D&D in HP

Dudley and Draco: The Dursleys' and Malfoys' Family Feud (with special guest appearance by Arthur Weasley) (Disclaimer: My apologies for the reference to the 1980s game "Dungeons and Dragons" - but with all the same controversy surrounding HP as surrounded that game, I feel a little like the skeletal Jack Sparrow atop the treasure pile in Pirates of the Caribbean ... "I just couldn't resist mate." And the name Malfoy can be read, at least for the purposes of this piece, to rhyme with McCoy ... as in the legendary family feud between the Hatfields and McCoys) Rowling on Family Dudley and Draco are really the heirs apparent of two opposite families that represent the polar extremes of the two halves of Harry's world: the most bigoted of muggles and the most bigoted of wizards. On the symbolic level Dudley and Draco are the two extremes which Harry must avoid in growing up, like the Scylla and Charbidis between which Ulysses (in Homer) and Aeneus (in Virgil) must sail their ships. What is most important for Rowling here is the family. It is the respective families that teach Dudley and Draco to be bigots. But, rather than simply point the finger at how family can be abused, Rowling has her own positive artistic comment to make on the true value of family. We learn in Order of the Pheonix that it was Aunt Petunia's choice to accept Harry into her home (on that first night way back in Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone) that gave Harry a blood-familial home to protect him in the ancient magic DD used. If you think about it this is pretty huge. It seems almost, in effect, that Albus Dumbledore, possibly one of the greatest wizards ever to live, needed the help of a muggle to do what he planned to do ... needed a muggle to enact a very ancient and powerful magic. And what is this ancient magic? Familial love. No matter wizard or muggle, the most powerful form of magic in the books is something that all are capable of. And that means ALL, including those who might not be "emotionally disposed" to the feelings of what we generally refer to as "Love." To be sure, the emotions that attend true love are important and an imbalance in this area can be detrimental to a person's psychological health. But I think Rowling understands that Love is first and foremost a choice. Aunt Petunia would probably be hard-pressed to have a single good feeling towards Harry, but she does act out charity towards him (at least in the most rudementary form ... it's not a comfortale home that she gives him, but it is a home based in fmailial bonds). Personally I think this represents a great deepening of the theme on the part of Rowling. In the first book we find that a mother's love of her child is very powerful, that familial love is powerful. We were all impressed with that, but in book 5 che goes and impresses us even more with this development: That love is a choice. And that familial love is just that ... a choice made to respect those bonds even when we did not choose to have them in the first place. There is a respect for the familial and it is acted out in a further choice to be charitable towards the family member. This is the core of familial love: a choice for respecting both the natural bond of family and the human dignity of the family member. The Protection of Muggles Act So ... Aunt Petunia is a key character in Rowling's veiw of the importance of family ... And I will say even further than that, that I believe the Dursley's as a family represent more than just a part of the magic that has protected Harry. Their home, as his home, represents more than just protection, it represents also (if I am right) a responsibility that is central to the meaning of Harry's character in the books. This is the point of the of the saga where in walks Arthur Weasley with his "Protection of Muggles Act" that he has been pushing. Harry, more than any other character in the books, represents a real connection between the muggle world and the wizarding world. Hermione is born of muggle parents, but ones who are sympathetic to the wizarding world and knew how to respond to their daughter's abilities. Harry alone, of wizards, knows the first hand experience of living with the mugglest of the mugglest. He also alone knows the experience of being told that it was a choice of familial love by one whom he never thought to be very loving at all (Aunt Petunia) that has been keeping him safe all these years - that it had serious impact on his life. It is important too that he experiences the prejudice that is possible from the opposite side of the fence, from wizard bigots. Not much needs to be said about this. Although Harry feels Hogwarts, the locus of wizard-kind for him, to be his home, he has also experienced there brutal treatment by wizards (I was, as we all were, a bit surprised at how Rowling did not pull any punches on this matter in the violence Draco does to Harry on the train). I think Harry can, or at least will by the end, see the undeniable connection between the violence some wizards are willing to do to him and the prejudices those same wizards have against muggles. Finally, it is important that he be friends with Ron and lovers with Ginny and experience their father's complete facination with the