Essay: Love and Wargames

In the sixth book of the Harry Potter series, the focus veers back and forth between love—the power of unity and wholeness—and war—the result of splintering and division. Quidditch is treated even more metaphorically than in the previous book, though the three matches that Gryffindor plays are actually important to the plot, despite only half of them including Harry, who leaves halfway through the second match and doesn’t play at all in the third, despite being the captain.

Sometimes a match in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is linked to winning in love, sometimes to winning in war, and sometimes it’s a combination. It’s inevitable that literal Quidditch should recede in importance as literal war grows more prominent, though the matches in the book are all connected to war. And, in the book with the most emphasis on romance, it’s fitting that Quidditch is linked to love more than in any of the other books.

War is fodder for games and competitions in the previous books, from Neville’s ten points in the first book winning the House Cup for Gryffindor to Harry and his friends receiving points for Gryffindor and Ravenclaw after returning from the Ministry. This also occurs in the sixth book concerning Harry and the Half-Blood Prince’s Potions book, but in a less admirable context. Harry learns many things from the Half-Blood Prince that can be valuable for war, but he treats the spells cavalierly, muffling the hearing of those around him, even when they might not overhear conversations about Horcruxes, and sticking Filch’s tongue to the roof of his mouth, though Harry knows he’s a Squib and cannot retaliate.

Harry also carelessly casts a spell on his best friend, hauling Ron into the air upside down. Hermione reminds him that he’s seen this spell used twice: by his father, in Snape’s Pensieve, and by Death Eaters dangling Muggles in the air at the Quidditch World Cup. In neither case did Harry feel anything but revulsion. He even speculated that his father coerced his mother into marrying him, since he couldn’t imagine any appeal James might hold for her after seeing him bully Snape, with whom Harry sympathizes, rather than feeling an affinity with James, though, in the same Pensieve memory, Snape calls Harry’s mother a Mudblood.

Harry’s problem with the Prince’s book comes to a head when he casts Sectumsempra on Draco Malfoy in a bathroom, not knowing what it’ll do. He’s inarguably in a war-like situation, having been spying on Draco, who seems like he’s about to cast the Cruciatus Curse on Harry, though we don’t know if he would have succeeded.  Harry knows other spells to neutralize a threat, most notably his “signature move”, the Disarming Charm, yet he uses a spell that’s an unknown. He’s old enough to know better but is being less responsible about magic at sixteen than he was at eleven. Harry has almost never played games without sustaining injuries but he’s repeatedly hurting others now by treating serious spells as child’s play.

Draco has moved beyond metaphorical wars. He feigns illness when Quidditch matches approach and another student plays Seeker for Slytherin. He’s embroiled in a literal war and has no time for wargames. Harry recognizes this though he doesn’t guess that Draco is attempting to kill Dumbledore and let Death Eaters into the castle. Up to a point, what Draco is attempting to do for Voldemort matters less than the fact that he’s taking orders from him. Draco’s previous respect for Snape has evaporated. He seems to fear that Snape’s position might make it more difficult for him to curry the favor he needs to protect his family from Voldemort, which is his main goal. 

The mentor/student relationship between Dumbledore and Harry is built on trust as he trains Harry to take his place. The relationship between Snape and Draco deteriorates, partly because Snape wants Draco to fail, which Draco seems to understand even as the reason eludes him. Dumbledore and Harry share a goal: defeating Voldemort. Snape and Draco want to protect Draco’s family, but Snape is on Dumbledore’s side. Draco is only on Draco’s side.

Like Draco, Harry misses the Quidditch final due to the war, since he’s in detention for cursing Draco in what becomes a real life-and-death struggle. A detention is also a mock-war, a pale imitation of prisoners forced to do hard labor, unless it’s with Dolores Umbridge, in which case, it’s a real war. Despite Harry not playing Seeker in the final match, the story segues from a mock war for Harry and Ginny—detention for him, a match for her—to victory in love, since a party in the common room is where they kiss, in a makeshift arena.

