This chapter opens with an ominous moment: Harry searching for a place to bury Moody’s eye. He does so under “the oldest, most gnarled, and resilient-looking tree he could find.” Harry’s symbolism is clear, and the scene will be repeated later.

All-in-all, this chapter has an Empire Strikes Back feel to it. Our heroes are stuck in the wilderness, hunting for clues to puzzles they know are important, but coming up empty. As Rowling writes it, the scene reduces the three of them to “three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead.” The dark magic of the locket, now being passed among them to diffuse its effect on any one of them, is taking a severe toll. And it is most assuredly the prime cause of discord within the tent.

Hermione’s realization that this is so does little to assuage the Horcrux’s effect on all of them. Endless boredom and hunger in the midst of the stress of being hunted like animals isn’t helping the situation. It all creates a vicious psychological cycle within the trio, most notably Harry: “[He] was starting to fear that Hermione too was disappointed by his poor leadership. In desperation he tried to think of further Horcrux locations, but the only one that continued to occur to him was Hogwarts, and as neither of the others thought this at all  likely, he stopped suggesting it.” In other words, out of fears over his lack of leadership, Harry quits being a leader. Any reader who has paid close attention to the series knows Harry has to be right, or at least on the right track. The importance Hogwarts holds for Voldemort and others is unmistakable. All of them are ignoring the evidence, from Ginny’s possession and Voldy’s other repeated attempts to penetrate the school, to what Harry learned in his Pensieve lessons in Half-Blood Prince.

But, what we do learn very clearly here is that the other Trio (Ginny, Neville, and Luna) are trying to wreak a bit of havoc at the school. More importantly, Harry, Hermione, and Ron learn from their eavesdropping exercise that the true Sword of Gryffindor has gone missing — hidden, perhaps by Dumbledore, to keep it from the hands of those who don’t deserve it. But, the most significant piece of information they learn while listening to Griphook and the others at the riverbank is that the sword can be used as a weapon against Horcruxes. Hermione realizes the sword has absorbed some of the effects of the basilisk’s venom. Harry feels that some answers are “tantalizingly close.” Yet, they’re just out of reach.

And the chapter ends in catastrophe. Ron’s emotional implosion pushes the group over the edge, leading to the Trio’s collapse. He storms out of the tent angry, misanthropic, and believing that Hermione has chosen Harry over him. We’ll learn later the true outcome, but I count this moment as one of Rowling’s most significant red herrings in the series. Upon my first read, I was convinced that this fracture doomed Ron. For a while, I waited nervously to see Harry and Hermione stumble across his body somewhere. Thus, the later moment when Ron rises to his real potential is all the more emphatic and powerful to me.

What makes this book so hard to read is the persistent pounding of death in every corner, upon every page. Chapter 15 opens with a burial, one that will be echoed painfully later. The Horcruxes presense, the pervasive fear and hunger, and final moment when it seems that the central friendship in the series is fully broken all make this one of the darker chapters in the entire HP saga.

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I finally got my copy of Hog’s Head Conversations today.  I saw PDF proofs earlier, but it was so much nicer to see the book-as-final-product.  Before I go any further, I do want to thank both Travis and Bob Trexler for their work.  In addition, they were both invaluable to helping polish my own work in the book.  I’m happy and humbled to be presented alongside likes of John Granger, Amy Sturgis, and our two guest bloggers, Gwen and Danielle.  Nothing like reading a couple of those essays to make one realize how special it is to be a part of Hog’s Head Conversations.  Thank you to everyone involved.  I hope my little contribution lives up to everyone else’s brilliance!

Anyway, on to this post’s purpose…

How characters learn and know things in books has fascinated me since I was in grad school.  Harry Potter is no exception.  After my first read-through, I was struck by the steady connection between visibility and knowledge or learning.  Three major magical objects serve as devices through which the books explore this connection: the invisibility cloak, the Mirror of Erised, and Dumbledore’s Pensieve.  All three play huge roles in key moments as Harry learns how to understand himself and the world around him.  

Harry often seeks invisibility when he’s confronted by a problem.  The Invisibility Cloak is his primary tool for achieving this.  Whether he is sneaking out of Gryffindor Tower for the first time to skulk around the Restricted Section, or he’s learning something about how his parents died in Hogsmeade, or he’s contemplating his own death on the way to confront Dumbledore Voldemort [my mistake], “his father’s cloak” is nearly always close at hand.  Only Harry’s wand spends more time at his side.  Being invisible isn’t just a tactical advantage as Harry sneaks around.  Invisibility also allows him a measure of control over himself and his environment.  His world is a strange blend of mixed perceptions.  In the Muggle World, the Dursleys have gone to significant lengths to make Harry as invisible as he could be.  But the Wizarding World describes him in Christ-like language as “The Boy Who Lived.”

In a sense, being literally invisible allows Harry to simply be — he can just exist in the most immediate way, unfettered by anything else.  The imposed isolation inflicted on Harry by the Dursleys serves their purposes, not Harry’s (at least not intentionally).  Harry isn’t truly invisible.  Instead, the Dursleys treat him much like an enslaved, colonized other.  His invisibility is a form of repression in the Muggle World.

But in the Wizarding World, the Cloak allows Harry to control his freedom and his status.  His migration from one realm into another rockets him along a bewildering path, removing his anonymity for another form of oppression — unprecedented celebrity.  But the cloak is a way of recovering a middle ground between both.  In Philosopher’s Stone, he feels a sense of wonder and excitement and curiosity as he dons the Cloak.  The language is contrasted with his emotions as he sits in class, the object of stares and whispers of his classmates and professors.

The Mirror of Erised is one of the most famous magical objects in the series, and perhaps all of contemporary fantasy literature.  We know what it reflects back to Harry — his “deepest, most desperate desires.”  That Harry sees his family is certainly important, but so is the way Harry interacts with it.  His initial contact with Erised describes him as wanting to touch it, treating the mirror like early audiences used to treat theater screens or televisions.  Almost immediately, Harry wants some kind of physical contact with the image, but quickly realizes that cannot happen.  Instead, Harry recognizes it is telling him something, and he even takes some fairly big steps in recognizing what he is being shown.  But the true test of Erised is recognizing what the image means for and about Harry.  He has to interpret the image in some fashion.

