits between them, proclaiming what a fan she is of Rita Skeeter and taunting Doge for skating over the sticky patches in Dumbledore’s life story.
Aunt Muriel seems to know all of the nastiest rumors about Dumbledore’s personal history, and over Doge’s increasingly indignant denials, she drags them all out in front of Harry. According to the rumors, Dumbledore’s sister, Ariana, was a Squib—a child born to wizard parents who lacks any magical abilities. Supposedly, Dumbledore’s mother, Kendra, a terrifying woman, kept Ariana locked in the basement out of shame for her abnormality, and Dumbledore did nothing to stop it. Ariana may or may not have killed her mother in desperation, but Albus most likely murdered Ariana after Kendra’s death. Albus’s brother, Aberforth, subsequently broke Dumbledore’s nose at Ariana’s funeral.
Aunt Muriel’s source for all of these rumors is a woman named Bathilda Bagshot, who lived in Godric’s Hollow (the town where Harry was born and where his parents were murdered) at the same time that Dumbledore’s family lived there, the time immediately following the imprisonment of Dumbledore’s father and extending through the deaths of his mother and sister. Aunt Muriel heard all of these rumors from Bathilda at roughly the time the events themselves took place. Though Bathilda Bagshot is now quite senile, Aunt Muriel reports that Bathilda is Rita Skeeter’s main source.
Harry is shocked at these reports about his dead friend, not least that Dumbledore lived in Godric’s Hollow like Harry, and that they both have relatives buried there, yet Dumbledore never saw fit to mention these things to Harry.
The wedding celebration is cut short by the appearance of Kingsley Shacklebolt’s Patronus, a silver lynx. (A Patronus, as we learn in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, is a charm that witches and wizards use to send out an animal-shaped manifestation of themselves. It can be used to send messages, and is also one of the only things that can ward off a dementor.) The lynx tells the guests that Scrimgeour is dead, the Ministry has fallen, and the Death Eaters are coming.
Analysis: Chapters Six–Eight
In these chapters, Harry has safely escaped the immediate threat of Voldemort for the moment, and the focus of the book shifts toward the quest to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes, the cursed objects into which Voldemort has placed fragments of his soul, rendering himself immortal while the objects survive. These chapters set up the terms and rules of the quest, in the sense of telling us what information the characters have to work with and what tools they have at their disposal. In the other novels in the series, the rules of the book were comprised of what a student at Hogwarts can and cannot do (such as not being able to Disapparate on school grounds), coupled with whatever tricks Harry has up his sleeve, such as his Invisibility Cloak and Marauder’s Map. This book has different rules, but the ever-systematic Hermione makes sure that they have all available information about Horcruxes and every piece of equipment that might be useful, all neatly packed in her tiny beaded handbag (actually a magic pouch—a plot device that lets them continue to work with a wide range of magical artifacts, much like when they lived at Hogwarts).
Chapter Six seems unusual at first glance, in that the chapter is not driven by the conflict between Harry and Voldemort but rather by the conflict between Harry and Mrs. Weasley. Mrs. Weasley does not know what the quest is, but she does a pretty effective job of blocking them from planning for it or leaving on it, at least for a few days. Mrs. Weasley is more than simply a hurdle to be overcome, however. Her maternal opposition reminds us that the stakes are very high in this quest. By accepting Ron and Hermione’s help, Harry has not only put his friends in danger, but also Ron’s entire family, and Harry feels guilty about this. Mrs. Weasley, the mother of so many of the novel’s characters (one of whom has just been maimed), will not let us forget the human costs of fighting Voldemort. The people who risk themselves and die helping Harry actually matter to someone.
The reading of Dumbledore’s will, in Chapter Seven, expands the theme of Dumbledore’s crypticness, as his bequests are essentially baffling riddles sent from beyond the grave. The will also gives them additional clues that help them start their quest. Since the inciting incident of the quest took place in the previous book, with Dumbledore telling Harry that he had to destroy the Horcruxes, the reading of the will is the dramatic equivalent of an inciting incident in this book, with mysterious clues or enigmas that start us wondering what the characters will do to locate and destroy the Horcruxes.
The scene with Aunt Muriel in Chapter Eight picks up and develops the plot concerning Harry’s growing mistrust of Dumbledore, giving concrete shape to his doubts, including details about Dumbledore’s supposedly abusive actions, and pointing to an actual source for the rumors in Bathilda Bagshot. But the statements bother Harry not so much because of their inherent credibility or the evidence supporting them but because they touch on doubts that are already latent within Harry.
Harry wants to believe Doge over Aunt Muriel, but he can’t shake the feeling that there must be more to the story than Doge is telling him. At least Aunt Muriel’s rumors have concreteness and specificity to them, while Doge’s denials seem vague and uninformed. And that difference is the root of Harry’s problem. Harry’s whole friendship with Dumbledore was based on mutual trust and faith, not on Harry’s knowledge about Dumbledore. But now that Dumbledore is dead, trust and faith aren’t good enough for Harry. He now wants facts, information, and personal history, and he doesn’t perceive that this thirst for knowledge is a substitute for love. Normally, he would be able to see that Rita Skeeter, Aunt Muriel, and Bathilda Bagshot are unreliable and biased sources. The reason he doesn’t is that it is easier for him to try to “know” things about Dumbledore than to believe Dumbledore loved him. As long as he believes there’s some truth about Dumbledore that he doesn’t know, Skeeter, Aunt Muriel, and Bathilda will torment him like demons
Chapters Nine–Eleven
Summary: Chapter Nine: A Place to Hide
The crowd panics and flees. Masked and cloaked figures appear—the Death Eaters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione join hands and Disapparate (teleport) under Hermione’s direction. They arrive in Tottenham Court Road, a busy street in London, in the Muggle rather than the wizarding world.
Though they have been forced to flee the Weasley household with no notice, Hermione reveals that they are better prepared than Ron and Harry think, because Hermione has packed clothes, Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, all the books they might need, a magic tent, their supply of Polyjuice Potion, and many other things, all in a tiny beaded handbag that takes up little space and weighs nothing.
The three friends go to a cafe to plan their next move, debating where they might go now that Voldemort has taken over the Ministry. Two burly workmen suddenly pull out wands and attack them, revealing themselves to be Death Eaters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione fight these attackers off with difficulty, having no idea how the Death Eaters could have found them so quickly, or how to evade them better in future.
Harry and his friends decide to go to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, the house that Sirius Black left to Harry in his will. They can only hope that the jinxes and charms on the house will be enough to hide them from Snape and the other Death Eaters. Inside the house, small signs, such as a knocked-over umbrella stand, give Harry and the others the impression that someone has been in the house, but it appears to be empty now. Suddenly they feel their tongues raveling and then unraveling, the effect of a Tongue-Tying charm Mad-Eye Moody put upon the house to prevent them from revealing its secrets. (Snape, as a trusted friend of Dumbledore’s, has entered the house before and so may be able to do so again, but Mad-Eye’s spell should prevent Snape from telling anyone else about it.)
Harry feels a burning pain in his scar and vicariously experiences Voldemort’s rage—the connection between their minds is apparently opening up again. Ron badgers Harry about what Voldemort is doing, fearful that Voldemort has attacked Ron’s family, while Hermione scolds Harry for exposing himself to a dangerous connection that he had previously worked so hard to close using the technique of Occlumency.
Ron’s father’s Patronus arrives to say that the family is safe but being watched. Sick with the painful sensation in his scar, Harry excuses himself and goes to the bathroom so he can have his vision in peace. Harry sees through Voldemort’s eyes as Voldemort tortures one of the Death Eaters who attacked them in the cafe, punishing him for summoning Voldemort but then letting Harry escape.
Summary: Chapter Ten: Kreacher’s Tale
Harry wakes up early and explores the house. He goes into Sirius’s room, with its Gryffindor banners and photographs of Muggle women in bikinis, demonstrating his rebelliousness toward his own family. In the room, Harry finds the first page of a letter to Sirius from Harry’s mother, Lily Potter. The letter reveals that Sirius had given Harry his first broomstick, for his first birthday; that Harry’s parents had known Bathilda Bagshot; and that Dumbledore had, for some unmentioned reason, borrowed James Potter’s Invisibility Cloak around the time the letter was written (soon after Harry had turned one and thus very near the time of James and Lily Potter’s murder).
Harry searches further and finds a torn piece of a photograph referred to in the letter, showing himself at one year old, riding a broomstick near his father’s legs. The other parts of the letter, and of the photograph, are missing.
Harry makes up his mind that he wants to go to Godric’s Hollow to meet Bathilda Bagshot and visit his parents’ graves, hoping to find information about his own parents and about Dumbledore’s past. When he tells this to Hermione, however, she tells him it’s a waste of valuable time, and that he knew Dumbledore better than Aunt Muriel or Rita Skeeter, and thus shouldn’t be bothered by the rumors. Hermione reminds him that their urgent task is to find the Horcruxes, the destruction of which will enable them to defeat Voldemort.
Harry and Hermione notice the room belonging to Sirius’s deceased younger brother, Regulus Arcturus Black, who had been a Death Eater. Seeing his name on the door, they realize he may be the R.A.B. who signed his name to the false locket that Harry and Dumbledore recovered from the cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—the R.A.B. who must have stolen the real locket Horcrux, which they need to find.
Hermione remembers with a shock that there had been a locket in the cabinet in the drawing room of the house the last time she’d been there—a locket that everyone had passed around and no one could open. Unfortunately, the locket is no longer there.
The only hope Harry and his friends have is that Kreacher, the bilious house-elf he inherited with the house, may have stolen the locket, as he used to steal back trinkets associated with the house whenever Sirius would try to throw them out, out of a sense of loyalty to his former masters and a desire to preserve the house as it was. Accordingly, they summon Kreacher.
Kreacher admits that he did steal the locket after it was thrown out two years ago, but he says that it’s now gone—stolen by Mundungus Fletcher. Kreacher refers to the locket as “Master Regulus’s,” and Harry demands to know why, ordering Kreacher to tell them everything he knows about the locket.
Kreacher explains that after Sirius ran away from home and deserted his parents, Sirius’s younger brother Regulus (who had always been fond of Kreacher) became more and more involved in the Dark Arts. At the age of sixteen, Regulus joined Lord Voldemort. A year later, Regulus informed Kreacher that Lord Voldemort needed the services of a house-elf, and that Regulus had volunteered Kreacher, who then went to Voldemort to do his bidding.
What Voldemort needed Kreacher for was to test the defenses that he had set up to guard the locket Horcrux in the underground cavern—the defenses Harry and Dumbledore had encountered at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Voldemort made Kreacher drink the potion in the basin until it was all drunk, then he put the locket Horcrux in it and refilled it. Then Voldemort left Kreacher to die as the potion overpowered Kreacher with thirst, Kreacher went to drink from the lake, and the dead hands of the Inferi dragged him under the water.
But Voldemort seriously miscalculated by not taking into consideration the nature and ways of house elves. Kreacher had been ordered by his master Regulus to come back after helping Voldemort, so he was bound to return. More important, though no witch or wizard could Disapparate into or out of the cavern, house-elf magic works differently than wizard’s magic, so Kreacher was able to simply Disapparate from under the water, going back to his master Regulus.
Apparently, Regulus soon after had a change of heart about serving Voldemort, and he made Kreacher take him back to the underground cavern and show him the basin with the locket. Regulus drank the potion himself, stole the locket, and replaced it with the false one signed “R.A.B.” that Harry found. He ordered Kreacher to return home, never to reveal to Regulus’s family what had happened to him, and to destroy the locket, after which Kreacher saw Regulus dragged beneath the lake and killed. Kreacher returned to Grimmauld Place, unable ever to tell Mistress Black what had happened to her son, and unable to destroy the locket as ordered because of the powerful enchantments protecting it.
Though Harry nurses a grudge against Kreacher for betraying Sirius previously, Hermione forces Harry to see that Kreacher’s behavior has been both consistent and loyal, because Regulus never explicitly explained to Kreacher that he had changed his loyalties, and Sirius seemed to have betrayed his own family and household in leaving.
Harry orders Kreacher to find Mundungus Fletcher and bring him back to Grimmauld Place, but before Kreacher leaves, Harry presents him with Regulus’s false locket as a token for Kreacher to remember his former master by. Overcome with gratitude, Kreacher leaves to carry out Harry’s orders.
Summary: Chapter Eleven: The Bribe
Kreacher does not return as fast as Harry hopes he will. He does not return that afternoon, or the next day, or the day after. Through the windows, Harry can see that Death Eaters are posted outside of the house, presumably watching for anyone entering or exiting.
The Death Eaters know the house is there, and that Harry owns it, because the Ministry of Magic has copies of every wizard’s will, but they can’t see it or enter it because of the enchantments on it.
Lupin arrives with news of the outside world. Harry is wanted for questioning by the Ministry. Wizards are being ordered to submit to interviews to prove they have wizarding parents. Anyone practicing magic who does not have wizarding parents (i.e., so-called “Mudbloods” like Hermione) will be presumed to have stolen magical secrets and will be liable for prosecution.
Lupin offers to accompany the three friends on their quest and provide protection, even if they are unable to tell him exactly what they are up to. He reveals that his wife Tonks is pregnant and staying at her parents’ house for safety, and admits that he regrets marrying her and bringing a half-werewolf child into the house, as the child will likely be an outcast.
Harry rejects Lupin’s offer angrily, calling Lupin a coward for seeking to abandon his own child. Lupin departs.