Artwork by Venessa Kelley (used with permission)

Draco Malfoy is waging literal war in the Room of Requirement, which has evolved from a place for mock wars in the previous book to where the Death Eaters infiltrate the castle in the sixth. The Trio (Harry, Ron and Hermione) and Counter-Trio (Ginny, Luna and Neville) again go from playing at war to being in a real battle when Draco succeeds in bringing Death Eaters to the castle.

Voldemort’s childhood in an orphanage could explain why he sees no value in “child’s play”—toys, games, sweets and fairy tales—but he does have a fondness for “trophies”, which are often awarded for performing well at games. Young Tom Riddle’s first trophies are items that Dumbledore demands Riddle return to the other orphans because Tom is abusing his power over them.

Through Pensieve memories, Dumbledore shows Harry the collecting bent that Voldemort had before he knew he was a wizard. Tom only knew that he had power. This “collecting” is a forerunner to his acquiring trophies to make into Horcruxes. Riddle outwardly rejects “real” games, as opposed to the game he played when he deprived the other kids of their possessions or terrorized the children who went with him to the cave. However, he declines to attack Harry except in game venues or game-like battles. He also created an elaborate, dangerous scavenger hunt game on a massive scale.

Mock-war has dropped out of Draco’s life, but at the beginning of the sixth book Harry still allows himself the luxury of Quidditch, from which he hopes for some satisfaction, since he can’t prove his suspicions about Draco yet. Despite winning the first match against Slytherin, Harry hasn’t defeated Draco in a head-to-head battle, since Draco didn’t play. By the time of the Quidditch final, from which Harry is sidelined, he’s also lost interest in Quidditch in favor of learning what Draco is up to. Real war trumps metaphorical war, especially when his enemy has left the metaphorical war. Despite Draco’s absence from the pitch, just prior to their bathroom battle Rowling tells the reader that it is “…a few days before the match against Ravenclaw…”, juxtaposing real and metaphorical war yet again, though it’s one in which Harry won’t participate, like Draco, because of the real war.

In Chamber of Secrets, Harry also goes from mock war to real war when Dobby charms a Bludger to pursue him. In Half-Blood Prince he’s again hit by what we can call “friendly fire”. Cormac McLaggen, Ron’s substitute, is showing a Gryffindor Beater how to do his job when he accidentally hits Harry in the head with a Bludger during the second match. Harry ends up in the infirmary with Ron, who’s recovering from being poisoned.

In the infirmary, Harry recalls his second-year Bludger injury and Dobby visiting him, which gives him the idea to summon Kreacher and ask him spy on Draco. He no longer faces Draco in mock battles but he’s inspired in how to fight him by something from a mock-war. When Kreacher answers Harry’s summons he’s locked in battle with Dobby, who’s a more willing spy than Kreacher.

At the end of the book Harry sets aside his metaphorical wars, especially that of being a student, and engages fully in a real war with game-like overtones as he prepares for the most complicated wargame he’s yet played: the Horcrux Hunt.

The first mention of Quidditch in the sixth book is Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny spending most of their summer days “playing two-a-side Quidditch in the Weasleys’ orchard”. Even when Harry is relaxing he’s symbolically preparing for war. The couples that emerge by the end of the book play opposite each other—Harry against Ginny and Ron against Hermione—making this the first Quidditch-romance link in the book, though we only see Hermione crying on Ron at Dumbledore’s funeral, while Harry and Ginny are actually a couple after Harry kisses her during the party celebrating Gryffindor winning the Quidditch cup.

Sixth-year Harry is now Quidditch captain, the leader in a mock war that’s analogous to the DA. As captain, he oversees tryouts and is floored by the number of people turning up, including non-Gryffindors. Hermione says that he’s the one who’s of interest, not Quidditch, and tells him how “fanciable” he is. Rowling has many possible venues in which to stage battles for love, but she always chooses things related to toys, sweets and games, including Romilda’s love-potion-laced chocolates. Girls could have hung over Harry at meals or given him anything with love potion in it, but the author chose Quidditch tryouts and chocolates.