The art of interpretation essentially becomes Dumbledore’s primary lesson for Harry in both HBP and DH.  And the Pensieve is the most important instructional tool.  Harry and Dumbledore reconstruct Voldemort’s fragmented narrative from the memories of others (sometimes fragmented, as well).  Harry’s final lesson on his path to knowledge is to learn that “knowing” doesn’t necessarily equate to “certainty.”

Taken together, the three objects chronicle how and what Harry learns.  And they always point what Harry has learned back onto himself and his own identity, at least for the reader if not for Harry himself.  The theme of choice is always integrated into these moments, as well.  Harry has to choose a good way to understand Erised’s reflection.  His interpretations of the Pensieve memories often involve choices he must make about himself versus Voldemort.

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Half-Blood Prince’s final chapter opens with a favorite device of Ernest Hemingway, the simple declarative sentence:

“All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed.”

It really is one of Rowling’s finer moments as a writer, poignant and rich with subtlety.  In this one statement, she wipes away all the carefree wonderment of childhood with pointed irony.  Hogwarts shifts in symbolism from a place of comfort and safety where the worst worry was two parchments on werewolves for horrible Professor Snape, to a place in which parents are spiriting their children away as fast as possible because Snape has murdered the headmaster.

We see the Centaurs and Merfolk gather and pay their respects in ways I believe would have left Dumbledore deeply honored.  His entombment is rich with symbolism, as Harry thinks “for one heart-stopping moment, that he [sees] a phoenix fly joyfully ino the blue.”  Yet, the “next second the fire had vanished,” and a brilliant “white marble tomb” sits in its place.

In Dumbledore’s death, Voldemort has seemingly gained a devastating victory. Harry and Hogwarts no longer have their protector.  The last bastion of paradise is now vulnerable — very vulnerable. Hogwarts has become, in one sense, a graveyard.

A palpable threat glares at us from the edges of this chapter, never clear and explicit, but there nonetheless. It peers at us from the Riddle mansion. The effect is amplified in the explicit declarations that our enchanting rhythm of nearly six long books has been broken.  We’re no longer tied to time as it is dictated in school.  Instead, everyone’s concerns take on much more urgent tones, emanating from a great emergency — war and death. Like the disjointed feeling new-minted graduates experience upon leaving school for “the real world,” so, too, with the Wizarding World as we’ve known it. Rowling is playing with an emotional realism like never before. Even as the Trio debate whether or not Hogwarts will be open in the next year, Harry makes it clear to readers that it doesn’t matter:  “I’m not coming back even if it does reopen.” The chapter’s overriding emotion is not only sadness, but anxiety.

Harry understands his childhood is over.  Yet, Rowling isn’t ready to declare him “ready.”  To lift a line from another heroic opus, Harry must complete his training.  In Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Yoda’s warning to Luke refers to a need to complete both a physical and mental training that prepares him to confront ultimate evil in the form of his father.  The trope is a common one, and often serves as a way to remove our Hero’s wise mentor out from under him.  In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore is taken from Harry so that Harry has to complete his heroic quest on his own.

I’ve always argued that HBP’s central plot thread is Dumbledore’s intense efforts to educate Harry in a more hazardous, yet consequential, way of engaging Voldemort — the fine art of speculation and inferrential reasoning.  The Pensieve lessons are always about piecing together incomplete pieces of Voldemort’s past so as to anticipate his plans.

Yet, there are sharp indications that Harry still has much to learn now that he has been thrust prematurely into his adulthood.  Trying to decipher who might be R.A.B, his feelings betray him:

He did not fell the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery, he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcruxes had to be completed before he could move a little farther along the dark and winding path stretching ahdead of him, the path he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone.  There might still be as many as four Horcruxes out there somewhere. … He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them within reach.

This picture starkly contrasts what we’ve seen from Harry before.  Whenever confronted with a problem, excitement and curiosity have coursed through him, often uncontrollably.  Philosopher’s Stone describes his first use of the Invisibility Cloak in terms of pure adrenaline:  “The whole of Hogwarts was open to him…”  Yet, in two years Harry has watched both Sirius and Dumbledore die as his intelligence and heroism failed him.  His rash dash into the Ministry’s aptly named Department of Mysteries ends in tragedy.  One year later, he can do nothing whatsoever to fight off Dumbeldore’s killers.  In two crucial moments, Harry believes that his greatest attributes have betray him completely.

Now, harry must rely on the kind of reasoning (incomplete as its bases may sometimes be) in order to think through the journey in front of him. And we see examples of incomplete thoughts seeping forth from Harry:

Neville and Luna alone of the D.A. had responded to Hermione’s summons the night that Dumbledore had died, and Harry knew why: They were the ones how had missed the D.A. the most… probably the ones who had checked their coins regularly in the hope that there would be another meeting.

The ellipsis points the reader to something omitted here.  Harry attaches a kind of childish need-to-belong to their loyalty.  Yet, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to add that Neville and Luna missed the D.A. the most because they believed in its cause.  It was surely one of the first places either had experienced social acceptance, but they also chose what was right over what was easy. And Neville will prove it in grim and terrifying fashion at the end of DH.

Harry’s breakup with Ginny is another pointer that Harry hasn’t quite thought his plan through.  As Harry laments what might have been, Ginny’s response is both knife-edged and sympathetic:  “‘But you’ve been too busy saving the Wizarding World,’ siad Ginny, half laughing. ‘Well…I can’t say I’m surprised.  I knew this would happen in the end.  I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort.  Maybe that’s why I like you so much.’”  Without question she resents his choice here, but accepts it without too much protest.  There’s a sense in which she seems to say to him, “Do you really think my safety is what matters now?  Don’t you see my importance to you in all of this?”  Harry hasn’t quite recognized in his friends and true love what we as readers see in John Granger’s eloquently explicated alchemical narrative.  All of them are absolutely important for Harry’s efforts to overcome Voldemort’s plan.

