Essay: The Will of Albus Dumbledore

At Harry’s seventeenth birthday party his cake is shaped like a Snitch, pointing again to his warrior role, and his metaphorical entanglement with the Snitch he caught in his first match. During the party Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister for Magic who fails to win Harry’s support in the previous book, shows up at the Burrow to give Harry, Ron and Hermione the items that Dumbledore left them in his will. Scrimgeour could have come at any time but Rowling has him arrive during a birthday party, a venue for sweets (the Snitch cake) and games. Scrimgeour is suspicious of Dumbledore’s motives because Harry, Ron and Hermione are the only ones to receive bequests who are still students; Scrimgeour doesn’t know that they are not planning to go back. However, unlike Voldemort, the Minister does not discount toys and things “for children” on principle. Like Snape, who felt strongly that Harry’s blank parchment was more than what it appeared to be (he was right—it was the Marauder’s Map), Scrimgeour has Ministry employees try for a month to plumb the mysteries of the items Dumbledore leaves them, to no avail. Now he must legally surrender these things to their new owners.

Ron’s bequest is the Deluminator, which seems a toy with one use. Hermione’s is a book of fairy tales. Harry is left the Snitch from his first Quidditch match. Scrimgeour says the maker of a Snitch wears gloves so it is not touched by human hands until caught in a match for the first time. All Snitches carry an enchantment that reveals the first human to touch it, “in case of a disputed capture”. JK Rowling now puts on the page that Harry and the Snitch are entangled, literally and metaphorically. Seeker and Snitch are forever linked.

Scrimgeour asks Ron why Dumbledore gave him the Deluminator, but Ron has no clue. Scrimgeour also asks Hermione whether Dumbledore discussed with her methods for encoding messages in books but she says, quite truthfully, that he did not. He wants Harry to try to open the Snitch, but he does not know that Harry did not first touch this Snitch with his hand, so it remains closed.

After Scrimgeour leaves, Harry reminds Ron and Hermione that he nearly swallowed this Snitch, and he puts it to his mouth. It still does not open but a legend appears on it that was not visible before: “I open at the close.” They puzzle over this riddle, riddles being another thing many people consider “childish”, in addition to “Riddle” being Voldemort’s birth name.

Later, after his wand breaks, Harry wants to throw out the Snitch. Rowling writes:

He pulled the pieces of the broken wand out of his pocket and, without looking at them, tucked them away in Hagrid’s pouch around his neck. The pouch was now too full of broken and useless objects to take any more. Harry’s hand brushed the old Snitch through the moleskin and for a moment he had to fight the temptation to pull it out and throw it away. Impenetrable, unhelpful, useless, like everything else Dumbledore had left behind—

Harry continues to carry “broken and useless objects” and more than one leads to the ultimate victory. Voldemort disdains such things and considers the (Junk) Room of Requirement to be a good misdirect, a safe place to hide a truly valuable item.

Scrimgeour doesn’t honor Dumbledore’s bequest to give Harry the Sword of Gryffindor, which is not a plaything. He says it was not Dumbledore’s to give, and Griphook would agree. But he lets Harry, Ron and Hermione have the other “childish” bequests, despite evidently not completely believing that they are merely a game-piece, a toy and a book of fairy tales.

Quidditch plays a role in communication many times in Deathly Hallows. Harry awakes with the name “Gregorovitch” on his lips, certain that there is a Quidditch connection. At Bill and Fleur’s wedding he learns from Krum, who is ever a Quidditch player to him (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 26: Until Someone Loses an Eye), that Mr. Lovegood is wearing “Grindelwald’s mark”. In this conversation Harry also recalls the Quidditch connection for “Gregorovitch”, though neither Harry nor Viktor remembers that Harry knows who made Viktor’s wand because of the “weighing of the wands,” part of another metaphorical war, the life-sized board game of the Triwizard Tournament. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 17: The Goblet of Games, Episode 18: The Wide World and Episode 19: Not Playing to Win.)

In Sirius’s old room at Grimmauld Place Harry finds a letter that his that mother wrote to Sirius just after his first birthday:

Dear Padfoot,

Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself. I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course, James thought it was so funny, says he’s going to be a great Quidditch player, but we’ve had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don’t take our eyes off him when he gets going.

Just after this mention of Harry using his first weapon—a broom—and his father looking forward to Harry being a great Quidditch player (a metaphorical warrior), Lily’s letter segues to a discussion of the real war and the Order of the Phoenix. This letter also reveals that Sirius, the Wise Old Man archetype, and specifically the Godfather variant of the Wise Old Man (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 2: This Old Man), gave him two of his three brooms: his very first broom and his Firebolt.