At the Keeper trials, Hermione “Confunds” Ron’s rival, Cormac McLaggen, and Ron gets the position. Hermione may not understand the game, but this doesn’t stop her from showing her feelings through the medium of Quidditch. It’s lucky that she interferes, since Ron is not just a good Keeper but a true team player. When McLaggen takes his place in the second match, he thinks he can win single-handedly and instructs every player in how to do their job, neglecting his own job and injuring Harry. Hermione’s agenda is personal, but Ron being the Keeper is best for the team, despite his attacks of self-doubt.

After a Quidditch practice Harry sees Ginny and Dean kissing. This prompts him to realize his feelings for her, which were hinted at earlier every time he was irked that she chose to be with Dean over him. Ron and Ginny have a row about her kissing in a public place and she counters by bringing up Harry kissing Cho and Hermione kissing Viktor. Both Cho and Viktor happen to be Quidditch players.

The Quidditch-romance connection comes up again when Ron goes from a successful match to kissing Lavender Brown. This link also arises when Hermione asks Cormac McLaggen to Professor Slughorn’s Christmas party. 

Parvati Patil verbalizes Hermione’s dating patterns: “Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don’t you? First Krum, then McLaggen...”

Hermione amends this to: “I like really good Quidditch players.”

After stating baldly that Quidditch is a factor in her dating, Hermione is annoyed that boys only seem to care about Quidditch, despite ample evidence that girls also like it. This is her reaction to Harry not wanting Ron to know that she Confunded McLaggen so Ron doesn’t fall apart in the next match. She’s also weary of McLaggen talking endlessly about his Quidditch skills, which sounds like thinly-veiled bragging about his sexual prowess.

Hermione tells Harry that instead of asking McLaggen to Slughorn’s party she considered asking Zacharias Smith, who’s labeled as a Hufflepuff Quidditch player at the Hog’s Head meeting in the previous book. This appalls Harry even more than McLaggen. Ron accuses Hermione of “fraternizing with the enemy” in Goblet of Fire, which is a term used in wartime that he’s applying to a battle for the heart involving a Quidditch player (a metaphorical soldier). In this book she seeks out or considers “enemies” (McLaggen and Smith) for premeditated fraternization in order to get the biggest reaction from Ron, which was not her intent in going to the Ball with Viktor.

Katie Bell is Harry’s teammate and “collateral damage” in Draco’s first attempt on Dumbledore’s life. After Katie returns to school, we move again from Quidditch talk to war talk, making it seem that Rowling is obsessed with reinforcing this connection. Love is treated again as a war. Harry characterizes the debate in his head as a “battle” between Ginny and Ron. He considers using Felix Felices potion to improve his luck, since Ron is with Ginny every time Harry hopes to get her alone. He strategizes now concerning the girl he fancies as much as he strategizes before a match or when spying on Draco. Love, games and literal war are treated equally.

Harry has two good reasons to be sorry that Ron was poisoned, even apart from Ron being his best friend: Lavender Brown and Cormac McLaggen. With Ron in the infirmary, Harry is the focus of Lavender’s concerns about their relationship, a topic that quickly wearies him. McLaggen is to be Keeper in the next match and assaults Harry constantly with strategy suggestions, making Harry miss Ron even more than he otherwise might have.

When Harry’s in the hospital wing thanks to McLaggen, he fantasizes about Ginny “weeping over his lifeless form” and confessing “her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing...” The second match has ties to love and war due to three things: this fantasy about Ginny; Harry meeting with his “spies”, Kreacher and Dobby; and the injury that puts him in the hospital wing being from a cannonball-like object, a Bludger.

After Harry and Ron are well again, Hermione tells Harry that Ginny and Dean argued because Dean laughed about the Bludger hitting Harry. He seems inordinately interested, to her, in whether Ginny and Dean have broken up and Harry claims that this is because he doesn’t want the house team messed up again. Hermione clearly doesn’t believe him. But after Harry curses Draco in the boys’ bathroom and gets a long series of detentions, she pretends to be concerned over the team in exactly the same way.