In addition, we witness the Trio speculate on Snape’s motives by looking at the past hinted at in Harry’s illicit Potions book.  Snape’s lineage leads Harry to conclude quite simply that Snape is “just like Voldemort.”  As determined as Harry needs to be, this reads alongside what we learn in Deathly Hallows, as a warning against thinking dismissively.  Admittedly, Harry is thinking emotionally.  But, if we learned anything from Dumbledore in the last three chapters, it’s that facing a crisis with a calm mind and steady courage is absolutely important.  Harry has to relearn this now that his challenges have grown more sinister.

Other moments Harry takes notice of are just as compelling in light of Deathly Hallows.  The appearance of an anonymous Elphias Doge foreshadows his role in DH.  Harry dismisses the man’s eulogy because “It did not mean very much.  It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him.”  Immediately, Harry flashes to his first vision of Dumbledore and his wonderfully odd welcome to Hogwarts:  “Nitwit! Oddment! Blubber! Tweak!”  What Draco and the other Malfoys want to construe as Dumbledore’s senility, Harry recognizes as Dumbledore’s playfulness.  In light of Doge’s highly romanticized view of Dumbledore in DH, the one Harry so desperately wants to cling to, his entire performance here reads as a bright warning to Harry not to read too much into Doge’s sentiments.

Harry declares he is “Dumbledore’s man through and through,” but this final chapter is full of flashing warnings of Harry’s biggest fight to come.  He’s faced down Voldemort multiple times on pure instinct, and he’s felt the warmth of victory and chill of defeat.  He’s even forced Voldemort from his mind and body.  Along with that metaphor in Order of the Phoenix, “The White Tomb” shows us that one of Harry’s greatest foes yet to come is his own self.  Dumbledore has armed for this battle more than perhaps any other.

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Another guest post by revgeorge!

Glad to be back with another post on HBP. Sorry I’ll have to briefly touch on many points.

The Trio plus One is enjoying an interlude of calm and happiness. Harry is blissfully happy with Ginny. Even Ron and Hermione are happy and laughing for once. But there are still hints of gloom. Ginny mentions three Dementor attacks. The war is still going on despite the relative insulation the students enjoy at Hogwarts. Do you think Rowling succeeds in showing us the intensity of the war raging outside through only snippets of information breaking into the pretty much routine life of Hogwarts? After all, even though Voldemort’s back and war is on, this school year for Harry is pretty much the same as usual. Any thoughts?

Quite a bit of time seems to pass in this chapter without much comment. Harry & Ginny’s happy times are curtailed because Ginny must study for OWLS and Harry has detentions still with Snape, which Snape seems to relish dragging out. So, several weeks or more must pass rather quickly in this chapter.

Hermione won’t let the Half-blood Prince go and through her research comes up with the picture of Eileen Prince. After much heated discussion, no one is satisfied with this information. Harry is certain the Prince is a boy; Hermione thinks it must be Eileen Prince. In a way they are both on the right track. Eileen is the mother of the Prince, and the book is most likely hers passed down to Snape. But Snape is the self proclaimed Half-blood Prince.

Right after this discussion about the Prince, Snape is mentioned again. It’s almost as if JKR is slapping our faces with the latent connection, Half-blood Prince=Snape, with just enough doubts thrown in with Eileen Prince to keep us from seeing the connection clearly.

Harry then receives another note from Dumbledore and heads off to meet him. Along the way he passes near the Room of Requirement just in time to hear Professor Trelawney thrown out of it by an apparently ecstatic Draco. Interesting point about the Room, if you try to get in and find out what someone is doing, you can’t. But if you try to get in for your own purposes, like Harry with the potions book or Trelawney and her sherry bottles, you can get in with no problems and possibly interrupt someone trying to work secretly. Does this make sense? Wouldn’t the Room had made some especially hidden place for Draco to work? Plus, for the first time all book neither Crabbe nor Goyle are on lookout.

This chapter then closes off with two terribly important things, which I will just comment on in brief. Harry finally hears from Trelawney who exactly overhead the prophecy being made, Snape again! Dumbledore says in Order of the Phoenix that the eavesdropper was found out half way into the prophecy and thrown out of The Hog’s Head. But Trelawney sees Snape caught by Aberforth after she comes out of her trance. What’s going on here? It’s obvious that Snape only gives Voldemort half the prophecy but did he hear all of it or did he catch only part before being caught and held up to be seen by Trelawney?

After this an enraged Harry rushes off to Dumbledore’s office to confront him but is quickly dumbfounded when he learns Dumbledore has located another horcrux and wants Harry to go with him. His excitement and anger wage war until Dumbledore presses his thoughts out of him.

For more discussion:

• Thoughts on Trelawney. She seems a complete old fraud but yet does have a real gift. What do you make of her and prophecy and divination in general?
• Dumbledore’s face whitens when Harry reveals he knows Snape told Voldemort the prophecy. Why do you think Dumbledore reacted this way, and what do you think of his attempted defense of Snape?
• Dumbledore told Harry to keep his invisibility cloak on him at all times but yet gives Harry time to go back to Gryffindor Tower to retrieve his cloak. What do you think of this?

Any other thoughts? After this chapter things get progressively darker for awhile.

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Our next guest post comes from Arabella Figg! ~ Travis

This is my first post here, and what a chapter to work on! So, no metaphorical Dung Bombs, please. (All page references are from the American edition.)

Sectumsempra could well have been titled Truth or Consequences, as deceit plays the starring role. Moreover, two events we’ve long-anticipated—a confrontation between Harry and Draco, and another kind between Harry and Ginny—occur.

The chapter begins with good news—Katie Bell’s return and the Ron/Lavender and Ginny/Dean breakups, Harry can now pursue Ginny, but fears Ron will disapprove; is he right (Ron has previously indicated how he would feel)? He returns Katie to the Quidditch team, displacing Dean who has played most of the year; was this fair?

Why do you think Slughorn stops holding Slug Club parties after telling Harry the truth about his Horcrux conversation with Tom Riddle?

Now we come to the heart of Sectumsempra: Harry’s bathroom encounter with Draco.
We have seen some amazing changes in Draco in this book—from brutish strutting to terrified crying. We also learn what drives him: if he fails, Voldemort will kill him. Is there any significance to Draco seeing Harry in a cracked mirror?