The next Quidditch connection is Harry, Ron and Hermione discovering an old photograph of a Slytherin Quidditch team in Regulus Black’s room at Grimmauld Place. Regulus was a Seeker, the same position as Harry, and the same position on the same house team as Draco. This is appropriate, since the Horcrux that Regulus stole was a gold locket, which is superficially similar to a Snitch. It would be more logical for Slytherin’s locket to be silver, not gold, as the house colors are green and silver—unless Rowling wants to evoke a Snitch with the locket.

 They decide that Regulus Arcturus Black is the R.A.B. who removed the locket from the cave, leaving behind the “imposter” locket Harry and Dumbledore find when they go there at the end of Half-Blood Prince. Harry recalls a locket that couldn’t be opened during the summer before his fifth year, when they were cleaning Grimmauld Place top to bottom—but it is no longer in the house. Harry’s Snitch is metaphorically part of him while the locket is literally part of Voldemort because it contains a piece of his soul. And, like the Snitch with the Resurrection Stone, Harry opens the locket by speaking the right thing to it.

Harry questions Kreacher about the locket and learns that Mundungus Fletcher took it, along with other items, including Sirius’s mirror, which is fortunate, since he sells it to Aberforth. Regulus asked Kreacher to help Voldemort put the locket in the cave, telling Kreacher to come home afterward. Voldemort made Kreacher drink the same potion Dumbledore drinks when he and Harry go to the cave, which explains Kreacher’s state of mind ever since, and when he was told to come home afterward, he did. Voldemort again underestimates those he disregards. He assumes that his secret died in the cave with the elf, not even bothering to check.

Harry, Ron and Hermione don’t learn the meaning of Hermione’s book of fairy tales until they visit Xeno Lovegood to ask about the symbol drawn in the book, the same symbol he wore at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Hermione thinks the book’s use has to do with something added to it, like the symbol, not the stories themselves, until they learn of the Deathly Hallows Quest and its connection to “The Tale of the Three Brothers”.

At the Lovegood house, Hermione’s book of “fairy tales” is revealed to be more than merely diverting stories for children. “The Tale of the Three Brothers” delineates an important rule of the game of magic: magic cannot be used willy-nilly to solve problems. There is always a price, especially if it is used to avoid death. The beginning of the story tells of three brothers who come to “a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across”.

It is impossible not to recall the unbridged river confronting Hansel and Gretel after they vanquish the witch and are journeying home. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deus ex Machina.) In contrast to the Beedle the Bard, Grimm made sure that Hansel and Gretel were not the agents of their own salvation by providing them with supernatural transport that was given to them without their having to do anything to earn it, which represents the theological concept of “grace” in the story.

The Three Brothers, however, take their salvation into their own hands, conjuring a bridge to cross the river. This is considered “cheating” Death, as it would be by Wilhelm Grimm. The character of Death confronts them on the bridge; he would have had them if they had tried to cross using non-magical means, and Death does not accept that he won’t have these three souls yet just because they can do magic. In other words, even wizards are subject to Death.

Two of the brothers, like many wizards, do not care about that price. They believe Death when he claims that he is going to give them “prizes” as rewards “for having been clever enough to evade him”. Like many fairy tales, this contains a fleshing-out of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.”

Each wizard names a reward and gets exactly what he asks for, which Death believes will lead to his being able to take their lives after all. The wand that the first brother requests will always win duels for its owner; it not only leads to his death but the deaths of many other wizards, and it becomes known as the Elder Wand.

The second brother understands even less about balance and power (such as the balance between life and death) and he asks for the power to recall people from Death, but he makes a mistake by not specifically asking to have the power to restore them to life.

The third brother correctly suspects that these aren’t really “rewards” for cheating Death. He is called “humble”, and he sets his sights lower, asking only for a way to leave the bridge without Death following him; so Death gives him “his own Cloak of Invisibility”.

The first brother is eventually murdered for the Elder Wand; the second brother recalls his dead girlfriend from Death but finds that this is not the same as being recalled to life; she is still dead, but “sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil,” which brings to mind the arch and veil in the Death Chamber in the Department of Mysteries. This brother kills himself because of his “hopeless longing”, taunting himself with the image of someone he can never truly be with, which links the Resurrection Stone to the Mirror of Erised. The mirror would probably have shown him his dead girlfriend and could also have led to his suicide. The third brother evades Death for years with his Cloak, removing it when he is old and giving it to his son, after which “he greeted Death as an old friend.”

