Once upon a time, we’d turn to the Harry Potter books for a delightful escape from our everyday lives of magic-free Muggle-dom. But times have changed. Opening up the latest volume of Rowling’s magical saga, what do we find?
The beginning of the book finds the British Prime Minister sitting alone at midnight, considering the terrifying news that a number of recent disasters in the country to have been no accident, but instead deliberate acts of evil. ‘A grim mood has gripped the country,’ notes a politician on the second page.
As I read this coming home on a London bus, just after midnight, a shiver went through me. Rarely has a work of fiction so oddly, and powerfully, coincided with fact. With the memories of the recent bomb attacks fresh in people’s minds – not just in London, but worldwide – the darkening fantasy of Harry Potter now seems but a step away from the headlines.
The book is full of arresting parallels with the current political situation – not all of which can be unintentional. What are we to make of Hogwarts school, now in a state of siege, using ‘secrecy sensors’ to scan the mail for dangerous devices? Or that the Ministry for Magic, reacting badly to public panic, mistakenly sends some innocent people to a faraway prison?
This is a moral universe where the young are corrupted into committing wrongdoing. Draco Malfoy, previously a cartoon-strip bully, is now viewed as a victim of wicked elders, who force him to become a ‘Death Eater’. Aged just sixteen, he ‘has no idea what lies in store,’ which is his moral destruction. When Harry finds Darco blubbering with fear, but unable to turn back from the path that has been decided for him, it’s clear just how troubled Rowling’s vision has become.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom. Harry, Ron and Hermione are now typically truculent teenagers: fighting, rowing and even – yuck – snogging1 (fortunately not each other). Harry fancies Ginny, Ron loves Lavender (but obviously prefers Hermione) and Hermione is left rumpled under the mistletoe by a particularly keen Cormac McLaggen. Amusements like this help give the book some much needed lightness as Harry tries to figure out how to defeat Voldemort.
So how does the book compare with the earlier adventures? It begins well – setting up a range of mysteries for the reader to ponder about. Is Professor Snape in league with Voldemort? What does Draco have concealed in the insalubrious Knockturn Alley? And who is ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ – other than a name written in one of Harry’s textbooks? Following the prince’s scribblings in the book’s margins, Harry zooms straight to the top of potion-making class, but Hermione is worried. Is Harry, under the influence of his mysterious mentor, inching towards the dark side?
Halfway through, however, the plot is hampered by Harry and Dumbledore’s ventures into the Pensieve: a device that allows them to explore people’s memories. Watching scenes from Voldemort’s past, in a bid to see what makes him tick, they do little but exchange tedious chunks of exposition. At such moments, the book feels less like a novel than an extended footnote to the earlier volumes.
Fortunately, there is a thrilling finale, with fights galore. There are tears too as Harry faces up to the death of a close friend, and realises how he must ‘fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated.’ As I turned the final page, I couldn’t help but feel moved by Rowling’s closing celebration of friendship in a world where we all face ‘mortal peril’.
[1] Snogging: An informal British word meaning cuddling and kissing.
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