Still shaking with anger, Harry reads a newspaper Lupin left behind that contains an extract from Rita Skeeter’s biography of Dumbledore. Bathilda Bagshot is quoted, describing how Dumbledore’s mother, Kendra, shunned contact with other wizards when she relocated to Godric’s Hollow, and kept Ariana, Dumbledore’s sister, well out of sight. According to Bathilda, no one ever saw Ariana manifest any magical ability, so presumably she must have been a Squib.
Kreacher arrives with Mundungus Fletcher. Under forceful questioning, Mundungus admits that he stole the locket and was trying to sell it in Diagon Alley, when it was confiscated by a toadlike woman from the Ministry of Magic wearing a bow on her head—clearly Dolores Umbridge.
Analysis: Chapters Nine–Eleven
Chapters Nine–Eleven move the quest plot forward by unraveling the mystery of the locket in a vivid and highly dramatic fashion. The fake locket signed “R.A.B.” was the biggest mystery (and biggest frustration) of the year before, when Harry and Dumbledore went through the harrowing ordeal of getting to the locket only to find that someone had been there before them. In finding out what actually happened to the locket, we are treated to the fascinating story of Regulus Black, a Death Eater and Slytherin who turned out to be much more than he seemed. With this information, they have at last picked up the trail of a Horcrux and can pursue the trail to find the actual locket.
The characters did not have to do a lot of detective work in order to solve the locket mystery. They simply stumbled on a sign with a name that matched the initials. What they did that was significant was to change their attitudes toward Kreacher, the house-elf. Harry had previously been repulsed by Kreacher because of his appearance and because of his apparently bigoted and pureblood viewpoint, whereas Hermione, as early as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, had pursued a misguided agenda of treating house elves like humans and promoting giving them rights to pay, vacation, benefits, and so on. What both Harry and Hermione together manage to do in these chapters is to see Kreacher clearly, as someone who is not a human being with a point of view of his own, but a creature whose very nature is defined by his loyalty and service to his master. When they see Kreacher for what he is and respect him for it, the door is unlocked, and Kreacher becomes extremely helpful to them.
The plot developments of these chapters come along with a general meditation on loss and mourning. The entire house is a memorial to Sirius, who left it to Harry and whose room is exactly as it was during Sirius’s Hogwarts days. The traces of Harry’s other friends and the time they spent there are everywhere. The photograph and letter that Harry finds, relics of his own parents, do nothing to advance the quest plot but do much to promote Harry’s sense that dead loved ones can reach out from the grave to communicate. This time that Harry spends pondering the loss of loved ones primes him to become furious with Lupin for what Harry perceives to be Lupin’s abandonment of his own unborn child. For Harry, nothing is more important than the loved ones he has lost.
As soon as Lupin leaves, Harry is once again plunged into doubt and torment about Dumbledore when he reads the excerpts of Skeeter’s book. Where the letter from his mother seemed to speak to him in her voice from beyond the grave, Dumbledore is communicating no clear message on his own behalf, instead causing doubts and frustrations. And Skeeter’s book, while adding no fresh rumors to those he heard from Aunt Muriel, only keeps Harry’s doubts alive. Harry isn’t just grieved by Dumbledore’s loss. Without actually admitting it to himself, he feels abandoned and betrayed by Dumbledore, just as Lupin is abandoning and betraying his wife and child.
Chapters Twelve–Thirteen
Summary: Chapter Twelve: Magic is Might
As August wears on, the house itself remains unseen, but watchers in cloaks continue to loiter outside number twelve Grimmauld Place. During this time, Kreacher transforms himself into an extremely productive and helpful house-elf, cleaning, cooking, and keeping himself washed.
From the newspapers, Harry and his friends learn that Snape has been confirmed as headmaster of Hogwarts, and that two new professors have joined the staff. These siblings, the Amycus and Alecto Carrow, are both Death Eaters.
Hermione remembers that the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black that hangs in the house allows the Phineas within the painting to move between the painting in number twelve Grimmauld Place and the painting of him that hangs in the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts (Phineas is a former headmaster). Hermione takes the picture down and puts it in her bag so that it won’t be able to spy on them and report their secrets to Snape.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin stalking Ministry of Magic employees, using the Invisibility Cloak to study the patterns of movement in and out of the Ministry so they can try to infiltrate it and look for the locket in Umbridge’s office. Earlier than the others expect, Harry announces that they are as ready as they’re going to be, and they should try to break in the next day.
At dinner that night, Harry’s scar burns, and he has to excuse himself to go have a vision of Voldemort in the privacy of the bathroom. Through Voldemort’s eyes, he sees Voldemort knock on a door—somewhere in Europe where the houses have decorated gables—and ask for Gregorovitch. On being told by the woman who answers that she doesn’t know where Gregorovitch is, Voldemort kills the woman in front of her young children—and perhaps kills the children as well; the vision is unclear.
Hermione yells at Harry for allowing Voldemort to get into his head again. Harry tells his friends that Voldemort must be looking for Gregorovitch for answers about how Harry’s wand defeated Voldemort, because Harry knows it was no ability of his own that let him fight Voldemort off during the chase.
The next day, the three friends break into the Ministry of Magic by bringing Polyjuice Potion with them, waylaying employees before they enter the building, incapacitating them, taking hair samples, then using the potion mixed with the hair samples to impersonate the employees. Hermione assumes the identity of Mafalda Hopkirk, an assistant, whom they stun. Ron steals the identity of a man named Cattermole, a lowly support services employee who for some reason wants very much to go to work that day, even after Hermione makes him vomit uncontrollably by giving him an enchanted pastille to eat. Harry becomes a wizard named Runcorn, a senior member of the Ministry whom the Death Eaters at the Ministry respect and most normal people seem to fear.
Following the procedures they’ve learned in the days before, they use magic portals in public restrooms to teleport into the Ministry. Almost as soon as they arrive and get into the elevator, the Death Eater Yaxley sends Ron (disguised as Cattermole) on a maintenance job, telling him to make the enchanted rain in Yaxley’s office stop. Yaxley threatens Ron/Cattermole, alluding to the fact that Cattermole’s wife has been accused of being a Mudblood and has her hearing that very day.
Summary: Chapter Thirteen: The Muggle-Born Registration Commission
Harry and Hermione continue on in the elevator to Level One, where they see Dolores Umbridge. Umbridge commandeers Hermione (disguised as Mafalda) to take notes at Umbridge’s Muggle-Born Registration Commission.
The new Minister of Magic, Pius Thicknesse, greets Harry (disguised as Runcorn). Harry says that he’s looking for Arthur Weasley, then, when he’s alone, he puts on the Invisibility Cloak and heads toward Umbridge’s office.
Outside Umbridge’s office is a room where employees are producing pamphlets warning of the dangers to wizarding society posed by Mudbloods. On the door to Umbridge’s office, Mad-Eye Moody’s magic eye looks out at the employees, watching them. Harry distracts these people with a Decoy Detonator and enters the office.
Once inside, Harry removes Moody’s eye and puts it in his pocket. As he searches the office, he comes upon Arthur Weasley’s file and notes that Weasley is being watched. He sees his own photograph on a poster above the words “Undesirable Number One,” on which Umbridge has written “to punish.” He sees a copy of the new Rita Skeeter book about Dumbledore. The locket is nowhere to be found.
Pius Thicknesse enters the office, and Harry, having failed to find what he’s searching for, sneaks past him out the door and goes back to the elevator. He encounters Ron, who is still working on Yaxley’s rain problem. He also encounters Arthur Weasley and tells him that he’s being watched, which makes Weasley think Runcorn is threatening him.
Harry proceeds to the room where Umbridge is conducting her hearings of suspected Mudbloods. Dementors guard the suspects. Hermione is there taking notes, as well as Yaxley, and Umbridge is just beginning to interview Mary Cattermole, whom she accuses of having obtained her wand by theft. Mary Cattermole tries to flatter Umbridge by complimenting a locket that Umbridge is wearing, which Harry recognizes as the Horcrux. Umbridge makes up a lie about the letters on the locket standing for members of her pureblood ancestry. Harry, enraged, casts spells to Stun Umbridge and Yaxley, then Hermione takes the locket, replaces it magically with a decoy, and the two lead Mary Cattermole and the other prisoners toward safety. They meet up with Ron and, urging the prisoners to escape and go into hiding, they join hands and Disapparate together.
Analysis: Chapters Twelve–Thirteen
The sequence where Harry and friends break into the Ministry of Magic gives us our clearest and most detailed picture yet of how the wizarding world has changed now that Voldemort is pulling the strings. The many things we see the Ministry doing in these chapters are all systematically modeled after Nazi Germany. Obviously, there is the separation of society based on racial heritage, with Mudbloods classified as inferior and branded as a threat to society, as the Jews were under the Nazis. We also see the organized use of science, government institutions, and new laws in order to create a veneer of legitimacy for evil. Wizard scientists have published “proof” that Mudbloods are inferior, the Ministry has departments for listing and tracking Mudbloods, and everyone is required to register and give proof of his or her heritage. Wives are separated from husbands and imprisoned. Acts of violence, terror, and intimidation are practiced without fear of reprisal by people in official positions—such as Yaxley intimidating Cattermole or Runcorn intimidating Arthur Weasley. By controlling the Ministry, Voldemort creates an atmosphere of fear that keeps ordinary people afraid to act decently, so that decency has become an act of great courage.
These chapters also revolve around Dolores Umbridge, the memorable villain of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Umbridge is the type of villain who thrives in an institutional setting. Being at the head of a committee and supervising a team of employees suit her quite as well as being headmistress of Hogwarts. In contrast to an outspoken villain like Bellatrix Lestrange, Umbridge thrives on hypocrisy and the abuse of rules and regulations. Her pursuit of Mary Cattermole under the pretense of the legal fiction that any Mudblood who has a wand must have stolen it is perfectly typical of Umbridge’s behavior. It’s a palpable lie, since Mudbloods were buying wands and attending Hogwarts for years before Voldemort took over, but Umbridge is so consistent in her pursuit of this lie that you start to think she actually believes it. Her absolute consistency, and the seeming arbitrariness of the lies she insists on, make her such a fascinating and repulsive character.
Chapters Fourteen–Fifteen
Summary: Chapter Fourteen: The Thief
Harry opens his eyes and finds himself in a forest. Hermione and Ron are there, but Ron is bleeding profusely, a huge chunk of his side missing. Hermione explains that he has been Splinched, meaning he left a part of himself behind while Disapparating. They treat his wound with a potion from Hermione’s bag, and Hermione tells Harry how she had taken them to Grimmauld Place, but Yaxley had grabbed hold of her so that she inadvertently took Yaxley with them, within the perimeter of the house’s protective enchantments. She was then able to slip out of Yaxley’s grip and bring them to these woods—the site of the Quidditch World Cup the year before—but now that Yaxley has gained entry to the house, they can no longer go back there.
Harry and Hermione set up the tent and cast protective charms on it, then they consider their situation. They do have the Horcrux, as Hermione had succeeded in taking the locket from Umbridge. As they are unable to open it and have no idea how to destroy it, all Harry can think to do for the moment is to wear it on a chain around his neck for safekeeping. Moreover, they have no idea where to start looking for any of the other Horcruxes, and they have little or nothing to eat while they try to figure it out.
Harry’s scar prickles and he sees through Voldemort’s eyes as Voldemort interrogates the wand maker Gregorovitch. Gregorovitch insists that he does not have what Voldemort wants, as it was stolen from him long ago. Voldemort, thinking he’s lying, reads his mind and sees a memory of a young, handsome blond man stealing the wand, stunning Gregorovitch with a spell, and escaping through a window. Voldemort draws back out of Gregorovitch’s mind, Gregorovitch screams, and there is a flash of green light as Voldemort kills Gregorovitch.
Hermione does not want to hear about Harry’s vision, being angry at his letting it occur. Harry describes it to Ron, saying that the vision makes no sense. Why would Voldemort kill Gregorovitch, when surely Voldemort must have visited him because he wanted Gregorovitch to make a new, more powerful wand that could defeat Harry? Yet Voldemort made no mention of such a desire.
Harry reflects that the mischievous-looking blond youth must be Voldemort’s next target. Harry thinks he’s seen this man before, but can’t think where.
Summary: Chapter Fifteen: Goblin’s Revenge
Harry buries Moody’s eye in the forest. The trio move their camp near to a market town, and Harry goes to steal food, but he sees dementors and is unable to summon his Patronus to protect himself, so he has to leave. Back at the tent, Hermione realizes that Harry’s problem is that he’s wearing the Horcrux. The Horcrux exerts a negative magical influence, blocking the positive emotion needed to summon a Patronus. They agree to take turns wearing it, but it makes whoever wears it irritable and argumentative.
The three friends embark on a difficult phase of their quest, moving from place to place, procuring food irregularly and with difficulty, unable to agree on what to try next, and with tensions growing between them.
One night, as Ron and Hermione are bickering, they hear voices nearby and discover that Tonks’s father, a young wizard named Dean, and two goblins are traveling near them, all on the run from Voldemort and the Ministry. One of the goblins, who worked at Gringotts bank, tells his companions a remarkable story about his revenge against the wizards of the Ministry.
According to the goblin, three students at Hogwarts—Ginny, Neville, and Luna—broke into Snape’s office and stole the sword of Gryffindor, but were caught and punished. Snape had the sword sent to Gringotts, but the goblin says that the Gringotts goblins all recognized the sword as a fake—though they said nothing of this to Snape.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione take out the portrait of Phineas Black, force Phineas to wear a blindfold, and question him about whether he’d seen the sword removed or replaced from the headmaster’s office. The last time Phineas saw the sword, Dumbledore was using it to break a ring. Harry and his friends realize that Phineas is describing Dumbledore destroying a Horcrux—the ring of Marvolo Gaunt—and that the Sword of Gryffindor must be able to destroy such objects because it has been impregnated with basilisk venom. One of the sword’s properties is that it absorbs anything that makes it stronger, and Harry had used it to kill a basilisk. They deduce that Dumbledore left the sword to Harry in his will (knowing that it would not actually be delivered to Harry) to signal its importance, then made a fake sword to leave in the office. The only question remaining is where Dumbledore hid the real sword.
