Harry Potter struggles with his identity throughout the book. Harry Potter had to transform the meaning of justice at Hogwarts in order for the school to survive. He had to uphold the rules, even as they protected the wrong people, and temporarily lost him and Hagrid their jobs. Because of his institutional role, he could not have done this in the beginning. But Dumbledore reverses his earlier position: Instead of expelling them, he awards them house points and a feast. Even after they save Ginny and Hogwarts, the boys are afraid of being punished. When Harry and Ron emerge victorious, McGonagall points out that they have broken about a hundred school rules in the process. They bring along Gilderoy Lockhart as the nominal adult who is supposed to be the rescuer, as a sort of punishment for his cowardice. Then they take on the responsibility to rescue Ginny. When Ginny disappears into the Chamber of Secrets, and Professor McGonagall sends the students back to their dormitories for their safety, Harry and Ron hide in a wardrobe in the staff room to find out what happened. Harry also manipulates Lockhart to let them move about freely, by agreeing that security measures are unnecessary, using their common desire to circumvent authority. They use the Invisibility Cloak to sneak out at night to Hagrid’s hut and then to the Forbidden Forest. When Hermione is petrified, Harry and Ron continue to break school rules to pursue the truth. Her identity informs her sense of justice. She says that she doesn’t want to break rules, but thinks that threatening Muggle-borns is worse than creating the potion. Hermione evolves as she puts aside her rule-abiding nature in order to do what is right. This requires them to sneak into the restricted section of the library, steal ingredients from Snape, occupy the girls’ bathroom (which is off-limits to the two boys, as Percy warns them repeatedly), and break into the Slytherin Common room. In order to find out if Draco Malfoy is responsible for petrifying students, they brew up the Polyjuice potion to transform their identities. The world is therefore saved by Harry’s personal moral compass, his individual struggle towards goodness born out of love and loyalty, and the shared values of his friends.Īs the plot progresses, Harry, Ron, and Hermione consistently break the school rules to solve the mystery. Because the institution is not itself on the side of truth and justice, as evidenced by Minister Fudge’s weakness, this makes the hero a rebel, with the same outsider status as the villain. He recognizes this insecurity in Tom Riddle, which makes him dangerously trusting of a character who turns out to want to kill him. This effectively means that as they continue to pursue truth and justice in the story, Harry feels that he can’t share what he knows with Dumbledore, at the risk of losing his place at school. In addition to placing the Weasleys and his policies into jeopardy, Harry and Ron place themselves in a bind: Dumbledore warns them that if they break any more rules they will be expelled from Hogwarts. It turns out that wizards can have more to fear from the rules of their own institutions than they do from Muggles. Weasley, and his Muggle Protection Act is put in jeopardy. Then they learn the serious consequences of this rebellion: Because the car has been seen by Muggles during their flight, the Ministry considers firing Mr. To overcome the obstacle placed in their way by Dobby, Ron and Harry steal the car a second time to fly to Hogwarts. He has quietly rebelled by enchanting the car in the first place, writing himself a loophole in the law to justify his hybrid wizard-Muggle aesthetic. Weasley, who is fond of Muggles, is less concerned than eager to hear how the car flew. Weasley’s resulting fury is rooted in concern for her children’s safety: the wizarding world lives in fear, enforced by the Ministry of Magic, of exposure to Muggles. After Harry suffers the consequences, Ron and his brothers break the rules of their household to steal their father’s car and rescue Harry. When confronted by Dobby with the choice of whether to maintain the status quo and give up the magical world, or rebel, Harry chooses magic. At the beginning of the story, Harry lives in a tense, fragile peace at the Dursleys, in which he is surviving but neglected, and has little power.
This leads to frequent dangers: at one point Harry is at risk of starving to death in his room, and Hogwarts is threatened with takeover by a sadistic murderous regime. Adults fail again and again to keep children safe, proving to be at times cruel, fearful, incompetent, and prejudiced.
Harry Potter and his friends often rebel against the rules of their world in order to pursue truth and justice.
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