Throughout his many travails involving desperation, frustration or fear, Harry has never shed tears (except in grief over Sirius’ death). What does this say about him? How do you feel about Draco’s tears; do they diminish him? Though Draco has always been cowardly, do you feel differently about him in this chapter?
What follows is not Harry’s finest hour. We have to ask, who are the heroes and villains in the following sequence?

(Note: Sectumsempra is a favorite curse of Snape’s. He uses it nonverbally twice in the series: against the tormenting James Potter (OotP 647), and in trying to save Remus, instead accidentally severing George’s ear (DH 688).

Now, into the bathroom, friends. First Harry spies upon and then unwittingly humiliates his tormented enemy by watching him cry, thus engendering a duel. To counter Draco’s Cruciatus curse, Harry employs the Prince’s Sectumsempra curse, which he’s been itching to try, to disastrous results. What were his other options?

Snape seems to arrive at the bathroom quite quickly. Was he following Harry or Draco? If he was watching over Draco, should he have diverted Harry from entering?

Along with using his wand, Snape sings over Draco three times to heal his wounds, each pass a step of healing. What relationship to Phoenix song might this have? What about any symbolism in both blood and water drenching the scene (and Harry)? What do you make of this line: “There were bloodstains floating like crimson flowers across [the wet floor’s] surface” (523)?

When Snape orders Harry to wait for him in the bathroom while taking care of Draco, “It did not occur to Harry for a second to disobey” (523). Yet within minutes, he’s boldly lying to an expert Legilimens (quite familiar with his mind) about where he learned the curse. Though Harry knows Snape sees the Potions book in his mind, he continues lying, and disobys Snape’s order to give over the Potions book. Instead, Harry switches covers with Ron’s book (involving Ron in his deception), hides the Prince’s book in the Room of Requirement (now the Room of Hidden Things), and brings Ron’s book to Snape. Harry then “firmly” and with “defiance” (527) heaps lies upon lies to Snape about the book’s ownership and provenance. Snape calls Harry “a liar and a cheat,” (528) and gives him a Professor McGonagall-approved Saturday detention for the rest of the term, thus making him miss the rest of the Quidditch matches.

Who are the honorable and dishonorable ones (or is each person partly both) during this sequence and why? How did you feel about Snape calling Harry a liar and cheat? Consider Harry, throughout the series, cribbing Hermione’s homework to pass his classes, and lying in many and varied circumstances? Did you read this scene differently after having read DH? Has Snape always been truthful to Harry, no matter the cruel and self-serving the delivery?

Hermione later upbraids Harry, but Ginny defends his use of the curse. Both love Harry, in different ways. Who is right and/or honorable here?

The chapter closes happily. At long last, after a critical Gryffindor win, Ginny runs to Harry and…they kiss! Did you feel this hit the expectation mark? What about Ron’s reaction?

There’s so much more to ruminate over in this chapter, but I leave it to you. For example:

• Why do you think Harry didn’t connect the curse and the Prince’s book with Snape, as Snape’s knowledge of this curse, questions and behavior were, as Rowling might say, “obvious”?
• Truth or Consequence: what might have happened if Harry been truthful about the Potions book? Was he right to deceive Snape?
• Draco knows that Snape has made the Unbreakable Vow (323), yet says Voldemort will kill him if he fails. Does this fit with the Unbreakable Vow as explained in Chapter 2?
• Why do you think Moaning Myrtle (after what we learned about ghosts in OotP) remained a certainly unhappy ghost?
• What does this chapter reveal about achieving access to the Room of Requirement? Why did Harry fail earlier and then succeed?
• Did Harry’s viewing his father’s misdeeds during detention have any value, especially after his Pensieve experience in the previous book?
• What setups for the last book do we find in the Room of Hidden Things?

Have fun!

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Travis asked some of us to fill in on the HBP read-thr0ugh, since he’s busy, you know, editing a book!

It would be easy to skip through Chapter 20 thinking that the most important thing we learn is how Voldemort/Riddle came into possession of Hufflepuff’s Cup and Slytherin’s Locket.  We know that both end up becoming Horcruxes at some point later.  In addition, the connection between these devices, Hogwarts, and Horcruxes is foreshadowed both here and in the earlier Pensieve lesson.  Slughorn’s distorted memory points to a conversation about such things with young Riddle, but it’s clear that he’s gone to great pains to hide important elements of that conversation — the wizard’s version of “trying to forget.” 

It’s striking to look back on these Pensieve lessons after Deathly Hallows and realize just how much of the last book’s plot is set up within these chapters.

But, some interesting character details emerge from them, as well.  Dumbledore emphasizes this observation of Riddle’s actions:

“Now,” said Dumbledore, “if you don’t mind, Harry, I want to pausce once more to draw your attention to certain points of our story.  Voldemort had committed another murder; whether it was his first since he killed the Riddles, I do not know, but I think it was.  This time, as you will have seen, he killed not for revenge, but for gain.  He wanted the two fabulous trophies that poor, besotted old woman showed him.  Just as he had once robbed the other children at his orphanage, just he had stolen his Uncle Morfin’s ring, so he ran of now with Hepzibah’s cup and locket.”  (439-40, American edition; my emphasis)

I’m always struck by this observation.  It’s obvious now that Dumbledore was pointing Harry not only to what would become Horcruxes, but also how and where Voldemort might hide some of them: Hogwarts.  Dumbeldore is drawing a connection between a childhood behavior (packrat-like theft and hiding) and what would become Voldemort’s trademark.

I have ideas why the connection matters, especially given that Voldemort (or some symbol of him) appears as a whimpering infant in the King’s Cross chapter of DH.  The “child” metaphor is carried through by Voldemort’s desire to return to Hogwarts.  Dumbledore emphasizes the practical reasons, but do you think this reveals something of Voldemort’s psychology?

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The first few pages of chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince belong to after-break catching-up.  Hermione gets filled in on the Snape/Draco conversation, and Ron begins to show more signs of discontent in his relationship with Lavender.