Despite this breakthrough, Ron is unimpressed by their progress. Frustrated and disappointed that Harry doesn’t have a better plan, and especially irritable because he’s wearing the Horcrux, he and Harry have a fight. Ron takes the Horcrux off, then asks Hermione if she’s staying with Harry or going with him. She says she’s staying, and Ron Disapparates.
Analysis: Chapters Fourteen–Fifteen
These chapters represent the low point in the quest. With Ron injured, and their comfortable house (and house-elf) lost, and having to forage for food, this is the most physically challenging period for them. But this is also the time when they are most frustrated and closest to despair. They wander from place to place, having no good ideas about what to try next, and the Horcrux exerts its subtle negative influence on them. It seems inevitable that divisions will arise between them.
However, neither Harry nor Hermione is willing to excuse Ron’s desertion based on the fact that he’s wearing the Horcrux when he decides to leave. Rather than a true case of possession, the Horcrux’s negative influence is like the hunger or frustration that they all experience—it’s something that tests them and makes it harder to do the right thing but that doesn’t take away their free will. Ron’s abandonment of his friends is a true moment of failure for him, one that stems from flaws in his character that are specific to him. Ron’s overindulgence in food is a running joke throughout the series, and of the three friends he is least used to being deprived of material comforts. In fact, because of his mother, he is used to being taken care of and takes it for granted that other people will take care of him, and in that sense he is still the most childish of the three. We can see that his action is not due to the Horcrux later in the book, when we find out that Dumbledore long ago predicted Ron’s moment of despair and his abandonment of Harry based solely on Ron’s character. Fortunately for Ron, Dumbledore, that famous believer in second chances, has prepared a way back for Ron. hapters Sixteen–Seventeen
Summary: Chapter Sixteen: Godric’s Hollow
Hermione and Harry avoid talking about Ron. They wait for Ron to come back, knowing he’ll have no way of ever finding them again once they Disapparate from their current location. But Ron does not appear, and they move on to a new site. With Ron gone, and little idea what to do next, Harry and Hermione make a habit of bringing Phineas Nigellus’s portrait out of the bag and talking to Phineas, from whom they learn that at Hogwarts, Ginny, Neville, and Luna seem to be trying to continue Dumbledore’s Army, carrying out acts of low-grade mutiny against Snape.
Hermione, who has carefully studied The Tales of Beedle the Bard, shows Harry an unexplained symbol that someone drew onto a page of the book after it was printed—a symbol that looks like a triangular eye, with a vertical line for a pupil. Harry recognizes it as the symbol Luna’s father was wearing at the wedding, and he tells Hermione how Krum had said it was Grindelwald’s mark.
Harry tells Hermione that he wants to go to Godric’s Hollow, and to his surprise—since she had previously said it was a waste of time—she agrees, having made up her mind that Godric’s Hollow is the most likely location of Gryffindor’s sword, since it was Godric Gryffindor’s birthplace. Harry reminds her that according to Aunt Muriel, Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric’s Hollow, and Hermione imagines that Dumbledore might have entrusted the sword to her.
Harry and Hermione plan their trip carefully, using some of their store of Polyjuice Potion, and go to Godric’s Hollow well disguised as middle-aged Muggles—wearing the Invisibility Cloak to boot. They realize when they get to the town that it is Christmas Eve. They go to the graveyard and see Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore’s graves. Hermione finds a grave that has the triangular symbol on it, beneath the name Ignotus Peverell, but Harry presses on, more interested in finding his parents’ grave.
Finally, they find it—the grave of Lily and James Potter, bearing the inscription “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Just as Harry realizes that he has brought nothing to leave at his parents’ grave, Hermione conjures a wreath for him to lay. Then they head out of the graveyard and back toward the town.
Summary: Chapter Seventeen: Bathilda’s Secret
Thinking that they hear someone coming, Harry and Hermione leave the graveyard and put the Invisibility Cloak back on. As they walk along the street, they suddenly come upon what can only be the house of James and Lily Potter. The hedge and garden are overgrown, untended for sixteen years. The house itself is a ruin, with its top floor partially blown apart—evidence of Voldemort’s backfired curse.
As soon as they touch the gate, a commemorative wooden sign rises up, with golden letters explaining that the house, which is invisible to Muggles, has been kept in its destroyed state “as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.”
An old woman, heavily muffled and stooping, walks up the street and approaches them, beckoning them to follow, despite the fact that they are under the Invisibility Cloak and presumably unrecognizable in their disguises. Harry asks the woman if she’s Bathilda. The woman nods silently and beckons again, turning to lead them into another house.
Inside, Bathilda’s house is extremely dirty and full of unpleasant odors. Harry notes that a number of picture frames are missing their photographs. He sees a photograph of the young man who stole the wand from Gregorovitch, and realizes that he saw that young man in a picture in Rita Skeeter’s book, in which he was arm in arm with a teenage Dumbledore. He guesses that Rita Skeeter must have taken the missing pictures to reproduce in her book.
Harry asks Bathilda who the young man in the picture is, but she does not respond, instead beckoning Harry to accompany her upstairs while Hermione remains below. In the foul-smelling room upstairs, Harry asks Bathilda if she has something for him, hoping she will give him the sword of Gryffindor, but instead he experiences yet another vision through Voldemort’s mind, with Voldemort telling someone to “hold him there” and then flying through the night sky. Back in the room, Harry is horrified to see Voldemort’s snake, Nagini, emerge from within Bathilda’s dead body to attack him. Apparently Bathilda had been dead long before, and the snake was somehow animating her body. Hermione rushes into the room, and Harry and Hermione struggle against the snake both physically and with magic. Hermione manages to fend it off with a violent blasting curse, then Disapparates with Harry in tow.
At the moment they disappear, Harry sees through Voldemort’s eyes as Voldemort arrives on the scene and sees Harry and Hermione (in their disguised form) disappearing and escaping. Harry can feel Voldemort’s rage and frustration, and then he has a flashback, still from Voldemort’s perspective, of the night Voldemort killed Harry’s parents and tried to murder Harry. In the flashback, Voldemort stalks through Godric’s Hollow on Halloween night, frightening a child. He approaches the Potters’ house and sees the Potters through the window. Neither James nor Lily Potter is holding a wand, and the defenseless James goes down quickly before Voldemort’s Killing Curse. Voldemort expects Lily to stand aside while he kills Harry, but she does not, trying to shield Harry with her body and begging to be killed in his place. Voldemort kills her, then aims his wand carefully at Harry’s face. When he delivers the curse, instead of killing Harry, he feels himself ripped from his body, his own self now consisting of nothing but pain and terror.
After the flashback into Voldemort’s memory is over, Harry sees through Voldemort’s eyes as Voldemort picks up off the floor of Bathilda’s house the photograph of the thief who stole from Gregorovitch—the thief that Voldemort has been looking for all along. Harry curses himself for dropping the photograph, then realizes he is back in his own body again, no longer in Voldemort’s mind. Hermione tells him that he has been unconscious for hours, and that the Horcrux had been stuck to his flesh, necessitating her use of a severing charm to remove it.
Harry offers to stand guard while Hermione rests, but Hermione reveals that Harry’s wand was broken by her ricocheting curse. They attempt to repair it, but the damage is too great. In despair, and furious with Hermione for destroying his wand, Harry stoically borrows Hermione’s wand and goes to stand watch.
Analysis: Chapters Sixteen–Seventeen
Chapter Sixteen, with its trips to the graveyard and the memorial at the ruined house, is about visiting the dead. What drives the entire chapter, motivating their trip to Godric’s Hollow, is not really the quest, but rather Harry’s unresolved feelings about Dumbledore and about his parents. All that’s actually on his mind is his wanting to see for himself that Dumbledore really lived there, and perhaps finding out something more from Bathilda about Dumbledore than he could learn from Rita Skeeter’s book. Hermione is still absorbed in the mysteries of their quest for Horcruxes and sword, but she has not yet put anything together, and is groping along a dead end. It is simply convenient for Harry that she thinks the sword might be there.
Harry’s visit to the dead is frustrating for him, only increasing his resentment and despair. When he sees Kendra and Ariana’s graves, and the inscription “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” all that it means to him is that Dumbledore did leave behind relatives there and didn’t tell Harry. The inscription itself is meaningless to him—he misses the fact that it implies that Kendra treasured Ariana, and that Dumbledore treasured them both. Seeing his parents’ graves is even worse. Though their inscription suggests that death can be conquered, all that Harry can think when he sees their graves is that they are dead and moldering and are unable to see him or care about him. Thus, the visit to the dead makes the dead seem farther away than ever.
Harry’s desire to commune with the dead—especially Dumledore and his parents—is one of his central preoccupations in the book. While defeating Voldemort by destroying the Horcruxes is his conscious desire, the one he has professed to his friends, the desire to commune with the dead is his subconscious, unacknowledged desire. That desire seems to be most firmly denied in this chapter.
A tone of horror pervades Chapter Seventeen, with its crisis in the filthy, smelly house of Bathilda, and the snake possessing and reanimating Bathilda’s long-dead body. Incidentally, we see in this chapter the true nastiness of Rita Skeeter, who has taken advantage of an impoverished and senile old woman to write her book, and who stole the woman’s photographs to illustrate it. The climax of the chapter’s horror comes in the extended flashback where we see with Harry the cold-blooded murder of Harry’s parents, witnessed firsthand through Voldemort’s sick mind. The chapter culminates in the devastating loss of Harry’s wand, driving a wedge of resentment between Harry and Hermione. Harry and Hermione were not led to Godric’s Hollow by any true insight or plan. It would be more accurate to say that they were misled there, by Harry’s grief and Hermione’s confusion.
Chapters Eighteen–Nineteen
Summary: Chapter Eighteen: The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
Harry is desolate at the loss of his wand, and frightened. Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands both had cores made from the same source—tail feathers from Albus Dumbledore’s pet phoenix, Fawkes. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry had been saved by the fact that his wand shared a core with Voldemort’s, because Voldemort’s curse did not work properly with Harry’s wand defending against it. Harry is sure that his wand, not his own magic, had somehow been responsible for his successfully evading Voldemort in the flight from the Dursleys’ house to the Tonkses’. Now that his wand is ruined, Harry feels unprotected.
Harry is filled with anger toward Dumbledore, who failed to tell him what he needed to know to complete his quest, and who left him no clue how to find the sword. By simply trying to figure out the meaning of Dumbledore’s bequest, Harry has now lost his wand and given Voldemort an important clue to whatever it is Voldemort’s looking for.
Hermione brings Harry Rita Skeeter’s book, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, having seen it in Bathilda’s house and picked it up. In his anger at Dumbledore, Harry looks forward with relish to the prospect of reading about his dead friend’s dirty secrets—without even having to ask Dumbledore’s permission.
Harry flips through the book, looking at the pictures, and discovers that the young man who stole the wand from Gregorovitch—the man Voldemort is now searching for—is Gellert Grindelwald. This fact is astounding to Harry and Hermione, because Grindelwald is the Dark wizard whom Dumbledore defeated in a duel decades earlier, yet in the photographs in the book, the teenage Grindelwald and Dumbledore seem to be the best of friends.
Harry and Hermione look for an explanation in the text of the book, and we see the excerpt they read. In it, Rita Skeeter claims that after his graduation from Hogwarts, Dumbledore was called home by news of his mother’s death, and that he went home to ensure his sister’s continued imprisonment. Bathilda Bagshot was at the time the only resident of Godric’s Hollow on speaking terms with Dumbledore’s mother, and that same summer that Dumbledore returned home, Bathilda was visited by her great-nephew, Gellert Grindelwald, a brilliant student of the Dark Arts at the Durmstrang Institute, who had recently been expelled for his illicit experiments. At Godric’s Hollow, Grindelwald and Dumbledore quickly struck up a close friendship.
Skeeter’s book reproduces a letter from Dumbledore to Grindelwald from this period, in which Dumbledore expresses the view that wizards should dominate and control Muggles for the Muggles’ own good—views that would have been anathema to the older Dumbledore, contradicting everything that he stood for. The book goes on to note that Dumbledore and Grindelwald parted ways two months later, not because Dumbledore had a change of heart, but because of Ariana’s sudden death. According to Bathilda, Dumbledore and his brother Aberforth got into a fistfight over her coffin, with Aberforth breaking Dumbledore’s nose and blaming him for Ariana’s death. Grindelwald quickly departed Godric’s Hollow to begin his terrifying career on the Continent, and Dumbledore did not intervene to stop him for a full five years. Rita Skeeter speculates about the role that either man might have played in killing Ariana, and at the meaning of the hitherto unknown bond between the two wizards.
Hermione reminds Harry that this book is by Rita Skeeter, a writer whom Harry knows from personal experience to be a malicious liar and fabricator, but Harry’s faith in Dumbledore is badly shaken. Hermione argues that Dumbledore was young at the time he wrote the letter, and that his whole life contradicts the sentiments expressed in it, but Harry is unconsoled, realizing that he is now as old as Dumbledore was then, and is already risking his life trying to defeat Dark wizards. Finally, Hermione tries to reassure Harry that Dumbledore loved him, but while Harry wishes he could believe her, he doesn’t.
