Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | Part Three of Three
Well, here we are.
The end.
Seven books, a whole lot of magic, and enough childhood trauma to keep the wizarding world's therapists employed for generations.
When I started rereading Harry Potter, I wanted to see how the stories held up now that I'm an adult.
I expected to rediscover characters I loved, notice details I'd forgotten, and probably get annoyed by a few things that hadn't bothered me when I was younger.
And I certainly did.
But what I didn't expect was how differently I'd feel about some of the people in these books.
Especially the villains.
Because when I first read Deathly Hallows, I couldn't wait for Voldemort to die.
This time?
I actually felt sorry for him.
And that surprised me more than anything.
The Man Who Couldn't Be Loved
Voldemort is one of the most powerful wizards who ever lived.
He's extraordinarily intelligent, magically gifted, and capable of inspiring absolute terror in nearly everyone who encounters him.
He has an army of followers.
He controls the Ministry of Magic.
He brings the wizarding world to its knees.
And yet, when I look at him now, I see one of the loneliest characters in the entire series.
Because Voldemort doesn't have friends.
He has followers.
He doesn't have relationships built on trust.
He has relationships built on fear.
Even the people who genuinely seem devoted to him, like Bellatrix Lestrange, are never allowed to become his equals or truly know him.
He keeps everyone at a distance.
And I think that's the real tragedy of Tom Riddle.
He spends his entire life trying to become so powerful that he'll never need anyone.
And in doing so, he makes himself incapable of experiencing the very things that make life worth living.
Now, there's an interesting detail about Voldemort's origins that adds another layer to this.
His mother, Merope Gaunt, uses a love potion to coerce Tom Riddle Sr. into a relationship. Voldemort is born from a union in which genuine love and consent are absent.
I've always found that disturbing, especially when considering the kind of person he becomes.
But I don't think we should interpret it as a magical rule that a child conceived under a love potion is incapable of love. It's more meaningful as a symbol of the circumstances surrounding his birth.
And those circumstances don't excuse the choices he makes.
Because here's the thing.
Voldemort encounters kindness throughout his life.
People offer him opportunities. They try to teach him. They attempt to reach him.
But he consistently interprets those interactions through the lens of what he can gain from them.
He manipulates people who care about him.
He exploits people who trust him.
And he destroys anyone who threatens his sense of control.
It's as though he's built walls so high around himself that even when kindness is offered, it can never actually reach him.
And as an adult, I find that profoundly sad.
Not because I think Voldemort deserves forgiveness.
But because I can recognize how much of his own humanity he threw away.
Understanding Isn't Forgiving
And that brings me to Severus Snape.
Oh, Severus.
We're going to have some words.
Because if there's one thing I've become increasingly convinced of during this reread, it's that Snape's story is not the beautiful redemption arc people sometimes make it out to be.
Now, before anyone starts throwing potion bottles at me, let me acknowledge something.
Snape was brave.
He played an essential role in defeating Voldemort.
He spent years working as a double agent, risking his life, deceiving one of the most dangerous wizards in history, and ultimately helping Harry accomplish what needed to be done.
Those things matter.
But you know what else matters?
He was an absolute bastard to children.
And not just Harry.
Neville was terrified of him.
Hermione was routinely humiliated by him.
He bullied students who had done absolutely nothing to deserve his cruelty.
And none of that was part of Dumbledore's master plan.
Nobody instructed Snape to torment eleven-year-olds.
He did that all on his own.
And then we learn about Lily.
The woman he loved.
The woman whose death motivated his betrayal of Voldemort.
And suddenly, we're supposed to look at everything differently.
But I don't.
Because Lily wasn't something Snape lost to James Potter.
She wasn't a prize that James won.
She was a person.
A person who had been Snape's friend, who eventually rejected the path he was taking, and who chose to build a life with someone else.
Snape's feelings for her don't entitle him to her affection.
And his grief over her death doesn't erase the choices he made before or afterward.
Let's not forget that Snape delivered the prophecy to Voldemort in the first place.
When he realized Lily might be targeted, he initially sought to save her, even if it meant Harry and James would die.
Dumbledore rightly challenged him on that.
And yes, Snape eventually agreed to protect Harry.
But he also spent years punishing Harry for looking like James Potter.
Every time he saw Lily's eyes, they were looking back at him from the face of a man he hated.
And somehow, Harry became the target of that resentment.
I understand why Snape behaved the way he did.
I can even recognize that he grew in certain ways and eventually acted to protect people beyond Lily's son.
But understanding someone's motivations isn't the same as excusing their behavior.
Doing something heroic doesn't retroactively make everything you've done heroic.
And this is why I still have a problem with Harry naming his son Albus Severus Potter.
I understand that Harry wanted to honor Snape's courage and sacrifice.
But personally?
I wouldn't name my child after a man who spent years tormenting me and my friends.
Sorry, Harry.
We're going to have to disagree on that one.
And while Alan Rickman gave us an extraordinary portrayal of Snape, I think his performance has also made it easier for audiences to romanticize a character whose behavior is much uglier on the page.
