Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Unsurprisingly, there are a few spoilers behind the cut. If you don’t want to know Snape’s motivation or fate, then, Gentle Reader, beware.

I’m typing this in the middle of designing this website: I have undoubtedly meddled with a thousand little bits of code that probably were better off without my interference; the only text on all the pages so far is “under construction”; and, more importantly, no one, not even my family and friends, knows this blog exists in the first place. But I feel as though I must write something about Deathly Hallows even though there are dozens of more important things that require doing. That’s certainly a recommendation for the book, isn’t it?

Maybe. See, I have this love-and-loathe relationship with the Harry Potter series. I love Rowling’s genius for creating intriguing characters living in a detailed, magical world. I love the way she influences the reader to care about those characters. I do believe in the value of friendship and the miraculous power of love. But every time I finish one of her books, I end up hopping mad for days.

Why? A little because, you know, I’m an unpublished fantasy writer and she’s the world’s best-selling children’s author. (Okay, maybe more than a little.) But, even taking that into account, there’s something else.

Deathly Hallows really surprised me because it’s the first book in the series that made me like and admire Harry. True, in the course of the story, he does do some things I don’t exactly find laudable (since when is there ever justification for using a torturing curse like crucio? Or taking away someone else’s free will with imperio? Are the Unforgiveable Curses actually the Unforgiveable-Unless-You’re-Full-Of-Righteous-Anger Curses?) , but he makes some selfless sacrifices that I, for one, doubt I’d manage. And, more importantly, gone is young Capslock!Potter of old. This Harry has matured – he’s able to respect people he dislikes and forgive those who’ve wronged him. He (gasp!) thinks before he acts; he considers the consequences of his plans. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, (hmmm, maybe this is where those “few” spoilers start to come into play) I don’t quite find him the most appealing hero in the book. Also, apparently, I understand the words “book review of Deathly Hallows” to mean “rambling on about Severus Snape “. Bear with me here.

Okay, I know Snape’s not a nice guy, and also that “not a nice guy” is putting it mildly. Is it wrong to bully kids placed under your authority? You bet. Would I like to meet him? Um… well, okay, maybe. But I can’t fault the Gryffindors who don’t like him. What then, do I find appealing? Am I a rabid Alan Rickman fan who can’t separate the movies from the books? Do I find Snape’s “bad-boy allure” irresistible?

Hardly.

Harry is a nice character and all, but, to me, he is not an interesting one. Voldemort killed his parents. Voldemort is always trying to kill him. In fact, it would not be exaggerating to say that Voldemort wants to and/or did destroy everything and everyone Harry ever loved. Ever. As it stands, Harry has a million reasons to fight the Death Eaters. What would he do if he turned traitor? Hide in a foxhole for the rest of his life because the people he betrayed are his friends and the person he’d have to betray them to kind of wants a scar-headed hunting trophy, dontcha know?

In contrast, Snape has every reason to turn. Voldemort seems to <3 him and want his bebehs. If they were in the same middle school class, he’d clearly be passing notes to Snape under the desk scrawled “bff lolz!!1!!”. Snape’s personality means he has no friends among the good guys and plenty of kindred spirits among the bad. He was clearly brought up to hate muggles; he enjoys having power over others and the freedom to abuse it. Basically, if he had a career counsellor, his career counsellor would be all, “Okay, so I’m thinking ‘Death Eater’ is a match.”

On the other hand, working for Dumbledore means his life is in danger at all times from the only people who consider him a friend. The people whose side he’s actually on hate him. He constantly has an Albus-voiced Jiminy Cricket on his knee nagging at him over what he should and shouldn’t do. (“Always let your conscience be your guide, Severus. Sherbert lemon?”) Even when he dies, he dies pretty much alone.

