Harry Potter - The Choices We Make

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

There is a definite current, barely discernable to the mind or senses, even though it is hardly even below the surface, running through the Harry Potter novels. This current is actually a question, a question as to the meaning of ‘choice’, of whether we are truly able to choose freely in life, or not.

There are many characters in the books that hold on to the opinion or notion that we are not free to choose—that our choices, and thus our futures, are fated. That they are determined by our births (whether we be pure-blood wizards, or mixed blood [mud-bloods, to use the extremely derogatory term] or muggle [non-wizarding folk] or by our abilities and strengths or by choices made by others, such as the whims and decisions of such things as the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts.

Yet that is not at all the message of Harry Potter’s life and trials. Just the opposite. Just look at this piece of dialogue between Harry and the headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, just after Harry and Hermione’s successful secreting of Sirius Black and the Hippogriff Buckbeak (Bucky) out of Hogswarts. Here Harry wonders whether he should not have been placed in Slytherin after all:

“So I should be in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it…”

(Here Dumbledore interrupts, filling in the sentence) “put you in

Gryffindor.”

“It only put me in Gryffindor,” Harry counters, “because I asked not to go in Slytherin...”

“Exactly,” said Dumbledore, beaming once more. “Which makes you very different from Tim Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (p. 245)

And then, listen in on this conversation between Dumbledore and the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. It has just transpired that the serial murder that has threatened their world is none other than Barty Crouch, part of a very old respected pure-blood wizarding family and son of a highly esteemed government official. He has just confessed that he carried out these murders on the order of Voldemort. However, Fudge is having none of that. He believes Crouch to be demented and orders him put to death through the ‘ministrations’ of an evil being called a Dementor. Dumbledore and Harry have once again asserted that, contrary to what Fudge adamantly believes, Voldemort is alive and busily recruiting his followers, the Death Eaters. They maintain that because of this all of the wizarding community is now terribly at risk. Fudge would not have any of that.

To counter the menace that Voldemort now poses, Dumbledore has just suggested enlisting the aid of the giants (before Voldemort has a chance to) and releasing the Azkaban prison from the control of these evil Dementors. Fudge is incredulous at the suggestion and is plainly frightened at the prospect. He is convinced that the wizarding community would simply not accept such a thing. It would, he was sure, be the end of his career.

“You are blinded”, Dumbledore said, “by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius! You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be! Your Dementor has just destroyed the last remaining member of a pure-blood family as old as any—and see what that man chose to make of his life!”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (pp. 614-615)

This, however, is not the only instance in the Harry Potter saga where free will, free choice, made ‘all the difference in the world.’ We see this in the evil Voldemort himself. Professor Sybil Trelawney had shared a prophecy (one of the few accurate ones she uttered) that a boy born in the closing days of July 1980, and whose parents had defied Voldemort three times and lived to tell of it, would be Voldemort’s potential downfall. Surprisingly, there were actually two people who meet these requirements, Harry Potter and his fellow student Neville Longbottom. Voldemort chose to believe that Harry was the one, rather than Neville, and the rest was history. Because Harry was protected by his mother’s loving sacrifice, Voldemort was indeed doomed—doomed because of his choices!

But how then are we to reconcile this theme, this persistent belief, with the idea steadfastly maintained in the Harry Potter stories that it was still quite possible to know the future? (Doesn’t that somehow wipe out the possibility of choice, of free will?) Interestingly, this belief that it is possible to know the future is resolutely held to even though Professor Trelawney, Professor of Divination, made the above prophecy and was usually spinney and seldom correct. But then, if this fore-knowledge was indeed possible, how then was a person’s actions and choices in that yet to happen future truly free?

Much of modern science denies free will, denying that such free choices are even possible. Instead, it decrees that what we are and what we do are firmly and decisively determined by a combination of environment and heredity. There is no real choice involved; it only ‘seems’ as if there is one.

But both theology and the metaphysical world of Harry Potter come down solidly on the conclusion that both fore-knowledge and free will, free choice, are indeed possible and not irreconcilable. Theology postulates a divine being who, being eternal, stands outside and apart from time. That means that this deity can exist, can be present, both now and in the future, and indeed, can do so at the very same time. Thus, the deity can know, even now, what will happen at a later time and what choices will be made then and yet does not control them. The person is still able to make his or her own choices.

And that is precisely what we see in Harry and Hermione Granger’s use of the Time Changer. They were able to see themselves, experience themselves, in a kind of time warp. True, it was not the future in this particular situation, but a case would well be made for its use to be made to travel to the future as well.

And so, surely the Sorting Hat had it right: “Not Slytherin, eh?’ said the small voice. ‘Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness, no doubt about that—no? Well, if you’re sure—better be GRYFFINDOR!’” (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, p. 91)

The truly decisive voice was that of Harry’s and of Harry’s alone. And so it is for all of us. All of us are defined, and shaped, for better or for worse, by the choices we make in life. The one truly decisive voice is ours and ours alone.

But then, that leaves us with a ‘rub’, for if we are truly able to make free (and, hopefully, informed) choices, then we are somehow accountable. All through Harry’s life he felt a certain burden of being ‘The Boy Who Lived’, the only person ever known to have survived Voldemort’s Avada Kedavra spell, yes, even before he began to be acclaimed as “The Chosen One.” He felt a certain responsibility, a certain accountability, at least to the wider wizarding world.

So, what about us? Are we accountable as well, responsible, for the choices we make in terms of our time, talents and gifts? And if so, to what or to whom? It is a difficult but pressing question for all of us no matter who we are