Harry Potter's Bookshelf (23 page)

In each book Harry
separates
from his Muggle home on Privet Drive, is
initiated
and transformed in a series of magical trials and adventures, and
returns
to Muggle dom at the end of the school year. Ms. Rowling’s annual journey formula for Harry, though, is more detailed than a mechanical hop from Privet Drive to Hogwarts and back to King’s Cross. Harry’s journey has
ten
distinct steps we see every year:

Here I just want to point out three curious things about how
Deathly Hallows
satisfies this formula before getting to the power of the circle and Luna’s answer to the Ravenclaw common room door.

First, the ten steps above can be divided pretty neatly into the divisions of separation (steps one and two), initiation (three to eight), and return (nine and ten). The fifth step, though, “going underground,” is a bit of a head-scratcher. Sure, Odysseus journeys to the land of the dead, Aeneas follows suit, and Dante, boy, does he go underground! There is even the pointer to Christ’s Harrowing of Hades.

But in the Rowling formula, “going underground” can seem bizarre. We go through the trap door that Fluffy protects in
Sorcerer’s Stone.
In
Chamber of Secrets
, it’s down the long slide under the sink in Myrtle’s bathroom to the Chamber of Secrets, again, “miles beneath Hogwarts.”
Prisoner of Azkaban
has the most token underground travel—through the roots beneath the Whomping Willow to the tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack. Harry doesn’t go underground in
Goblet of Fire
but to a graveyard, which, because most of the people “present”
are
underground, has the same symbolic weight. In
Order of the Phoenix
, Harry and friends battle the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in the lowest level of the Ministry of Magic. Dumbledore takes Harry into a subterranean cave and lake in
Half-Blood Prince
before making his notable descent from the Astronomy Tower.

What is Ms. Rowling after here? I think it’s safe to assume if we see an event or action recur without fail in each book, we know it has been put there intentionally. The answer is the series finale,
Deathly Hallows
, in which Harry spends a lot of time underground.

In
Deathly Hallows
Harry and friends go underground again and again. And again. I counted seven times. They flush themselves into the Ministry and descend to the Wiz engamot chambers to rescue the Cattermoles. Harry and Ron dive into the pool in the Forest of Dean to get the Sword of Gryffindor. There’s a regular reunion in the dungeon beneath Malfoy Manor. Harry digs himself a hole to get underground and bury Dobby. The Terrific Trio and Griphook descend to the depths below Gringotts to liberate and hitch a ride on a pale dragon. We get back into the Shrieking Shack via the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow. And Harry enters the London “underground” in King’s Cross, his imagined “underworld” and very real
and
“in his head” meeting place with the late headmaster (King’s Cross is the busiest platform on the London underground subway system).

In every one of these trips, a spelunker ascends in a lifesav ing rescue (the Cattermoles, Harry from the pool, Dobby’s group rescue from the Malfoys, and the Gringotts dragon), with an invaluable magical object (the Sword of Gryffindor—twice—the cup Horcrux, and Snape’s memories), or forever changed (Ron post-baptism, Harry after burying Dobby, Harry rising from King’s Cross). Could the previous six novels’ underground passages have just been foreshadowing all these descents in
Deathly Hallows
? Hold on to this question. We’ll have to come back to it.

Second, another signature of Ms. Rowling’s hero’s journey is Harry’s annual figurative death and resurrection from the dead in the presence of a symbol of Christ. There are two lines we read in every book, I think. (Maybe three, if you include Hermione’s pleas for Ron and Harry to read
Hogwarts: A History
.) One is “. . . and Harry’s scar hurt worse than it had ever hurt before.” The other and more important repeatable line is Harry’s dying thought, “. . . so this is what it’s like to die.” Battling Quirrell, fanged by a basilisk, kissed by a dementor, tortured by the reborn Dark Lord, possessed by Voldemort in the Ministry, carried by the Inferi into the lake, and just flat-out killed by Voldemort in the finale, Harry dies a figurative death in every single book.

And in every book except the last, he comes back from this faux death either because of or just in the vicinity of a symbol of Christ. I’ll talk more about that symbolism in a moment, but here you just have to note that for six books, Harry’s resurrection is cued or caused by a potent Christian reference. Fawkes the Phoenix plays this part in
Chamber of Secrets
,
Goblet of Fire
, and
Order of the Phoenix
. It’s a Philosopher Stone in his pocket in the first book, a stag Patronus in
Prisoner of Azkaban
, and both a Hippogriff and the Half-Blood Prince in
Half-Blood Prince
. [For explanations of these symbols, see
How Harry Cast His Spell
, chapter nine (Tyndale, 2008).]

And
Deathly Hallows
?

In
Deathly Hallows
, Harry doesn’t rise from the dead
in the presence of
a symbol of Christ. As we saw in the last chapter, he rises
as
a symbol of Christ. I think it’s safe to say here that all the previous deaths and resurrections were just pointers and prefigurings of Harry’s ultimate victory, his “mastery of death.” Ms. Rowling has said that the last third of
Deathly Hallows
was the fixed part of the storyline that drove every other element of the previous books. All the stories do point to Harry’s trip into “The Forest Again.”

Third, two violations of journey formula happen at the end of
Half-Blood Prince
: we don’t get our meeting with Dumbledore (he’s attending his own funeral) and we don’t go to King’s Cross station. That omission is understandable; as Ms. Rowling said before the finale, books six and seven slide together at the end into one story. We make up for it, though, in
Deathly Hallows,
where we get
two
Dumbledore denouement scenes and
two
trips to King’s Cross. Harry’s encounter with his mentor at his King’s Cross vision is the most curious of these scenes and trips.