Ginny knows what Hermione’s doing, which is why she accuses her of only pretending to know about Quidditch. It’s probably offensive to Ginny that Hermione uses this to justify continuing to browbeat Harry, who’s accepted his well-deserved punishment for cursing Draco. By asking Ginny to side with her on Harry’s absence from the Quidditch final being detrimental to the team, Hermione is implying, though she probably doesn’t believe it, that Ginny cares more about the team than about Harry. Either that or Hermione’s trying to get Ginny to admit that she cares about Harry far more than she cares about the team, and for a different reason.

Neither Ginny nor Hermione are truly talking about Quidditch during this row, just as the team isn’t why Harry cares whether Ginny and Dean have broken up. He and Hermione both use Quidditch to hide their true agenda. Hermione tucks it away for future use when Harry does it, though it’s not as fitting for her, while Ginny calls Hermione on how inappropriate it is for her to do this.

A battle connected to love is indeed going on in Harry’s brain. He considers Quidditch a path to love for Dean when he imagines Ginny as Seeker in the final match and Dean as Chaser, fearing that, if Gryffindor wins, in the post-game euphoria, Ginny and Dean might make up. Harry returns to the common room after his detention. The password is, “Quod agis?” Latin for “Who won?” Harry wins, having the courage at last to show Ginny, his equal, how he feels about her before a crowd of spectators. It isn’t private but very public, like most sporting events, and only after this initial display do they leave the common room’s “arena” to seek a less-populated location to celebrate a different victory in a different kind of war.

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry crosses seven thresholds with Hagrid or with his help. Each threshold aligns with one of the books and also links to each book’s ruling archetype.

The first five thresholds are:

1.      Harry crosses water with Hagrid to go to Surrey, where he’s delivered to Dumbledore, the best embodiment of the Wise Old Man in the first book, which is ruled by this archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man.)

2.      Harry crosses water again after Hagrid brings him his school letter, a piece of writing, linking this threshold to the second book, in which Ginny Weasley writes in Tom Riddle’s diary and is the best embodiment of the Maiden, the ruling archetype for this book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden.)

3.      Harry and Hagrid go through the wall of the Leaky Cauldron to go to Diagon Alley, a link to the third book, in which he uses a Time-Turner to dissolve walls to free Sirius. He’s helped by Hermione, the best embodiment of the Mother in this book, which is ruled by this archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 4: Mother,May I?)

4.      Harry and Hagrid go to Harry’s Gringotts vault, a symbolic underworld, to withdraw gold left to him by his Father. This is linked to the fourth book, when Harry goes to a graveyard with Cedric Diggory, the best embodiment of the Father in the fourth book, which is ruled by this archetype. Harry is rewarded with gold when he returns from the graveyard. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 5: Our Father.)

5.      Harry crosses the lake with Hagrid, and with all of the first years, a symbolic baptism signaling the new life they’re all beginning together, which is fitting for the threshold linked to the fifth book, which is about a religious war. A godfather is a key player in a baptism, and Harry loses his godfather in the fifth book, but he’s comforted by Luna Lovegood, who best embodies the Crone in this book, which is ruled by her archetype. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 6: A Murder of Crones.)

Finally, the sixth threshold Harry crosses with Hagrid in the first book is one he also crosses with Draco, Neville and Hermione: their detention in the Forbidden Forest, another symbolic underworld. Before the detention, this is tied to the overall theme of games when Harry, Neville and Hermione each lose 50 points for Gryffindor, a total of 150 points, equivalent to what a Seeker gets for catching a Snitch. Harry gets a lot more grief for this than Neville or Hermione, since they aren’t as well-known. Because of the lost 150 points it’s as if Harry catching the Snitch in the previous match never happened. The total being 150 links this directly to Harry being a Seeker.

