Tag: bravery

Life lessons

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

Posted on by francia

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.

Curiosities

Hogwarts, A History: Who Were the Hogwarts Founders?

Posted on by francia

When Hogwarts was founded, each founder had a wildly different idea of what the future of Wizardkind should look like and should be. This disagreement led to the foundation of the House system. Each founder had an idea of the kind of student they wanted to teach.

Salazar Slytherin believed that magic should be kept within all-magic families; he is known for his distrust of Muggle-born students, and believed that they should not be admitted into the school. Slytherin handpicked his students, and paid particular attention to the qualities he valued—he wanted to teach students who were resourceful and clever, cunning and ambitious. He valued blood purity, a disregard for rules, and also selected students who, like him, were skilled in speaking Parseltongue, the language of snakes (the emblem of Slytherin house). It is believed that those who can speak Parseltongue are in some way related to or descendent from Salazar Slytherin. After his falling out with Godric Gryffindor—and the rest of the founders siding with Gryffindor—Slytherin built the Chamber of Secrets, which housed a Basilisk that Salazar intended for his heir to use to purge Hogwarts of Muggle-borns.

Rowena Ravenclaw is the person credited with the location and name of Hogwarts, which she chose after a dream she had that showed her both a warty hog and a cliff overlooking a lake. It was also Rowena who devised the Hogwarts floor plan—a floor plan that moves and changes like a living being. Ravenclaw was known as the best witch of her age. Her ideal student was creative and clever, with a sharp mind and wit. Ravenclaw disagreed with Slytherin about the value of Muggle-born students, and in fact, many students in Ravenclaw house were actually Muggle-born. She was the original owner of the Diadem of Ravenclaw, which was said to enhance the wearer’s own wisdom.

Godric Gryffindor was known as the best duelist of his age. Gryffindor valued courage and bravery, and picked students that he believed were capable of bold, heroic deeds. He was the founder most in favor of admitting Muggle-borns into Hogwarts, which became a major factor in the splitting of Slytherin from the school. Gryffindor is also the source of the Sorting Hat—when the founders realized there would be no method in place to continue sorting students into the four houses after they died, Gryffindor took off his own hat. The four founders enchanted the hat so that even after they died, the hat would act as a kind of representative and sort students according to their own values.

Helga Hufflepuff chose her students based not on blood purity or any specific traits such as ambition or intelligence. Helga Hufflepuff accepted students of all kinds, including Muggle-borns. Hufflepuff chose students who valued fairness and loyalty, and who were willing to work hard to gain their success. Helga took the students that the other founders would not, and brought them together, teaching them all everything she knew. She also treated them all equally and fairly. Hufflepuff is the one credited with bringing house-elves to work at Hogwarts, where they would not be subjected to the cruelty and abuse that is common among high-class pureblood households who employ house-elves. Helga’s recipes are also the basis of many of the staple foods seen and eaten at Hogwarts feasts—and many of those recipes are still in use.

Each founder had a vision for Hogwarts, and through the House system, each of those visions came to life. Even after death, the four founders of Hogwarts shape the world and the future. While Hogwarts may be their collective legacies, each house stands as evidence of each Founder’s individual impact on Wizarding society.