Summary: Chapter Nineteen: The Silver Doe
One cold night, when Harry and Hermione are camped in a snow-covered forest with Harry keeping watch, a silver doe, glimmering like moonlight, appears noiselessly before Harry and walks slowly away. Harry follows it, overcome by an instinct that tells him this is not Dark magic or a trap. After leading him into the forest, the doe disappears, and Harry finds that he’s now standing near a frozen pool. On shining a light from his wand at the pool, he sees that the Sword of Gryffindor lies at the bottom, under the ice.
Harry recalls that only true Gryffindors can retrieve the sword, and that Gryffindors are defined by daring, nerve, and chivalry. Accordingly, he strips off his clothes, breaks the ice, and plunges into the cold water. As soon as he is underwater, the Horcrux around his neck begins to choke him, and he blacks out. He wakes up beside the pool, having been pulled out by Ron Weasley, who has retrieved the sword from the pool and cut the Horcrux off of Harry’s neck. Ron tells Harry that he wants to return to the quest—if Harry will have him.
Harry tells Ron that as the retriever of the sword, Ron must be the one to use it to destroy the locket Horcrux. Harry has a sudden flash of insight that the way to open the locket must be to tell it to open in Parseltongue, the language of snakes, which Harry knows how to speak. Harry warns Ron to stab the locket quickly, before it can try to kill him, then he opens the locket.
The locket speaks to Ron, playing on his deepest fears, telling him that he’s the least loved of his mother’s children, that he will always be overshadowed by Harry, and that Hermione prefers Harry over him. Two bubbles rise up from the locket, looking like the heads of Harry and Hermione, and they taunt Ron, telling him how they laughed at his stupidity, cowardice, and most of all his presumption in thinking he could attract Hermione while Harry was in the picture. The two heads meet and kiss each other.
Ron brings the sword down and destroys the locket. Harry, having seen Ron’s fears manifested plainly, assures Ron that there’s nothing between Harry and Hermione. Ron apologizes for leaving, and they embrace.
Ron and Harry return to the tent, where Hermione flies into a rage and attacks Ron. When Ron finally gets an opportunity to speak, he tells how he had wanted to come back as soon as he Disapparated, but he was seized by a gang of Snatchers, thugs who kidnap Muggle-borns and blood traitors to claim a reward from the Ministry. Ron only barely managed to escape, and by the time he did, Harry and Hermione had moved to a new hiding place.
Hermione demands to know how Ron found them, and Ron explains that a few days before, he suddenly heard Hermione’s voice coming out of the Deluminator, saying Ron’s name and something about a wand. Harry remembers—this was the first time they had spoken Ron’s name since he had left, and Hermione had been recalling how Ron’s wand never worked again after it had been smashed in the flying car years before. A ball of light had come out of the Deluminator, and Ron had followed it, and then the ball of light went inside Ron, and Ron knew where to Disapparate to in order to find them. The silver doe appeared to him, just as it did to Harry, leading him to the pool in time to save Harry.
Hermione finally accepts Ron’s story and his reappearance in their group. Ron gives Harry a spare wand that he stole from the Snatchers during their escape, and they go to bed.
Analysis: Chapters Eighteen–Nineteen
Chapter Eighteen presents Harry with his chance to finally see the dirt on Dumbledore. The excerpt from the book contains the worst Rita Skeeter has dug up on Dumbledore, seeming to prove that Dumbledore wanted to dominate Muggles and aided and encouraged the notorious and murderous Dark wizard, Grindelwald. The only possibilities seem to be that Skeeter is lying or distorting the truth, or that she is telling the truth about Dumbledore and Dumbledore changed his mind later in life. It is, however, difficult to deny that Dumbledore once had these views because of the letter reproduced in Dumbledore’s own handwriting.
Hermione does not have nearly as much of a problem accepting that Dumbledore changed his mind as Harry does. As Hermione intuits, Harry is most bothered by the fact that Dumbledore never told him enough, seeing this as proof that Dumbledore did not love him. This is the low point in the plot concerning the conflict between Harry and Dumbledore—a plot that has nothing to do with Voldemort. Harry began doubting Dumbledore’s love in Chapter Two, and now he feels certain it did not exist.
Chapter Nineteen presents a turning point, not in regard to Dumbledore specifically, but in regard to Harry’s ability to trust. The recovery of the sword does not come about because of any problem-solving by Harry or Hermione, but as an act of grace. The appearance of the mysterious silver doe shows that someone is helping Harry, though we won’t know who for a long time. Harry’s choice to follow the doe represents an act of faith and trust, something that had become increasingly difficult for him as he struggled with his mistrust of Dumbledore. Harry may not be ready to accept that the dead love him, but he is at least ready to put his faith in the unknown.
Ron’s reappearance also comes as an act of grace—an unexpected act of heroism and help at a time when Harry needs help most. In this chapter, too, the conflict that drives the story is not really between Harry and Voldemort but instead the internal conflict between Ron and his own fears. Ron’s final willingness to confront his fears of always being second fiddle to Harry, and of Hermione and even Ron’s mother loving Harry more than Ron, represent a significant step toward maturity. Ron’s problem has in the end turned out to be not very different from Harry’s: Ron has had difficulty accepting that he is already loved.
Chapters Twenty–Twenty-Two
Summary: Chapter Twenty: Xenophilius Lovegood
Hermione remains angry at Ron, but Ron and Harry feel much more optimistic now that they’ve destroyed one Horcrux. Ron tells Harry that a magical Trace has been placed on Voldemort’s name, so that anyone who says it can be tracked by the Ministry. This Trace is how the trio were discovered in Tottenham Court Road. Fortunately, Harry and Hermione have already slipped into the habit of calling Voldemort You-Know-Who.
Hermione announces that she wants to visit Xenophilius Lovegood, having found, in the signature of the letter from Dumbledore excerpted in Skeeter’s book, yet another appearance of the triangular symbol associated with Grindelwald and worn by Xenophilius. Ron concurs, noting that Xenophilius’s underground newspaper, The Quibbler, has been staunchly pro-Harry, despite the price on his head.
The trio find the tower where the Lovegoods live, but Xenophilius seems alarmed at their presence and reluctant to invite them in or help them. Grudgingly, he lets them come in. Ron chides Xenophilius for printing in his newspaper that people should help Harry, then appearing unwilling to help Harry himself, and finally Xenophilius agrees to help. He excuses himself to go call Luna, who, he says, is outside fishing, then serves them a nasty-tasting root infusion. Xenophilius asks Harry what he has come for, and Harry inquires about the symbol. Xenophilius tells him that it is the sign of the Deathly Hallows.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-One: The Tale of the Three Brothers
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all baffled—none of them have heard of the Deathly Hallows. Xenophilius explains that the Deathly Hallows have nothing to do with Dark Magic, and that the symbol is merely a way for wizards to indicate to each other that they believe in a particular legend and are engaged in a quest for certain objects—the Deathly Hallows. To explain what these objects are, Xenophilius has Hermione read an old and familiar fairy tale from The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Three brothers were traveling on a road when they came to a river. They made a bridge using magic, but when they were halfway across, Death spoke to them. Death was angry at being cheated of their lives, but he congratulated them and offered them each a prize. The oldest brother asked for a wand that would always win duels, and Death fashioned one out of an elder tree branch. The second asked for the power to bring people back from the dead, and Death gave him a stone with that power. The youngest brother asked for something that would let him leave that place without being followed by Death, and Death reluctantly handed over his own Invisibility Cloak.
The three brothers departed. The first brother was killed in his sleep by a thief after he boasted about his wand. The second brother summoned the spirit of a girl he had once loved, but she couldn’t truly be with him in life, so he killed himself to join her. The youngest brother lived for many years, then handed the cloak off to his own son and welcomed Death like an old friend.
Xenophilius explains that the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility are the Deathly Hallows. Initiates into the legend behind the fairy tale believe that the possessor of all three objects will be the master of Death. Hermione questions whether these objects actually exist, but Xenophilius unwittingly draws her attention to the fact that Harry’s cloak sounds exactly like the cloak in the story. He has no proof that the stone exists, but he notes that there is ample evidence for the existence of the wand, which has been passed from famous wizard to famous wizard, with the new owner always capturing it from the old one in order to truly master it.
Hermione asks Xenophilius if the Peverells have anything to do with the quest, since she saw the symbol on the gravestone of Ignotus Peverell in Godric’s Hollow. Xenophilius explains that many believe the three Peverell brothers to have been the three brothers in the story. Then he excuses himself to fix the dinner.
The three friends debate the relative merits and possible existence of the three artifacts, then Harry wanders upstairs into Luna’s room, seeing paintings of himself and Luna’s other friends, as well as a photograph of Luna and her mother. Harry is startled to realize that the photographs are dusty and the room clearly has not been inhabited for months. He confronts Xenophilius with his lie, and Xenophilius admits that the Ministry has kidnapped Luna because of the pro-Potter articles Xenophilius had been printing. When Xenophilius had gone outside earlier, he had actually dispatched an owl to the Ministry.
Death Eaters arrive, and Xenophilius attempts to subdue Harry and his friends with a spell, but the spell hits an explosive Erumpent horn hanging on his wall, which detonates and blows up half the tower, leaving the trio upstairs and Xenophilius below, separated by rubble. The Death Eaters beat Xenophilius and berate him for constantly summoning them on false pretexts, but one of them uses a spell to determine that someone is indeed upstairs. Ron, Harry, and Hermione Disapparate, but not before Hermione hits Xenophilius with a Forgetting spell to erase his memory and allows the Death Eaters to catch a glimpse of Harry, so they’ll know Xenophilius wasn’t lying.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Two: The Deathly Hallows
Having transported themselves safely to an empty field, Ron, Harry, and Hermione discuss what they’ve learned and debate whether the Deathly Hallows could possibly exist. Hermione steadfastly maintains that it is all nonsense, but Harry starts to put together the information they’ve just gathered into a coherent picture, until he becomes almost obsessed with the Hallows.
First, Harry remembers that during the previous year, when he viewed images in Dumbledore’s Pensieve of Marvolo Gaunt (Voldemort’s grandfather), Gaunt had claimed to be the descendant of the Peverells and claimed that their symbol was on his ring. (This was the ring Horcrux that Dumbledore destroyed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.) Harry puts these pieces together and decides that Gaunt must be the descendant of one of the three brothers in the tale, and that the Resurrection Stone is the stone that was in the ring—and that Dumbledore must have hidden it for Harry inside the Snitch, which they have yet to open.
Harry further realizes that Voldemort was tracking Ollivander, Gregorovitch, and now Grindelwald because he wants the Elder Wand—not because he wants a new wand, or answers about how to defeat Harry’s wand.
Finally, Harry decides that his Invisibility Cloak—the cloak his father left to him—must be the cloak in the story, and that he himself must be descended from the third brother in the story, living as he did in the same town as the Peverells. He remembers that in the letter fragment from his mother that he found in Sirius’s house, she mentions that Dumbledore had borrowed the Cloak. Harry reasons that Dumbledore must have known that it was one of the Hallows and must have wanted to assemble them all. Harry is seized by the idea that if he gathers the Hallows himself, he will finally be powerful enough to defeat Voldemort, whose Horcruxes will be no match for the Hallows.
It occurs to Harry that Voldemort must not know about the Hallows, having been raised in a Muggle orphanage without being read wizard fairy tales. He must be searching for the wand thinking only that it is a powerful wand, not one of three artifacts. If Voldemort had known, he would have pursued the Hallows rather than making the Horcruxes, and he wouldn’t have made a Hallow into a Horcrux (the ring with the Resurrection Stone in it).
As passionate as Harry is about his deductions, Hermione resists, noting that there would be no reason for Dumbledore not to tell Harry about the Hallows if they existed, and reminding Harry that Dumbledore left clear instructions to find and destroy Horcruxes—not to go searching for Hallows to destroy Voldemort. Ron supports Hermione, so the matter seems to be closed, but Harry lies awake that night obsessing about what he could do with the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand—for example, using the Stone to question Dumbledore and the Wand to free Luna from Azkaban, where she is most likely being kept. Over the next few days, the sense of division between Harry and Ron and Hermione deepens.
One night, Ron manages to tune into the underground radio program “Potterwatch,” produced by members of the Order of the Phoenix. Harry, Hermione, and Ron listen eagerly as wizards they know and recognize give out news of the outside world and the people they know and love. Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell have been murdered, along with a goblin; Xenophilius is in prison; Hagrid was almost arrested but escaped; Muggles are being murdered by Death Eaters in great numbers. Rumors have circulated that Voldemort has been sighted outside of England.
As the program ends, Harry seizes on this last piece of information to insist that Voldemort must be searching in Europe for the Elder Wand. Unfortunately, he slips and says Voldemort’s name, breaking the Trace and leading the Ministry’s agents to their hiding place. A voice announces that a dozen wizards are outside the tent, and orders them to come out with their hands up.
Analysis: Chapters Twenty–Twenty-Two
This sequence of chapters, which finally introduces us to the meaning of the book’s title, brings together the two plotlines that have dominated the book. On the one hand, we have seen Harry’s difficult quest to find the Horcruxes and destroy Voldemort before Voldemort can kill him. Under the surface of that plot, Harry has been struggling internally with his grief over Dumbledore. In this second plot, Harry has struggled to stay faithful to his promise to Dumbledore to destroy the Horcruxes, while his doubts have grown that Dumbledore may not have loved him and may not even have been a good person. Essentially, Harry has not been able to fully focus on or commit to the quest that Dumbledore left him because of his grief over Dumbledore—he feels unable to accept Dumbledore’s love now that Dumbledore is dead, and is thus unable to maintain his faith in Dumbledore and the quest.