The third brother asks to put off paying the price for his magic, rather than attempting to not pay at all, like his brothers. If it sounds like an elaborate game, it is, one whose rules Voldemort does not understand. He presumes to be Master of Death by force, not by cleverness nor by seeking, like the third brother, just enough power, not ultimate power. The third brother also chooses his time of death, like Harry and Dumbledore, which Voldemort will never do, his goal being to elude Death completely. It’s possible that he wouldn’t have reached this goal even if he had acquired the Philosopher’s Stone six years earlier, since his credo is in direct opposition to the alchemists. In Magic and Alchemy (Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena), Robert Michael Place writes:

It was believed that the philosopher’s stone would transform any substance into its highest form. As the universal medicine it could cure any illness, and prolong life indefinitely, but its greatest cure was for the suffering of the soul, and the true immortality that it offered was mystical knowledge that all is one and death is an illusion. [NY: Chelsea House Publications, 2009, p. 47.]

Mr. Lovegood describes Death’s “true Cloak of Invisibility” and the problems that other Invisibility Cloaks have of fading with time; Harry, Ron and Hermione realize that Harry’s Cloak fits this description, though, like Hermione, Ron discounts the tale’s veracity, perhaps because he grew up hearing it repeatedly and he assumes that it is “just a story”. The two of them still doubt that anything truly useful can come from fairy tales. Harry is less sure.

Though Hermione does not see the book’s point, before or after learning that one of the tales is about the Deathly Hallows, once they have questioned Kreacher about the locket she correctly pegs the source of Voldemort’s mental-block when he left the elf in the cave. She says:

“Of course, Voldemort would have considered the ways of house-elves far beneath his notice, just like all the purebloods who treat them like animals... It would never have occurred to him that they might have magic that he didn’t.”

Harry learns that Dolores Umbridge took the locket Horcrux from Mundungus Fletcher as a bribe, so he, Ron and Hermione are eventually in the position of trying to get it from her in a Ministry courtroom that resembles an arena, a place for games, and in this arena, Harry has to conjure a Patronus, which he learned because of dementors being at a Quidditch game. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 15: Prisoner of Quidditch and Episode16: The Seeker.) He is not playing literal Quidditch, but he is in an arena, and he is protecting himself and others with a Patronus while trying to get his hands on a Snitch-like object. He is also attempting to protect those being unjustly targeted by the Ministry, the Muggle-born witches and wizards Umbridge is persecuting, just as Sirius and Buckbeak were targeted in Prisoner of Azkaban, completing this miniature reprise of the third book.

Harry also cannot possess the other item bequeathed to him by Dumbledore, the Sword of Gryffindor, until he is playing what amounts to a game. First Harry sees, in the Forest of Dean, a Patronus in the form of a Silver Doe leading him to a frozen pond where the sword lies. Harry tries to summon the sword with Hermione’s wand but it does not come to him. Rowling writes, “He had not expected it to.” This is the exact same phrase she uses after Harry tries and fails to summon the locket in Umbridge’s office at the Ministry. Deep down Harry knows that using magic, a Summoning Charm, is cheating, just as Death felt that the three brothers cheated to conjure a bridge over the river. Harry has to work out the game’s rules and then play by those rules. He thinks about the Chamber of Secrets, when he was in need of help and the sword “delivered itself,” but he cannot quite work out how to manufacture the same need now.

When Harry dives into the pool for the sword, the chain on which he wears the locket Horcrux tries to strangle him, providing the need for chivalry that releases the sword. Ron is the one who performs the chivalrous act this time, having returned from temporary exile. Because he saves Harry he can retrieve the sword, cut the chain strangling Harry, and pull locket, sword and Harry from the water. Ron does not think about game rules; he just sees Harry in need of saving and leaps to do it. This is also a reversal of Harry rescuing Ron from the lake during the Tournament. They have traded places.

The sword is now available for Horcrux-destruction duty. Harry again treats this like a game, as if the rules are clear:

“Come here,” he said, and he led the way, brushed snow from the rock’s surface, and held out his hand for the Horcrux. When Ron offered the sword, however, Harry shook his head.

“No, you should do it.”

“Me?” said Ron, looking shocked. “Why?”

“Because you got the sword out of the pool. I think it’s supposed to be you.”