Snape was complicated.
He was courageous.
He was cruel.
And I don't think we have to pretend those contradictions resolve neatly just because he died fighting the right enemy.
The Power to Let Go
Which brings me back to Harry.
Because the older I get, the more I appreciate just how extraordinary his final decisions are.
Throughout the series, Harry is surrounded by people who seek power.
Voldemort wants immortality.
The Ministry wants control.
The Death Eaters want supremacy.
Even Dumbledore, in his youth, was tempted by the idea that extraordinary power could be used to reshape the world.
And then there's Harry.
A young man who has every reason to want more power than anyone else.
He's been hunted, manipulated, betrayed, and forced to fight for his life since he was a child.
And at the end of Deathly Hallows, he becomes the rightful master of the Elder Wand.
The most powerful wand in existence.
Think about that.
After everything Harry has endured, he finally possesses the kind of power Voldemort spent his entire life trying to obtain.
And what does he do with it?
He repairs his old wand.
His phoenix-feather wand.
The one that chose him when he was eleven years old.
The wand that accompanied him through nearly every adventure, every loss, and every triumph.
And then he decides to return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's tomb.
He hopes that if he dies undefeated, its extraordinary power will finally be broken.
I love that.
Because Harry doesn't see the Elder Wand as a reward for everything he's suffered.
He doesn't see it as something he's entitled to possess.
He sees an opportunity to remove a dangerous source of power from the world.
And he chooses to let it go.
Voldemort spends his life trying to conquer death.
Harry willingly walks toward death to save the people he loves.
Voldemort sacrifices others to preserve himself.
Harry is willing to sacrifice himself to preserve others.
Voldemort wants the most powerful wand in existence.
Harry just wants his own wand back.
And I think that tells us everything we need to know about the difference between them.
The Boy Who Lived
When I was younger, I thought Harry's greatest achievement was defeating Voldemort.
He survived the Killing Curse.
He destroyed the Horcruxes.
He defeated the most dangerous dark wizard in the world.
The good guys won.
The end.
But reading these books as an adult, I don't think that's what makes Harry extraordinary.
It's that after everything he's experienced, he still chooses kindness.
He still trusts people.
He still believes other people's lives matter.
He has every opportunity to become bitter, cruel, or obsessed with power.
And he doesn't.
He's certainly not perfect.
He's impulsive, stubborn, occasionally arrogant, and sometimes spectacularly bad at listening to Hermione.
But he never loses the ability to care about people.
And that's something Voldemort never understands.
Voldemort believes love makes people vulnerable.
Harry discovers that love gives people something worth being vulnerable for.
And maybe that's why I feel so differently about Voldemort's death now.
As a kid, I celebrated because the villain was finally gone.
As an adult, I find myself mourning the life he never allowed himself to have.
He could have been extraordinary in so many ways.
He could have built friendships.
He could have loved people.
He could have used his incredible gifts to make the world better.
Instead, he spent his life chasing immortality and died without ever really learning how to live.
And that's a tragedy.
Not one that absolves him of his crimes.
But a tragedy nonetheless.
Reading the Same Book as a Different Person
When I started this series, I wanted to revisit the Harry Potter books and see what I'd notice now that I was older.
I thought it would be fun.
And it was.
But somewhere along the way, these books started reminding me of things I hadn't expected.
Hagrid reminded me of the importance of having someone who believes in you.
Tom Riddle made me think about what my younger self would think of the man I've become.
The animals reminded me of the companions I've loved and lost, and how the roles we play in their lives change as we grow older.
The fathers and sons of Goblet of Fire made me reflect on the men who helped shape my understanding of adulthood.
Order of the Phoenix reminded me that you can't always return to the places, or the versions of yourself, that once made you feel safe.
And Half-Blood Prince reminded me that eventually, you have to stop waiting for someone else to show you the way.
Now, at the end of Deathly Hallows, I find myself thinking about the kind of person I want to continue becoming.
Someone who recognizes when power is being abused.
Someone who understands that needing other people isn't a weakness.
Someone who can acknowledge the good and bad in people without pretending either cancels the other out.
And someone who remembers that kindness, empathy, and love are worth protecting.
I don't think I understood all of those things when I first read these books.
I was younger.
I had different experiences.
Different fears.
Different ideas about what it meant to be strong, successful, or even good.
And that's what makes returning to these stories so interesting.
The characters haven't changed.
The words are exactly where I left them.
Hagrid is still waiting outside that little hut on the rock.
Tom Riddle is still hiding in the diary.
Neville is still searching for Trevor.
And somewhere in the Great Hall, Harry Potter is still discovering that the world is much bigger and more wonderful than he ever imagined.
But I'm not the same person who first met them.
And I never will be again.
I think there's something wonderful about that.
Because maybe the real magic of rereading a book isn't getting to experience the same story all over again.
Maybe it's discovering how much you've changed since the last time you turned its pages.
The book hasn't changed.
I have.
And I hope I always will.
