Essay: Fireworks, Heretics and Traitors

In my previous essay (Bonfire of the Phoenix) I began to examine the ways in which Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix can be considered JK Rowling’s version of the Gunpowder Plot, the rebellion that resulted in the arrest of Guy Fawkes, among others, and which led to the establishment of the most widely celebrated nationalistic holiday in the United Kingdom and its Commonwealths: Guy Fawkes Day, also called Bonfire Night, a holiday distinguished by the role that fireworks and bonfires play in its celebration.

The backdrop for the Gunpowder Plot is a church-state conflict. When a church and state are essentially the same it is inevitable that those following a competing system of beliefs are viewed not just as heretics but as traitors to their country. This was the case in the late sixteenth century, when the Church of England was in its infancy and “recusant” Catholics considered Queen Elizabeth I to be a pretender to the throne because Henry VIII hadn’t been legally married to her mother, Anne Boleyn, in the eyes of the Pope, who refused to grant Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, making Elizabeth illegitimate in their eyes.

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

The Potterverse is nominally as secular as the modern United Kingdom, which is to say very, but JK Rowling uses a great deal of religious symbolism in the Harry Potter books, and at one point she even said that she didn’t want to discuss her religious beliefs or affiliation very much because she was afraid that it would tip off readers about her plans for the end of the series.

However, her religious imagery and symbolism comes through despite her trying to avoid the topic in interviews. In the first book, Harry fills the role of a holy man when Ron has him play the bishop in the chess game that is the fourth obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 19: Not Playing to Win), and Harry is out cold for three days after his encounter with Quirrell and Voldemort, like the three days that Christ spends in the tomb after the Crucifixion. Phoenixes are also symbols of resurrection; Fawkes fills the role of the Holy Spirit when Harry evokes him by stating his belief in Dumbledore in the Chamber of Secrets (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina). Harry is also symbolically crucified when he is bound to a gravestone in Goblet of Fire.

In Order of the Phoenix Harry is often in the role of a priest, harking back to his bishop chess role, while Dumbledore is in the role of a Pope or god-figure, which is fitting for the godfather variant of the Wise Old Man archetype (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man). Dumbledore is the leader of Hogwarts, which we can now see is in the role of a religious institution—just as the Roman Catholic Church ran and still runs many schools and universities around the world, a role that the Anglican Church took on in England after Henry VIII split from Rome. Hogwarts had a great deal of influence on wizarding government at one time; Fudge consulted Dumbledore constantly when he first took office, and it was on the pretense of helping Fudge that Quirrell lured Dumbledore from Hogwarts so he could try to get the Philosopher’s Stone for Voldemort.

The main tenet of Dumbledore’s belief system in Order of the Phoenix is that Voldemort is back, which is presented less as a belief—though Dumbledore believes Harry—and more as a fact, despite Dumbledore himself not witnessing it. To Harry it is a fact. The Ministry preaches a different gospel: You-Know-Who isn’t back and Cedric’s death was an accident, so carry on, nothing to see here. At the end of Goblet of Fire, Fudge and Dumbledore have a “parting of the ways”; it is nothing less than a wizarding religious schism.

Henry VIII no longer wanted the Pope interfering with his succession. He decided that if he were the Church, the secular and religious leader, this would be rectified. Similarly, Fudge sees Dumbledore as a threat to his authority. He can no longer tolerate the Ministry having less than complete control at Hogwarts, the symbolic state church.

A school expelling a student is analogous to a church excommunicating a member. When Harry is on trial for performing underage magic to protect him and Dudley from Dementors, Dumbledore reminds Fudge that the Ministry “has no authority to punish Hogwarts students for misdemeanors at school” and “The Ministry does not have the power to expel Hogwarts students”. These are symbolically sectarian powers which Fudge wants because Hogwarts not being under his control undermines his authority and the beliefs that he wants all wizards to hold. When Dumbledore points out that Fudge seems to have “overlooked a few laws” Fudge tells him, “Laws can be changed.”