On the night of the detention, Draco is resistant to entering the Forest, saying that he’ll complain to his father. In the sixth book, Draco has a different task, this time from Voldemort, as a punishment for something his father did—the screw up at the Ministry that leads to Lucius Malfoy being sent to Azkaban. Draco’s task is killing Dumbledore. Instead of looking to his father to protect him from a harsh world, even just a school detention (Draco suggests that he write lines, an early reference to Umbridge’s favorite form of torture) he’s now the one in the family who’ll be responsible for saving them all from Voldemort’s wrath. He hopes.

At the edge of the forest, Hagrid shows the kids the unicorn blood that concerns him. This is a precious substance that can keep a person alive even if they’re on the brink of death. The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, has a strong emphasis on the subject of Potions. Snape, the Potions master throughout most of the books, finally becomes the DADA teacher, but even though that’s not what he teaches Harry now, Harry learns a lot from Snape through the marginalia in the Half-Blood Prince’s potions textbook. Slughorn, the new potions master, repeatedly talks about Harry’s prowess in potions probably being inherited from Lily, whose love, part of Harry’s very being, not only protected him when he was confronted by Quirrell at the end of the first book, but whose love, through Harry’s blood, also helped resurrect Voldemort in the fourth book, just as the unicorn’s blood helped sustain him in the first book.

The unicorn staggers all over the forest, a long, slow death, analogous to Dumbledore’s slow death, which occurs throughout Half-Blood Prince due to Dumbledore having put on the ring set with the Resurrection Stone, the ring that Voldemort cursed after turning it into a Horcrux. The curse was only temporarily arrested by Snape’s quick thinking, but it is still slowly killing Dumbledore.

Hagrid fears that he may have to put the wounded unicorn out of its misery, which is what Dumbledore asks Snape to do for him, and near the end of the book, Snape does. Hagrid has never known a unicorn to be hurt before—which also links it to Dumbledore, the only one Voldemort ever feared, someone who seems virtually invincible. In the forest is another creature connected to horses that is also analogous to Dumbledore. Like Dumbledore, centaurs are by their nature Liminal Beings, the seventh archetype. (See QuantumHarry, the Podcast, Episode 8: Have You Tried Not Being Liminal? & Episode 9: We’re Here, We’re Metaphorically Queer.) In Greek mythology the centaur Chiron educates many heroes, including Ajax, Aeneas, Theseus, Achilles, Perseus, and Heracles. Dumbledore is also the epitome of a teacher, though he has a major difference of opinion with the centaurs in the forest: they believe omens in the stars are about things that are fated to happen. Dumbledore believes prophecies only have the power we give them.

After meeting her first centaur Hermione asks Hagrid if there are many in the forest. It’s important to remember this when she leads Umbridge into the forest, assuming that Umbridge will offend the centaurs in some way, allowing her and Harry to escape. When this is what happens, it’s a rather poetic form of justice, since centaurs, as Liminal Beings, are teachers at heart, and Umbridge has perverted and debased teaching. Her comeuppance in the forest is like a teachers’ union coming after her with torches and pitchforks, or tar and feathers.

While looking for the wounded unicorn, Draco frightens Neville on purpose, his usual pattern: treating a serious situation like a joke. He also does this in the third book when he offends Buckbeak and is injured. Hagrid puts Malfoy and Harry together, giving them Fang the dog as a companion. This aligns with the many times in the sixth book when Harry follows in Draco’s footsteps or vice versa. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.)

Draco and Harry are both present when Dumbledore is killed and together they discover the slowly-dying unicorn who has finally expired. The DADA teacher in the first book is largely responsible for this, since Quirrell is host to Voldemort, just as the DADA teacher in the sixth book, Snape, is ultimately responsible for Dumbledore’s death, though Dumbledore asks Snape to kill him.

After the detention, when Harry is going to bed, he finds his Invisibility Cloak hidden under his sheets, with a note saying, “Just in case.” At the end of the detention in the forest, Dumbledore gives Harry something he needs to take the next step and participate in the protection of the Philosopher’s Stone, just as he prepares Harry, in the sixth book, to destroy the remaining Horcruxes without him.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry,the Podcast, Episode 23: The Half-Blood Potions Text. 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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