Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory.
Today we’re going to be discussing Harry’s ‘death’ at the hands of Voldemort in the
Deathly Hallows.
More specifically, we’re going to be diving in and dissecting the nuances of HOW it happened,
WHY it happened, and HOW Harry was able to come back to life.
To set the scene – we’re in the Forbidden Forest and Harry comes face-to-face with Voldemort
once again.
However, unlike previous confrontations – from his meeting with a fragmented Voldemort attached
to Professor Quirrell, to their duel in the graveyard of Little Hangleton – this time
Harry does not intend to defend himself or fight back.
He’s come to die.
Fans of the book will remember the chapter as the aptly named “The Forest Again”
and movie lovers will certainly know this scene as the one right after Harry sees his
dead loved ones through the magic of the Resurrection Stone – one of the three fabled Deathly
Hallows.
Voldemort and his followers are waiting for Harry to turn himself over – a deal Voldemort
has proposed in exchange for the safety of the other wizards who have been fighting alongside
Harry in The Battle of Hogwarts.
"I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the
leaping flames.
"I expected him to come."
"I was, it seems...
mistaken," said Voldemort.
"You weren't."
Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster: He did not
want to sound afraid.
At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort.
It was just the two of them.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort said very softly.
His voice might have been part of the spitting fire.
"The Boy Who Lived."
None of the Death Eaters moved.
They were waiting: Everything was waiting.
Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and
her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his-- Voldemort had raised his wand.
His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen
if he proceeded.
Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could
still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear--
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.”
Okay, so what happened?
Well, it appears that Harry gets hit with Avada Kedavra- THE KILLING CURSE.
It’s well reinforced in Harry Potter that ‘Avada Kedavra’- a terrible dark curse
that is known to emit a blindingly intense green bolt of light, kills people.
In fact, the only function of the spell is to kill.
So, how is Harry able to come back from it?
One could argue that ‘Avada Kedavra’ is never actually written on the page- but to
that I say: don’t be ridiculous.
The next thing we see is Harry waking up in a strange place- a place unlike anything else
we had seen previously.
"He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before.
His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet
formed into surroundings.
The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a
flat, blank something on which to be."
His environment was completely surreal, and Harry had lost all of his bearings.
In fact, he had no idea if what he was experiencing was real, or just a figment of his imagination.
"Tell me one last thing.
Is this real?
Or has this been happening inside my head?"
To Which Dumbledore replies:
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that
it is not real?"
Harry, after a minor adjustment to his surroundings, also noticed that the mist had begun to form
in the shape of Kings Cross Station, where he first departed to Hogwarts so many years
ago.
But Harry wasn’t truly at Kings Cross, so- where was he?
As it turns out, he was in limbo.
Limbo, in many religions, can be described as ‘the border place between heaven and
hell’ where souls go before moving on to the afterlife.
It’s never explicitly described in the book whether or not ALL souls in the Harry Potter
universe go through this point in limbo, however- Harry certainly made it- and it’s all to
do with his connection to Voldemort.
When we look at Harry in this strange new environment, what we’re witnessing is Harry’s
soul, and this lines up perfectly with the way he died.
One theory for how Avada Kedavra kills you is that it rips the soul from the body, so
while Harry’s physical form remained in the forbidden forest, his soul was now relocated
to somewhere completely different.
Of course there always lies the possibility that ALL OF THIS could still simply be magic-
a mind trick or some form of magic we have never seen before..
BUT THEN, Dumbledore – who we all know to be dead – approaches him.
It would be reasonable at this point to conclude that Harry himself is dead.
That he has come to a sort of afterlife.
In fact, that’s the conclusion that Harry comes to as well, having the following exchange
with his old Headmaster:
“But you’re dead,” said Harry.
“Oh, yes,” said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.
“Then … I’m dead too?”
“Ah,” said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly.
“That is the question, isn’t it?
On the whole, dear boy, I think not.”