And changed they are, to bring Hogwarts under Ministry control as churches in England were brought under control of the Crown after the break with Rome. This puts Dumbledore and Harry in the position of traitors to their government because of their “heretical” beliefs, and it makes them more than a little similar to Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, and their cohorts, who hoped that because James I had a Catholic mother, he might be more sympathetic to Catholics than Elizabeth I—but they were disappointed. Though there were Catholic-led plots, especially plots to kill the queen, for many years before 1605, the Gunpowder Plot itself occurred under James’s rule, after he imprisoned, fined and executed many Catholics.

The Ministry’s goal is to quash Harry’s dissent, which Umbridge attempts by sending Dementors after him, so he might run afoul of the law by trying to defend himself magically, or, failing that, be Kissed by a dementor, which would also eliminate him as a threat. However, unlike Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby, Harry can clear his name. He wins Umbridge’s opening game-like battle, though she doesn’t play fair by sending Dementors in the first place, summarily attempting to expel Harry from school without due process.

When Harry gets a detention from Umbridge, McGonagall says, “Do you really think this is about truth or lies?” But Harry does; beliefs, truth, and lies matter a great deal to him. This is a religious war. Umbridge labels him a liar and a heretic, in effect. This is not acceptable to him.

After the opening salvo, Harry and Umbridge are at war for the remainder of the book. Harry’s initial victory is short-lived, though Umbridge is not equipped for games, which she disregards just as Voldemort disregards anything he considers beneath his notice. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 1: The Kids’ Table.) Nor is Umbridge adept at “traditional” war, as Harry is. It’s unclear whether she could teach a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, which she never attempts to do, ostensibly for ideological reasons, though we see in the seventh book that she can conjure a Patronus.

Umbridge tries to prevent Harry from training to be a soldier in her lessons, where he might have expected to engage in duels, another kind of mock-battle. She also bans him from Quidditch for life, doing everything in her power to squash Harry down into a metaphorical small child, to prevent his maturation, which is similar to the Petrifaction victims in Chamber of Secrets. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 12: Grow Up Now.) In Order of the Phoenix, Dolores Umbridge is a metaphorical Basilisk, trying to get Harry to look into her eyes over and over, either directly, which would kill him, or indirectly, which would Petrify him, freezing him forever as a non-threatening child.

Umbridge cannot get the power she wants through the existing rules, so she creates a new post: High Inquisitor, a religious title, not a secular one, highlighting that she will pursue heretics, those whose beliefs don’t mesh with the new dogma. This is what an Inquisition is; because state and “church” are one, when she roots out “incorrect beliefs” she’s rooting out treason. In the previous essay I mentioned Diana Wynne Jones’s book Witch Week, which takes place in an alternate reality in which Guy Fawkes succeeds at blowing up Parliament but is caught; in this world witches and magic are also forbidden, and those who work for the government hunting down witches are called Inquisitors, because witches are perceived to be both traitors and heretics. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal?)

This further emphasizes that Dumbledore is both a god-figure and a pope-figure. Harry made a statement of faith in him in the second book. In this book, Dumbledore leads what Fudge and Umbridge perceive as a rival “religion” that predates theirs. They remove Ministry employees adhering to Dumbledore’s older “catechism”, or who are close to him, just as the Crown declared Catholic priests to be guilty of high treason (in 1585) because it was assumed that their true allegiance was to the Pope. This makes it clearer than ever that Rowling is retelling the Gunpowder Plot, in which Catholic rebels chafed at the Crown taking over the official religion, ruthlessly coming down on those refusing to disavow Rome. The state is now the Church and heresy is equal to treason. This is the position that Dumbledore’s allies are in now that Fudge has basically decreed them both heretics and traitors.

On the way to give Professor McGonagall notice of his first detention with Umbridge, Harry is taunted by Peeves.

 “What is it this time, my fine Potty friend? Hearing voices? Seeing visions? Speaking in”–Peeves blew a gigantic raspberry–“tongues?”

Hearing voices, seeing visions and speaking in tongues are all related to ecstatic religious experience, showing again that the conflict between Harry and Umbridge is a religious war.

