Fathers and Sons

I finished GoF yesterday. One of the things that really struck me this time through was the cover, which features a still very young and innocent looking Harry, wielding a wand in triumphant excitement while the other Tri-wizard champions lurk in the background. This is the last of the books to feature such a young and almost carefree looking Harry on the cover, and with good reason. It's really in Goblet that the series takes a much more serious turn to the battle against darkness.

I still have Crouch/Mad-Eye on the brain. I couldn't help but feel thoughtful as the story wound up, thinking about the terrible complexities of Crouch and Crouch Jr.'s relationship. Voldemort himself, in the graveyard, draws the parallel for us, just in case we've missed it -- that both he and Crouch had "disappointing fathers" as he puts it so ironically and sickeningly. When you think about it, both Voldemort and Crouch Jr. did indeed receive some real wounding and neglect at the hands of their fathers, though this should not have resulted in the totally demented and horrifying responses they give. One wonders if Crouch Jr. wasn't somehow following in the footsteps of his "father figure" Voldemort by killing his own father in cold blood, just as Voldemort had done.

Father-son relationships are all over the Harry Potter books. While it's true that mother love is the heart and soul, the "wand core" if you will, of the story, Rowling really spends far more energy and ink exploring father/son relationships. It's father-hunger that drives a lot of the male characters, or at least plays a big part. Harry longs for both of his parents, and for a family, but need and desire for a father is especially strong, as we see in PoA when he hopes against hope that the person he sees in the distance, conjuring the patronus that saves them, is his father. (And then there's Prongs...and also the fact that it's his father's shade that advises him and guides him in the graveyard battle. Every time I get to the line when Lily says "Hold on, your father's coming," I cry.)

I think we can say Voldemort longs (or at least used to, back when he was still human) for a family too, though he was already cold and closed off enough even by age eleven to never admit it. But what's he doing really, when he builds his gang of death eaters -- he's trying to manufacture a family ("My true family returns!") although he has no love for any of them which makes you wonder really how deeply bound many of them are to him, bound only as they are by fear and power-lust.

So many other nods to father-son relationships and stories: Harry and Sirius, his godfather; Hagrid feeling a kinship with Harry because they'd both lost their fathers and families at a young age; Draco's warped relationship with his Lucius and his need to prove his mettle to his dad, even at high cost; the terribly bad fathering that Dudley has received from Vernon (which Dumbledore notes in HBP); Neville's courageous father and mother tortured into insanity when he was just a young child, so he essentially grows up an orphan raises by a grandmother; the Weasley boys and Arthur (with lots of complications especially between Arthur and Percy); the Crouch/Crouch Jr. mess; the memory Snape hides of his own abusive father. Am I forgetting anything? I'm sure I am.

At any rate, this has been such a strong thread running through HP that I feel certain there will be more of it in book 7. And I wonder really if the whole question of Snape's loyalties isn't tied up here, in which "father figure" (Voldemort or Dumbledore) he truly feels an allegiance to. One of the biggest reasons I'm betting on Snape's loyalties to the right is that I believe love is strong than hate, blessing stronger than cursing, and forgiveness stronger than revenge. Snape has been mentored for over sixteen years by Albus Dumbledore; he's been in close proximity to the man all this time. I have a hard time not believing that he hasn't been deeply shaped by that forgiveness and love, even if he's struggled over the years with a continued fascination with (addiction to?) the dark arts, and even if that forgiveness and love have not yet worked far enough down into his heart for him to be fully freed and to give that kind of love away to others. I think we're going to see it happen. Harry's healing and Snape's healing -- their abilities to love and forgive -- are inextricably tied up. They've both been "fathered" by Dumbledore, which in an odd way makes them brothers.