Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Pervasive Fantasy of Rowling's Wizarding World

Unlike other fantasy creations, the world of Rowling’s Harry Potter series exists alongside our own, within it, about it and through it. Lewis’s Narnia books were portal fantasy and involved the removal of children from our recognisable reality to a removed imagined world. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is presented as history, and his constructed mythology exists in a time before our history began, before the continents had drifted. Rowling’s magical world, however can be accessed at all times through the world we inhabit. Some distinct locations provide a clear portal, like The Leaky Cauldron, situated between two shops on a muggle high street, or platform 9 and 3/4, which exists in the magically created space between platforms 9 and 10 at the very real Kings Cross Station. But even without these specific sites magical people can appear and disappear seamlessly in our world, as when Harry, Ron and Hermione apparate onto Tottenham Court Road after Bill and Fleur’s wedding in the seventh book. In this sense the contents of the Potter books become very familiar, everything is as it is yet another layer of meaning is added to our existent societal structure. In the books, events that occur in the wizarding world, like the escape of Sirius Black from Azkaban prison, appear on the muggle television. The crime he’s accused of committing - the murder of thirteen muggles - is explained as a gas explosion. This pervasive addition to how we conceptualise the familiar creates a sense of duality to the reader’s experience, while being mirrored in the narrative. Harry leaves Hogwarts at the end of each book and re-enters our muggle world, where he lives with the Dursley’s, where he’s no longer allowed to use magic, and where he goes back to being ordinary - just like you and me - yet he knows that there is more. This sense of the familiar in fantasy could be enough to argue that reading Harry Potter feels less like a literary experience, and more historically realist, especially when the language of the Potter universe has been accepted into the everyday vernacular of a generation to the extent that words like muggle, Quiddich, Hogwarts, Death Eater, Floo Network, and Nimbus 2000 can be dropped into a sentence without any need for further explanation. The very accessibility of the wizarding world inspires readers to view life through a different lens, and has proven problematic to child readers who come to believe in the parallel world to such an extent that they feel genuine loss when they do not get accepted into Hogwarts. 

A very familiar theme that is recycled through the Potter series is that of the battle between good and evil. Harry, The Boy Who Lived, faces Lord Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named, in a battle to the death - ‘neither can live whilst the other survives’. Harry is The Chosen One, prophetically anticipated and fatalistically meant to be. In that respect he joins a whole line of child protagonists somehow called upon to save a/the world: Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials), the Pevensie Children (Narnia), Will Stanton (The Dark is Rising), to name but a few. Yet the line between good and evil, while seemingly simply drawn, becomes increasingly problematic on closer reading, ‘The world isn’t divided up into good people and Death Eaters, Harry.’ Harry himself contains part of Voldemort’s soul, he is the seventh Horcrux, and from his earliest encounters with the wizarding world, the dual nature of the Harry/Voldemort conundrum becomes apparent. When buying his wand on his first trip to Diagon Alley he learns that his wand shares core origin with Voldemort’s: ‘Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great.‘ And again on his arrival at Hogwarts during the sorting we learn that Harry has the potential for ‘greatness‘ and a placement in Slytherin, Lord Voldemort’s old house, would help him achieve this potential. The nature of greatness remains problematic, and even though Harry chooses a contrary path to Voldemort on his first night in Gryffindor tower, he has his first significant dream where he hears Voldemort’s voice inside Quirrel’s turban. As in the scene at the Zoo, the glass has been removed between Harry and the snake that through wizarding power is given a voice.

An obviously good character who later becomes problematic is Dumbledore. The aged mentor who doubles as puppet master:

He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the Mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could (Philosopher’s Stone)

Here we see the first instance where Dumbledore tests Harry’s ability, arriving just in time to avert complete disaster. This method, while allowing for unsupervised heroic adventures in the first three books, in the fourth becomes troublesome when Harry is entered illegally into the Triwizard Tournament and allowed to compete. Where previously Harry’s adventures had happened very much in secret, somehow mitigating the fact that he was allowed to do as much as he did, in the fourth book the danger is acknowledged and yet events are allowed to unfold. Allowing Harry to face the dangers of the tournament becomes Dumbledore’s first open testing ground for his new chess piece. Instead of allowing Harry to enter in order to fulfil the ‘binding magical contract‘ that the Goblet constitutes, then making him forfeit every round safely, Dumbledore expects Harry to compete in challenges that are too advanced for his skill set and that he did not freely volunteer for. In this regard, Harry is the only 

competitor forced, like a Gladiator in the colosseum, to fight a series of battles that end in a duel with Voldemort. The Triwizard Tournament, therefore, is the practice arena for Harry’s greater struggle - and for Dumbledore, directing from the sidelines, it is the perfect training ground.