This is explained as Dumbledore having “taught Harry something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power of certain acts.” Harry also does not think until now about the most logical way to open the locket: he will ask it to open in Parseltongue, which is how he destroyed the diary in the second book, after using the word “Open” in Parseltongue to enter the Chamber of Secrets. Harry saying, “I think it’s supposed to be you,” is the closest Rowling comes to admitting that every single important act in the books is following the rules of a game. There is no randomness to Harry’s world, nothing that doesn’t follow the rules of a game of some sort.

The destruction of this Horcrux is the first of three times in the seventh book that others—Ron, Hermione and Neville—re-enact elements from Harry’s and Ginny’s spiritual coming-of-age from the second book, and they’re the three people and three archetypes—Wise Old Man, Mother and Father—who have accompanied him at other important times. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 7: Fountain of Youth.) Ron, the Wise Old Man, destroys a Horcrux with basilisk venom after saving Harry, whose life was at risk specifically because of the locket, while Harry stabbed the diary with a basilisk fang, which saved Ginny from the diary Horcrux. 

Later, Ron repeats Harry’s action, using the Parseltongue for “open” to enter the Chamber of Secrets, and he and Hermione return with a supply of basilisk fangs, though this time Hermione, an archetypal Mother, is the one who stabs the Horcrux. Finally, Neville, an archetypal Father, uses the sword to kill Nagini, the last Horcrux and another large snake controlled by Voldemort, like the basilisk.

The only Horcruxes not destroyed with basilisk venom are the diadem of Ravenclaw, destroyed by Fiendfyre, and Harry, who is killed by Voldemort with the Killing Curse. Harry was only nearly killed by basilisk venom in the Chamber, and healed by phoenix tears. Acquiring the locket and cup are like Quidditch matches, but both acquiring and destroying the diadem resemble Quidditch. These three Horcruxes are linked to Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, against whom Harry would usually play Quidditch matches during the school year. Instead, in the seventh book, he plays virtual matches against these houses by finding and/or destroying the Horcruxes linked to each house.

 The “destruction” of Harry-the-Horcrux is also like a Quidditch match, but a specific type: it is like the match in which Viktor Krum gave up victory in the Quidditch World Cup and like the first match that Ginny played as a Seeker. Viktor and Ginny each caught the Snitch to help others but in so doing lost the match.

When Ron tells Harry and Hermione how he found his way back to them, we learn that another bequest, the Deluminator, is more than a mere toy, which Scrimgeour suspected. On Christmas morning—when many children receive toys as gifts—Ron hears Hermione’s voice coming from the Deluminator. It is the first time Ron’s name has been said by her or by Harry since he left. The Deluminator picks up on it, specifically Hermione saying it. When he activates the device, a light enters Ron’s chest, and, probably safe to say, his heart. Guided by this, he Disapparates, arriving where Harry and Hermione are camped, though he cannot see the tent because of the security spells. The next time they move the Deluminator again leads him to them, and when Harry is away from the protective spells shielding the tent, while chasing the Silver Doe, Ron sees him.

Some speculation concerning the Deluminator: since the person using it can hear the one they love saying their name, which causes a light to enter the heart of the user, and this light acts as a homing beacon to locate their beloved, Dumbledore may have created this object specifically to find Grindelwald, which means that it is also possible that Dumbledore did not defeat Grindelwald despite loving him, but because he loved him; he otherwise would not have been able to locate him through the Deluminator. (This also implies that Grindelwald said Albus’s name at some point.) Dumbledore did not kill Grindelwald; it is also possible that the speech he gave to Draco about his mercy was not first given to a frightened sixteen-year-old boy but to the beloved friend he wanted to stop but not kill. So while Dumbledore’s invention cannot be used by Harry to defeat Voldemort, despite Harry’s prodigious ability to love, it helps Ron to find his way back to his friends, which saves Harry’s life.

Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore’s gravestone in Godric’s Hollow may help to explain the Deluminator. The stone is engraved, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This appears twice in the Bible: Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34. Hermione is Ron’s treasure, so the light that enters his heart finds where his heart wants to be: it finds Hermione, as Dumbledore may have used it to find Grindelwald. Once again, a toy or game is not part of a war of violent battles but a war for someone’s heart. Ron also fights a war for love when he destroys the locket, finally ignoring its lies about Harry and Hermione looking down on him, not loving him. In the end, truth and love triumph and the Horcrux is no more.

Dumbledore chose his bequests very well.

Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, thePodcast, Episode 27: Legacy. 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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