A Reflection on HP and my favorite moment: Always.

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I was introduced to Harry Potter a little over ten years ago when my mom was reading Prisoner of Azkaban to my brother. At first I wasn't interested. The backdrop of a magical world made me suspect; in truth, it all seemed a bit cheesy. I'm sad to admit (for the purists out there) but it was the movie version of Sorcerer's Stone that sold me on the idea. Only then did I see the appeal of a captivating world with characters and situations so extraordinarily unique.

What I saw was a world crafted with many of the same ideologies I valued. Magic wasn't an escape from the laws of this world but an extension of how this world might work bound by subtly different laws. More importantly, characters were forced to make difficult decisions with truth rarely black-and-white. I loved Snape--hated him but loved him. Harry, Ron, and Hermione weren't so much models as they were character studies for all the relationships I experienced in my adolescence. Through them I had a lens to some of the difficult positions in which I found myself.

The one time I had to put the book down and go on a run was when Harry and Ginny first kissed, because ever since Chamber of Secrets I had hoped that it would turn out that way--and it did. That's the thing about this series: Rowling had a massive task to make it all fulfilling, to bring about an ending not just satisfactory but worthy of the preceding six years of build-up. She did it without selling us a picture of the world drizzled in surreality. This was an earthy, beautiful--and yet painful--end to years of growing up with Harry alongside. Death is not avoided; that's Voldemort's job. In fact, pain and mortality were embraced in a way that is at once exceedingly healthy and, unfortunately, counter-cultural. She tapped into a need and we flocked to it. Perhaps in part we saw that the questions being raised were ones we were too scared to ask on our own. Perhaps we saw in Harry or Ron or Hermione a little of ourselves and hoped that in the end they'd live happily-ever-after.

But Rowling was clear: happily-ever-after does not mean survival. Death is not to be avoided. James and Lily Potter, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Sirius Black, Dumbledore, Regulus Black, Igor Karkaroff, Bertha Jorkins, Charity Burbage, Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Tonks, Colin Creevey, Severus Snape... the list goes on. Each lived fully; each gave themselves not just for Harry but for the sake of a world that matters.

We are called to fight for what is valuable in our own lives. Love translates across the Wizarding World into our own. My favorite moment of the series was Snape's vindication. He was never a good character; he was duplicitous, sometimes callous, and often unfair. But he was such a true character. The impact of Lily's death changed him, just as in our lives we are changed by myriad moments that come to define us. Some of these we can name; others have passed beyond recognition.

The legacy that Snape leaves is all any of us can hope for. He gives everything for a single love. He never received anything back. Life, as he said, is not fair--but in the end good wins. It wins triumphantly not because of its mighty power over evil but because of the deeper magic that makes a person wonder if Rowling wasn't a little C.S. Lewis in disguise. What is love finally but grace extended on behalf of one for the other? To be accepted in spite of one's faults is at the core of what these books are about. A generation of young people are better off having Harry as an example. We may never be able to levitate a single feather, but surely we can see that love is not cheap. In fact, for us it may yet cost a lot more than it ever has before, and that is a moral well worth hearing.