Book 1 Chapter 17: The Man with Two Faces

and the author with at least as many

In the final chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry confronts Voldemort, who’s been living on the back of Quirrell’s head. Harry manages to keep the Stone away from them until he passes out, and then he wakes up in the hospital wing. There, Dumbledore answers all of his questions, and afterwards Harry goes to the end-of-the-year feast. Dumbledore gives some last minute points to Gryffindor because of their heroics, which allows them to jump from last place to first and win the House Cup. Finally, Harry heads home to the Dursleys, cheerfully planning the tricks he’s going to play on Dudley.

The actual confrontation with the villain is only about a third of the chapter, and a lot of that is monologuing. It reads like the conclusion of a mystery novel; all of the clues are reexamined and explained so the reader can see that it was Quirrell all along. That continues through the conversation with Dumbledore, where he fills in any gaps Quirrell didn’t know, and the conversation with Ron and Hermione, where they puzzle out Dumbledore’s strange behavior.

What stands out in this chapter is Dumbledore, who is always highly quotable. On page 297 of my copy: “to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” On page 298: “’The truth,’ Dumbledore sighed. ‘It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.’” And the best one, on page 299:

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign…to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin.”

It’s genuinely a beautiful idea, that being loved is something you carry with you for life. I imagine that this writing came out of real experience, because Harry Potter was written shortly after Rowling’s mother died. In a 2001 interview, she said:

Perhaps two or three days after I had the idea for Harry, I disposed of his parents in a in quite a brutal way … it was very cut and dry, nothing lingering, no debate about how it had happened or – and at that stage no real discussion of how painful that was going to be. Well of course, mum died six months after I'd written my first attempt at an opening chapter. And that made an enormous difference because I was living it, I was living what I had just written.¹

She goes on to say that the Mirror of Erised, which I considered a high point of the book, was “absolutely entirely drawn from” that loss.  I think it’s fair to say, then, that Rowling’s strongest and most impactful writing is when she’s drawing on the real world.

Also in the real world, Rowling recently called beloved actor and LGBT+ Celebrity Ally of the year David Tennant a member of the “gender Taliban,”² whatever that is. This was in response to a Tweet³ implying that David Tennant’s criticism of transphobic politician Kemi Badenoch was racist. Rowling followed that up by joining a crowd of racists who have decided that an Algerian Olympic athlete is not actually a woman. As Variety describes:

“Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better?” Rowling wrote on X while sharing a picture of Carini in tears and Khelif trying to comfort her after the match was cut short. “The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.” ⁴

I can’t imagine a statement that could sum up hateful delusion better. There’s a long conversation to be had about the way that transphobia is tangled up in racism, but that’s a conversation that is far beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll provide some sources at the end of this article for anyone who needs more information.

Right now, the point I want to make is that J.K. Rowling has made the decision to devote herself to hatred. The question that raises is, what do I do with all of the Dumbledore quotes that still bounce around my head? Thinking about death as “the next great adventure” is something that has been comforting when my anxiety gets bad. That can still bring some comfort, but it also brings a host of other feelings: melancholy, hurt, frustration.

This is one of the core questions that I’ve been considering throughout this project: Is it possible to have a relationship with a work of art that is independent from the artist? It seems like the answer can be neither a wholehearted “yes” or “no.”  My feelings about Harry Potter are not the same as my feelings about J.K. Rowling, but neither are they totally separate.

Here’s what it comes down to: I believe that reading is one of the best tools for self-reflection we have. And I believe you can inhabit a fictional world for a while that gives you a new perspective on the real world. But when I’m repeatedly getting slapped in the face by the author—and when the fictional world itself is often so frustrating—is it worth it? Would it be better to throw it all out and put my energy elsewhere?

I’m starting to think that that might be the case. Right now, I’m planning on writing a post wrapping up my response to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as a whole, and after that, I’ll be writing about some other children’s novels. Harry Potter was only ever one of many books I loved when I was young, so I’m interested to see how other books compare.

Recommended information on transphobia and racism:

• “The Anti-Trans Panic Is Rooted in White Supremacist Ideology” by Florence Ashley & Blu Buchanan gives a broad view of the intersection of transphobia and racism through history and current events.

• “Anti-Trans Sports Bills Aren’t Just Transphobic — They’re Racist, Too,” by Derrick Clifton discusses the experiences of cisgender and transgender black women in sports.

• Veronica Ivy on the Daily Show talks specifically about the Olympics and the science of gender variation in sports.

1. "Harry Potter and Me" (BBC Christmas Special, British version), BBC, 28 December 2001. Full video here transcription by 'Marvelous Marvolo' and Jimmi Thøgersen here.

2. Rowling’s Tweet is here. David Tennant’s comment about Kemi Badenoch (which was pretty mild, in my opinion) can be seen here. And for something to cheer up after all this, you can listen to David Tennant sharing his reason to be cheerful at last year’s Pride.

3. I will never call it X. It’s Twitter forever.

4. J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk Criticize Olympics After Algeria’s Imane Khelif Wins Women’s Boxing Match Amid Gender Controversy: ‘A Misogynist Sporting Establishment,’ by Zack Sharf. Aug 1, 2024.