Trelawney’s job is “hearing voices, seeing visions and speaking in tongues”. It’s no coincidence that she’s the first teacher Umbridge puts on probation and the first to be sacked. She’s the clergy of the “old” religion to Umbridge, who may not know about the prophecy Trelawney gave about Voldemort and Harry, but she recognizes her as a threat to the new “church”, someone who may contradict the Ministry if what she “Sees” tells her to. Umbridge paints her as a fraud, something Harry’s often thought, but even McGonagall, no Divination fan, is sympathetic when Umbridge tries to eject Trelawney from the castle. “Pope” Dumbledore lets her stay.

Sirius criticizes Hermione for holding the first DA meeting at the Hog’s Head, rather than the Three Broomsticks. However, Rowling had good reason for the meeting to be there, her tongue no doubt planted firmly in her cheek. In the terminology of 1605, the barrels of gunpowder Guy Fawkes was caught with were called hogsheads. Part of the charges read in court say: “...the said false Traitors traitorously provided, and brought into the Cellar aforesaid, four Hogsheads full of Gunpowder, and laid divers great Iron Bars and Stones upon the said four Hogsheads...”  Aberforth Dumbledore owns the Hog’s Head and gives support to Dumbledore’s Army when the Room of Requirement is the equivalent of their military camp in Deathly Hallows.

Umbridge issues Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four after the first DA meeting, banning all student clubs. This is like forbidding non-sanctioned religious services, which the English Crown did. For a Catholic priest to conduct services was illegal, just as it was illegal for anyone to not attend Church of England services—those people were labeled “recusants” because they had “recused” themselves from services. The Decree also says any student caught violating it will be expelled—excommunicated, in other words.

Dumbledore still exerts his authority as “pope” of Hogwarts, so Umbridge amends Number Twenty-Four: “The High Inquisitor will henceforth have supreme authority over all punishments, sanctions and removal of privileges pertaining to the students of Hogwarts, and the power to alter such punishments, sanctions, and removals of privileges as may have been ordered by other staff members.” This lets her ban Harry, Fred and George from Quidditch.

Educational Decree Number Twenty-Seven proclaims that a student will be expelled (i.e. excommunicated) if caught with The Quibbler, a competing canon, an unauthorized gospel. In 1604, James I issued the Acts of Uniformity, requiring strict adherence to Anglican Church tenets, banishing Jesuits and Roman Catholic priests—just as Umbridge tried to banish Trelawney—and appointing a commission to make a new English translation of the Bible: the King James Bible. James I needed to control the canon and so does Umbridge.

Despite being in a position in which she is supposed to be enforcing school rules, Umbridge regularly breaks them. If it wasn’t acceptable for Draco Malfoy to be Transfigured into a ferret, it’s definitely wrong for students to be tortured by a teacher, whether it’s with a quill or the Cruciatus Curse. Dolores Umbridge, however, invents her own canon of rules, creating another game, one that’s unrecognizable to Hogwarts students. It’s a “fixed” game, and not designed to be won by the players. It’s more like a game of Dungeons and Dragons with Umbridge as the ruthless dungeon master.

JK Rowling doesn’t whitewash the Gunpowder Plot or imply that characters who are analogous to the Plotters weren’t doing what they were accused of. Harry is accused not once, but twice of doing what he shouldn’t: casting a Patronus charm in front of a Muggle and forming an illegal school club. Both times he is technically guilty, according to the letter of the law, but the law itself comes into question, not Harry flouting the law. Harry feels that it’s wrong to be forced to say whatever the Ministry tells him to. He is an unrepentant heretic turned into a traitor by the state co-opting sectarian powers, a rebel leader unapologetically, inarguably, and willfully breaking rules laid down by Umbridge and the Ministry. In Chapter 19, The Lion and the Serpent, Rowling writes: “He and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing that she and the Ministry most feared...”

Harry having to write I will not tell lies until it is bleeding out of his hand appalled many readers. But torture being used to make a heretic reject heresy was standard practice in 1605. Umbridge doesn’t choose just any punishment: Harry must recant, he must say what he doesn’t believe, and say that what he used to believe is a lie. Actually believing it is unimportant; saying it is.