Here’s why Harry’s situation in limbo was more complicated: he wasn’t actually
dead.
During Harry’s talk with Dumbledore, Dumbledore explains that Harry is in fact very much alive-
for his soul was still entirely intact- whole.
So despite being in limbo, Harry was alive- which meant that YES, he could CHOOSE to go
on to the afterlife, but he also had the much BETTER option of returning to the land of
the living as a whole person.
Harry could board the train and go ‘on’- or he could just return to where he came from.
Harry chose the latter.
Okay- but now you might be wondering: HOW?
How was Harry still alive?
Harry wonders this very same thing.
“But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse,” Harry started again, “and nobody died for
me this time – how can I be alive?”
“I think you know,” said Dumbledore.
“Think back.
Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty.”
“He took my blood,” said Harry.
“Precisely!” said Dumbledore.
“He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it!
Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you!
He tethered you to life while he lives!
… You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make.
He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts
of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child.
But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew.
He left more than his body behind.
He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.”
Harry never dies because his mother's sacrifice - the same magic that has protected him for
all his life - is still alive in Lord Voldemort's veins.
If we put that together with the fact that his life-long lightning bolt scar has disappeared
(at least, temporarily) and the fact that there is an ‘agonised’ creature quietly
moaning in the background, it all starts to make sense.
Dumbledore all but confirms this theory when he assures Harry that the part of Voldemort’s
soul that was inside of him was destroyed when Voldemort hit Harry with the Killing
Curse this time around, saying, “Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry.”
However, I will add this: many fans believe that the ‘child’ on the floor of Kings
Cross was in fact the part of Voldemort’s soul that previously resided within Harry.
We know that Harry carried a piece of Voldemort with him for his entire life, and so it seems
to make sense that- with Harry dying and this soul shard now destroyed- it would follow
him to the afterlife.
However, though this is CLOSE to the answer, it’s actually wrong.
According to JK Rowling the being stuck in limbo with Harry wasn't the horcrux within
himself, but rather the current state of Voldemort's soul.
“What exactly was the mutilated baby-like creature Harry saw at King's Cross in chapter
35 of 'Hallows'?”
“I’ve been asked this a LOT.
It is the last piece of soul Voldemort possesses.
When Voldemort attacks Harry, they both fall temporarily unconscious, and both their souls
- Harry's undamaged and healthy, Voldemort’s stunted and maimed - appear in the limbo where
Harry meets Dumbledore.”
In essence, it’s a representation of Voldemort’s maimed soul- rather than the piece of destroyed
soul that resided within Harry- the most common interpretation of Harry’s run-in with this
odd creature.
Voldemort lived a cursed life where he would routinely rip his own soul apart in pursuit
of immortality, and such acts come at a great cost.
The pathetic, wriggling child squirming along the floor, was all that was left of Voldemort’s
soul.
Now that we’ve cleared up the fact that Harry never actually TRULY died, I think it’s
time for me to answer the question of HOW he returned from this alternate plane of existence.
Essentially, because Harry’s soul is now whole and pure – he is given the opportunity
to return to his life as just Harry.
All he has to do at this point is CHOOSE to go back.
Being that his version of purgatory is at King’s Cross station, Dumbledore suggests
that if Harry chooses to move on into death, he would likely board a train and carry on.
But, of course, Harry chooses to return to the world of the living in order to try to
finally defeat Voldemort and help save as many people as he can from further death and
destruction.
At this point, Dumbledore begins to disappear into a descending mist, and you may begin
to wonder if any of this has actually happened.
Maybe Harry just hit his head really hard.
Of course, Harry has this exact same thought, asking Dumbledore one final question before
he completely disappears.
Harry wants to know – and I can hardly blame him – if any of this was real or if it was
only happening inside his head.
To which Dumbledore responds with one of my all-time favourite lines: “Of course it
is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not
real?”
And with that we’ve reached the end of another video!
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Until next time
Remember
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live