Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Ron Weasley is one of Harry’s two best friends. Like Harry, Ron decides to drop out of Hogwarts to search for and destroy Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Ron has been a loyal friend to Harry throughout the Harry Potter series, but in The Deathly Hallows, Ron’s character undergoes a major breakthrough.

Throughout his life, Ron has felt lost in the shuffle of his large family. His older brothers are more accomplished and successful, and he always gets hand-me-downs instead of new items. In previous novels, Rowling touched on Ron’s deep insecurities, but in The Deathly Hallows, Ron’s experience with the Horcrux locket reveals the ugliest aspects of his jealousy and insecurity. Harry notices that when Ron wears the locket, “he [becomes] downright unpleasant” (288), and he accuses Harry of having no clear plan or sense of leadership. He becomes annoyed when Harry and Hermione appear to leave him out of their planning and discussions, and after weeks of camping in the woods, Ron abandons the mission. When Ron returns, however, he faces the evil contents of the locket, and his worst fears are on full display. The Horcrux locket taunts Ron, calling him the “least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter” (375) and the “least loved, now, by the girl who prefers [his] friend” (375-76). The locket preys upon Ron’s jealousy of Harry and Hermione’s closeness and his feelings of being overlooked in his large family. Most of all, the locket emphasizes Ron’s jealousy of Harry’s name and reputation: “What are you, compared with the Boy Who Lived?” (376).

In this pivotal scene, Ron confronts his inner demons within the locket and destroys the Horcrux. After years of battling low self-esteem and envy, Ron frees himself from the dark thoughts that separated him from his friends, and he resumes his rightful place on the hunt for the Horcruxes. Ron is changed: he becomes more thoughtful, more confident, and more heroic than he ever thought he could be.

Hermione Granger is one of Harry’s two best friends. Like Harry and Ron, Hermione decides to drop out of Hogwarts to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes. The brightest and most prepared of her friends, Hermione takes the mission very seriously and spends months preparing for the journey. Hermione is driven, self-motivated, and very serious about ensuring their mission runs smoothly.

In The Deathly Hallows, Hermione demonstrates her heroism through her tireless devotion to the mission. At the novel's beginning, she tells Harry that she’s been “packing for days, so we’re ready to leave at a moment’s notice” (96). Although Ron teases her for possibly being over-prepared, her preparations come in handy through their journey. She adds that she has “modified [her] parents’ memories so that they’re convinced they’re really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins,” and she adds that to keep them safe, she made sure that “Wendell and Monica Wilkins don’t know that they’ve got a daughter” (96-97). Hermione was willing to walk away from her own family to devote herself to the quest to destroy the Horcruxes, and like Harry, she won’t rest until Voldemort is defeated.

Hermione also has a big heart. When Kreacher tells them about his trip to the cave with Voldemort and Regulus, Hermione is moved to tears, and she states that she’s “said all along that wizards would pay for how they treat house-elves” (198). Ever since the fourth novel in the Harry Potter series, Hermione has argued for the fair treatment of magical creatures like house-elves, goblins, and centaurs, and her compassion extends to humans as well. She also possesses the wit and level-headedness to think quickly, which helps to keep her, Ron, and Harry alive. Hermione is the heart and soul of the Horcrux mission, and without her organization, vision, and care, Harry never would have made it to the end of the journey.

Albus Dumbledore is Harry’s former headmaster at Hogwarts and his long-time mentor. Although Dumbledore was killed at the end of the sixth Harry Potter book, he remains a significant presence in the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series. Through flashbacks, anecdotes, portraits, and a strange vision of the afterlife, Dumbledore’s story continues to be told, and in the course of The Deathly Hallows, Harry learns things about Dumbledore that challenge his entire perception of his deceased headmaster.

Dumbledore has long been admired throughout the wizarding community. His childhood friend Elphias Doge writes, "Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched” (20). Dumbledore always looked for the best in others, and this statement aligns with the version of Dumbledore that readers of the previous Harry Potter novels know and love. However, Rita Skeeter argues that “anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is in for a rude awakening” (25), and in fact, she claims that he “dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth!” (25). As the checkered past of the Dumbledore family comes to light, Harry wonders if he ever knew the real Dumbledore. In particular, Dumbledore’s childhood friendship with the evil wizard Grindelwald was deeply concerning. Skeeter argues that Albus turned his back on his family to focus on his plans with Grindelwald, or as she puts it, “plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister” (358). His brother Aberforth carries similar sentiments for Albus, and he claims that Albus “learned secrecy at [their] mother’s knee. Secrets and lies, that’s how [they] grew up, and Albus…he was a natural” (562).

Even in death, the Albus Dumbledore in the King’s Cross afterlife admits that he had a childhood obsession with the Deathly Hallows and becoming the master of death. He wonders if he was any better than Voldemort. Dumbledore knows that he was selfish and secretive, but in the end, he did his best to make up for his foolish fancies and dreams of grandeur.

Professor Snape is the new headmaster of Hogwarts and the man who killed Dumbledore. For the first six installments of the Harry Potter series, Snape’s ambiguous behavior has left the reader to wonder if he is a villain or not. On the one hand, Snape was a member of the Order of the Phoenix and was greatly trusted by Dumbledore, and on more than one occasion, he saved the life of Harry and his friends. On the other hand, Snape is a former follower of Voldemort, and he has always had nothing but contempt for Harry. Harry hates Snape, and when Snape kills Dumbledore at the end of the sixth book, his status as a villain seems to solidify. However, Rowling reveals a very different side of Snape in The Deathly Hallows.

Through the Pensieve, Harry learns that Snape was in love with Harry’s mother, Lily. Snape met Lily when they were children, and they became friends. Snape was jealous of James Potter, but what drove a wedge between Snape and Lily was when he started hanging out with future Death Eaters and called Lily a “Mudblood.” Snape has lived with this regret his entire life, and when Voldemort kills Lily, Snape turns his allegiance to Dumbledore, who tells him that “if [Snape] loved Lily Evans, if [he] truly loved her, then [his] way forward is clear” (678), and he must help protect Harry. Harry realizes that Snape loved his mother just as much as his father did, and everything Snape did to protect Harry was out of love for Lily. As Harry tells Voldemort in their final duel, “[Snape] was Dumbledore’s spy from the moment [Voldemort] threatened her, and [Snape’s] been working against [Voldemort] ever since” (741). In the final pages of the book, Rowling reveals that Harry named his third child Albus Severus, and Harry tells his son that Severus Snape was “the bravest man [he] ever knew” (758).