The Deathly Hallows capture Harry’s imagination primarily because they offer a way out of his impasse. With the Resurrection Stone, Harry could speak with Dumbledore, or with his parents, and he would no longer feel cut off from his dead loved ones. He would be master of death, and so would no longer have to grieve. His power would be sufficient to defeat Voldemort at last. But if Harry chooses to pursue the Hallows instead of the Horcruxes, he will pay a price, because he’ll essentially be abandoning his faith in Dumbledore altogether, refusing to do what Dumbledore advised, and he’ll be giving up on the possibility that Dumbledore knew what was best for him. He would be putting his faith in his own power rather than in Dumbledore.
The fact that choosing to look for the Hallows would be a dangerous, even foolish decision, is implied by a number of factors. In the story of the three brothers, the gifts from Death are intentionally duplicitous, giving the two older brothers what they want but leading directly to their ruin. Only the younger brother thrives, and that is because he does not even seek to “master” death by becoming a killer, an immortal, or a resurrector of dead souls. All he asks for is a normal life. Other signs include the fact that Xenophilius seeks the Hallows, and Xenophilius is manifestly a fool. Throughout literature, folklore, and mythology, the attempt to bring back dead loved ones almost always backfires, being an unnatural and taboo act that the gods will not tolerate.
Chapters Twenty-Three–Twenty-Four
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Three: Malfoy Manor
Hermione points her wand at Harry’s face and causes it to swell so that he’s unrecognizable, just before the three friends are seized by a gang of Snatchers. Harry can’t see, but he recognizes one of the voices menacing Hermione as belonging to Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf. Questioned about their names, Harry claims to be Vernon Dudley, Ron to be Barny Weasley (after having been caught in the lie that he was Stan Shunpike), and Hermione to be Penelope Clearwater.
As the Snatchers go to check their names against lists of wanted persons, leaving the prisoners bound together, Harry and his friends discover that Dean Thomas, their fellow Gryffindor, is bound with them. Dean tells them that these Snatchers are merely looking for truant Hogwarts students to sell to the Ministry for gold.
The Snatchers return, not having found the names they gave on their lists. Harry is able to lie convincingly that he is a Slytherin and that his father works in the Ministry, but the Snatchers realize who they’ve actually caught when they match Hermione to a picture of her in the newspaper, which states that Hermione is known to be traveling with Harry Potter, then discover the Sword of Gryffindor and Harry’s glasses. Throughout this ordeal, Harry has trouble staying in the present moment, as he keeps having visions through Voldemort’s eyes of Voldemort flying to the top of a black fortress—Nurmengard. The Snatchers decide to take the prisoners to Malfoy Manor, Voldemort’s base of operations, and as they go there, Harry has visions of Voldemort interrogating Grindelwald in his cell at Nurmengard.
At the manor, Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy try to get Draco to positively identify Harry, whose face is still unrecognizably swollen, but Draco, fearful and reluctant, won’t commit. Narcissa and Lucius think it is Harry, because they can identify Hermione and Ron, but they don’t want to contact Voldemort without being sure. Bellatrix Lestrange enters the room, and though at first she seems ready to contact Voldemort herself and end the dispute, when she discovers the Sword of Gryffindor, which she had thought safe in her own vault at Gringotts, she tells Narcissa and Lucius that they are all in mortal danger, and she has Harry and Ron thrown into the dark basement so she can interrogate Hermione and plan her next move.
As Bellatrix tortures Hermione to learn where they got the sword, accusing her of breaking into Bellatrix’s Gringotts vault, Harry and Ron discover that the basement also holds Luna, Ollivander the wandmaker, Dean Thomas, and Griphook, a Gringotts goblin. Luna has a nail that she uses to untie them, and Ron uses his Deluminator to light the basement. As they hear Hermione screaming in pain, Harry desperately looks for a way to escape. Finding none, he empties his pouch, looking for something that might aid him, and he finds the shard of Sirius’s magic mirror. Dumbledore’s eye is looking out of it at Harry. Harry asks the eye for help, and it disappears.
The prisoners hear Hermione claiming that the sword is only a fake, and then Bellatrix stating her intention to question the Gringotts goblin. Harry asks Griphook to lie and say the sword they were carrying is a fake, then they turn out the lights, just as Malfoy comes down to bring Griphook to Bellatrix.
There is a loud crack, and they relight the Deluminator to discover that Dobby the house-elf, who served the Malfoys until Harry tricked Lucius into freeing Dobby, has appeared in their midst, ready to rescue them. Dobby, with his special house-elf magic, can Disapparate in and out of the house, taking humans with him, so Harry tells him to take Luna, Ollivander, and Dean to Bill Weasley’s house, and then return for the rest of them. The people upstairs hear the crack of the elf disappearing, so they send Wormtail to investigate. Ron and Harry struggle to subdue Wormtail, but Wormtail’s silver hand clamps around Harry’s throat and chokes him. Harry reminds Wormtail that Harry once saved his life and says that Wormtail shouldn’t kill him, and Wormtail actually loosens his grip. But then Wormtail’s silver hand, which had been given to him by Voldemort, turns on Wormtail and strangles him, a punishment for his moment of hesitation.
Upstairs, Griphook tells Bellatrix that the sword is a fake, and Bellatrix, reassured, summons Voldemort by tapping the Dark Mark on her forearm. Harry has a vision from Voldemort’s point of view of Voldemort being enraged at being summoned, and, in his impatience, killing Grindelwald.
Bellatrix announces that she’s finished with Hermione and offers Hermione to Greyback to eat. Ron and Harry rush in, disarming Bellatrix of her wand and incapacitating Lucius, but Bellatrix holds a knife to Hermione’s throat and forces Harry and Ron to drop the wands they have taken (from Bellatrix and Wormtail, respectively), which Draco picks up. Harry senses that Voldemort is very near.
With a grinding sound, the chandelier above them starts to fall. Bellatrix leaps out of the way, and the chandelier falls on Hermione and Griphook, who is holding the Sword of Gryffindor. Harry jumps up and wrests Draco’s wand from his hands, as well as the two wands Draco had picked up.
Narcissa sees Dobby and realizes that her former house-elf is the one who helped Harry and his friends. Dobby seizes her wand as Bellatrix screams for Dobby’s death.
Harry, Ron, Griphook, and Dobby all Disapparate to Bill Weasley’s cottage, but Dobby arrives mortally wounded, Bellatrix having thrown her silver knife into his body before he disappeared. Harry tries to comfort Dobby and pleads with him not to die, but the house-elf dies in Harry’s arms after saying Harry’s name.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Four: The Wandmaker
As Bill and Fleur help the escaped prisoners, Harry covers Dobby with his jacket. He is aware that he can see and hear the enraged Voldemort punishing the residents of Malfoy Manor, but in his grief—which is a manifestation of his love—for Dobby, he finds himself able at last to close his mind to Voldemort and to choose not to listen. Harry digs Dobby’s grave himself, using a shovel rather than magic. They have a brief funeral service for Dobby, then Harry uses one of the wands he seized to inscribe a stone with the inscription “Here Lies Dobby, A Free Elf.”
Harry, having had time to think as he dug the grave, decides that he should be pursuing the Horcruxes as Dumbledore instructed, rather than the Hallows. He guesses that Dumbledore didn’t tell him about the Hallows because he knew that Harry would have to struggle with himself in order not to pursue them, and that Harry would need time to work out for himself that they’re not worth pursuing.
Harry takes Ron and Hermione with him to question Griphook. Harry asks the goblin to help him break into the Lestrange vault at Gringotts, and Griphook, who is impressed by the kindness and respect Harry shows to elves and goblins, says he’ll consider it. Outside of Griphook’s room, Harry tells Ron and Hermione that he thinks the vault may house a Horcrux, since Voldemort trusted Bellatrix and tended to find grandiose homes for his Horcruxes, and also because Bellatrix seemed so worried to hear that her vault might have been broken into.
Harry and his friends next go to question Ollivander. Ollivander tells him that his broken wand is past repair. He identifies the wands Harry and Ron took as belonging to Bellatrix and Draco, and tells them that when a wand has been captured, it generally shifts its allegiance to the new owner—regardless of whether the previous owner is still alive. Ollivander confirms that Voldemort had taken him prisoner and tortured him to find out how to overcome the problem of not being able to beat Harry with the wand that shared the same phoenix-feather core as Harry’s. Ollivander first told Voldemort to simply borrow a wand, but Harry’s wand destroyed the borrowed wand. Then, Voldemort decided to try to find an even more powerful wand, and that is how Voldemort began to seek the Elder Wand. Ollivander confesses that he told Voldemort to look to Gregorovitch for the wand, because Gregorovitch was rumored to possess it. However, though Ollivander knows about the history of the Elder Wand and its powers, he doesn’t know about the Deathly Hallows or the wand’s connection to the other artifacts.
Harry deduces that if Gregorovitch had the wand and it was stolen from him by Grindelwald (as he had witnessed during his vision of Voldemort reading Gregorovitch’s mind), and then Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in their famous duel, then the ownership of the Elder Wand must have passed to Dumbledore. Harry realizes that Voldemort must have figured this out by now and must already have gone to Dumbledore’s grave to take the wand, and that they’re too late to stop him, but he accepts this fact with equanimity, having deliberately decided to talk to Griphook before Ollivander because he is now committed to pursuing Horcruxes rather than Hallows.
At Hogwarts, Voldemort enters Dumbledore’s grave and takes the Elder Wand from his hands.
Analysis: Chapters Twenty-Three–Twenty-Four
Harry’s over-enthusiasm for the Hallows (at the end of Chapter Twenty-Two) leads directly to the party’s being captured, imprisoned, and tortured. The experience is important to the advancement of the main plot, because it is only by having Bellatrix torture and interrogate Hermione that Harry deduces that something vitally important to Voldemort, possibly a Horcrux, must be stored in Bellatrix’s vault. Chapter Twenty-Three represents a shift of pace from the preceding, replacing the abstract, hypothetical dilemma of Horcruxes versus Hallows with fast-paced action.
One of the things that makes this sequence so suspenseful and convincing is how fully imagined each of the evil characters is. Bellatrix drives the scene, being the most forceful character and the one with the most power, but Lucius, Narcissa, Greyback, Draco, and Wormtail all have their own individual dilemmas and preoccupations—all quite separate from Voldemort and his concerns—that come together to shape the events of the chapter.
Chapter Twenty-Four represents a momentous decision for Harry, which the narrative signals as momentous to us and to Harry, even though nothing extraordinary seems to be at stake for anyone else. All Harry does is decide to speak to the goblin before the wand maker. The goblin can give him information about his only lead on a Horcrux, which might or might not be in Bellatrix’s vault, while the wand maker could offer him information about the Elder Wand, a Hallow. Harry’s decision turns out to have real consequences: by delaying talking to Ollivander, Harry gives Voldemort a head start in his pursuit of the Elder Wand, actually allowing Voldemort to take possession of it. Harry reaches this decision as he is digging the grave for Dobby the house-elf. Dobby has just given his life saving Harry and his friends, and there is nothing Harry can do to change Dobby’s sacrifice and loss. All he can do is bury Dobby and try to keep faith with him by continuing his own struggle. Thus, Dobby’s death is good for Dumbledore’s mission, because it makes Harry want to keep faith with the dead. hapters Twenty-Five–Twenty-Seven
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Five: Shell Cottage
Griphook agrees to help them break into Bellatrix Lestrange’s Gringotts vault, but he demands the Sword of Gryffindor as payment. This puts Harry and his friends in a bind, because if they refuse, they’ll never get into the vault to look for a Horcrux, but if they give up the sword, they’ll have no way to destroy any Horcrux they find. Harry decides to trick the goblin, telling him he can have the sword after they break into the vault, but not specifying how long after. Feeling somewhat guilty, Harry gives his promise to Griphook, and for several weeks they plan the break-in.
Lupin arrives at the cottage with the news that Tonks has had her baby. He asks Harry to be the godfather, and Harry agrees.
Before Harry and the others embark on their mission, Bill takes Harry aside. He does not know what Harry is planning to do or how Griphook is involved, but he warns Harry to be careful of goblins. He says that goblins are deeply distrustful of wizards, believing that wizards do not respect agreements involving treasure and tend to trample on goblin rights. He explains that goblins believe manufactured items belong to the maker, and that ownership of goblin-made goods should not pass from wizard to wizard but should revert to the goblins after the first owner’s death. He warns Harry of the dangers of reneging on a deal with a goblin.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Six: Gringotts
To break into Gringotts, Hermione disguises herself as Bellatrix Lestrange and changes Ron’s appearance so he’s unrecognizable. With Harry and Griphook under the Invisibility Cloak, the four go to Diagon Alley, where they see witches and wizards begging in the streets, deprived of their wands by the Ministry.
A Death Eater named Travers stops Hermione/Bellatrix, noting that he’d heard she’d been confined to her house and lost her wand, but Hermione dismisses his questions contemptuously, in a good imitation of Bellatrix’s manner. Unfortunately, Travers is going to Gringotts too, and they enter the bank together.
The first security obstacle they face is Probity Probes—rods that detect the presence of Concealment spells and magical items. Harry sneaks up in his cloak and zaps the guards working the probes with spells of Confusion.
At the customer service counter, Hermione asks to be admitted to Bellatrix’s vault, and a goblin asks her for identification. When the goblin says her wand will suffice, Harry realizes that they must know Bellatrix lost her wand and must be expecting an impostor, so he uses the Imperius curse to control the goblin’s mind. The goblin compliments her on her new wand, which makes Travers suspicious, so Harry controls him as well.