Fawkes and Loyalty to Dumbledore

The action begins once again in Dumbledore’s office, where one of my favorite Dumbledore/Harry moments takes place: when Harry tells Dumbledore the story of affirming to Scrimgeour that he was “Dumbledore’s man, through and through.”  Dumbledore goes speechless and teary, and Fawkes lets out “a low, soft, musical cry.”  Fawkes’s song symbolizes loyalty to Dumbledore, which is loyalty to the good.

It’s an interesting moment to observe after our discussion about Lupin’s loyalty to Dumbledore in the last chapter.   Whatever else you think about Dumbledore’s actions, this moment does not strike me as manipulative.  Dumbledore isn’t working up a tear to take advantage of Harry’s declaration of loyalty.  And Fawkes, quite obviously a symbol of goodness in the series, affirms Harry’s loyalty.

Morphin’s Memory

After a tense discussion about Snape and Dumbledore’s recounting of Riddle’s history until the age of 16, being sure to note the key themes of his life – isolation, talent, charm, deception – Harry and the headmaster dive into the Pensieve for the tale of Riddle’s visit to the House of Gaunt.  It’s quite fascinating to get the other side of the story that Harry picked up in a dream at the beginning of Goblet of Fire.

Interesting – and right – that Dumbledore tried to secure Morphin’s release when he discovered the truth.

We’ve talked about this before, but the application of the Restriction on underage wizardry is an awful law that cannot possibly be enforced well.  It will most often result in disadvantage to Muggle-borns (how many Wizarding parents really do keep their kids from practicing magic over the summer?), and in a Wizarding household, it was used by Riddle to cover up a murder.

Slughorn’s Memory

Next, we dive into the “Sluggish” memory.  Note Dumbledore’s words about Slughorn’s tampering: “It is … very crudely done … it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations.”  When I posited earlier that memories can be better altered than Slughorn’s fog-and-shouting, it appears I was correct.  However, I’m not sure it can be done magically. It seems to me it has to be done psychologically. “Crudely done” is connected with the fact that the real memory is still there.  I think a much more flawless memory could be created if someone actually convinces him- or herself of the lie. Like I said, psychological, not magical.

Fawkes and Loyalty to Harry

An interesting item I had not picked up before.  Dumbledore gives Harry his assignment: get the memory.  After Harry leaves the room, Phineas Nigellus protests, “I can’t see why the boy should be able to do it better than you, Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore’s reply, “I wouldn’t expect you to, Phineas,” is met with another low, musical cry from Fawkes.  If I’m correct in my position that this is a sign of approval from Fawkes, and it’s about loyalty, then Fawkes here has sung about Dumbledore’s loyalty to – or faith in – Harry.  As such, these two notes by Fawkes are something of a foreshadowing of the “You are with me” / “I am with you” reversal of roles between Dumbledore and Harry.

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• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker

I mentioned this in the comments recently, but I thought I’d open a post on it. In my discussion of Chapter 14 of Half-Blood Prince, I wrote about Harry, but didn’t give any attention to our first look at the lucky potion, Felix Felicis, in action.

Is Felix Felicis a hoax?

The potion itself seems completely absurd – that taking a drink of it will not only affect you, but cause external circumstances to change in order to give you a better day.  Slughorn claims that he took Felix twice and had “two perfect days.”  Harry takes Felix when he wants to retrieve Slughorn’s memory, and believes that Felix keeps telling him what to do.

But Ron simply thinks he takes Felix, and has the same great day – external circumstances and all.  The weather is great for Quidditch, two of Slytherin’s best players don’t show up, and Ron is suddenly able to make save after save.  If Ron hadn’t been told Harry had only pretended to put Felix in his pumpkin juice, he’d probably have thought Felix got him his snog with Lavender later that day as well. 

Faux Fortune?

But Beedle’s tale, “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” might just be a tip that Felix never actually did anything at all.  The three heroines and the knight make it to this magical fountain.  Three of the four are rid of their problems without the fountain, and while the fourth seems to think the fountain has given him magical fortune, we are told quite plainly by Beedle that the fountain never had any magical properties at all.

Is the Beedle story a fairy-tale parallel to real-world superstitions that have no basis in reality?  Certainly, the whole Wizarding World seems to believe in the power of Felix Felicis every bit as much as Beedle’s imaginary world does.  There are even laws regulating the use of Felix.  If we’re right to speculate that prior to Harry’s journey to the cave, Dumbledore sent Harry back not to get his cloak (which Dumbledore knew Harry had on him!), but to give his friends lucky potion, knowing the Death Eaters were on their way, we might even say Dumbledore believes in it.  (That last point is a long shot, but there it is for discussion, anyway.)

Luck and Choice

Is Felix Felicis a hoax?  I think so.  And it gets us back to where Rowling stands on choice and fate.  No potion, fountain, or prophecy can change your circumstances.  Only you can change, by your own choices.

And recall her quoted line from Plutarch: “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.“  Ron, the knight in Beedle’s tale, and other believers in magical fortune think that the magical transformation of outward reality (whether one has good or bad luck in one’s circumstances) makes for a better day or a better life.  Rowling, Plutarch, and Beedle believe that it is inward change that makes all the difference.

Of course, the catch is that Ron and the knight had to be deceived first.  But Ron later learns that it wasn’t magic at all; it was his own work on the Quidditch pitch.

Related Posts

• The Hog’s Head Half-Blood Prince Read-Through
• The White Tomb
• The Phoenix Lament
• The Flight of the Prince, by Lily Luna
• The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Red Rocker

“When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them … and I’m much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter.”
“I don’t want a bond with Pettigrew!” said Harry. “He betrayed my parents!”
“This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me … the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew’s life.” (Prisoner of Azkaban)

If this isn’t a set-up for something big happening with Pettigrew and Harry in Book 7, I’ll eat the Sorting Hat. There are, in fact, more than this when it comes to these “life debts” in the Harry Potter series. Jeremy Abel has recently compiled a list of them:

1. Harry saved Pettigrew
2. Harry saved Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets
3. Harry saved Arthur when Arthur was attacked by Nagini in the Ministry of Magic
4. Harry saved Ron when he accidentally drank the poison intended for Dumbledore
5. Harry saved Sirius and Hermione from the Dementors
6. James saved Snape from Lupin as a werewolf
7. Snape saved Harry from the curse placed on him by Professor Quirrell during the Quidditch match
8. Snape saved Dumbledore from the curse on Slytherin’s ring
9. Dumbledore saved Harry during his fall from his broom when the Dementors came onto the Quidditch pitch
10. Lilly saved Harry because of her sacrifice which repelled Voldemort’s curse

To this almost complete list, I would add that Snape saved Draco from failing in his mission and the resulting certain death at the hands of Voldemort. One could also say that Dumbledore saved Draco as well, if one believes in Good!Snape (which I do). So those would be #11 (Draco-Snape) and #12 (Draco-Dumbledore). Though not chronological, we’ll use this set of numbers as our point of reference throughout the essay.

