I've remained fairly ignorant of Harry Potter since childhood, and it wasn't until about the age of 20 that I decided to investigate what these books had to offer.
As a child, my mother shielded us from the world of Harry Potter. Not the world of magic, but Harry Potter specifically. Her reason at the time was "Harry Potter makes the bad guys look like good guys". I had no idea what this meant, but I respected my mom enough to obey the rules and didn’t question her decision. Rule: No Harry Potter.
Thankfully, my friends were more interested in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, so I never felt alienated for being a muggle.
Now, of course, I understand.
I believe there's nothing fundamentally wrong with fictional magic. Fantasy was a massive part of my childhood, but Harry Potter stirs some kind of apprehension from me that no longer stems from my mom. So far, I've read The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets and both have a wonderful mischievous charm to them which I love. But reading through the second novelisation, a specific scene caught my attention. At one point, Ron pulls out a wand to curse a fellow student. His wand is broken at the time and he ends up cursing himself instead. This scene shocked me, and the book lay on my bedside table for a few days until I felt comfortable to pick it up again.
My question: Since when is it ok to normalise cursing another person? This should never be a thought that crosses a child's mind, yet it does! Just last week, a Harry Potter-obsessed friend of mine tweeted a fantasy about turning someone into a ferret as punishment for being mean. Sure, it’s supposed to be light-hearted and funny. And I understand that, I’m human too. But we’re talking about cursing here, and that’s a real-world danger that should be acknowledged.
"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Ephesians 6:12
Or, the somewhat humorous Message translation:
"This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels."
Sure, it's recorded that both Jesus and God have cursed people and things in the Bible. But He's God! Unless you’ve heard from God, where is the power of that curse coming from? What's the opposite of God? The devil.
I posed the question to my Facebook friends a while ago on how they felt about cursing in Harry Potter and any possible real-life implications, hoping for answers from all walks of life. I got some fantastic replies from parents, teenagers, and 20+ers; including those that were Christians and/or had experience with the occult. A running theme from the discussion was that it is the parent’s responsibility to allow/disallow a child to read a specific book. While true, and my parents were uncommonly strict, this definitely does not happen in practice. I worked in a library for 8 years and often heard the phrase “at least they’re reading”, like that was somehow better than playing video games or watching TV. Parents don’t check what their kids are reading, and with Harry Potter, the lines are blurred between good and evil.
It was also apparent that most people are unaware that curses exist in the real world, which may indicate the root of the issue.
Disclaimer: I’ve changed my opinion regarding magic in Harry Potter several times throughout writing this. And even now, I think I may have been a bit too black and white on the subject. But I’m not going to re-write it now. Expect more Harry Potter-related posts in the future that are better thought-out, as I finish the series and formulate more ideas.