Everything I Know I Learned From Harry Potter: Important Life Lessons From the Boy Who Lived

Books and films are formative influences for the people who interact with them; people carry with them the stories they love. This is true for fantasy movies as much as it is for documentaries—books like Harry Potter have a tendency to leave their mark on the people who enjoy them. 

In the first book, Harry, Hermione, and Ron find themselves chasing after Voldemort. After Ron is injured, Harry and Hermione continue—only to be met with a test that will allow only one person to continue. Hermione volunteers to stay behind, in order to care for Ron. When she tells Harry that he is a great wizard, he says he is not as good at using magic as she is. She responds by saying while she is adept at books and being clever, that there are more important things that can help in a battle, such as friendship and bravery—Harry may not be the best magic-user, but technical skill is only one part of what will get Harry through this battle. Sometimes, the friendships someone has with others, and the knowledge that their friends will support them, is as valuable as weapons or skills. In the end, Voldemort’s army was no match for the family and friends Harry had; the support they gave him, the courage that support led him to claim, and their own bravery, was enough to triumph.

Later on, faced with an establishment that sought only to control them—and the reality of Voldemort returning to power—Harry and his fellow students banded together during his fifth year to create Dumbledore’s Army. With encouragement from Hermione, and additional help from Professor Lupin and Sirius Black, Harry taught his friends and fellow students how to defend themselves. Dumbledore’s Army was an inter-house effort of students, inspired to fight by a rising willful ignorance about the true situation of Voldemort’s return to power. This group of children—many of them underage—taught themselves and each other how to perform magic that most would have believed beyond their skill level. Instead of accepting this complacency in the face of true danger, Dumbledore’s Army risked almost everything to be involved in the secret society, including torture from Delores Umbridge, whose job it was to keep the students of Hogwarts controlled, so that they could not rise up against the Ministry of Magic, the Wizarding government. (Dumbledore’s Army took up the name of their Headmaster as a kind of sardonic joke at the ministry’s expense—the fear was that Professor Dumbledore could and would create an army from his students to take on the ministry.)

In their seventh year, Harry, Hermione, and Ron left school to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes in order to weaken him enough to finally destroy him. Snape became headmaster, and known Death Eaters not only openly held teaching positions but also used those places of power to torture students. The remnants of Dumbledore’s Army formed a kind of resistance. When the Death Eater Professors wanted them to torture younger students, they refused, and instead took the punishments themselves. The solidarity and resistance that Neville and the rest of Harry’s friends created lasted long enough for Harry to find most of the Horcruxes—and when Harry returned and needed help to find and destroy the rest of the Horcruxes, his friends did not hesitate to fight and risk their lives to help him or to help defend their school. They were invaluable in the battle that saw the end of Voldemort.

As children and people grow, they take with them the lessons they have been taught from their favorite stories, whether they learned them from a book or a film. The Harry Potter books and movies made sure to teach some incredible life lessons.

The Secret World of Harry Potter: Things That Didn’t Make it To The Movies

The world of Harry Potter is full of magic, from shape-shifters to werewolves to dragons. On every page there is a new slice of magic, a new spell or hex or creature waiting to be found. It makes sense that when the books were adapted into films, some of that magic was left by the wayside. Here are some bits of secret magic that didn’t make it into the films, but that made the journey through Harry Potter’s world so magical.

Though the films made no reference to him, Peeves—the resident poltergeist of Hogwarts, known mostly for the devious pranks he played—was an integral part of the books. Throughout the novels, Peeves pranked or otherwise antagonized Hogwarts—from throwing things at students and staff, to emptying an inkbottle over a student’s head, Peeves made a name for himself through his antics. However, there were a few memorable moments that not only made readers laugh, but also showed a deeper side to the Wizarding World. During Harry’s fifth year, the Weasley twins left Hogwarts in protest of Delores Umbridge and her draconian rule—in the middle of exams, with a flourish that included fireworks, flying brooms, and a general disdain for authority. Their final words were to Peeves, and were followed to the letter: “Give her hell from us.” Peeves bowed to them, and tipped his hat, before starting an unparalleled reign of chaos. (It’s worth remembering that up to this point, the only people who could reliably control Peeves were the Bloody Baron—the Slytherin house ghost—and Professor Dumbledore.)  Another memorable moment for Peeves is the one time Professor McGonagall sided with him: during his rampage of chaos after the Weasley twins left, McGonagall happened to see Peeves trying to unscrew a chandelier. Her response was not to tell him to stop; instead, she told him the chandelier unscrewed the other way.

Harry himself is different in the books than in the movies. In the books, he is more independent, has a more explicit mistrust of adults and authority, and is generally a lot more sarcastic, with a darker sense of humor than in the movies.

This is most notable when Professor Snape corrected Harry for not calling him sir. Snape, at one point, merely repeated something that Harry had just said, but with the addition of the word ‘sir’ at the end. Harry responded with a simple, “There’s no need to call me sir, Professor.” This scene did not make it into the film adaptation, but it shows an integral part of Harry’s characterization.

The fifth book included a moment that is reflected in the film adaptation, but that wasn’t directly paralleled. At Christmas, Harry had a vision of Arthur Weasley, his friend’s father, being attacked by a large snake—from the perspective of the snake. This, along with the anxiety of being kept in the dark about the actions his friends are taking to fight against Voldemort, led to Harry isolating himself from his friends and those he knew best. In the book, this led to a moment where Harry, alone in his room, was afraid that Voldemort may have been possessing him at the time of the attack, or may be capable of possessing him in general. Understandably, Harry was deeply uncomfortable with this, but Ginny Weasley, another friend who has actually experienced the kind of possession Harry is afraid of, helped him to not only understand that he was not actually being possessed, but to also ease his mind about the whole ordeal.

These moments might not have made it into the movie, but they are the magic waiting in between the words of the stories that so many people love; they are the reason people keep coming back.