The entire party, led by the mind-controlled goblin, gets into a rail cart and travels deep into the vaults. Harry curses himself for the strategy they’ve adopted, realizing that the Death Eaters know all about who stole Bellatrix’s wand, and that posing as Bellatrix has already brought them too much scrutiny and attention. When the cart passes through a waterfall and all of their Disguising spells are undone, Griphook tells them that the Gringotts employees have set up defenses indicating that they know impostors are present.
A dragon blocks the passageway to the vault, but Griphook shakes metal instruments called Clankers, which the dragon has been trained to fear, and it backs up. The mind-controlled goblin places his palm to the door of the vault, and it opens.
Harry knows from his conversations with Dumbledore that if a Horcrux is in the vault, it must either be the Hufflepuff cup or else an unknown object, so they have no choice but to look for the cup. Unfortunately, whenever they touch anything inside the vault, it burns them and then multiplies into myriad worthless copies, so that if they continue touching items in the vault, it will eventually fill and crush them. They try not to touch anything as they search, but this proves impossible.
Finally, they see the cup sitting high up out of reach. The dragon roars outside the door, and the heat from the multiplied treasure is overwhelming. Hermione Levitates Harry toward the cup, but he knocks over a suit of armor, and they begin to be buried in hot objects. Harry uses the sword to skewer the cup through a handle as Griphook sinks beneath the burning treasure. Harry stops to save him, letting go of the sword, and Griphook seizes the sword, flinging the cup into the air. Harry realizes that Griphook never believed Harry would keep his word, but he manages to catch the cup again as Griphook disappears.
A crowd of goblins appears in the passage, there to apprehend Harry and company. Harry uses his wand to free the chained dragon, then the three get on the dragon’s back and ride it through the tunnel, eventually emerging in the bank lobby, exiting through the door, and flying off into the sky above Diagon Alley.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Final Hiding Place
The dragon flies far off into the countryside, finally flying lower over a mountainous lake. Harry and friends decide to jump off into the lake, and make their way, bruised, burned, and battered, to the shore, the cup safely in their grasp.
Harry has a vision in which he not only sees out of Voldemort’s eyes but reads his thoughts. Voldemort is questioning a goblin about the break-in, and when told that Harry Potter was the thief and that the cup was the item stolen, he flies into a rage and kills the goblin and all the wizards who don’t flee fast enough, using the Elder Wand. Voldemort is not yet aware that Harry knows about his Horcruxes and is destroying them, because he does not feel anything when they are destroyed. Now that his cup Horcrux has been stolen, it finally occurs to him that Harry might be after his Horcruxes, and that Dumbledore might have given Harry the means to find them out. He resolves to check on his ring and his locket to see that they’re safe, and to keep Nagini the snake (which is itself a Horcrux) beside him at all times. Finally, he will check on the last and safest Horcrux, which is at Hogwarts.
Harry relays this information to his friends. They know they have very limited time, because Voldemort will discover that his ring and locket are gone within a matter of hours, and may move the final Horcrux to a new hiding place. On a more positive note, they now know the final Horcrux is at Hogwarts, so they set off for the village of Hogsmeade.
Analysis: Chapters Twenty-Five–Twenty-Seven
Now that Harry has made his decision and committed himself to finishing the quest, the novel starts to move more quickly to its conclusion, and in three chapters the trio pulls off their most audacious mission yet, breaking into and out of the famously well-protected Gringotts bank. When Harry was introduced to Gringotts in the first novel, something as foolhardy as breaking into a vault was probably the furthest thing from his, or the reader’s mind.
Harry’s qualms about lying to the goblin, and Bill’s warning about playing fast and loose in deals with goblins, are both examples of foreshadowing. We know that the implicit conflict between Griphook and Harry over the sword will eventually break out into the open, and Harry will have to find a new way to destroy Horcruxes.
In the heist sequence, we see the results of the Ministry’s activities, as wandless witches and wizards are reduced to begging in the gutter. The suspense of the break-in is heightened by its being narrated from Harry’s point of view, even though it is Hermione who is under the most pressure to perform.
The image of Voldemort killing his followers brings our attention back to Voldemort as the central threat. Now that the conflicts in the middle of the book, between Harry and his friends and between Harry and himself, have either been resolved or receded into the background, the novel moves into its final phase. Voldemort discovers the true nature of Harry’s quest, and the quest brings Harry and his friends directly into confrontation with Voldemort
Chapters Twenty-Eight–Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Missing Mirror
Harry, Ron, and Hermione appear in Hogsmeade, but their appearance triggers a magical alarm that sounds like loud screaming. A dozen Death Eaters burst out of the Three Broomsticks pub in search of them. Though they remain under the Invisibility Cloak, they have nowhere to hide, and they infer from the Death Eaters’ comments that enchantments will keep them from teleporting away again. The Death Eaters unleash dementors in search of them, and Harry summons his Patronus, potentially giving their position away.
Before the Death Eaters can find them, however, a door opens in a house on the street, and a rough voice summons them inside and into a room above the Hog’s Head Inn. Still cloaked, they look out the window down at the street below, where the man who saved them—whom Harry recognizes as the Hog’s Head barman—argues with the Death Eaters. The man claims that it was he who set off the alarm, letting his cat out after curfew. He claims that the Patronus was his own goat Patronus, not Harry’s stag, and points out that Voldemort won’t want to be summoned over a cat. Mindful that the Hog’s Head bar is a convenient place for them to trade black market goods, the Death Eaters leave him alone.
Harry recognizes the man’s blue eyes as those he’s been seeing through the magic mirror, and he realizes that this man must be Aberforth, Dumbledore’s brother, and that Aberforth was the one who sent Dobby. Aberforth acknowledges that he’s been trying to keep an eye on Harry, though it was not he who led them to the sword.
Aberforth tries to convince Harry that Voldemort has already won, and that Harry should abandon his quest—whatever it is—and leave the country, before he meets Dumbledore’s fate. He reminds them of his brother Dumbledore’s penchant for lies and secrecy, and says that many of those Dumbledore loved and cared for turned out to be worse off than if he’d left them alone.
Hermione guesses that Aberforth is talking about his sister, Ariana, and prods him into giving them the real story of what happened to her. Ariana was not a Squib, as Rita Skeeter claimed. When she was six years old, as her magic was beginning to manifest itself but before she could control it, she was observed doing magic by three much older Muggle boys, who attacked her in some unspecified way, leaving her permanently unhinged. Dumbledore’s father was imprisoned in Azkaban for attacking these boys, and Dumbledore’s early flirtation with the idea of wizards dominating Muggles stemmed from anger at what had happened to his sister and father, coupled with a wish to create a world in which his sister would not have to hide.
Dumbledore returned home when his mother, Kendra, died and took responsibility for Ariana. He met Grindelwald, and the two began hatching grand plans to change the world, wanting to set off as soon as possible. Aberforth confronted them, pointing out that Ariana was in no fit state to travel or be left alone, so they had no way to do whatever it was they wanted to do. As the argument grew heated, Aberforth drew his wand, and Grindelwald used the Cruciatus (torturing) curse on him. As the three fought, Ariana came to intervene, and one of the curses the three wizards were hurling at each other killed her. Grindelwald left immediately, and Dumbledore was free to embark on his career.
Harry tells Aberforth that Dumbledore was never free of his past, and describes how Dumbledore, when he drank a potion and went out of his mind in the previous book, was begging an unseen figure to hurt him instead of “them”—clearly a memory of seeing Grindelwald hurting Aberforth and Ariana. Harry says that he hasn’t given up on the Order of the Phoenix and intends to defeat Voldemort, and Aberforth agrees to help him get into Hogwarts.
Aberforth turns to an oil painting of Ariana on the wall and tells the picture of Ariana that she knows what to do. Ariana turns around within the picture and walks down a tunnel, growing smaller and smaller until she disappears, eventually returning through the picture with a bedraggled and scarred Neville Longbottom, who emerges from the painting into the room.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Lost Diadem
Neville wants to know if rumors he’s heard about Harry breaking into Gringotts are true, and Harry confirms this. Neville describes what’s happening at Hogwarts: the Carrow siblings, Amycus and Alecto, have been made professors and put in charge of discipline. Amycus teaches students how to use the Cruciatus Curse, while Alecto teaches Muggle studies with an anti-Muggle bias.
Neville proudly shows the scars he earned for standing up to the Carrows. Neville remembered that when Harry stood up to unjust authority figures, it gave the rest of the students hope, so he tried to fill this role after Harry left school. Luna was taken away from school, and Ginny never returned after Easter break, so Neville found himself increasingly on his own in carrying out underground acts of resistance against the new regime. Eventually, the Death Eaters tried to stop Neville by going after his grandmother, who put a Death Eater in the hospital and then went on the run. Neville knew that it was time for him to disappear, and he has been in hiding in the Room of Requirement, which they had used in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Neville leads Harry and company through the portrait into the Room of Requirement. About twenty students are hiding in it, all members of Dumbledore’s Army and supporters of Harry who’ve been driven into hiding. They are wild with joy at seeing Harry and his friends. Soon after, Luna Lovegood and Dean arrive. All of the students are eager to help Harry, and are unhappy and resentful to hear that Harry, Ron, and Hermione are on a mission alone that they won’t disclose or accept help with. With some prodding from Ron and Hermione, Harry realizes that he doesn’t have to be quite as cryptic as Dumbledore and can recruit help in searching for the Horcrux without explaining what it is.
Harry tells the assembled students that they’re looking for a distinctive object, and that they don’t know what it is but think it might be associated with Ravenclaw (given that other objects were associated with other houses). Luna volunteers that there is a legend about a lost diadem of Ravenclaw, which has been gone for centuries. Harry could see a reproduction of it on the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw in the Ravenclaw common room.
Luna and Harry put on the Invisibility Cloak, and Luna leads him to the room so he can see it. Instead of a password, the Ravenclaw door is opened by answering a very philosophical question. The knocker asks, “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?” and Luna opens the door by answering, “A circle has no beginning.”
Harry climbs up on the statue to get a good look at the tiara, but is apprehended by Alecto Carrow, who touches her Dark Mark to summon Voldemort.
Analysis: Chapters Twenty-Eight–Twenty-Nine
Aberforth’s story gives Harry a better perspective on the story of Dumbledore’s youthful mistakes, providing the essential details—that Ariana was not a Squib but was attacked by Muggles—that make Dumbledore, his mother Kendra, and even his father all seem human rather than monstrous. So complete is Harry’s shift in attitude toward Dumbledore that he is now in a position to defend Dumbledore to Aberforth. Harry’s resolve to complete Dumbledore’s mission is intact, and it is enough to galvanize others who have given up. In the last chapters of the novel we see Harry as a leader, and we see Harry’s leadership reflected in others.
Neville’s newfound heroism is a pleasurable reversal of his role throughout the series as the most timid and least competent student in Harry’s class. As Neville explains it, however, his own heroism is not simply a matter of difficult and challenging times bringing out the best in his own character. Instead, Neville modeled his heroism and leadership after Harry’s. When Harry did not appear in school, Neville stepped in to fill the role. As the intimidated whipping boy of the school for so long, Neville was well able to appreciate the importance of those who take a stand and show leadership.
Neville’s adoption of Harry’s role and his continuation of Harry’s struggle demonstrate an important way in which human beings can connect with one another even after losing one another. A central problem of the book, expressed vividly in the epigraph from Aeschylus, is how we can be connected to people we have lost. Important people have died, and Harry has felt—particularly in the graveyard in Godric’s Hollow—that they are simply gone, unable to care about him or his struggles anymore. But Neville’s actions show Harry that there is a way to stay connected to people who have left us, if we keep faith with them and continue their struggle.
Chapters Thirty–Thirty-One
Summary: Chapter Thirty: The Sacking of Severus Snape
Harry has a vision of Voldemort receiving the summons. Luna Stuns Alecto, knocking her out and waking the Ravenclaw students, who enter the common room. Amycus pounds on the door, but he’s too stupid to answer the doorknocker’s next question, and can’t get in. Harry slips into Voldemort’s mind and sees that Voldemort has decided to check on his locket Horcrux before coming to Hogwarts, giving Harry a little extra time.
Professor McGonagall arrives outside the room and lets Amycus in. Harry and Luna have recloaked, and Amycus sees only his Stunned sister on the floor. His chief worry is that they will be punished for giving a false alarm, and he muses aloud that he can blame the summons on the Ravenclaw students, so Voldemort may be satisfied with killing a few of them. When Professor McGonagall stands up to Amycus defiantly, he spits in her face, prompting Harry to step out of the Cloak and deliver a Cruciatus Curse at Amycus.
Professor McGonagall urges Harry to flee, but when he explains that he is looking for the lost diadem of Ravenclaw on Dumbledore’s orders, she says that the teachers will secure the school from Voldemort while he searches. Visions of Voldemort reveal to Harry that Voldemort has discovered that his locket is missing and is on his way to the school.
Harry and Professor McGonagall quickly make a plan to alert the other heads of houses and evacuate any students unwilling or too young to fight against Voldemort. They are on their way to alert the heads, with Harry and Luna hidden under the cloak, when they meet Severus Snape in the hallway. When Snape demands to know if McGonagall has seen Harry Potter, she attacks him, and they duel. McGonagall holds Snape at bay, and he is finally forced to take flight when Professors Sprout and Flitwick run up to aid her. Snape leaps from the window and flies away on huge, batlike wings.
Professor McGonagall organizes the other professors in establishing magical defenses and evacuating students, putting to work those students who can help defend the school, including Dumbledore’s Army. Lupin and the entire Weasley family enter the school in order to help, with Percy apologizing for being a pro-Ministry prig and Lupin showing pictures of his and Tonks’s baby.
