voldy, voldy, voldy....

I've heard a lot of complaints about Harry Potter - mainly because it's about dark magic and therefore should be avoided. To me, that's about as good a reason as "that book cover is ugly...must be a bad book". We fear what we don't understand...and one of my "life mantras", if I were to have one, is to at least try and understand things that I'm told are not "good" (sorry for all the quotation marks, folks), or that I'm afraid of.

This is not to say that this was the situation that led me to start reading HP. That was completely accidental, but I have started thinking about the themes in the book and what I drew from reading the series. These are certainly not children's book - the story gets progressively darker, but not without reason. I always appreciated the parallels to our own world, whether that was Hermione's passion for elf rights, or the sly criticisms of mass media...but at the end of the day, the book is about friendship and facing our own demons.

Friendship
No matter what happened in the books, the bond between Harry, Hermione, and Ron never changed. As with every friendship, there are ups and downs, but at the core of it, it was their friendship that always drew me back to the heart of the story. No matter how dark it got, you could always rely on their mutual affections for each other (and Ron's role as comedic relief in many an instance) to ground everything else. Yes, you still need confidantes even if you're the only person who can save the world from evil.

Facing our own demons
Without ruining the big reveal at the end, I do want to say that rather than being driven by revenge, the book is driven by a willingness to face our inner demons. So often we externalize all our problems and are afraid to see what our true reflection might be - that inside of us there lives greed, and selfishness, and jealousy. Before we work on how to eliminate those dark forces from ourselves, we also need to acknowledge them and understand them.

On a less serious note - I just loved reading these books. For all it's worth, it got so many kids, teens and even adults to read again! To me, that's a beautiful thing. Especially if it's something as well-written as Rowling's works. I have yet to read in full The Lord of the Rings or other similar epics, but I do think one unique thing about HP is also its sense of humour. And you know, it sounds so much cooler in my head with all the British accents.