I was in a subway holding the book, terrified as I watched the shocking scene.
“Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers surrounded him; his flailing hand almost knocked the refilled goblet from Harry’s trembling hands as he moaned, ‘Don’t hurt them, don’t hurt them, please, please, it’s my fault, hurt me instead…Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!’” (HBP 572-573).
I sprinted home, got into bed, and lay there reading in complete suspense as to what would happen next.
As the release of the film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” approaches, I continue to think back to my first experience reading “Half-Blood Prince”: how I was mesmerized during Harry’s private lessons with Dumbledore, intrigued and frightened by the concept of horcruxes, delighted when Harry finally snogs Ginny, and horrified as Harry is forced to move with Dumbledore on a march towards death; a march that starts as Harry and Dumbledore leave the Cave and ends when Snape enters the top of the Astronomy Tower, surrounded by Death Eaters with Dumbledore weak and on the ground.
And here we were. The great moment of truth that we had been moving towards ever since that mysterious teacher with “greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin” looked “straight into Harry’s eyes” (Sorcerer’s Stone 126) during Harry’s first opening feast and as Dumbledore begged for help, what would be proven true: Dumbledore’s belief in Snape’s goodness or Harry’s wavering suspicions that Snape was really a Death Eater?
“Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.
“’Avada Kedavra!’
“A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight” (HBP 596).
My eyes transfixed to the page, my mind in shock, my voice half whispering, half shrieking, “It can’t be!,” I stared at the book as if the world had ended. It was as if every stuffed animal that ever made me feel warm and cozy and safe was slashed and burned before my face. The gods that had guarded me had fallen. The world as I knew it was over. And all of the grief and trauma that you and I went through with Harry did not prepare us for this.
Just one year before, we watched as Harry witnessed his beloved godfather Sirius Black, slip from the world of the living to the world “behind the veil” (Order of the Phoenix 806). A year before that, we witnessed with Harry the murder of his friend and rival Cedric Diggory and “…stared into Cedric’s face, at his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house” (Goblet of Fire 638).A year before that, we watched the ruthless killing of Harry’s mother played again and again in Harry’s mind.
And while we and Harry had been through so much together, even with all of that trauma and loss , as we approached Dumbledore’s corpse with Harry “there was still no preparation for seeing him here, spread-eagled, broken: the greatest wizard Harry had ever, or would ever, meet” (HBP 608).
Dumbledore was dead.
RESPONSE (please respond to any one or all three of these in as little or great of detail as you’d like):
1- Please tell us about your experience at this moment in Harry Potter.
2- Tell us of a moment in your life (please remember to only talk about what you feel safe discussing) that was, like this moment, of tremendous shock.
3- Tell us of a moment in the world where it seemed that the shock and loss were too great to bear.
