Personal sacrifice, personal loss: Who suffered most?

A friend, who is also a bit of a Harry Potter fan, sent me this captioned picture today and it got me thinking: of all the characters in the Rowling world who themselves survived the entire situation, which one would you say suffered most as a result of the Voldemort's rise to power and the war to defeat him?

The caption would suggest that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice and I might be willing consider this possibility (that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice of all by erasing herself from her parents’ memories) if it weren’t reversible.

But she can reverse it.

What cannot be reversed are the Weasley family’s losses (one son dead, two sons injured), nor the losses suffered by Mrs. Tonks (her husband [Ted Tonks], daughter [Nymphadora Tonks], son-in-law [Remus Lupin] and sister [Bellatrix Lestrange] were all killed, leaving her alone with a half-werewolf grandson). 

And you have to figure that Hermione and Ron set out for Australia fairly soon after the war ended with Voldemort’s death to track down her parents, reverse the obliviate spells she cast on them and remind them who she is!

Note, in Chapter five (the last chapter I’ve finished) of The Way Forward, my fan fiction post-Deathly Hallows novel, I make it clear that Hermione and Ron go to Australia to retrieve her parents!

I will have to take some more time to think about this question as I am sure there are a whole cast of characters, minor or major, who suffered great losses as a result of the events of the Rowling books.

The "club-house leader" is Mrs. Tonks, by the way. But is there someone out there who sacrificed more?

Draco's wand chose his mother (apparently)

I am writing this in the middle of the night and without my books in front of me but, as I was reading the French version of The Philosopher's Stone (A L'ecole de sorciers), two issues came to mind, one minor and one fairly major.

The minor one is simply this: at the time the translation of The Philosopher's Stone was undertaken, J.K. Rowling and her publisher had already amended the book so that Adalbert Waffling was NOT listed as the author of A History of Magic on Harry's first year book list. As we all know, Bathilda Bagshot (or, as she is known in the French-speaking world, Bathilda Tourdesac) penned this all important tome.

The translation was done, however, before Rowling corrected the little addition error where she has a woman complain that an item in Diagon Alley costs 17 Sickles (or "dix-sept Mornilles") which, we find out later, is the equivalent of one Galleon ("Gallion"), leading to the question: why wouldn't the woman complain that the item costs a Galleon?

The more major issue that arises in the early part of the first book is related to the subject of wand lore that becomes so important and oft-discussed in the later books.

It is a well-known fact among Potter fans that "The Wand chooses the Wizard". The scene where Harry first vista Ollivanders' to purchase his wand is a classic, in fact, and the allegiance of a wand, how it can be won and lost, and how a wand both learns from and teaches its chosen witch or wizard, are all wonderful aspects of wand lore that we cherish in the Potter world.

What has really jumped out at me in reading the first book in French, however, is the reality that Jo had not really developed her detailed theories of wand lore when she wrote The Philosopher's Stone. These ideas that the Wand chooses the Wizard and that, once that choice is made, a genuine, intimate relationship develops between the two simply do not seem to exist in her mind at that point in time.

Why do I write this?

First, even before Harry visits Ollivanders', he meets a young Draco Malfoy at Madam Malkin's, being fitted for his school robes. What does Malfoy say to Harry? To paraphrase, he says: "My mother is off buying my wand". Yikes! No wand is choosing Draco -- his mother is picking one up for him as she might a new pair of socks or a telescope.

And second, Ron later complains to Harry that he has a "hand-me-down" wand, that used to be his brother's. Wait a minute: that single sentence implies first that a Wizard might decide, after being chosen by his Wand at age 11, that he simply feels like going out and buying a new one. What about he relationship, the teaching and learning? Second, it means that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have no concerns about their youngest son using a Wand that has not chosen him. Wow. I know they're poor but...

I am smiling, of course, as I write this. I know that it is much too much to expect that Rowling had every detail of her incredibly complex magical world nailed down when she sat down to write that first book. But it is interesting to be able to trace the development of some of the more important details and themes in the books themselves.

Why don't the Weasleys have a House Elf?

Let's talk about House Elves for a moment. I'm currently re-reading The Goblet of Fire which, of course, has a distinct HE subplot, and it's gotten me thinking.

The main question that keeps popping into my mind is this one: Why don't the Weasleys have a House Elf?

There is a second question, which is also floating around in my mind, but perhaps I'll deal with that another time. The second question? If House Elves are generally solitary creatures (one per household -- both the Malfoys and the Crouches appear to have only one House Elf each, despite their great wealth), how do House Elves have children?

I mean, from what we've learned, House Elves can do nothing without first getting permission from their Masters. Further, House Elves appear to come in two biological sexes (male and female, Dobby and Winky) which would lead one to imagine (perhaps incorrectly) that it takes one House Elf of each sex to create a child.

So, if House Elves are generally allocated one per great house, and you need to have two House Elves (one of each sex) to make a baby House Elf, does a House Elf approach her Master and say, "Master, may I go visit the nearby great house to visit my partner House Elf for the purposes of making a baby House Elf so you have someone to replace me when I die?"

And, if that's the way it works, to which great house is the resulting baby Elf attached?

But more on that another time (perhaps).

My first question is, why don't the Weasleys, with all those children, have a House Elf?

Part of the answer appears to be provided in my consideration of the second question above: on several occasions in the early books, J.K. Rowling suggests that House Elves are attached to great houses, like those owned by the Malfoys and the Crouches, and the families that inhabit them.