Ginny Weasley tells Harry that Ron and Hermione said something about heading to a bathroom. Harry starts to look for them when he has a vision of Voldemort arriving at the school gates, Nagini draped across his shoulders.
Summary: Chapter Thirty-One: The Battle of Hogwarts document.write('');
As the students of Hogwarts prepare to fight or flee, Voldemort’s voice echoes through the school, promising to leave Hogwarts untouched if Harry Potter is handed over by midnight. Pansy Parkinson of Slytherin House shouts that they should grab Harry, but the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws all stand in his defense. The Slytherins all leave the school, but McGonagall has to force out the members of other houses who are underage but want to stay and fight for Harry.
The professors go to man their battle positions, as Harry turns back to his search for the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. Remembering that the diadem has not been seen “in living memory,” he decides to ask the dead—the Gray Lady, who is the House ghost of Ravenclaw. Harry finds the Gray Lady, who refuses to help him until he confronts her with the threat to Hogwarts. Then she admits that she is the ghost of Helena Ravenclaw, the daughter of the founder. Helena had stolen the diadem, hoping to make herself smarter and more important than her mother. She fled to hide in a forest in Albania, and her mother, Rowena, concealed the theft. On her deathbed, Rowena wanted to see her daughter one last time, so she sent a man who loved Helena to seek her out. Helena refused to come, and the young man killed her in anger, then killed himself. The young man became the Hogwarts ghost known as the Bloody Baron, while the diadem was left in the forest.
Pressed by Harry, the Gray Lady admits that she told her story to Tom Riddle (Voldemort’s name when he was a student at Hogwarts). Harry guesses that Tom Riddle went and found the diadem in the forest, but when he made it a Horcrux, re-hid it at Hogwarts. (Harry knows from his vision that it’s at Hogwarts now.) He reasons that Voldemort’s only chance to hide it after he graduated from Hogwarts would have been the day he came to ask Dumbledore for a job, on the way to or from Dumbledore’s office.
Harry leaves Ravenclaw Tower and runs into Hagrid, who is with his giant dog Fang and giant half-brother, Grawpy. Harry leads them off in search of Ron and Hermione, seeing signs everywhere that the battle for Hogwarts has begun. As they run through the school, Harry remembers with a shock that he has seen the diadem in the Room of Requirement, in its form of “the room where everything is hidden,” when he hid his own Potions book there in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Finally, Harry encounters Ron and Hermione, who have gone to the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve basilisk teeth to destroy Horcruxes with. Ron was able to imitate Harry speaking Parseltongue to gain entry to the room, and they destroyed the cup. Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to the Room of Requirement, taking stock of the ever-worsening battle swirling around them. In the room, amid the labyrinth of hidden objects, Harry finds the diadem but is confronted by Draco Malfoy and his cronies, Crabbe, and Goyle, who followed Harry in to capture him, hoping to hand him over to Voldemort.
Crabbe and Goyle try to kill Harry rather than capture him, for once ignoring Draco’s leadership, and in the struggle the diadem is dropped. Crabbe uses a fire curse to try to kill Harry and his friends, and it rages out of control. Harry and Ron seize broomsticks and save Hermione, Goyle, Malfoy, and the diadem, but Crabbe dies. Outside the Room of Requirement, they see that the diadem Horcrux has been destroyed by the fire curse.
A noise in the corridor alerts them that Death Eaters have gained entrance to Hogwarts. They go to help the defenders of Hogwarts, and in the ensuing battle, Fred Weasley is killed.
Analysis: Chapters Thirty–Thirty-One
In these chapters, Harry and his friends return to the halls of Hogwarts, which is of course the setting for all of the other books in the series, but which has long been absent from this one. Hogwarts is much more than just a setting for the action, having been one of the chief attractions for readers of the series, and almost a character in its own right, with its living walls, statues, and portraits and its secrets that not even Dumbledore knew fully. By moving the climactic ending of the book back to Hogwarts, the author allows the school to resume its fascinating role as a character once more, and also raises the stakes of the battle between Harry and Voldemort, as the school itself, and everyone and everything in it, come under attack. For Harry to fight to save the wizarding world, or the world in general, is very abstract. For him to fight to save Hogwarts is something we can picture in detail and care about.
When Harry leaves the Room of Requirement and explores Ravenclaw, we see more reversals in relation to the previous novels. Now Harry walks through the school as an intruder and an adult rather than a student, and the crowds of sleeping Ravenclaw students seem like children in comparison to him. Professor McGonagall, who had always kept him in his place by being the strict disciplinarian, is now seen by Harry as a friend, and he lashes out at Amycus to protect her. She herself views Harry in a different light, for once not trying to order him around for his own good.
Plot developments come very quickly in Chapter Thirty-One, with Harry’s discovery of the diadem’s history and his recovery of it, his final confrontation with Draco, Ron and Hermione’s collection of the basilisk teeth, the mobilization of virtually every remaining character in the book, and the death of Fred
Plot developments come very quickly in Chapter Thirty-One, with Harry’s discovery of the diadem’s history and his recovery of it, his final confrontation with Draco, Ron and Hermione’s collection of the basilisk teeth, the mobilization of virtually every remaining character in the book, and the death of Fred Weasley. The book’s focus swings wide in this chapter, encompassing everything and everyone who matters to Harry, so that we can see that everything is to be decided this night.
Chapters Thirty-Two–Thirty-Three
Summary: Chapter Thirty-Two: The Elder Wand
Giant spiders from the Forbidden Forest enter the school, fighting on the side of the Death Eaters, as Harry, Ron, and the Weasleys try to move Fred’s body to a safe place. Ron wants to stay and fight to avenge his brother, but Hermione urges him to focus on the goal: to destroy Nagini, the last known Horcrux. Harry uses his ability to see through Voldemort’s eyes to find out where he is, and has a vision of Voldemort in the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade ordering Lucius Malfoy, who is frantic with worry about Draco, to go fetch Snape.
They head toward the Whomping Willow to enter the passageway to the Shrieking Shack, on the way fighting off attacking Death Eaters and saving Draco Malfoy’s life from a Death Eater who mistakes him for an enemy. Before they reach the Willow, they see that giants have joined the fight on both sides, and they have to fight off a hundred dementors, with some help from Luna, Ernie, and Seamus, who have mastered the art of summoning Patronuses.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione enter the passage and creep to where they can observe what’s happening in the Shrieking Shack. Voldemort is telling Snape that the Elder Wand is working no better than his old wand and has not given him the extraordinary powers it was supposed to. Voldemort concludes that he is not yet the true master of the Elder Wand, because Snape killed its previous owner, and thus Voldemort must kill Snape to be the wand’s master. Voldemort orders Nagini to kill Snape, and the great snake bites Snape’s neck, mortally wounding him. Voldemort leaves.
Harry goes to Snape’s body, and Snape, dying, tells Harry to “Take it,” and expels a silvery substance from his mouth, nose, and ears. Harry collects the substance in a flask that Hermione provides, and Snape, after telling Harry to look at him, dies.
Summary: Chapter Thirty-Three: The Prince’s Tale
Voldemort addresses the school, telling them that he will give them a one-hour reprieve to dispose of their dead and treat the wounded. He announces that Harry should meet him alone in the Forbidden Forest in one hour, or Voldemort will recommence the battle, enter the fray himself, and kill every person who helped Harry.
In the Great Hall of Hogwarts, those who have died fighting for Harry are laid out. Among the dead are Lupin and Tonks.
Leaving behind his grieving friends, Harry goes to Dumbledore’s office to place Snape’s memories into the Pensieve for viewing, witnessing Snape’s true life story. He sees Snape as a boy of nine or ten, observing Lily Evans, Harry’s future mother, first discovering her magical talents, and Snape clumsily trying to befriend her by telling her about her true nature as a witch. In a slightly later memory, Snape has become her friend and is giving Lily her first introduction to the wizarding world. Lily’s sister, Petunia, taunts Snape for his awful clothes, provoking him into attacking her, which angers Lily.
Harry observes a scene in which Snape watches Lily say good-bye to her family to board the Hogwarts Express for the first time. Lily reveals to Petunia that she knows that Petunia, who professes to hate magic, begged Dumbledore to admit her to the school. Petunia angrily accuses Lily of being a freak and a sneak, and Lily feels discomfort regarding Snape, who was the one who stole Petunia’s letter of response from Dumbledore. On the train, young James Potter and Sirius Black taunt and mock Snape.
Harry sees Snape’s disappointment at Lily’s being Sorted into Gryffindor rather than his own Slytherin. Later in their school career, Lily and Snape are still close friends, but Snape is jealous of James Potter’s attraction to her, and Lily disapproves of Snape’s Dark magic–practicing friends. Lily is furious with Snape for calling her a Mudblood, and for speaking contemptuously of Mudbloods in general. Snape frantically apologizes, but Lily tells him they have chosen separate ways.
Harry watches as Snape meets with Dumbledore on a wild hilltop. Snape has sworn loyalty to Voldemort but is meeting with Dumbledore secretly because he knows that Voldemort plans to kill Lily, her husband James, and her son, all because Snape told Voldemort about Professor Trelawney’s prediction that Voldemort would be killed by a boy born at the end of July. Snape promises to do anything Dumbledore asks if he will protect Lily.
Later, in Dumbledore’s office, Snape sobs for Lily Potter’s death. Dumbledore tells him that the son survived, and that Snape’s path is clear if he truly loved Lily. Snape agrees to devote his life to protecting Harry but makes Dumbledore promise never to tell anyone.
Much later, when Harry is a student at Hogwarts, Snape expresses his irritation at how Harry resembles his father in attitude and actions. Still later, Dumbledore and Snape discuss Karkaroff’s darkening Dark Mark, and Voldemort’s imminent return, which it presages.
In another memory, Snape ministers to Dumbledore after Dumbledore rashly puts on the ring of Marvolo Gaunt and suffers a blackened and burned hand because of the ring’s curse. Snape’s potions buy Dumbledore a year of life, but nothing they do can prevent the curse from killing him eventually. Dumbledore makes Snape promise to protect the students at Hogwarts if Voldemort gains control of the school, to help Draco stay out of trouble as he tries to carry out Voldemort’s instructions to kill Dumbledore, and to kill Dumbledore himself when the right time comes.
Later, Dumbledore tells Snape that after Snape kills Dumbledore, there may come a time when Voldemort seems to fear for the life of his snake (which will mean that the other Horcruxes are destroyed or threatened). At that moment, Snape should tell Harry the truth: that when Voldemort sent his killing curse at Lily Potter and blasted his own soul to bits, a piece of Voldemort’s soul bound itself to Harry’s. This event is the reason that Harry can read Voldemort’s mind and can speak Parseltongue. As long as Harry lives, so will Voldemort. The only way Voldemort will die is if all of the Horcruxes are destroyed and Voldemort himself kills Harry, who is in fact the seventh Horcrux. Snape is furious, accusing Dumbledore of raising Harry as a lamb for slaughter and using Snape by falsely telling him he was protecting Lily Potter’s son.
Later, after Dumbledore’s death, the portrait of Dumbledore tells Snape to give Voldemort the correct date of Harry’s departure from the Dursleys and to plant the idea of using decoys, so Harry can escape. In the pursuit of Harry, Snape burns off George Weasley’s ear accidentally, while trying to protect Lupin from a Death Eater.
Snape goes to Sirius’s house and steals the small fragment at the end of the letter Harry found, simply because the page is signed “Lots of love, Lily.” He tears Lily’s picture out of the photograph of Lily, James, and Harry.
Finally, the portrait of Phineas Nigellus tells Snape that Harry and Hermione are hiding in the Forest of Dean, Hermione having mentioned the place while opening her magic bag. Dumbledore urges Snape to take the Sword of Gryffindor to them under the right conditions, and Snape leaves, on his way to put the sword under ice and use his own Patronus (the silver doe) to guide Harry.
The memories over, Harry wakes up in the headmaster’s office.
Analysis: Chapters Thirty-Two–Thirty-Three
Snape has no chance to fight or stand up to Voldemort, and thus has no time to demonstrate his true heroic character before he dies. His final actions are as tightly cloaked in mystery as everything he has done throughout the series. Sadly, his death accomplishes nothing, as Voldemort is simply pursuing one more misguided and doomed scheme to acquire the power to beat Harry. Fortunately for Harry, Snape has time for one last act, extracting his memories for viewing in the Pensieve, the headmaster’s privilege (since the Pensieve is in the headmaster’s office).
The viewing of Snape’s life story in the Pensieve is very satisfying, as it explains everything mysterious or contradictory that we have witnessed about Snape throughout the series. His connection with Slytherin and past as a Death Eater are all real, but his animosity toward Harry was never malice, but simply irritation at seeing Harry’s father reflected in him. We knew since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that Harry’s father had persecuted Snape, but we never saw that Snape’s hatred of James Potter was counterbalanced by a much stronger emotion. Much to our surprise, everything that Snape has ever done throughout the series has been motivated by love. The sudden revelation that things were not as they seemed, and that something else was going on all along that we are only now aware of, is called irony, and it is one of the most pleasurable experiences an author can produce. When the events in question concern a character who has fascinated us and held our attention through seven books, the experience for the reader is rare and special.
Chapters Thirty-Four–Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Forest Again
Harry, though filled with dread, accepts that he has to die. He sees that Dumbledore knew him well enough to know that he would sacrifice himself willingly if he could save the lives of others. He notes that Dumbledore overestimated him, because the snake remains undestroyed, but he trusts that someone else can manage to kill the snake, now that Ron and Hermione know how.
