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“It is our choices, Harry,” Dumbledore told a 12-year-old Harry Potter, “that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
With those simple words, J.K. Rowling defined one of the central themes of Harry Potter and influenced hundreds of millions of children and adults alike. The lesson is ancient, age-old wisdom that each generation learns anew. But the concept is simple. We do not become who we are by accident—we choose it, decision by decision until those choices define us. One of the most enduring magical acts of Harry Potter is that the books don’t just explain that reality; they demonstrate it. At each difficult or groundbreaking turn in the narrative, Harry or one of the other characters is faced with a decision. As in life, the characters sometimes make mistakes. Other times, they choose correctly. Regardless, they are left to deal with the consequences, both joyous and fatal, that those decisions create, and in so doing, they become more relatable and more relevant than ever.
Sins Of The Father
Harry Potter and his friends’ first major mistake is as relatable as their magic is aspirational. At some point in nearly everyone’s adolescence, they allow personal bias to get the better of them. Harry and his friends are no different. In fact, in Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry, Ron, and Hermione first hypothesize and then believe that Severus Snape wants them dead. They use Snape’s seemingly random hatred of Harry and his greasy, dour appearance to convince themselves he is out to get them. Luckily, when Harry realizes his mistake and faces Professor Quirrell instead, he survives the encounter. But Snape’s innocence is a bitter pill to swallow, and it’s one that isn’t truly accepted until the final book of the series.
In this case, it’s not just Harry’s presumptuous mistake that makes the narrative relatable, but it’s Harry’s unwillingness to completely accept he was in the wrong. His continued grudge against Snape, the genesis of which began with Harry’s father’s own mistakes, sets him on a crash course with both the truth and the past.
Keep Your Friends Close
Ron Weasley, as Harry’s best friend, often acts as a foil to the titular character. The mistakes he makes, however, are all his own. Twice throughout the course of the series, Ron lets his jealousy and insecurity get the better of him in a maelstrom of ego and stubbornness that, both times, nearly lead to disaster. The first significant appearance of what could be considered Ron’s fatal flaw shows up in the Goblet of Fire. Unbeknownst to Harry, his name has been entered in the Triwizard Tournament; when he is chosen for the competition, he is shocked, and Ron is furious. Harry attempts to convince Ron that he did not put his own name in the goblet—that he would never do that, especially without telling his friends. Hermione believes Harry immediately, but Ron refuses to listen. Instead, he indulges in his own worst fears: Harry will always overshadow him. Harry laughs at him behind his back. Harry is of an altogether different and better caliber than his sidekick best friend. Ron’s delusion and self-pity engulf him and it is not until Harry is nearly killed during the first task that Ron snaps out of it and realizes he was wrong.
However, as in real life, the lesson takes more than one round to sink in. Three years later, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to track Horcruxes, Ron again gives in to his own worst tendencies. The monotony of walking through the countryside day after day with little to eat and even less reason to hope awakens his own personal demon that feeds on self-pity and envy. After Ron convinces himself that Harry and Hermione like each other as more than friends, Ron explodes, blames Harry for not having a better plan, and blames Hermione for choosing Harry’s side. He storms from the camp, and, if not for Dumbledore’s deluminator, he would have lost both of his best friends for good. Thankfully, the magnitude of the mistake hits him the second time, and he holds strong throughout the rest of the series.
Heavy Is The Head
As Rowling proves with Dumbledore’s character, not even the wisest characters are safe from errors in judgment. Unlike the others, who often need to have the world point out their mistakes, Dumbledore realizes where he went wrong without being told. Unfortunately, his awareness and apology do not negate the consequences. It’s been argued that the entire plot of Harry Potter could have been reduced to one, all hands on deck battle with Voldemort if only the characters told each other the truth from the start. Whether or not that’s true, no one in the series is guiltier of withholding information than Dumbledore. From the time Harry was a baby, Dumbledore knew why Voldemort targeted the Potter family, and he strongly suspected Harry’s life and Voldemort’s seeming immortality were linked. But he said nothing.
In fact, not until the end of Order of the Phoenix does Harry even begin to learn the truth. Dumbledore breaks his silence — but only in the face of irreparable devastation. If Dumbledore had helped Harry himself instead of leaving him in the hands of Snape, hands that Dumbledore knew Harry never truly trusted, then Harry may have taken occlumency more seriously. If Harry had known about the prophecy, he never would have been lured to the Department of Mysteries. If Harry had been given even the tiniest piece of the puzzle, he might have swallowed back his anger one last time and stayed at Hogwarts. Instead, the fear that lured Harry to the Department of Mysteries came true. Sirius died. And of all the people to blame for Sirius’s death, Dumbledore is inarguably one of them.
Through The Veil
The tragedy in the Department of Mysteries, and whose mistakes led to it, cuts more than one way. It is true that Dumbledore failed Harry in that moment—or even throughout his whole fifth year. However, Harry himself fell prey to old prejudices and new emotions. Harry hated Snape, and so he refused to learn from him. He wanted to believe his Voldemort-linked dreams gave him some semblance of control over his own fate, which, especially at that point in his life, seemed especially chaotic and terrifying.
Harry refused to trust Snape because of his own bias and his inherited prejudice against him. He wouldn’t listen to Hermione, even though she begged him to learn to block Voldemort out because he wanted to act instead of always be acted upon. He blew off Dumbledore’s warnings to stay in the castle because he was mad at Dumbledore for ignoring him. He acted, in short, very much like any 15-year-old boy would. And, as tragically happens in the real world as well, his short-sighted approach led to tragic long-term consequences.
Love Is The Most Powerful Magic
Finally, and for once playing in Harry’s favor, Voldemort only made one error—but he made it many times. No matter how much evidence he was shown to the contrary, Voldemort refused to believe love was anything but weakness. First, he overlooked Lily’s sacrifice when he attempted to kill Harry, and the rebounding spell nearly wiped him out right then. Second, Voldemort believed Snape’s main motivation to be power and therefore believed Snape would never betray him even though he knew Snape loved Lilly Potter. Next, he shot a killing curse at an unarmed, willing Harry, inadvertently murdering a piece of his own soul and sparing Harry’s life. And finally, Voldemort allowed Harry Potter to sacrifice himself for the rest of the school, binding Harry’s classmates with the protection of love that Harry himself had been bound by after his mother’s sacrifice.
In the end, Dumbledore, of course, was right. It was choices that revealed the true nature of the characters in Harry Potter. But it wasn’t any one person’s singular choice. It was the aggregate of choices—the ability to learn from mistakes and take accountability for error. As in life, some mistakes led to irreversible consequences. But the courage to face those mistakes and try again the next time, come back better and more humbly, won out.
“We have to choose between what is right,” Rowling wrote, “and what is easy.”
And then she showed us what happens when we do.