We could argue that a House Elf can only live in a manor or other great building (such as Hogwarts). That would certainly help to explain why the Weasleys don't have an Elf -- the Burrow is simply not grand enough to host such a creature.

When you read that, did your mind go where mine went? But but but but... the Black family does not own a glorious manor house and they have enjoyed the services of Kreacher and his family for generations. The Blacks live in a row house in London, not tiny nor inexpensive by any means, but not a manor house.

So perhaps you don't have to own a magnificent home (or building) to have a House Elf.

Could it be that House Elves only serve great wizarding families with long, glorious histories? No matter where they live at the moment?

That's possible, but it doesn't explain why the Weasleys (or the Gaunts for that matter) don't have an Elf. The Weasleys are well-established as a pure-blood wizarding family and the Gaunts, for certain, are pure-blood with a glorious past.

My best explanation is that House Elves formed relationships with wizarding families long ago in the distant past. They naturally gravitated to families with large homes and lots of money. Once the bond was formed, it continued throughout history, no matter what happened to the wizarding family and its fortunes.

It could be broken only by three events:

1. The wizards freed the Elf for whatever reason;
2. The last Elf in its family died, without children, leaving the wizarding family without an Elf; or
3. The wizarding family died out completely, leaving the Elf in search of a new place.

In the case of 1 or 3, the Elf would either try to find a new family or end up at a place (like Hogwarts) where it could find work and a new role in life.

In the case of 2, the family either had to live without an Elf or find a new Elf that is looking for a new place.

Think about Dobby and Winky, who find themselves, by the middle of TGOF, without a place. Dobby has been accidentally freed by the Malfoys while Winky was let go by Barty Crouch Sr. Dobby goes out looking for work at other houses but ends up at Hogwarts while Winky falls into alcoholism as a result of her shame of being a House Elf without a proper place.

If those two stories are typical of what happens when an Elf becomes free, it is surprising to me that the Weasleys were never able to pick up a House Elf at any point in their history.

It can't be their poverty that stopped them: remember, House Elves normally don't want to be paid. So what was the problem? What happened?

Reflections on the Mirror of Erised

I have a quick question about the Mirror of Erised. You know, the magical mirror that Harry encounters in The Philosopher's Stone and that Dumbledore uses, later in that same book, to create an extremely clever protection for the Stone itself?

First, I should say that I think the Mirror is an amazing creation that J.K. uses rather brilliantly to give us a peek into the deepest secrets of two of the central young characters in the series. Through the use of the Mirror, Rowling very quickly lets us know that, for Harry, the lack of a real family, a loving family, exists as a hole in the centre of his soul. His greatest wish, we learn through this surprisingly simple technique, is to be a part of a family. This would become a driving force for Harry throughout the books.

Further, Rowling uses the Mirror to help her with the much more difficult challenge of showing us some of the issues that stand at the centre of Ron's psyche. Why is this a "much more difficult challenge" for Rowling? Because she uses a third-person limited narrator to tell her story: her narrator describes what happens in the stories from an objective position (the narrator does not actually take part in the action) but, for the most part, she limits her narrator to being able to see into the mind of one single character. Harry.

We know what Harry is thinking from scene to scene but rarely do we ever get to know what other characters are thinking.

So it is not so difficult for Rowling to help her reader to understand Harry because we are privy to his thoughts and reactions in relation to every incident that occurs. We learn about him by knowing his thoughts and feelings.

It is much more difficult for J.K. to help us understand the other characters whose minds are, for the most part, closed to us. We learn about them only from what they say and do, not from what they think.

The Mirror gives her a unique opportunity to let us into the mind of another character: Ron. When Ron stands in front of the Mirror, he describes what he sees and it is himself earning all kinds of different awards and accolades. This ties in with something he said to Harry earlier in the book: that he arrives at Hogwarts already knowing that he won't live up to the standards and expectations set by his older brothers.

So, from the Mirror, we learn that Ron yearns to stand out on his own, to emerge from the long shadows cast by Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred and George.

As an interesting aside regarding Rowling's narrative technique, note that the reader "sees" what Harry sees in the Mirror (the narrator describes his family to us) while the reader only learns about what Ron sees in the Mirror from what Ron says to Harry about it. It's as if, like Harry, the narrator cannot see what Ron sees in the Mirror.

Okay, that's all a set up for this question about the Mirror:

Does the Mirror show Harry his family as it actually existed or does it show him his family as he imagines it to be?

The narrator tells us that Harry sees a large family, some members having eyes like his and his mother, others having knobbly knees like Harry. It is through these similarities that Harry realises that this is his family he is seeing and, in fact, that these are his parents in the middle of the group.

That suggests to me that the Mirror is not drawing these images from Harry's mind or imagination because, if it were, he would recognise them right away. J.K. would have written something like "Harry saw the family he had always imagined he had".

But, instead, Rowling makes it clear that, for Harry, this is the first moment in his life when he feels a part of a larger, loving family. He does not recognise them at first; the recognition comes slowly as he examines them.

So then we must conclude that the Mirror, after reading Harry's soul and realising that his greatest wish is to know his family, was able to find, somehow, images of his actual ancestors to show him.

A small point, sure, but that's what this blog is about: finding and considering small and large points about the Harry Potter world.

I find it interesting that, in the film version of the first book, the producers/directors choose to include only Harry's parents in the Mirror, to amend Harry's psyche from wishing to be part of a large family (which then ties him even closer to the Weasleys in the books) to wishing to know his parents (which makes it a much more personal thing).

It also makes the argument that the Mirror is only showing Harry that which it draws from his own mind because Harry's memory likely still retained images of his parents from his infancy.