Harry puts on the Invisibility Cloak and goes downstairs, almost running into Neville, who is helping carry in the dead body of Colin Creevey, the younger boy who had long idolized Harry. Harry avoids encountering any of his other friends, but goes up to Neville and gives him the information that the snake Nagini must be destroyed, in case anything happens to Ron and Hermione. So if the chance presents itself, and Neville happens to think of it . . . he should kill the snake.
Harry enters the forest. He takes out the Snitch Dumbledore left him, whose message said “I open at the close.” He tells the Snitch he is about to die, and it opens for him, revealing the cracked Resurrection Stone. Behind him, the shades of his parents appear, as well as Sirius and Lupin, who was killed in the recent battle. The shades tell him they are proud of him and that it doesn’t hurt to die, and they promise to stay with him in his ordeal, invisible to all but him.
Harry goes farther into the forest. He sees dementors, but they are powerless to affect him, as the shades of his loved ones act like Patronuses. In a clearing in the forest, Voldemort stands, surrounded by followers. The hour is up. Voldemort says he thought Harry would come but must have been mistaken. Harry says loudly that he wasn’t, as he steps out of the Cloak and drops the stone, causing the shades to vanish. He keeps his wand put away.
Everyone waits for Voldemort to act. Hagrid, taken prisoner and tied, shouts at Harry but is silenced. Harry thinks of Ginny’s face and her kiss. Voldemort casts the Killing Curse, and everything vanishes for Harry.
Chapter Thirty-Five: King’s Cross
Harry gradually comes into consciousness, naked. He opens his eyes and finds himself in an unformed, dreamlike place. He hears something pitiful yet unseemly flapping and thumping. He wishes for clothes, and robes appear before him, which he puts on. He sees that he is in a great hall. He sees a small, naked child, looking like it’s been beaten and stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath. He wants to help it but is repulsed by it. Dumbledore’s voice tells Harry that he cannot help it.
Dumbledore leads Harry to a couple of seats and commends him for his bravery. He acknowledges that he is dead, but says that Harry is probably not. He explains, or helps Harry to figure out, that while Voldemort has just killed the part of his own soul that was embedded within Harry, Harry is still alive because Voldemort reconstituted his own body out of Harry’s blood (in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Because Voldemort contains Harry’s blood, as long as Voldemort is alive he preserves Lily Potter’s charm, so Harry can’t die at his hand. Thus, paradoxically, while Harry had to die before Voldemort could, Harry can’t die while Voldemort lives. They have a double bond, with Voldemort’s soul in Harry and Harry’s blood in Voldemort.
Dumbledore explains the mystery of why Harry’s wand defeated Voldemort even when the latter had Lucius Malfoy’s wand. The first time Harry fought Voldemort with their twin wands, Harry won because his courage was greater. Because of Harry’s bond with Voldemort, and because of the kinship between their two wands, Harry’s wand absorbed a bit of Voldemort’s essence and also came to recognize him as a mortal enemy. That is why Harry’s wand recognized Voldemort and defended against him, turning a bit of Voldemort’s highly potent magic back against him and destroying Lucius’s wand.
Harry raises the subject of the Deathly Hallows, and Dumbledore admits with shame that he was seduced by their promise to make him master over death. The search for the Hallows drew Dumbledore and Grindelwald together years before, and they had intended to embark on a search for them when Aberforth pointed out that they couldn’t leave Ariana. Dumbledore, realizing that the craving for power was his most dangerous weakness, turned down the post of Minister of Magic and stayed at Hogwarts his whole career.
Dumbledore avoided facing Grindelwald for as long as possible, afraid that he might learn that it was he, Dumbledore, who cast the spell that killed Ariana. Finally, he defeated Grindelwald and took the Elder Wand from him. Dumbledore had given up on the search for the Hallows when he learned that Harry’s father had the Cloak and borrowed it to examine it. When Dumbledore got hold of the ring with the Stone, he couldn’t resist using it to try to speak to his sister and parents. He put it on, forgetting that the ring was now a Horcrux and thus cursed, thereby ruining his hand and causing his own eventual demise. He says that he never could have united the Hallows because he took the Cloak out of idle curiosity and the Stone for selfish reasons, wishing to disturb the peaceful dead. He only did the right thing with the Wand, having taken it to protect others from it. Harry, on the other hand, only wanted each of these items for selfless reasons.
Dumbledore concludes by explaining that he had counted on Hermione to slow Harry down somewhat during his quest, keeping him from rushing after the Hallows, so that Harry would not impulsively seize upon the Hallows for the wrong reasons. He says that Voldemort just wanted a wand powerful enough to beat Harry, while understanding nothing of the Hallows. Dumbledore admits that he hoped that by having Snape kill him, he could protect the Wand from being taken by another unscrupulous master, but that things hadn’t worked out as he’d planned.
Finally, Dumbledore tells Harry that he can choose to go back to life or move on. In answer to Harry’s question, he acknowledges that all of this is happening inside Harry’s head, but that this fact does not make the conversation less real.
Analysis: Chapters Thirty-Four–Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Four represents the climax of the novel, not only because Harry finally confronts Voldemort without any defense, but because his long struggle with his doubts about Dumbledore is finally at an end. Having seen Snape’s final memories in the Pensieve, Harry has seen his worst fears realized. He feared all along that Dumbledore did not love him or have his best interests at heart, and now he sees (or thinks he sees) that Dumbledore knew for Harry’s entire life that Harry would have to die, and that Dumbledore’s careful guidance and protection of Harry was all for the sake of sacrificing Harry. In other words, Dumbledore did not love Harry; there was something else that he loved, a vision of the future that he treasured, and he was willing to let Harry die to bring it about.
Paradoxically, Harry’s acceptance that his worst fears are true frees him from those fears. He finds that he agrees with Dumbledore: If Harry’s dying is the only way for the world to be rid of Voldemort, then Harry should die. Dumbledore’s love (or lack of love) for Harry should not be the thing by which Harry judges Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s goal was the right one, and Harry finds the courage to carry it out.
Harry’s reward for this acceptance, of course, comes in Chapter Thirty-Five, when he gets to meet Dumbledore once more and see that Dumbledore really did love him. One of the mysteries of the book, the thing readers are likely to continue pondering long after they put the book down, is what this meeting with Dumbledore means. Did Harry die and truly meet Dumbledore in the afterlife before returning? The answer would seem to be no, since Dumbledore tells Harry more or less plainly that Harry is not dead and that this meeting is all in his head—yet real nonetheless. The epigraph from William Penn stated that friends who die are never truly lost, and that we can still speak to them and commune with them fully. The author’s interpretation of this excerpt may be that when we know and love someone and they die, our mental re-creation of that person within our own minds is real and meaningful, and the conversations we have with them within our minds are precious and real as well. Harry has finally let go of his fears of Dumbledore lying to him and not loving him, and he has regained Dumbledore—a Dumbledore he carries within him.
The shuddering child on the floor, whom Harry cannot help, is a very effective element of the scene, lending just a hint of horror to counterbalance the generally positive message of the chapter. The child is horrifying and yet sympathetic, and sticks in our memory because it is never explained. Clearly, the child is connected to Voldemort, who took the form of a horrifying baby at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Perhaps this is what Voldemort becomes when he passes out at the same time as Harry (as we find in the following chapter). Perhaps this is Voldemort’s soul, or perhaps only the fragment of his soul that Voldemort killed when he struck at Harry.
Chapters Thirty-Six–Epilogue
Summary: Chapter Thirty-Six
Harry awakens at the scene where he expected to be killed by Voldemort, though he does not show that he’s alive. He listens and watches, and gathers that Voldemort also collapsed and was unconscious, much like Harry. Voldemort sends Narcissa to see if Harry is alive, and Narcissa feels Harry’s beating heart, but instead of betraying him, asks in a whisper if Draco is alive and in the castle. Harry whispers yes, and Narcissa announces that Harry is dead.
Voldemort’s followers celebrate, and Voldemort casts a Cruciatus Curse on Harry, lifting him in the air and toying with his body, though Harry does not feel the pain from the curse as he should. Voldemort orders Hagrid to carry Harry to Hogwarts with them.
At Hogwarts, Voldemort announces that Harry was killed while running away, and orders everyone inside to kneel before him or die. The crowds resist, somehow shaking off the silencing curse Voldemort throws at them, and McGonagall, Ron, and Hermione all shout defiantly at Voldemort.
Neville Longbottom comes forward to confront Voldemort, who tries to win Neville over with promises of a senior position as a Death Eater. Neville rejects Voldemort.
Voldemort summons the Sorting Hat, saying that it won’t be needed anymore and that all of Hogwarts will be in Slytherin. He puts the hat on Neville and lights him on fire.
Neville pulls the Gryffindor Sword out of the hat and kills Nagini, as all of Harry’s supporters and all of Voldemort’s erupt in a fresh battle.
Harry slips on his Cloak in the confusion and sends curses at the Death Eaters. Voldemort holds McGonagall, Kingsley, and Slughorn at bay, while Bellatrix faces off against Hermione, Ginny, and Luna. Mrs. Weasley steps in, duels Bellatrix by herself, and kills her, infuriating Voldemort. Harry casts a Shield charm to protect Mrs. Weasley from Voldemort, then takes off his cloak, revealing himself to be alive for the first time.
The room goes silent as Harry and Voldemort circle each other. Voldemort tries to insist that Harry has only ever succeeded against him by accident or because greater men and women were shielding him and pulling the strings. In reply, Harry observes that by laying down his life for all those at Hogwarts, Harry has put a protective charm on them like the one his mother put on him, so that all of Voldemort’s curses keep sliding off of them. He tells Voldemort that he knows many important things Voldemort does not know.
Harry informs Voldemort that Voldemort actually did not have Dumbledore killed, because Dumbledore had planned and orchestrated his own death months before. Harry tells Voldemort that Snape was Dumbledore’s spy almost his entire career, having loved Lily Potter since he was a child. Most important, Voldemort is not the master of the Elder Wand because he still hasn’t defeated the Wand’s most recent master. That master was not Snape, because Snape did not defeat Dumbledore but merely helped him die. The one who defeated Dumbledore, without ever knowing it, was Draco (in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). The Elder Wand had recognized Draco as its master, though Draco never knew this or took possession of the Wand, and the Wand was buried with Dumbledore. Harry recalls that he himself disarmed Draco weeks before, and that if the Elder Wand is aware of this fact, Harry is the Wand’s true master. He invites Voldemort to help him test this hypothesis.
Voldemort fires his Killing Curse, and Harry simultaneously sends a Disarming Curse, and the two curses meet in the middle, with Voldemort’s rebounding and killing him and the Wand coming to Harry’s hand.
All of Hogwarts erupts in victory and begins to celebrate. At the first opportunity, Harry puts on his Cloak and takes Ron and Hermione with him to the headmaster’s office, where the portraits of former headmasters and headmistresses applaud him. Harry speaks to the portrait of Dumbledore, announcing his intentions to leave the Stone where it fell in the forest, to return the Wand to Dumbledore’s grave in the hope that Harry will die a natural death and end its power, and to keep his Cloak. Dumbledore approves.
Summary: Epilogue: Nineteen Years Later
Nineteen years later, Harry stands at the train station, waiting to send his younger son to Hogwarts for his first year. Harry is married to Ginny, and they have three children: James, who attends Hogwarts already; Albus Severus, who is just starting; and Lily, who is still two years away from going. James is taunting Albus that he might be selected for Slytherin House.
The Potter family meets Ron and Hermione, who are married and who have two children. Rose, the elder, is starting her first year at Hogwarts, and Hugo is younger.
Draco is on the platform as well, with his own wife and son, Scorpius. Draco nods curtly to Harry and looks away.
James reports that Lupin and Tonks’s son, Teddy Lupin, is kissing their cousin Victoire, the daughter of Bill and Fleur Weasley.
Ginny tells James to send Neville Longbottom, now the Hogwarts Professor of Herbology, her love.
Harry offers some final words of comfort to Albus Severus, noting that one of the headmasters he was named for, Severus Snape, was a Slytherin and was the bravest man Harry ever knew.
The train departs. Harry gives a final wave, confers with Ginny, then touches his scar. It has not hurt for nineteen years, and all is well.
Analysis: Chapter Thirty-Six–Epilogue
The final chapter ties up all of the loose ends. If the climactic moment of the novel was Harry’s self-sacrifice, and the biggest emotional reward came with Harry’s recovery of Dumbledore’s love, now we need to see Voldemort defeated and his followers disposed of. The resolution of Harry and Voldemort’s duel and of the wand subplot that has run through this novel (and that really began three novels before, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is very carefully explained and worked out. As with the revelations regarding Snape, we can see that the author knew where she was going years before and laid all of the groundwork in earlier novels, leading up to this payoff. Still, the explanation of why Harry’s wand kept beating Voldemort, why Harry is now the master of the Elder Wand, and why Harry’s blood inside Voldemort kept Harry alive while Voldemort was alive, yet Harry can kill Voldemort now (or allow him to kill himself) is all extremely complicated and will take most readers several careful re-readings to figure out. The meeting with Dumbledore is a resolution that affects readers in a much more visceral and emotional way, and most will simply be glad to see Voldemort finally die.
Because of the intricacy with which the final battle with Voldemort is plotted out and resolved, the Epilogue is a welcome addition, as it too speaks more directly to our emotions. Harry gets his reward in the form of the girl he loves, Ginny, and gets to be part of a family for the first time, as he has always longed to. After hating him for seven years, Harry has finally come to love and revere Snape, giving his name to Harry’s younger son, Albus Severus.