By Peter T. Chattaway

YOU EXPECT many things when you read a new Harry Potter novel: magic, humour, a set of mysteries, a looming battle between good and evil, even some clunky exposition.

But you don’t necessarily expect to see quotes from Christian scripture.

And yet, there they are, on pages 266 and 268 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – the seventh and final installment of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular series about a boy who goes to a school for people born with magical powers.

The book, which runs to 607 pages, is not quite half finished when Harry and his friend Hermione Granger visit a cemetery and see a pair of tombstones. One marks the grave of two relatives of Albus Dumbledore, the wise headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who died at the end of the previous book. The other marks the final resting place of Harry’s parents, James and Lily Potter.

The quote over the Dumbledore grave says, simply: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Treasure is a recurring theme in this book – at one point, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione have to break into a bank run by goblins – but those who recognize this passage will also remember Jesus speaks this line after telling his followers to store up treasure in Heaven rather than on Earth.

That takes us to the quote on the Potter grave, which states: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

Harry is puzzled – indeed horrified – by this quote, at first. Didn’t Dumbledore say the well-organized mind has nothing to fear from death? Isn’t the evil of the Dark Lord Voldemort rooted partly in his own fear of death, and in the obsessive way he and his followers cling to this life at all costs?

Hermione sets Harry right, telling him this quote must refer to something different.

“It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death,” she says. “Living after death.”

Incidentally, Harry and Hermione happen to be having this conversation on Christmas Eve. Behind a church. Which, until a page or two before, was filled with people singing Christmas carols.

Over the years, the Harry Potter books have been attacked from various angles. To some, the books promote forms of sorcery that are clearly forbidden in the Bible – though I don’t think either the biblical authors or modern-day practitioners of Wicca have time travel and broomstick rides in mind when they discuss ‘witchcraft.’

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To others, the books are too secular. Unlike the fantasies of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the writings of J.K. Rowling make no direct reference to God figures; no one seems to be ‘in charge,’ as it were. And while the wizards speak of holidays and godfathers and so on, they do not seem to have any religion of their own.

Yet, as even conservative Christians like John Granger have noted, the books have always had at least an implicit or residual Christian sensibility. Rowling’s imagination has always been deeply informed by medieval symbolism – and to the extent that those symbols carry images of Christ within them, so too do her books.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does not completely resolve the confusion over what is literal and what is allegorical in Rowling’s world; and it suffers from other flaws, too. But it does suggest, more powerfully than any of the previous books, that Rowling has a belief – or at least a hope – in the reality of the life to come.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the most crucial moment in this book (and thus the entire series) involves a character obediently going to his death, surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” (my term, not Rowling’s) from beyond the grave – who seem “more real” (Rowling’s term, not mine) than the living.

It is a powerful, powerful portrayal of what is, in essence, an act of martyrdom. And it is quotes from scripture which help to prepare the reader for this moment.

This stands in stark contrast to the sorts of things we see in other best-selling books for children these days. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events , for example, takes occasional jabs at religion: the ‘Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin,’ anyone?  And a climactic moment in the final novel involves a friendly snake emerging from a tree to give some people an apple – which will heal them.

And then, of course, there is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, in which God dies the most pathetic death imaginable – while an ex-nun explains to a couple of children that Christianity is just “a very powerful and convincing mistake.” A major subplot also celebrates the annihilation of the soul. The first part of the trilogy, The Golden Compass, makes the jump to the big screen in just a few months.

In a market where popular and well-written children’s books turn scripture on its head, it is, if anything, refreshing to see scripture invoked in support of the key themes in the Harry Potter books. For this, we should celebrate the books, not condemn them – even as we encourage our children, and each other, to be more discerning readers.

September 2007