Magic Alert

...Naturally, when he murdered Dumbledore at the end of Book Six, the question seemed answered...

...In Deathly Hallows, with his mentors Sirius Black and Dumbledore dead, Harry rises to the occasion and becomes a true leader, in thought and deed...

...Or teens...

...As the story closes, readers finally learn the answer to the real mystery: For which side was double-agent Severus Snape, the most complicated, interesting character in the story, really working...

...In what originally seemed like an amusing tangent, Rowling has devoted a considerable amount of space to the workings of the Wizard government, known as the Ministry of Magic...

...This heavy-handed Christological imagery—lamb to the slaughter, dying that others might live—is unnecessary...

...scene of all previous volumes...

...Without reading too much into this, since Rowling is no conservative, it is healthy for children to absorb the lesson that the government won't always protect them, and when the stakes are high, individuals must act...

...That's a totally satisfying end to a wonderful series...

...Harry survives...

...Harry, who is about to come of age at 17, has decided not to return to the Hogwarts School, Lisa Schiffren is a writer in New York...

...Through several volumes the Minister of Magic, one Cornelius Fudge, remained willfully blind to Voldemort's resurgence...

...In his youth, Dumbledore had quite a lust for personal power, which he learned to abjure at great cost...

...Well, maybe only to parents...

...Harry walks, wand put away, to meet death at Voldemort's hands...

...So the three teenagers set out, without a plan or much guidance, and only their wits (and the usual entertaining magic) to find the hidden horcruxes in a landscape under siege by a totalitarian force...

...Rowling's 4,195-page epic begins, the Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters are on the verge of capturing the Ministry of Magic and taking over the entire wizarding community of England...

...Rowling has been quoted as saying that she thinks even nine-year-olds are old enough to understand that life is about moral choices...

...His successor, Rufus Scrimgeour, wished to use Harry to reassure the public that matters were in hand, even when no action was being taken...

...but as children's literature it is a wonderful shared myth for a time when children's culture is grossly commercialized...

...During that bloody battle at Hog-warts, Voldemort offers to stop all hostilities and welcome Harry's allies to his new order—if only Harry will give himself up...

...Of course, the unprecedented popularity of this series—325 million books sold worldwide, 8.3 million of this current volume sold in the United States on the first day—cannot be entirely ascribed to its solid politics...

...Now we learn that Snape has never ceased loving Lily Potter, even though he lost her to James Potter...

...Speaking of complexity, one of the more interesting twists here is the exploration of Albus Dumbledore's past, which turns out to have been more complicated and less wise and benign than previously shown...

...Harry and his friends live in Gryf-findor House, where being lion-hearted counts for more than just plain intelligence...

...Instead, he and his beloved friends Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley set out to fulfill a mission that Harry had been charged with by Albus Dumbledore, the revered headmaster who died at the hands of Severus Snape at the end of Book Six...

...Everyone must choose which side he or she is on, and all choices have great consequences over characters' lifetimes—and even beyond, to their children's...

...The most critical choice made by many of the characters in the series— up until the very end of Book Five, the movie version of which just came out—is whether or not to believe Harry's claim that Voldemort has returned from exile and is gathering strength...

...Still, if this book has a serious weakness, it is that Rowling rarely paints central characters in moral shades of gray...

...Nor is Harry allowed to confide his task to the older members of the resistance—known as the Order of the Phoenix...

...Not until each horcrux is found and destroyed can the Dark Lord be killed...

...And they are deeply romantic backstories at that...

...One splits one's soul only by the act of murder...

...To be sure, we have watched this character grow from an 11-year-old innocent, alone in the world, into a young man who has shouldered the burdens of that world...

...But Rowling is a believer in redemption by love...

...The depth of Harry's longing for his parents is the most touching part of the books...

...The fact is that J.K...

...After proving his mettle over five books, Neville winds up with the privilege of slaying Voldemort's last horcrux, and with a sword that is available only to "true Gryffindors...

...And here, at the end, she really did tie up vast amounts of detail that she had foreshadowed volumes ago...

...Though Harry is an orphan, it is his mother's love and her sacrifice of her life to save him that protects him against Voldemort's attempts to kill him...

...Evil is defeated...

...She does not seem to find it troubling that many of Harry's allies die at the hands of Death Eaters, who could earlier have been dispatched instead of merely disarmed...