Umbridge sets up Harry by sending Dementors after him. Sturgis Podmore, who is an arrested member of the Order, may also have been set up when he’s caught in the Department of Mysteries. If the Ministry equals Parliament, then the Department of Mysteries, a name with distinct religious overtones, equals the cellar where Guy Fawkes was caught with the gunpowder.

Podmore’s capture sounds very dodgy, and not completely dissimilar to something that happened in the days leading up to the fifth of November in 1605. A “warning” letter to a Catholic-sympathizing member of Parliament about avoiding Parliament on the fifth of November may or may not have been fake, but it provided an excuse for soldiers to storm the hiding place under Parliament where Guy Fawkes hid, which led to his capture and, eventually, his death.

JK Rowling seems to be having some fun with “what-ifs”, creating distorted parallels to historical events, “what-ifs” concerning things that may or may not have happened, such as the Plotters being framed, and “what-ifs” concerning a different outcome for the Plotters, as in, “What if they succeeded?” Ron, who’s often unintentionally prescient, suggests that this might be what happened to Sturgis Podmore:

“It could be a frame-up!” Ron exclaimed excitedly....“The Ministry suspects he’s one of Dumbledore’s lot so–I dunno–they lured him to the Ministry, and he wasn’t trying to get through a door at all! Maybe they’ve just made something up to get him!”

Hermione looks rather impressed and says:

“Do you know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were true.”

In light of this, Percy’s letter to Ron reads like a warning one brother might have written to another in Elizabethan England. In 1593 penalties were proposed for those who refused to attend Church of England services, and it was a crime to attend Catholic services. In this scenario Percy is a convert working for the Crown who’s protecting his job. He wants his brother to also protect himself. His falling out with the family takes on religious overtones.

If Podmore was set up, Arthur Weasley is surely not supposed to be near the religiously-named Department of Mysteries. Nagini, controlled by Voldemort, bites Arthur, a Guy Fawkes-type near-miss. Dumbledore doesn’t want Arthur discovered in the equivalent of the cellar beneath Parliament. He’d go to prison, like Podmore.

Everard and Dilys, former Hogwarts headmasters with portraits elsewhere in the wizarding world, help Arthur through the magic that allows the subjects of wizarding portraits to move between their paintings regardless of where they are located. Dilys’s other painting is in St. Mungo’s Hospital. Everard’s is in the lower depths of the Ministry. Everard is the one who raises the alarm and has Arthur found by “the right people”. Even though “Everard” isn’t the most common name, it happens to be the first name of Everard Digby—one of the co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot.

St. Mungo

It is intriquing that Rowling chose to call her hospital “St. Mungo’s”. A Roman Catholic church in Scotland is also named for him, and he was supposed to have fled an anti-Christian king in Strathclyde—so he was involved in religious strife centuries before Guy Fawkes—after which he took refuge with St. David in Wales. St. David’s feast-day is the first of March, Ron Weasley’s birthday.

In St. Mungo’s, Harry and the Weasleys see Urquhart Rackharrow’s portrait, described as “vicious”. The caption reads, “INVENTOR OF THE ENTRAIL-EXPELLING CURSE”. This cannot possibly be a healing spell. On the contrary, while Guy Fawkes ensured that his hanging would bring him almost instant death, disappointing the spectators, his cohorts were hung just long enough to be in great pain, then drawn and quartered. “Drawn” refers to being taken from the gallows while still alive and having your entrails drawn from you, slowly and painfully, a combination of torture and death. It’s possible that Arthur’s wound from Nagini approximated this, and that this is why the Healers had more than a little difficulty treating him, since what they really seemed to need was a spell for putting a person’s entrails back into the body and keeping them there.