Life Debt?

Before examining the specific life debts, we need to ask the question, ”What are we talking about here, in the first place?”  Because the word “debt” really makes this sound awful.  If saving someone’s life results in their being indebted to you in some way that they have to “pay it back,” then it could easily destroy altruism (as one reader at HP Essays put it) and make saving lives a tool to manipulate people.  “Hey, don’t jinx me, man!  Don’t you rememeber you have a life debt to me?”I don’t think it’s best to think of this in that kind of economic way, however.  ”Magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable” is such a manipulative device, and it doesn’t work as an exact cause-and-effect relationship.  I believe that if one really, really wants to, one can ignore the life debt; anything else would be to make love compulsory and ruin the key theme of “choice” in the novels.  In short, a severely calloused person could indeed scoff at someone’s saving their life. 

But the actual magic involved in the saving of a life and creating of the debt seems to me to be the magical opposite of Avada Kedavra, or any other method of killing a person.  When the Killing Curse is thrown or a person is murdered, the murderer’s soul is torn.  It’s the greatest act of evil, and gives way to the potential of horcrux creation, most evil of magic practices. 

On the other hand, the saving of a life (rather than the taking of it), being the exact opposite, is an expression of love and mercy, and hence creates the kind of bond that exists when one person loves another.  It is a practical magical application, so to speak, of Dumbledore’s assertion that love is the most powerful form of magic.  Therefore, we should not think of life debts as the mechanical creation of an almost economic debt, but the bond of love created between the saver and the saved. 

If the saved person was an enemy to begin with, I’d guess that would make the magic both more powerful and more complex, because, as I tried to demonstrate in the essay, “Dumbledore’s Mercy,” evil intentions falter in the face of response of love. 

Which Debts are Plot-Significant?

Now, obviously not all of these are going to be significant, so let’s sort through the list and focus on the ones that will have some kind of significance for Book 7. Numbers 2-5, while significant to the plots of their respective books, will likely have no significance for Book 7, simply because Hermione, the Weasleys, and Harry are all so loyal to each other already that saving each other’s lives is just part of what they do. The “life debt” created only increases the strong bond that already existed between them. Same goes for #9 – Harry is already loyal to Dumbledore. Number 10, Lily’s sacrifice for Harry, has already been exceedingly significant, and I’m assuming will continue to be so, but we already know how, and once again, a positive mother-son bond would have already existed.

That leaves us with Harry’s saving Pettigrew (#1), James’ saving Snape (#6), Snape’s saving Harry (#7), Dumbledore (#8), and Draco (#11), and Dumbledore’s saving Draco (#12). For my own purposes, being on the “Good Snape” side, Snape saving Draco and Dumbledore saving Draco amount to about the same thing, but let’s quickly consider a Draco-Dumbledore debt if Snape is evil before moving on.

The Draco-Dumbledore Debt (#12)
Even if Snape turns out to be evil, I think it can be argued that Dumbledore had every intention of saving Draco Malfoy, and that his actions and words on the night of his death put Draco in his debt. (See my essay, “Dumbledore’s Mercy“). Now the question will be asked, “What does it matter if you are in the debt of a dead man?” A fair question. But loyalty to Dumbledore has a lot of power, doesn’t it? Dumbledore’s belief that he will only truly be gone when no one who is left is loyal to him has proved true. It’s actually part of the whole point of Half-Blood Prince that Rowling establish Harry’s undying loyalty to Dumbledore. A Draco Malfoy with a life debt to Dumbledore in the service of Lord Voldemort is another strike against the Dark Lord any way you cut it. What would be so significant about this particular debt is that, unlike the Wormtail-Harry debt, Voldemort would not actually know about the Draco-Dumbledore debt. Dumbledore told Draco that he “expects” Draco to die in the attempt on Dumbledore’s life. In short, Voldemort is foolish enough (this is his greatest weakeness!) to believe that Dumbledore, faced with the prospect of his own death, would take the life of his would-be killer (even though it’s his own student) than to submit to death. And no one ever need know about Draco’s conversation with Dumbledore or his hesitancy to kill him.

Would Evil!Snape tell Voldemort that Draco faultered so badly? I doubt it. Even if Snape is evil, we see some sort of bond between him and Narcissa, and the Unbreakable Vow (UV) was put in place to protect Draco from Voldemort’s wrath. I doubt even an Evil!Snape would run back to Voldemort and say, “Even though the task is completed, you should kill Draco because he faltered.”

But the point is moot, because Snape is good, and here’s why.

The Snape Debts (#6, 7, 8, 11)
Snape saves three people in the course of the series, so we’ll take them one by one.

The Dumbledore-Snape Debt (#8)
While Dumbledore is no longer in the debt of Snape, being dead now, the creation of the debt is quite significant. Jeremy observes and asks in the post I quoted above:

The Snape-Dumbledore saving relationship is interesting, though I’m not sure of its significance. Does it bear on the good, bad, or conflicted Snape question?