muggle world. After his treament by the Dursleys growing up he needs to learn a few things (and unlearn a few others). Arthur Weaslye is a great man to learn from. Harry can see an honest and charitable and simply fun-loving wizard who is fascinated with the way muggles solve their needs. But even more-so, he can see a man who is feircely dedicated to keeping his own kind from abusing their own powers to the ill teatment of muggles, both in his choice of particular career (dealing in keeping muggles from being hurt by tampered-with things) and in his political activism (pushing the protection act). Conclusion: I believe that what the books are about and what the family symbolizes for Rowling is "participation" between the mundane details of physical or "ordinary" life and the world behind that world that gives it meaning. (I should note that I did not arrive at this term "participation" on my own. It is used by an Italian scholar named Enrico Mazza, who studies Patristic theology. In a work entitled "Mystagogy" he talks about a Greek term, "Methexis," which comes from the vocabulary used by Plato and which basically means "participation." The context of that work ["Mystagogy"] is 4th century theological thought on the Sacraments of the Church. In this context it is the physical-historical world's "participation" in the eternal life of God through the sacraments, as well as the real connection between the sacraments as pracitced in our lives today and the historical institution of those sacraments, particularly the institution of the EUcharist in the upper room and on the Cross. With regards to what Rowling means by "magic" I believe the two worlds I just described [the historical and the eternal] to be analogous to the worlds of Muggles and Wizards; the world of the "nitty-gritty" and the world of the magical.) This participation requires the respect and charity of which I have been speaking. Harry's "success" in the quest that is the 7 book series is practically identical to his ability to be the man in the middle, to be the particiaption between the muggle and wizard. He must be the bridge between the muggleness of his phsyical family (where his physical home protects him) and the magic of the wizarding family (where he feels at home). Only thus will he be able to understand the malady that is Lord Voldemort. Only thus will he be able to see how to defeat that malady (that seems to be the main develpoment in DD's character in HBP ... the development that will provide Harry a paradigm of how to learn to defeat Voldy now that DD is gone ... DD is now saying "Harry, we MUST learn what it is that Voldemort is about, if he is to be overcome") Harry must be the answer to Arthur Weasley's prayers, he must be the protection of Muggles (this is, I think, the hidden meaning of the "Dudley Demented" chapter). He must protect the Dursleys not only from attacks by the wizarding community, he must also protect them from themselves, from their own muggle bigotry. For, if they completely reject the magical, they rob they're own world of wonder and will eventually die from the boredom of mundanity they have rought upon themselves (this is not your common boredom ... this is the grave malady of which Charles Williams writes in his novel War in Heaven, when his arch satanic character, Demetrius the Greek, says something like, "I am weary of gazing into this darkness through which we fall"). Aunt Petunia made a sacrifice, no matter how reluctantly, to be charitable to Harry and he has been protected by that. I believe Harry will learn the lesson of Arthur Weasley ... that he must now return the favor and be the protection of those wrapped "in this mortal coil." ("In this Mortal Coil": Maybe one of the reasons that the "Flight from Death" [Voldemort] hates muggles so much is that, without magic such as the Philosophers stone they have made more progress in coming to grips with their own mortality than he has) Post-Script I have no guess whether or not Rowling will do anything further with Arthur Weasley and the Protection of Muggles Act. I would love it if, by the end of Book 7, Arthur gets the act pushed through and written into the ministry's laws ... but I do not think that that is necessarily crucial to the role of the act within the series as a work of literature. It has already fulfilled its role as a thematic element simply in that we the readers have seen its import to Aruthrur and how he lives out that imoprt in the actions he takes as a wizard interacting with the Muggle world and in his disposition towards muggle matters. And most importantly, Harry has been sufficiently exposed to Arthur's concerns in this regard for it to impact him. The most imoprtant thread in the plot of the series (ie the main plot) is where Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione (and possibly Ginny) wind up in the end; how they wind up on their path to actively doing good as wizards living in a larger world where muggles are a majority, and what that particular path is. I have already said that I think Harry will be the 7th and lasting (more than a year) DADA teacher at Hogwarts when it re-opens, after he defeats Voldy. But I think his emphasis will be that charity is the key to DADA, including charity towards muggles.