I estimate that I have read the Harry Potter series in its entirety no fewer than ten times. Just today, I finished up my most recent read-through of the series, and I found myself with a lump in my throat once again as I completed the final chapters. For me there is an inexplicable comfort in the familiar pages of my classic hardcover editions with their Mary GrandPré illustrations and my penciled marginalia from readings past. Year after year, I return to Harry Potter not only for its nostalgia but also the sheer beauty of the story.
I entered the wizarding world at the perfect moment. The summer I turned eleven, my family decided to see whether Harry Potter was worth the fuss, and we listened to the first book on a road trip. This experience guaranteed two things, the first being that I would have no choice but to keep on going with the series and the second being that I will never be able to read the books without Jim Dale's Hagrid voice booming in my memory.
By the time I had caught up to The Half-Blood Prince that July, I was utterly enchanted with the series. The Prisoner of Azkaban had been my favorite installment so far, although I had a soft spot for The Order of the Phoenix as well since it was the longest book I had read at that point in my bookish young life. Eagerly I placed a hold at our local library for the final book, which was to be published that summer, and waited for my copy to come in. When it finally did, I rocketed through The Deathly Hallows in a matter of hours, finding it satisfactory if a little confusing.
The next summer, I read the books all over again. And the summer after that. And again, and again, every year for seven summers straight, until the year I turned seventeen. As I returned to the books in those years, I found myself growing up alongside Harry himself who, like me, was ten-turning-eleven when the whole thing started.
For a few years after that, however, I took a break from the series. Then in 2016, as the summer was winding down and my most stressful semester of college was about to begin, I picked them back up. I did the same thing in 2018 in my last month as a single woman and my first few months of married adult life. Once again this year, I felt that old urge to revisit them, and I suspect I will be returning to them again and again in the years to come.
But it's not solely nostalgia that drives me back to Harry Potter. I read a lot of books growing up (and I read a lot of books multiple times!), yet most of them I haven't touched since my adolescence. Many of them were engaging, a few even profound, but on the whole, they lack Harry Potter's timeless nature and its perennial themes.
I first started to think deeply about its themes when, as a senior in high school, I decided to write my persuasive essay for English on why I thought Christians should read Harry Potter, aimed toward the tiny but vocal faction of the faith who remained wary of the series a decade and a half after its publication. As I analyzed themes, culled quotations, and crafted my argument, I realized that the books, rather than undermining the Christian vision of the world, actually support it (whether intentionally or not). Other stories I read advanced relativistic messages of self-discovery (or, frankly, had no real message at all); Harry Potter was different.
The series has an ethos that is remarkably Christian in its emphases on sacrificial love, personal responsibility, and individual moral agency. Even the fact that it speaks of human beings as having souls––eternal and immaterial dimensions to our humanity that outlast our mortal bodies––makes it stand out from the other books I was reading at the time. Katniss Everdeen does not spend her time in the arena pondering her eternal destiny. The intrepid protagonists of The Fault in Our Stars conclude that, when their cancer finally catches up with them, they will simply cease to exist (probably). While the characters of Harry Potter are certainly not all paragons of virtue, they have, on the whole, an understanding of what virtue is and a desire to pursue it. Those who don't are, rightfully, the villains.
This is not to say that I read Harry Potter in the way I read the Bible. Rather, when I read Harry Potter, I glimpse in its themes something of the beauty and power of the world as God has written it. In His world, love demands sacrifice. People reap the fruits of their actions, not their circumstances. Light dispels even the gloomiest darkness. Wicked people can be redeemed. Death does not have the final say. Good ultimately triumphs over evil. This is the world we all live in, and when we see its truths expressed in an excellent piece of art, as they are in Harry Potter, we instinctively recognize them as reality even though we are encountering them in fantasy.
This, I believe, is why Harry Potter is so beloved––because there is something fundamentally true about Harry's world, and we all know that, deep down. By encountering those truths in his world, we become better equipped to live them out in our own. This is why I return to the series year after year, especially when things feel dark and difficult. After all this time, it is still magical.