...In addition to being ill-tempered and greasy-haired, Snape is both a former Death Eater and member of the Order of the Phoenix...

...Perhaps that is enough maturation for most readers...

...In the end, of course, it all works out...

...He had split his soul into seven parts, keeping one and storing each of the others in an object called a horcrux...

...Like, never...

...Rowling, famously an abandoned single mother on welfare when she started writing—and now, deservedly, the richest woman in England—tells us over and again that there is nothing more important than the love of parents for their children...

...Peace returns to the wizarding world, and ultimately everyone marries, raises children (which is the main business of life), and sends the next generation off to Hogwarts School...

...His ultimate allegiance stems from a desire to honor Lily's sacrifice for her son...

...The prose moves—which is one way that it keeps children (and the rest of us) reading...

...In all the skirmishes leading up to Deathly Hallows' penultimate clash—a set-piece battle between Voldemort's followers and Harry's allies—Harry refuses to use his wand or skills to kill enemies who are actively trying to kill him and his people...

...Their goal is to purge society of muggle-born (nonmagical) wizards and restore a "pure blood" wizard standard...

...Now, the Ministry has been taken over without a struggle, and sympathizers inside are happy to start purging wizard ranks of muggle-borns and certain "half-bloods...

...Rowling has imagined an entire wonderful world, including the backstories of most of those who people it...

...Though, of course, one hopes dearly that it hasn't really ended...

...It is clear that Rowling believes that this preserves his purity of heart...

...Her ability to plot intricately detailed stories seven books out is legendary...

...As a parent of Harry Potter fans, I've been thrilled to see the books promulgate out-of-fashion virtues such as bravery and honor, deep love of friends, and extraordinary loyalty to them...

...Harry, who knows that there are things more important than death, decides that he will sacrifice himself to protect the others, as his mother and father and others sacrificed for him...

...The clearest embodiment of this virtue is Harry's housemate, Neville Longbottom, who arrives at school a stammering, clumsy, self-conscious boy, raised by a tyrannical grandmother...

...At heart, the Harry Potter series is a traditional struggle between good and evil, freedom and slavery, love and death...

...Meanwhile, Voldemort's driving hatred for muggles similarly owes everything to his muggle-father's abandonment of his mother and himself, followed by her death...

...Unlike the previous books, which are plotted around the school year at Hogwarts, and with a mystery solved at the end, Deathly Hallows takes the form of a heroic quest...

...For Voldemort to assume ultimate power he must kill Harry Pot-ter—or Harry must kill him, according to an old prophecy...

...In Deathly Hallows Narcissa Malfoy, mother of Harry's classmate Draco, wife of the vengeful and cruel Death Eater Lucius, brazenly betrays Voldemort to rescue her son—saving Harry in the process...

...Neither he nor his friends have much of a dark side, unless adolescent angst and Ron's petulance count...

...This cat-and-mouse game continues in various forms until the final showdown...

...It may not be literary—okay, it isn't—and some find it a bit treacly...

...Any book that can convey that to children is a good thing, especially in the world we currently inhabit...

...Harry and his mates are so virtuous, so strong, and so committed to fighting evil, that there isn't much room for the kind of internal conflict that leads to growth...

...Evidence for the good hinged entirely on the fact that Dumbledore trusted him...

...It is not immoral to kill those who come to kill you, and in a novel that is devoted to a clash between good and evil, it is odd for Rowling to suggest otherwise...

...She has devised funny, charming details—portraits that move and talk, invisibility cloaks, bags that expand to hold vast supplies without getting bigger—and deeply eccentric, often lovable characters...

...This series is more explicitly pro-life, pro-family, anti-cult-of-death than any current secular cultural artifact I can think of...

...Do you know how rarely bravery or honor is discussed in books for preteens...

...That the Death Eaters are searching for Harry, to bring him in to be slain by Voldemort, adds plenty of tension and forward propulsion...

...In seeking to become impervious to death, Voldemort had engaged in the darkest of dark magic...

...Fast-paced action—yup...

...The Ministry, which has always been able to track witches and wizards who perform illegal magic, now exerts totalitarian control over community members...

...His side suffers grievous losses from this renunciation...

...Perhaps because Rowling likes her characters black and white, or perhaps because she wishes to imbue the series with some explicitly Christian morality, she paints herself into a funny corner...

...His experience explains why, when Harry doubted himself, Dumbledore has always argued that a person is the product of his moral choices, not genes or inclinations...