Indeed, it does. In the first place, one has to wonder why, if Snape is evil, he would have saved Dumbledore’s life after the Ringcrux caper. Perhaps we could posit a situation in which Dumbledore would have had the capacity to blow Snape’s spy cover if Snape refused to heal him. But let’s think about the situation. Dumbledore makes it back from destroying the Ringcrux, barely alive. Surely Albus doesn’t want anyone to know where he’s been or what he’s been doing, so he goes to Snape, and Snape alone. This is the perfect opportunity for Evil!Snape to do away with the Dark Lord’s greatest enemy without anyone knowing about it. Why not take it? He wouldn’t blow his cover at Hogwarts by allowing Dumbledore to die and creating an easily believable story that Dumbledore showed up on his doorstep and died just as he crossed it. Even if the Ringrux was destroyed at some point after the Narcissa-Snape UV was made, Snape could only see this as the perfect opportunity to save Draco by bypassing the whole scheme and allowing Dumbledore to die in his presence. It would have been the perfect murder. There would be no disadvantages, as far as I can see, if ending the problem of Dumbledore right then and there.

This doesn’t entirely eliminate the Conflicted!Snape theory, which posits a Snape who waffled back and forth, especially after the Dark Lord’s return, and chose the Dark Side on the Astronomy Tower, but it makes the theory more unlikely. If Snape were loyal enough to Dumbledore over the summer to save his life when he was on death’s doorstep, what could possibly have changed over the course of the schoolyear to cause such a drastic shift in Severus as to make him to to exact opposite of saving Dumbledore’s life? A year teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts? No way. If spending regular time in the presence of Voldemort doesn’t sway one to the Dark Side, teaching a bunch of teenagers how to cast nonverbal spells isn’t going to do it.

The Snape-Dumbledore debt is definitely a point in favor of Good!Snape.

The Harry-Snape Debt (#7)

Harry’s hatred for Snape is perhaps even greater than his hatred for Voldemort at the end of HBP. One can hardly imagine Harry running into Snape two days after the close fo HBP and not mustering up all the hatred he can for his first attempt at a Killing Curse.

But it’s interesting to consider that it was just after the revelation of Pettigrew’s being responsible for his parents’ death that he chose to have mercy on him. If ever there were a time that Harry would be raging mad and make a rash decision, that would have been it. At this point a couple of things need to be considered.

Snape most definitely and deliberately saved Harry’s life in Philosopher’s Stone when Quirrell was trying to curse him. Whether Snape’s explanation to Bellatrix at Spinner’s End was a lie or not, the fact remains: Harry would be dead if not for Snape. Hence, the creation of that Life Debt. The Life Debt is “magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable.” If this is really the case, and we have no reason to doubt Dumbledore’s wisdom on this, then Harry may just find it much more difficult than he imagined to conjure up enough reason to attempt to kill Snape. The bond created when Snape saved Harry might be the trick to stay Harry’s wand long enough for Snape to get his full story explained.

Of course, if Snape really is evil, then Harry’s being indebted to him might make it all the more difficult for Harry to fight Snape, should the chance arise again (could it have even been why he was unable to be effective against Snape at the end of HBP?).

The Snape-James Debt (#6)
The Snape-James debt must be taken into account simultaneously with the Harry-Snape debt. A few points are important, and a few questions must be asked. First, in what way does the James-Snape debt affect Snape’s relationship with Harry? Emotionally, Snape obviously hated James and so hates Harry. He attempts to cover up this debt by raging at Harry about how James saved him from Sirius’s cruel joke in the first place, so it wasn’t much of a “saving.” The fact remains, of course, that Snape was in James’s debt.

Here’s a question to which we do not have a clear answer, as far as I know: Can the debt be repaid, so that one is no longer in the other’s debt? To apply it specifically, when Snape saved Harry’s life, did that fulfill his debt to James, so that the debt is now cancelled? We don’t know for sure. Snape continues to hate Harry in either case, but if the debt is ongoing, will it affect Snape’s loyalties? Does it inform how we should think about Snape’s loyalties at the present? Since we can’t know the long-term nature of a life debt, we really can’t speculate too far about these things.
But here’s where this debt becomes significant for Book 7. Besides Dumbledore, who’s the one person Harry wants to be most like? His dad. When it comes right down to it, it was because he wanted to be like his dad that he spared Pettigrew.

And his dad saved Snape. This might be additional incentive for Harry to reconsider Snape in Book 7 – or at least, as with the Harry-Snape debt above, cause Harry to pause from attempting to kill him just long enough to hear Snape out.

Let’s take a brief break from canonical facts to speculate about how this might play out. Here comes some guesswork.

Imagine a confrontation between Harry and Snape, maybe similar to the one with Sirius at the end of PoA.* Harry has Snape where he wants him, perhaps with the help of Ron and Hermione, and the time has finally come for him to avenge Dumbledore’s death. Snape is trapped and disarmed. But something is holding Harry back. Two things simultaneously, in fact: (1) Snape saved his life in his first year at Hogwarts, and even if Harry can’t place this exactly in his mind, it’s keeping him from being able to pull the trigger; and (2) Harry remembers that his dad saved Snape. With Snape at wandpoint and unable to move, Harry decides to let Snape have his say. Severus explains all about his loyalty to Dumbledore, why he turned from being a Death Eater, what his connection was to Harry’s parents, and what really happened on the Astronomy Tower (un-stoppering Dumbledore’s death).

Then just for fun, consider that Harry doesn’t believe Snape. The only two people in the world who can be rightfully called “Dumbledore’s man through and through” face each other, battling each other over the same point: loyalty to Dumbledore. As Harry loses his temper and finally decides to kill Snape, the powerful loyalty being expressed by each side calls to the scene the only remaining character who can resolve this tension: Fawkes the Phoenix. In the same way the Fawkes came to Harry’s rescue in the Chamber, he comes to Snape’s rescue, hovering in between Harry and Snape, or even landing on the fallen Snape, ready to swallow anything Harry throws at Snape. And Harry finally believes.**

Possible? Perhaps. I think it’s a fairly good guess based on the Life Debts as they stand.

A final note on the James-Snape debt. We’ve been given what is considered by most fans an insufficient explanation from Dumbledore concerning the reason for Snape’s repentance:

‘Professor Snape made a terrible mistake. He was still in Lord Voldemort’s employ on the night he heard the first half of Professor Trelawney’s prophecy. Naturally, he hastened to tell his master what he had heard, for it concerned his master most deeply. But he did not know – he had no possible way of knowing – which boy Voldemort would hunt from then onwards, or that the parents he would destroy in his murderous quest were people that Professor Snape knew, that they were your mother and father -’

Harry let out a yell of mirthless laughter.

