Dealing with grief is a surreal experience. It makes us feel very separate from the world, but at the same time, it brings us together in one of the most profound ways a human can experience. JK Rowling honestly and poignantly shows both effects in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
If you haven’t read the fifth Harry Potter book yet, shame on you. I’m also going to ruin it for you. Sirius dies. This is difficult for Harry, who has grown up without a significant father figure and had started looking to Sirius, his newly discovered godfather, as a protector and role model. Harry finally has the promise of familial happiness—away from his wretched aunt, uncle, and cousin—when it all gets torn away.
Sirius’s death is a bit strange, so it requires some explanation. During a battle with the Death Eaters, Sirius gets hit by one of Belatrix’s spells, and he falls through a veiled archway in the middle of the room. As readers, we later come to understand that this is a doorway between the living and the dead. The unique thing about this scene is that we’re not sure what’s going on. Sirius just fell through a curtain. He could be okay. He’s right through that doorway, after all, and not too long ago, we heard voices back behind that veil.
Rowling successfully gets the reader feeling that confused sensation that our loved one is just an arm’s reach away, when really they’re in a place we can’t get to just yet. In doing so, she also beautifully ties in the belief that death is not the end, and does so without getting religious, preachy, or even overly generic. Although she received some criticism for this, I appreciate her way of handling it. One thing that every major religion has in common is the belief that death is not final, whether it be the Judeo-Christian belief in heaven and hell, the eastern belief in rebirth and nirvana, or one of the many other explanations found in the world’s religions. Most people in the world believe that something comes next, so it’s easy for any reader to plug her own beliefs into the wizarding world discussions on the same subject.
I also appreciate that even in Rowling’s magical world, there are still some Muggle rules that the wizards have to play by. One of them is that death is permanent. Magic can do so much in her world: dishes wash themselves, travel is instantaneous, and a potion can heal a traumatic injury in a few hours. The kids can blow up the attic, and a wave of a magic wand puts it all together again before dinner. How easy would it have been to wave that same magic wand and bring back the dead? This magical death-cure loophole is one of my biggest pet peeves with fantasy writing (for example, in the Dragonlance series, whenever a major character dies, Goldmoon shows up with her magic stick and resurrects him). I am grateful to JK Rowling for staying honest about death while writing within a world with a lot ways to bend the rules.
I’ve veered off on a tangent, so let’s come back to the dual feelings of isolation and togetherness, starting with isolation. At the end of chapter 37, Harry is in Dumbledore’s office. Here is an excerpt:
Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harry could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for breakfast, perhaps. It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever. Sirius seemed a million miles away already, even if a part of Harry still believed that if he had only pulled back that veil, he would have found Sirius looking back at him, greeting him, perhaps, with his laugh like a bark….
In the early stages of loss, it feels like the world stops for us, yet we can still see people going about their daily lives, oblivious. I felt that after losing Josh, and others have described a similar feeling dealing with their own losses. I think this is one of those universal experiences. We look around and remember how carefree we were not so long ago, but now nothing seems normal. How can everyone carry on as if nothing has changed when so much has changed for us? Will we ever feel like that again? In a single paragraph, Rowling captures that feeling of isolation.
She also does a great job showing how experiencing loss can bring us together in amazing ways. At the very beginning of The Order of the Phoenix, Harry sees thestrals for the first time. They’ve always been there, but he’s never seen them. He learns that only those who have seen death can see a thestral, and until the end of book four, Harry had yet to experience loss. This is a powerful symbol of how there are certain things that can only be comprehended by those who’ve been down the path of loss.
At the end of the book, shortly after his conversation with Dumbledore, Harry meets up with Luna. Luna has been hovering as a strong secondary character for a while, but this is the moment where she unexpectedly joins the leading cast. She’s not a likely person for Harry to befriend because they are so different, yet their similar losses bring them together in an intimate understanding and form the foundation of friendship.
Here is an excerpt from chapter 38. The final feast is going on, and Harry finds Luna in the hallway as she looks for the things her fellow students have taken and hidden from her. Harry offers to help, but she assures him that they’ll turn up in time. She then asks Harry why he isn’t at the feast.
Harry shrugged. “Just didn’t feel like it.”
“No,” said Luna, observing him with those oddly misty, protuberant eyes. “I don’t suppose you do. That man the Death Eaters killed was your Godfather, wasn’t he? Ginny told me.
Harry nodded curtly, but found that for some reason he did not mind Luna talking about Sirius. He had just remembered that she too could see thestrals.
“Have you…” he began. “I mean, who…has anyone you’ve known ever died?”
“Yes,” said Luna simply, “my mother. She was quite an extraordinary witch, you know, but she did like to experiment and one of her spells went rather badly wrong one day. I was nine.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled.
“Yes, it was rather horrible,” said Luna conversationally. “I still feel very sad about it sometimes. But I’ve still got Dad. And anyway, it’s not as though I’ll never see Mum again, is it?”
“Er—isn’t it?” said Harry uncertainly.
She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?”
“You mean…”
“In that room with the archway. They were just lurking out of sight, that’s all. You heard them.”
They looked at each other. Luna was smiling slightly. Harry did not know what to say, or to think. Luna believed so many extraordinary things…yet he had been sure he had heard voices behind the veil too….
After a little small talk, Luna wishes Harry a good holiday and walks away.
…as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly.
This is a great example of how we come together through separate, yet shared experiences. Both of these young people have lost in a similar manner. These shared experiences bring them together. It’s also very comforting to Harry to see Luna, who has been through her grief and come to a sort of peace about it. Although she can speak “simply” and “conversationally” about her loss now that years have passed, she hasn’t forgotten her mother and still feels sadness for this loss. Harry sees all of this, as well as her hopefulness, and finds comfort in this honest conversation.
I admire JK Rowling for a lot of things, but the way she handles death and loss in her books is one the biggest. I can tell by her writing that she’s been there. She doesn’t sugar-coat, and she doesn’t lie, yet she still manages to be hopeful and comforting. I’m sure she’s helped many readers—young and old—who identify with Harry’s experiences. I know she made an impression on me.
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