one billion points to gryffindor

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Ch. 16-17

It’s a sprint to the finish here at Hogwarts—just two chapters to go from discovering that Voldemort is still around to encountering and defeating him. Friendship saves the day, as it is only with Ron and Hermione’s help that he can defeat the obstacle course to the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry credits this, in retrospect, to Dumbledore—to whom he has only spoken twice over the course of the book, and only once before facing Voldemort:

“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.”

More cynically, one can imagine Dumbledore suspected that Voldemort still couldn’t kill Harry—and thus, that Harry was the only one who would be able to hold him off. Dumbledore is still enough of a vague, omnipotent presence at this point that Harry’s interpretation doesn’t seem unlikely, though. He’s the wise, benevolent mentor who lacks motivations of his own. It’s actually surprising to me how little he feels like a fully-formed person at this point, and how distant a presence.

However plausible Harry’s understanding of Dumbledore’s role may be, it’s not very accurate—at least in the sense of Dumbledore having ‘taught [them] enough to help.’ Yes, Dumbledore showed Harry how to use the Mirror of Erised. Hermione frees them from the Devil’s Snare thanks to what she learned in Herbology (which Dumbledore definitely doesn’t teach). But the middle three challenges—the keys, the chess, and the logic puzzle—are all based on things the trio could already do. They didn’t need a year at Hogwarts to be good at flying, chess, and logic—it’s playing to strengths they already had. I guess you can argue that Harry wouldn’t have discovered he could fly without coming to Hogwarts, but the talent itself is apparently innate—neither Madam Hooch nor Wood ever seems to have to actually teach him anything except the rules of Quidditch. It’s an interesting ending note: school is nice but your true strength comes from your extracurriculars. Hogwarts may be fun, but at no point (except, again, the Devil’s Snare) is what the trio learn in class essential to their success in solving the mystery and coming out the other side alive.

But Hogwarts is important, of course. There’s something so lovely and wistful about the final paragraphs at school, the sense of packing up for the summer, of something ending but not really ending, because they’ll all be back again next year.

And that’s book one done. So what have we established, besides an attachment to Hogwarts? There’s already a clear moral framework, shaped in large part by Harry’s loyalties, by in-group and out-group. Harry is by no means on the ‘lawful’ side of the alignment chart: breaking rules and following your instincts are essential to doing the right thing, and the book displays nothing but frustration for arbitrary rule-following. Fairness is a huge concern, which makes sense given the age of the characters. McGonagall’s scrupulous evenhandedness is as frustrating as Snape’s bias. The arbitrariness of the Hogwarts points and punishment systems—never so clearly displayed as in the final scene, when Dumbledore blatantly tips the scales for Gryffindor—is bad not because there isn’t a letter of law to follow, but because it’s not applied justly. The triumphant final scene demonstrates how it ought to operate: on the basis of justice (the Gryffindors did good work, are better people, and deserve to win), not fairness (they shouldn’t have gotten the points because the competition was surely technically over, they were breaking about half a billion rules).

I also think I need to acknowledge that I’m being a bit too uncharitable with my harping on the illogical injustice of the wizards’ fixation on secrecy. The sharp separation of wizard and Muggle can’t be entirely understood, I think, as an in-world concern. It comes from something fundamental to the books’ charm, which is the way they maintain the suggestion that Harry Potter’s world both is and is not our own. On the one hand, they’re clearly too heightened to be reality—there’s a Muggle girl wandering around named Hermione, for heaven’s sake— plus the consistently semi-satirical tone with which the Dursleys, our largest example of the real world, are depicted (more on this back in the first newsletter). It’s an unreality that makes it seem frankly silly to apply overly naturalistic logic. But at the same time, the possibility is left open that Harry’s world could be ours. An entire culture of magic and wonder might be just behind the door of that shady pub with no one inside. But maintaining that belief demands explaining why we’ve never noticed evidence of it. In this light, the constant references to the lengths wizards go to to remain hidden are cheeky, not isolationist.

Buuuut it’s a separation that’s undermined somewhat by the way Harry Potter’s marketing apparatus has developed—namely, not that the wizarding world might be behind the door of any pub, but that you, reader/viewer, are a wizard. Choose your house! Buy a wand! Etc.! Obviously Hogwarts is more fun as an immersive fantasy than imagining yourself as a muggle bystander, but it also erodes the extra-textual logic behind the strict separation. Besides which, it’s a separation that’s impossible to entirely maintain, as Harry reminds us as he departs for summer vacation. He’s back with his bullies, but the Dursleys know about the wizarding world now.

And that brings us to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets! Next week, Chapters 1-5.