There is no such thing as magic

The final lesson of Harry Potter: memento mori

For the moment I will say only this: a “fairy-story” is one which touches on or uses Faërie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faërie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic—but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician.

“On Fairy Stories”, J. R. R. Tolkien

Looking back at J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, I was surprised by how much of the magic is of the first kind: laborious, scientific, cause-and-effect. The second kind, the Faërie magic, plays its part, most importantly in the raw power of Lily Potter’s sacrifice. Overall, though, the Wizarding World has little of the mythical element we find in Tolkien or Lewis.

It is also an agnostic world. For all their power, wizards are similar both to the in-universe muggles and to ourselves in the real world. They know as much as we do about the supernatural, and have the same fundamental questions about life, the universe and everything: what exists after death? What is love? Are we free, or tied to our destinies (or both)?¹

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” — Corinthians 15:26

The Wizarding World has little of magic-as-wonder, and much of magic-as-technology; and none of the supernatural, no gods or greater forces to guide the characters. Should we take this absence as endorsement? Does Harry Potter takes place in a techno-optimistic world, where the measure of a good life is how many material problems one can solve, and thus how much technology/magic/power one can control?

The late Sir Roger Scruton seemed to think so:

I distinguish two kinds of children's literature: the kind that exploits the primordial fear and hopes of the child, in which magic plays a controlling part; and the kind that looks with the eyes of the child into the real adult world, and brings a measure of innocence to what it sees there. […] The Harry Potter stories are the opposite of that. They show an adult world entirely invaded by childish fears and illusions. Magic and mystery are the currencies in which all transactions are measured. The wand, the spell, and the store of occult knowledge have displaced every kind of spiritual discipline. Each character is good or evil by nature, and there is no process of development, no path of renunciation and prayer, whereby the hero or the heroin can prepare to face the ordeals of a real adult existence. All obstacles are dreams, which can be dispelled at the wave of a wand, and nobody needs any power that he cannot obtain from the things of this world — if only he knows their secrets.

We expect children to think and feel in that way, because they have yet to be released from the grip of those primeval, hunter-gatherer emergencies. But we also expect them to grow out of it. […] Growing up means learning that the world will not deliver the goods just because we wish for them. That adult worldview is the opposite of the mental posture shaped by “potterism”.

“Pottering towards the new socialist state”, Sir Roger Scruton, BBC Radio 4,

I have no doubt that Scruton knew more about literature than I ever will. Nevertheless, I find it hard to imagine how he could have reached the conclusion above — assuming he was analyzing the books as books, not as whatever its fanbase might have turned them into. The lesson of Harry Potter is not that any problem may be solved if only one knows the correct wand movement and hocus pocus.

It is precisely the opposite.

Voldemort, the technocrat

The most techno-optimist character in the series is Lord Voldemort — its main antagonist. He states his guiding philosophy in the very first book:

There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it...

The power Voldemort refers to is over other people, yes; but more importantly, it is power over nature. Voldemort’s main goal is to defeat death and live forever. His plan to do so is to split his soul and hide the parts inside objects, creating Horcruxes. Each time Voldemort does so, however, he loses a little of his humanity. In the end, he has turned into a monster: a pale, white-skinned skeleton with red eyes. Voldemort tried to become something beyond death; he became something beneath life.

Opposing Voldemort’s worldview we have Harry James Potter himself, whom we watch grow in real time as the series progresses.

Growing up with Harry

Taken individually, the Harry Potter books are well-constructed fantasy-mystery novels; but as a series, they become greater than the sum of its parts, mainly for this coming-of-age aspect. In few other popular media we have such a strong, ever-growing parallel between the protagonist’s maturity and the world’s maturity².

When we meet eleven-year-old Harry in Philosopher’s Stone, the Wizarding World seems very whimsical. Fighting darkness is a year-round game, which can be finished in time for the end of term feast. Little Harry Potter, sitting in front of the Mirror of Erised and seeing his dead parents, could easily believe that anything can (and should) be possible; even having his family back. Fortunately, Dumbledore is there to tell him that no magic can resurrect the dead, and that though some objects can give a simulacrum of those gone, it is not good to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

The cracks in the Wizarding World start to appear in Chamber of Secrets. Wizard society, we learn, not only has a purity-of-blood class system, but still has slavery. But these are presented as one might present real world topics to children: as the works and beliefs of a few evil individuals, like the Malfoy. Prisoner of Azkaban continues by showing the foggy morality of the Ministry of Magic, which employ literal soul-sucking monsters as its law enforcers. But it is in book four, Goblet of Fire, that the innocence of Harry Potter — both the series and the character — is shattered, when Cedric Digory is murdered before his eyes. Fighting evil is no longer a game, and all is not well as the school year ends. Harry is forced to grow up, and fast.