In many ways the Potter series follows the conventions of the School Story. A child is removed from a domestic home to a place where they experience relative autonomy, which allows for a greater range of experiences and a greater degree of adventure than they would have if they’d stayed at home. While at school they partake in classes, interact with other children, and engage in sports. Unlike other school stories, however, the school itself is a definite personality within the story. With its moving staircases, secret passageways, doors to nowhere, and most notably in the Room of Requirement, ‘It’s almost like Hogwarts wants us to fight back’, Hogwarts even has a sense of humour that allows for the appearance of a collection of antique chamber pots when Dumbledore is most in need of a toilet. Yet the personality of Hogwarts is as ambiguous in its notion of ‘good‘ as its headmaster. Unlike other school stories, the goings on at Hogwarts are augmented by the powers at play (sometimes literally at play), and while the castle can make space for the inhabitants to fight evil or protect against it, it can also allow space for the existence of the evil that must be fought. In the second book the discovery of the legendary Chamber of Secrets leads to a series of sinister attacks on muggle-born students. ‘The horror within‘ that is ‘released‘ uses the stone pipework in the walls of the castle to move around freely during all hours of the day. Like Dumbledore, who assisted Harry in his various battles rather than preventing the battles from taking place, Hogwarts provides the training and sometimes the danger. 

  In the same way the inhabitants of Hogwarts are divided into four houses, one of which is notorious for producing dark wizards. Slytherin house is even banished from the grounds of Hogwarts during the final battle because their ideology differs so strongly from that of the others. Salazar Slytherin created The Chamber of Secrets, yet while he was forced to part from the school his house remains. This is problematic because in the aftermath of the battle ‘nobody was sitting according to house any more: all were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts and parents, centaurs and house-elves’, yet in the final chapter when Harry gives his son last minute encouragement on platform 9 and 3/4, the subject of the talk is about the houses and how no particular house is ‘bad’. Slytherin still exists, as do Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, the unity seen in the final battle has not lasted, division remains. The conflicting ideologies persist along with the stigma attached to ‘belonging‘ to a certain set. 

A discussion about Harry Potter, its placement in the familiar and its re-working of old tropes into new forms, cannot be complete without a comparison to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In both books the hero goes on a quest to destroy an object that contains part of the Dark Lord’s soul, ‘They are one, the Ring and the Dark Lord.’ In both series the hero is attached psychologically and magically, to the object. In Harry’s case he is the vessel in which the last Horcrux is contained, in Frodo’s he is the Ring bearer, and has developed a dependency on the Ring that he cannot overcome in the end. Both Harry and Frodo are guided for part of their journey by a venerable wizard, who dies and leaves them to complete the journey alone - or at least, with the aid of other friends. Both Harry and Frodo are rescued from death by those wizards, Gandalf collects Frodo from the slopes of Mount Doom on a giant eagle, while Harry meets Dumbledore in limbo in Kings Cross Station to discuss his options that ultimately leads to the decision to live. Both books contain characters that are tall, wear black hoods, and cause feelings of fear and despair. The Nazgul and the Dementors are an interesting addition to the comparison, because while their similarities in aesthetic and function are striking, their actual composition is entirely different. The Nazgul, or Ringwraiths, are named for what isn’t there. They are insubstantial voids in the space where men once were. Their status as once-men is what makes them so terrifying, because they are the extreme result of dependence on power in the pursuit of power, which is a very human trait. In comparison the Dementors are named for what they do, mens is latin for mind (also used in legilimens and occlumens) so Dementor can be interpreted as ‘De-Mind’ - the removal of the mind. Dementors were never men, they are creatures that feed on negative emotion, and while they have the ability to make wraiths - by

devouring a person’s soul - that person will never become one of them.

  While the Nazgul stand for specific men and Dementors stand for no men, Harry and Frodo stand for the everyman. Neither of them wanted the ‘task that was appointed to them’, both inherited their future roles. 

‘I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened.’

‘So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. What we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.‘      

Both are small and of average faculty. Harry defers in intelligence to Hermione who outshines him in most arenas, while Frodo is protected by the physically stronger characters of Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir and Gimli for the first part of his journey. They also stand for freedom in relation to a specific type of servitude. If the dark powers stand for homogeneity, Sauron for industrialism - ‘he needs only this Ring to cover all the lands in darkness’ - and Voldemort for collectivism, ‘the colours of Slytherin will do for all’, then Frodo and Harry stand for individualism and the freedom that that brings. In the face of the industry of Mordor and Isengard, Frodo is a symbol of romanticism, originating in the peaceful agricultural Shire. In the face of Voldemort’s singularity of vision that only benefits pure-blood Wizards and reduces others to silent subservience, Harry is a friend to muggles, muggle-borns, blood-traitors, half giants, half veela, house elves, centaurs and all. Both he and Frodo must destroy the part of themselves that allows for evil, and live, thus preserving themselves as the romantic hero.  

The Harry Potter series does not challenge our concept of what a hero is, it does not offer a great alternative to the school story genre. It does not provide us with a Utopian vision of what man could be if he had magical abilities, it does not even challenge class conventions - and if there’s anything that the ability to perform magic should do, it would be to level the field in terms of wealth and status, assuming that all people live according to their abilities. Instead what the Potter books do, is they challenge our perception of the world we live in. The pervasiveness of the Wizarding World as told by Rowling is where the magic of Potter truly lies.