Back to Harry. The kid has his moody, impulsive flaws, sure, but he never really questions his morals. Yeah, he sometimes gets pissy. Fine, he does think about tearing off after those naughty Hallows instead of dutifully pursuing the Horcruxes. He even loses all faith in Dumbledore’s character once or twice. But does the reader ever for a second believe he’ll let Voldemort stay in power? Even when he’s at his mopiest, his worst sentiment is, “Who says it has to be me?” The right of things is clear: Voldemort must be defeated. “Mudblood” is a bad word. Blood purity is stupid and wrong. Harry never has to learn all this, mind: somehow, he knows it already. Never mind that he’s only just learned the wizarding world exists, and, for all he knows, muggle-borns might really be terrible people or less competent: Malfoy is a jerk! Harry hopes he’s not put in Slytherin! Well, duh. Harry’s an awesome guy: if he has to choose between condemning or defending people, he defends them, even if he doesn’t know them. That’s entertainment heroics! That’s human decency! That’s why the books are named after him!

Snape, on the other hand, appears to come from the other side of the moral tracks (Here comes the racism and cruelty train now! Whoo whoo! All aboard!). By the time he introduces himself to Lily Evans at age nine or ten, someone – maybe mommie dearest – has clearly taught him that muggle-borns and muggles are inferior . Probably wasn’t too hard to convince him, either, considering his muggle father who “doesn’t like anything much” appears to have been all but abusive, and the other kids in town don’t seem to have given him such a great time, either. To top it off, the kid craves attention, power, confirmation of his worth. In other words, if there’s Death to be Eaten, you better believe he’s all over that.

Yet, somehow, by the end of the war, Snape has laid down his life for the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter. For love of Lily Evans*, sure. Maybe for selfish obsessive love that makes him need to be number one in the imaginary mind of his dead crush. Maybe for capital-R Romantic love that makes him refuse to let her sacrifice be in vain. Maybe for something more complex that makes him strive to pursue the good she saw in him. Whatever. Rowling leaves it open to interpretation, and, anyway, it doesn’t really matter. The point is, the foundations of his cosy moral world have been shaken enough that he has had to completely re-think everything he took for granted.

And, see, right here is why Harry Potter might not be the series for me. Rowling is emphatic in the choice of what’s right over what’s easy, but I’m more interested in how someone can know what’s right. Because surely not all the Slytherins and Death Eaters are cowardly losers who go against their morals to save their own skins? Surely, you know, Sirius Black’s mum and Draco Malfoy and others truly believe the world would be better under wizarding command?

When Voldemort demands the students hand over Harry, how should Pansy Parkinson “know” it’s more right to refuse to surrender him – putting the whole school in danger – than it is to sacrifice the life of one person for the survival of many? And even the Gryffindors don’t seem to support complete muggle equality: no one in wizarding society is clamouring for the de-institution of the Statute of Secrecy. Magic-users are killing muggles, and it’s still deemed more important that wizarding society should be protected from outsiders than potential victims be fully informed of the threat. Wizards can heal broken limbs and re-grow bones – if a moral person would not withhold those charms from a witch or wizard who required first aid, is it acceptable to withhold them from muggles?

There are so many questions in the last couple paragraphs, but I’m sure here’s the one you’re wondering: what the heck does all that have to do with Harry and Snape?

I’m not really interested in why someone as good as Harry chooses – surprise! – the side of good in the end. I have a pretty clear idea already, thanks. What I want to know is: how do I know my side is Harry’s side? How do I know these people I’m fighting alongside are Order members and not Death Eaters? How do I know Slytherins are wrong and Gryffindors are right without a narrator to tell me so?

Those are the questions Snape** has to grapple with through the story. And grapple he does – his struggle to do the right thing comes through in his every action and comment. He hates protecting Harry. He sneers at the Gryffindors and butters up Death Eaters’ kids. You can tell that, OMFG, if it weren’t for Lily, he’d serve that Potter brat up to the Dark Lord with a parsley garnish and maybe a little Mornay sauce, yum yum. When he “loses” his Order of Merlin in “Prisoner of Azkaban”, it hurts so much that he throws a goshdarn temper tantrum. This task he has taken on is so freaking difficult – but he does it. And, finally, when he’s about to die a lonely, stab-in-the-back death, when the entire wizarding world believes he’s a traitor and a murderer, when he believes his protection of Lily’s son has been in the name of an end that would upset rather than please her, his last attempt is not to run away or change sides or protect himself – it’s to get to Harry and give him the information he needs to kill Voldemort.

Somewhere along the way, he’s switched trains. And he didn’t just get off at a station and board a different line. He clawed his way off one moving car and fought onto another.