‘He hated my dad like he hated Sirius! Haven’t you noticed, Professor, how the people Snape hates tend to end up dead?’

‘You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life and the reason that he returned -’

‘But he’s a very good Occlumens, isn’t he, sir?’ said Harry, whose voice was shaking with the effort of keeping it steady. ‘And isn’t Voldemort convinced that Snape’s on his side, even now? Professor … how can you be sure Snape’s on our side?’

Dumbledore did not speak for a moment; he looked as though he was trying to make up his mind about something. At last he said, ‘I am sure. I trust Severus Snape completely.’ (HBP-25)

I agree the explanation is not sufficient, primarily because of the “moment” in which Dumbledore was considering whether to explain more to Harry. But quite frankly, we’ve no idea what was going on in Dumbledore’s mind and whether or not it had anything to do with what was just said about the Potters. For all we know, the answer to why Dumbledore trusts Snape so much might lie in some Snape-Dumbledore connection we don’t know about. Some have speculated that Snape harbored a secret, unrequited love for Lily Evans (which might explain even better Snape’s revulsion of James).

But what Dumbledore has given us may not be as weak an answer as most people think. Again, let’s observe that Dumbledore describes the Life Debt magic as “magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable.” We’re talking about magic every bit as powerful as Lily’s sacrifice that saved Harry. If this is really the case, is it that difficult to believe that young Snape, in the debt of James Potter, fell apart and came to his senses when he became responsible for the murder of the one who, just a few years prior, had saved his life? I don’t think Dumbledore is exaggerating when he speaks of Snape’s “remorse” and it being his “greatest regret.”

The Draco-Snape Debt (#11)

Assuming once again a Good!Snape, nothing could be better for Draco Malfoy than to be (a) in Snape’s debt and (b) under Snape’s care and protection as HBP ends. For more on this, see my recent essay, “Dumbledore’s Mercy.” The rest of the implications for the Draco-Snape debt fit in nicely with the Wormtail-Harry debt, so let’s think about that one now.

The Wormtail-Harry Debt (#1)

Finally, we have what is about to be the key life debt of the series, because it’s been clearly mentioned as significant by Dumbledore. How so? Again, we enter the realm of wild guesswork. [I don't think it's a "guess" that Wormtail will turn on Voldemort in favor of Harry before the end of Book 7. But how it will happen is where we don't have much to go on.] We could speculate all sorts of dramatic scenarios in which Wormtail turns on Lord Voldemort, much to his surprise.

But I don’t know if Voldemort would be so surprised at a Wormtail turnaround. He already distrusts Wormtail, and is suspicious at the beginning of GoF that Wormtail is trying to protect Harry (“not use the boy” GoF-1). What is really interesting is the Snape/Wormtail pairing at Spinner’s End. I think it’s best to assume that Voldemort, to some extent, distrusts both Snape and Wormtail. He distrusts everybody in the first place, but with Snape under the employ of that “muggle-lover” Dumbledore for all those years, and Wormtail in Harry’s debt, Voldemort would be quite keen to make sure neither of them turn on him. So he’s created an atmosphere of suspicion and spying at Spinner’s End.

Now Snape has fled, having fulfilled the Unbreakable Vow, un-stoppering Dumbledore’s death according to plan, and taken Draco with him. It’s a likely possibility that he’ll take Draco with him back to Spinner’s End before anywhere else; it might even be possible that Draco will stay there with him for a while. And maybe Narcissa as well? After all, Narcissa is afraid of the Dark Lord’s anger, and Snape has already protected her family once by taking and fulfilling the vow.

In any case, assuming Good!Snape theories are correct, consider the three people who are now under the employ of Lord Voldemort, who are in various ways vitally connected to each other and to Harry:

1. Wormtail, living with Snape and owing a Life Debt to Harry
2. Snape, ultimately loyal to Dumbledore and continuing his job on his orders
3. Draco, indebted now to Snape and Dumbledore, afraid of Voldemort and having just been offered sanctuary by Dumbledore

They don’t have to all be living at Spinner’s End – placing the Malfoys there would just be a matter of convenience. Now consider: There is simply no way Dumbledore put his plan into motion without charging Snape to do everything he could to save Draco. It may have even been part of their communication by legilimency on the Tower that night. So we should assume that Snape, when the time is right, will extend Dumbledore’s offer of mercy to Draco once again. That means, there are at least three “Death Eaters” (assuming Malfoy either was one already or will become one) who could potentially turn on Voldemort from within. Any way you look at it, that’s problematic for Lord Voldemort, especially if all three of them agree to team up before it’s over (unlikely, but possible).

Wild guesswork aside, now, Wormtail’s Life Debt to Harry will bring out a couple of interesting things.

• Why in the world did cowardly Wormtail get placed in Gryffindor? We should expect an act of bravery worthy of a Gryffindor before the end, and his “Life Debt” is going to be the key. I would not at all be surprised by a Wormtail sacrificial death (though, if I were forced to guess which character got the “reprieve” Rowling referred to, I’d guess Pettigrew).
• Redemption is a key theme in the book, and the redemption of the one who betrayed Harry’s parents would be a dramatic and poignant plot turn.

Conclusion

The regular caveats about my “wild guesswork” in place, I think it’s fair to say that Life Debts will play a very significant role in Book 7. It’s unlikely that the actual “life debt” magic will be referenced in every case (we’ll probably hear about it again only in Wormtail’s case), but expect Rowling to be working that magic behind the scenes throughout the course of the novel.

Endnotes
*This is a situation I read Joyce Odell [Red Hen] posit to set up her big “Dumbledore is alive” reveal, before JKR smashed that theory to bits.
**I do not know who first came up with the idea of Fawkes being the one who settles this conflict. I’ve read the idea in several places now.

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I’ve been wanting to revisit Harry’s first Potions lecture with Snape and toss some thoughts around about the draught of living death. But Janet’s newest “Setups and Payoffs” post is up, and it covers a lot of what I had wanted to say. It’s excellent reading, and you’ll get a lot of insight into that first class, and she also summarizes well the reasons Dumbledore is actually, really dead.

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