On her Open Book Tour press conference in Los Angeles, Rowling said she thought the Christian content of the books was “obvious.”
¹¹
I think we can all agree that Harry’s arriving at “King’s Cross” after his sacrificial death in love for his friends points to Calvary and not an especially obscure reference. But why meet with Dumbledore there, and underground?

To answer those questions, I think we have to discuss why poets and novelists return again and again to the hero’s journey. If you grasp the spiritual meaning of the circle, you’ll understand Luna’s answer to the Ravenclaw door as well as why Harry’s final return from the dead
guaranteed
his eventual victory over the Dark Lord.

The hero’s journey isn’t a story formula, ultimately, or just a mechanical structure on which to hang a plot. It’s really about the symbolism of the circle and the center we discussed above.

Harry’s adventure completes a circle every year: from his life with the Dursleys at Privet Drive, through his adventures in the magical world, back to being picked up by the Dursleys at King’s Cross Station at year’s end. If you have a piece of paper handy, draw a circle with the beginning point at the bottom being the Dursleys, Hogwarts being diametrically across from it (up in Scotland?), and the circle coming to a close again at the Dursleys, who meet Harry at King’s Cross.

Now every hero’s journey is a figurative, completed circle, if not a geometric one, and from what we’ve discussed before and seen in
Secret Garden,
in
Amulet,
and in Harry’s circular showdowns with the Dark Lord, the circle is a symbol of God and creation, specifically of the unknown center defining and creating the visible circle.

And this has
what
to do with Harry’s annual journey?

A hero completing a circular journey has ritually arrived by his circumnavigation at the defining center because the circle he or she has completed is one with the center. To repeat myself: As its radiation or visible aspect, the circle is
essentially
the same thing as its defining center or origin. If magic has a shape, it is a circle and it is the circle’s unplottable and defining center that is the heart and power of the magic.

Harry ends every year and the story has its most important turn at King’s
Cross
because the cross, like the circle, is defined by the center point at which a horizontal and vertical line meet. Draw a cross in your hero’s journey circle to divide that circle into four pie pieces. This point that defines the cross, the circle, and the end of the journey brings the hero into the “sacred space” or point creating the world.

Harry makes this trip to the crossing point defining the circle of his journey
seven
times. I explain the symbolism and importance of the number seven in
Unlocking Harry Potter
; but, as you’ve read the stories, you know how central the number seven is: the number of Quidditch players, Horcruxes, Years of Magical Education, Harry-clones escaping Privet Drive in
Deathly Hallows
, etc. If you’ve studied Arithmancy with Professor Vector or Pythagoras or even Lord Voldemort, you know this is the most “magically powerful” number.

Having completed the circle and achieved the center the seventh time, this last time by sacrificing himself without hope of gain, Harry, in effect, has executed his ego or died to himself, thereby returning to the center or transpersonal self before Voldemort kills him. Harry survives the Killing Curse
again
. How? In the story, it’s a function of his connection with the sacrificial death of his first savior, Lily Potter, and the magic of this sacrifice that exists in her blood, blood that flows in both Voldemort and Harry. No doubt this is a tip of the hat to the goddesses of Homer and Virgil and Dante’s green-eyed Beatrice, who save their respective heroes.

I think it is as credible—and maybe even easier to understand—to look at Harry’s survival within the context of his repeated circular journeys. From this view, Harry survives as the center because no point on the circle can destroy the center defining that circle. By transcending himself, Harry steps out of time and space, if you will, and into eternity and the infinite of the Origin, which Ms. Rowling portrays quite appropriately as a place called King’s Cross.

When Harry tells Dumbledore he thinks they are at King’s Cross, do you remember the headmaster’s reaction?

Dumbledore, unlike Harry, undoubtedly has studied Arithmancy, sacred geometry, and Christian scripture (hence the tombstone verses in Godric’s Hollow). Of course, he finds Harry’s intuitive choice of “locations” (after his sacrifice makes him “master of death”) quite humorous. Dumbledore laughs because the hero’s journey is a circle for much the same reason that the events of Calvary (the King’s Cross) have their meaning and why Christ died on a geometric cross. In achieving the symbolic Center, Harry has become, if not one, then “not two” with the transcendent Absolute.

By choosing to return to time and space after this apotheosis, Harry broke the power of the Dark Lord. Harry went underground repeatedly in
Deathly Hallows
, most importantly in choosing to dig Dobby’s grave on Easter morning, because each descent into the underworld was a dying to himself from which, remember, he either saved lives, recovered lost treasure, or was enlightened. Imagine the world as a circle; every descent was Harry’s movement toward the center and source of life and away from the periphery of ego and the fear of death.

It’s important to note that the end of
Deathly Hallows
is not just the completion of Harry’s journey in his seventh year, but the joining of the circle with the beginning of his journey in
Sorcerer’s Stone
. There are too many connecting points and echoes to go into here, but you probably noticed in the first book that Hagrid carries Harry’s body from the ruins of his childhood home to safety on Sirius’s motorcycle and he escorted Harry from his about-to-be-destroyed house on Privet Drive on the same motorcycle and, in the last, carries Harry’s body from the Forbidden Forest to Hogwarts as an echo of that event.

Harry returns to Godric’s Hollow in
Deathly Hallows
for the first time since Hagrid took him to the Dursleys and learns on Christmas morning what happened to him and his parents on that Halloween long ago. Ted Lupin becomes the philosophical orphan whose parents were murdered by the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters, completing and repeating another circle.