Now, I’m not saying I find the reason for Snape’s change-of-heart particularly original or edifying. I’m not sure his journey suggests a complete or satisfying answer to the posers above. But at least it acknowledges they’re there. At least it says that, if the Sorting Hat slides over your eleven-year-old head and insists you belong in Salazar Slytherin’s House O’Bigotry***, you can rejoice because you are now entitled to ask questions the Gryffindors can’t, and, if you do come to accept the moral order they take for granted, yours will be not a blind faith but a considered, hard-earned choice.

If you were forced to listen to my thoughts about the Harry Potter series before it ended, you’ve probably heard me repeat, only half-joking, that one thing Rowling could do to earn not only my fandom but my permanent writer-respect and awe is to have the revelation slowly dawn on Harry and the reader that Voldemort is actually doing the right thing and the Order is in the wrong. Not because it’s the best story. Not because it’s the way the series “should have ended” or because I think the Death Eaters were right or because I wanted to see Harry having more Dramatic Moments. But – well, of course, it would have been a completely unexpected and hugely difficult feat to pull off, sure. But, more than that, an ending like that would say, “Yes, it is our choices that make us who we are. Yes, we must choose what is right over what is easy. And what is easy is deciding what is right based only on our gut feelings and those of the people we love. If our choices make us, then we must make them with care.” Because, otherwise, “being a hero” means “starting off on the right side”. And what’s that but luck of the draw?

Severus Snape and Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Dr. Faustus (I’m tempted to finish this sentence with “are all having a happy party in anti-hero land”, but not only would that be anticlimactic, it is likely untrue****)(I’m also tempted to finish it with “FTW!!!1!!one! w00t w00t!!!!” but that seems even less appropriate) are the reasons I couldn’t fully enjoy Deathly Hallows. Because, if a book is going to speak to me about good and evil, I want it to tell me what they do: villains can be right. Traitors can be good. Morals are not something you can ever stop thinking about. And I believe it’s time to end this before I steal from Stephen Sondheim too obviously.

Severus Snape and Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Dr. Faustus FTW!!!1!!one! w00t w00t!!!!

Until next time:

The Downfall of Lord VeganTorte

“Unfortunately, it was only then that Minister Fudge realized Lord Voldemort was actually made of chocolate cake.

*It’s probably best that Harry found out about the whole unrequited-love thing through the Pensieve, not a conversation with dying Snape himself…
HARRY: What did you do to make Dumbledore trust you?
SNAPE: Your… mom….
HARRY: WHAT?!
HERMIONE: … Awkward.

** And, to a lesser extent, Dumbledore, but the reader doesn’t get to see much of that “onscreen”.

***…. which is the same thing as “cunning”, “ambition”, and “slyness”? Say what? Can’t the Sorting Hat come out and admit it puts racist kids in Slytherin? Because, despite the other criteria it professes to use, this is clearly the case. Unless all cunning people are racist. Obviously, brave people can’t be bigots – courage is the antiracism! A more accurate (but still not entirely satisfactory) dichotomy between the two houses seems to be selfishness vs. selflessness…

**** The Phantom of the Opera and Magneto are hosting a housewarming. Bring your own angst.

3 Replies to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”

  1. Sarah sarah sarah…..i have to say u hit the nail with this post. I happy yet not with the last book. At times I wanted to burn the book…others I wanted to oh well burn the book. But I did like the way she ended the series. !9 years later! no more Harry Potter books to bring down the series.
    Well I am better at giving my point of view on this in person or on the phone!

    komal

  2. I applaud you for this post! You have much deeper and insightful thoughts than the average Harry devotee (re: me reading the last book = “wheeeeee I like Harry Potter yayyyyy fun story yayyyy stories!”), annnnd you make me giggle so so so much. And that Voldemort cake is amazing – where can I see more pics from that event?

  3. Heather – don’t worry, my FIRST thoughts were more along the lines of “Oooh, there’s ANOTHER word I need! And it’s close to the top of the page!” I’m trying to post all sorts of photos on Facebook, but it crashes my browser whenever I try to make an album, so our relationship is kind of at an impasse.

    Komal – Pyro! Pyrooooooooooooooooo! ;)

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