JK Rowling has a gift for irony. Guy Fawkes is burnt in effigy when people celebrate his defeat, and in Order of the Phoenix, Harry and Sirius communicate through fire, which they did first in the previous book. Sirius, like Dumbledore, also happens to be the “godfather” variant of the Wise Old Man archetype, which makes him another symbolic priest. Soon after Ron has read and burnt Percy’s letter, Sirius’s head appears in the common room fire, as if he’s a Guy Fawkes who cannot be burnt, just as Dumbledore’s Fawkes can survive burning. In the previous book, Molly, also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, speaks to Amos Diggory, the father of the war’s first victim, through the kitchen fire at the Burrow. By preventing many members of the Order of the Phoenix and those sympathetic to the Order from using the Floo network for communication, it’s as if Umbridge is shutting them out of their natural habitat.

Fred and George turn the use of fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes’ defeat on its ear by using fireworks as a weapon against Umbridge. The twins are also very fond of Catherine Wheels, named for St. Catherine of Alexandria because when she was to be martyred on the “breaking wheel” it shattered at her touch, and she was beheaded instead. St. Catherine is the second Catholic saint named in the fifth book; St. Mungo was the first.

The DA is equal to the Gunpowder Plotters, as is the Order of the Phoenix, but the DA is also a game for Harry. He participates in mock-attacks in his third and fourth years of Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Umbridge prevents this in her lessons, so Hermione asks Harry to teach her, Ron, and others. This training is eventually used for real war, but in the meantime the DA is Harry’s respite from battles with Umbridge. It’s another case of Harry training for war and training others in a playful venue. More importantly, Harry is preparing himself to lead. He enjoys planning lessons and seeing the DA progress and improve. There is no DA in the sixth book but it is clear that the DA takes the place of Quidditch for him here. In the sixth book he’s Gryffindor’s team captain, filling the void left by the DA. The two activities are interchangeable for Harry.

Another possible reason that the first DA meeting is in the Hog’s Head, besides gunpowder being stored in “hogsheads”, is that this is where Hagrid played a game of cards that was really a battle with the disguised Quirrell, and he let Dumbledore down by revealing to his opponent, inordinately interested in three-headed Greek dogs, how to get past Fluffy.

Rowling lists the students at the pub but one not called by name, Zacharias Smith, will be a persistent thorn in Harry’s side. He is defined only as “a member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team”, a sign that he and Harry will bump heads. Smith is the only one identified with Quidditch at the meeting, though others play on their house teams, mostly Gryffindor (so they’re Harry’s de facto allies). After Hermione says that Voldemort is back, the “aggressive” Smith challenges this. But the others, none of whom are singled-out as Quidditch players, praise Harry for his exploits.

Even when Smith isn’t challenging Harry, he’s still confrontational, suggesting that Harry is trying to soft-pedal what he’s done, saying, “Are you trying to weasel out of showing us any of this stuff?” Rowling identifies Smith as an opponent from the start and he sticks to this role throughout this book and into the next.

When the “Rescue Party” consisting of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Luna, reaches the Hall of Prophecy, they find prophecies stored there in small glass orbs not unlike Neville’s Remembrall, the glass ball Harry caught to gain his place on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Like a Remembrall, a Prophecy Ball contains something connected to memory: the memory of a prophecy. It is also linked to the future, so this is a pair of opposites: past and future. The memory and future in the orb are connected to both Harry and Neville, as either one of them could have fulfilled the prophecy before Voldemort chose Harry, the half-blood, his equal. 

The real war takes on game-like overtones. Harry and his friends play “Keep Away” with the Death Eaters, preventing them from getting the prophecy just as a Seeker and his teammates work to keep the Seeker on the opposing team from the Snitch. Since the prophecy and Voldemort’s reaction to it made Harry who he is, The Boy Who Lived, the orb could be seen as Harry. He is as entangled with the prophecy orb as he is with Snitches. The battle for the orb is far dirtier than any Quidditch game, however; this game is being played for keeps. Harry is no longer facing Draco Malfoy but his father, Lucius, who tells Harry, “Do not play games with us, Potter.” 

The time for games is over. Despite the similarity to a game, to Quidditch, this is war.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 21: Remember, Remember, Copyright 2017-2018 by Quantum Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.

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