Sometimes you read a book and there is a line, a phrase or a paragraph that completely sums up the entire story.
Today, I finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), about 14 years too late. Surprisingly, this is the paragraph that sums up the entire Potter saga, right here in the ending of the very first book:
Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realise that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection for ever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good. – Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 216.
Harry Potter is not about magic, nor wizards and witches. It is primarily about sacrificial love. Mark Greene explains it so well here in his article ‘Harry Potter and the Magic of Love’.
Wan Phing Lim 