But in what consists growing up? At the end of the book Sirius Black, the closest Harry has to a father, is killed, and Harry is left to wrestle with the fact that no one can bring him back. Refusing to accept death, as we said, is the main cause of Voldemort’s fall, so dealing with grief will be crucial for Harry. Nevertheless, this is the same book in which we learn about the prophecy — Harry shall kill Voldemort or Voldemort shall kill Harry; either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. So we could be led to believe that Harry’s coming of age consists mainly of becoming the Chosen One: the prophesized hero who will defeat the dark lord.

However, the following book, Half-Blood Prince, plays with ours (and the character’s) expectations of Harry as a fate-ordained warrior:

“But, sir,” said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, “it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or —”

“Got to?” said Dumbledore. “Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!”

Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father, and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.

“I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”

“Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore. “You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. . . In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you . . . which makes it certain, really, that —”

“That one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.”

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.

The prophecy is important, but only in the measure Voldemort chose to give it importance. Harry, on the other hand, must oppose the dark lord, not because destiny says so, but because the kind of person he has grown into — the kind of person he chose to be — demands it. It is as Dumbledore told him all those years ago: we are defined not by our powers, but by our choices.

So, if Harry’s coming of age, is not about becoming the Chosen One, what is it about?

The Boy Who Lived goes to die

The final piece of the puzzle, and the final step Harry must take in his journey from boy to man, comes in Deathly Hallows. Death haunts this book from beggining to end: from trying to decipher the postumus plans of Dumbledore, to the in-universe fairy-tale The Tale of the Three Brothers; from the pilling up of dead characters, to visiting Lily and James Potter’s graves, upon which is inscribed “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

At the end of Hallows, Harry at last discovers the truth: he is an Horcrux. He carries inside himself a piece of Voldemort’s soul. And thus he must die.

That is the climax of the book. There is a standard final battle later, but the duel between Harry and Voldemort borders on anticlimactic. No, the climax of the Deathly Hallows, as well as its heart, is on that long and painful chapter, where Harry slowly makes his way through Hogwarts and towards the Black Forest, where Voldemort is waiting to kill him. Knowing that, if the stops to say goodbye to Ron and Hermione, he will lose the courage. Conscious, as if for the first time, of the air in his lungs, of the pulsating blood in his body. Of being alive.

In a final touch of thematic meaning, Harry does all this, conscious that he did not destroy all the other Horcruxes. If he had, he would have dealt the final blow in turning Voldemort mortal, and perhaps could, even in death, be considered to have beaten the Dark Lord. But as it is, Harry’s death is merely one more step in the mission. Whether it will be the Chosen One to finish it does not matter.

Because Harry was never that important. Like the prophecy itself, he was only as important as Voldemort chose him to be.

That is the final lesson of the Harry Potter books. It does not matter if you are a wizard or a muggle, a pure-blood or a mudblood. It does not matter how much power you have, how much magic-science you know. The fundamentals questions of life stay the same: time, love, fate, choice — and death. Because in the end, there really is no such thing as magic. In the end, even the boy who lived must die.

This ends Harry’s journey to adulthood. To be an adult, as Sir Scruton said, is to accept powerlessness. To be mature is to accept death. That Harry is later brought back to life does not really matter. Because he had made his choice, and accepted his mortality.

All men must die, but that doesn’t mean Harry Potter is a nihilistic series. Voldemort knew nothing about dying; he knew even less about living.

That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

Albus Dumbledore

All men must die. Which is to say that all men must choose how they live. It is all in The Tale of the Three Brothers. The true master of death is not the first brother, who seeks power, much less the second one, who tries to bring back the dead. The master of death is the third brother, who lives a long, happy life. Who enjoys love, and friendship, and when the time comes, passes on what he has been gifted, and welcomes Death as an old friend. So that in his final moment he may say — as our final moment with Harry in King’s Cross — all is well.

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1. All those questions are (unsuccessfully) studied in the Department of Mysteries, introduced in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

2. And, for the first generation of readers, who likely read Philosopher’s Stone at ten and finished Deathly Hallows at twenty, audience maturity as well.