From the moment Harry Potter opens, its main themes are quickly apparent: love and death. From Voldemort’s ambition to master death, to Lily’s loving sacrifice for her infant son, destined himself to die, these themes wind themselves throughout the series: for example, Cedric dies in a cemetery -- a place of death -- where Harry is saved through his parents’ love, and Dumbledore meets death at the hands of Snape, but not without compassion. Thus Rowling weaves these themes into her spectacular climax, a tale of three brothers trying to conquer Death, only to one by one be reclaimed into his clutches -- one for power, one for love, and one willingly.
THE FIRST BROTHER: So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence [...] a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death!
The first brother was a power-hungry man, determined that power would allow him to beat death. Hence, he taunts the ghostly figure of demise to grant him the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in existence. The brother’s equal in Harry Potter is Tom Riddle or Voldemort, the name ‘Voldemort’ even translating roughly to ‘flight of death’ from French. Like the first brother, Voldemort lusts after power, following the Elder Wand’s trail of bloodshed to its source as a way of conquering, rather than accepting, death. To him, mortality is an obstacle, something you can avoid. He convinces himself that the Master of Death is the person who wields Death as a weapon, and so the Elder Wand is the only Hallow he actively pursues because he believes in power over death; he doesn’t long to wish others back, nor hide himself, from Death, but instead to defeat it. But the wand’s invincibility does not extend to the wielder. The first brother slays his enemies with his unbeatable wand, but he is later robbed and murdered while he lies in his bed, all because he put too much faith in the power of Power. Voldemort will die in a similar fashion.
Voldemort and the first Brother believe that the power to cast death will be enough to conquer it. The last enemy to be destroyed, for both, is dying. Voldemort seeks out the fabled Elder Wand because he believes he has earned it: “a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death!” But Voldemort has not conquered Death, for he has not accepted it. Accepting and acknowledging the inevitability of death is to truly conquer it, which is why Harry is the wand’s true owner -- he accepts, unequivocally, that he has to die. No matter if he had rightfully won the wand or not, Voldemort would never be worthy of it, because he would never truly conquer Death; he treats Death as his enemy, but as we learn from Harry and the third brother, the only way to become Master of Death is to give in to it and accept it. In the novel Voldemort is reduced to Tom Riddle again, in the film becoming nothing but ashes scattered in the wind. He dies alone and powerless against Death, crumbling to dust and forgotten.
And so Death took the first brother for his own.
THE SECOND BROTHER: Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death.
Love is a force more powerful than magic in the Harry Potter series. Rowling wants us to believe that love can transcend death; that it exists always, in death and before it. The second brother was an arrogant man, but one filled with longing, and so he asked for a device to retrieve people from Death: the Resurrection Stone. This theme of love and death is perhaps the strongest message of the series. For Harry, it that exists in trying to love past the grave, to love those who aren’t there, as it does for the second brother and his equal: Severus Snape. While Harry doesn’t understand how someone can be with him after they have passed, but still manages to move on, the Second Brother never lets go, and is driven mad, joining Death to feel that love again.
For Severus Snape, the last enemy that has to be destroyed is death -- not to conquer it, but to see Lily, his love, again. The second brother’s gift from Death was the power to raise the dead. Snape, in a sense, does the same thing, reanimating his late love not through Dark Magic, but through memory. Snape resurrects Lily every time he sees her eyes in Harry’s face; he cannot let her go, but he can love her in death. It’s poignant that the last thing Snape says is that Harry “has his mother's eyes”, because he’s looking at her when he passes. His love for Lily transcends death: “after all this time”, he still loves her. He will “always” love her. The word always is a special term, as it can mean even after death, hence why it’s so iconic: love can exist after death, with Snape loving Lily even after she dies.
And so Death took the second brother for his own.
THE THIRD BROTHER: The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death.
The third brother was a humble man and simply asked for an object that would allow him to go forth from that place without being followed by death. His entire life, Harry Potter has lived under the shadow of death, but himself has never greeted it; instead he has been left in its wake. Harry is afraid not of dying, but instead of the divide that death creates. Harry struggles with the idea of life after death. When he reads on his parent’s grave, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” and Hermione explains how it means living after death, all he can think is ‘But they were not living: they were gone.' In the Mirror of Erised and through the Resurrection Stone, Harry craves to have his parents with him once more. This is why he is shot so clearly alone in so many scenes.
And once Harry learns he has to die, his isolation is complete. Death no longer follows but waits as Harry walks alone into the forest for the last time. Finally, he must face Death -- but when he discovers the Resurrection Stone, he doesn’t understand how his family is already with him. “Why are you here?” he asks, to which Lily replies, “We never left”. Finally, the themes come to terms. His parents’ love did not die with them; it lived on, lived after death, transcended it. The ones we love never truly leave us; they live in our memories. Harry drops the stone, accepting that he doesn’t need to see his parents to feel their love, because love doesn’t leave after death; it remains “always”, and so that love guides him willingly to his death.
The Master of Death is said to own all three Hallows. But to own all three comes with a price:
To die.
To own all three is to accept that no power will save you, nothing can bring your loved ones back, and eventually you must shed the cloak and embrace Death yourself. Using the fairytale rule of three, JK Rowling started her series with a man in search of power over Death, a woman who would die for love, and a boy who would evade death for years. In the end, the man is reclaimed by death again, another man dies for the woman’s love, and the boy eventually sheds his protection and faces Death as an equal. Although he has earned all three Hallows, Harry Potter is the master and equal of Death because he finally understands: to destroy death -- is to accept it.
And, equals, they departed this life.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This one is actually a collab! I wrote it with my good friend Nick, who runs the YouTube channel you find when you type "nicholas dobbie" into the search bar. Originally, this was actually a script that we wrote together for his channel, but I like it so much that I decided to publish it here, too - and this is the unabridged version, so instead of watching a 9-minute video, you can read a 1.3k word essay! Nice! You can find the video by clicking any of the key buzzwords involving Nick or his channel. We worked our little butts off on this one, and it really paid off. Dude's good at what he does, I'm good at what I do, and we would both die on the battlefield for Harry Potter; this is the lovechild of that obsession. Check out Nick, if you've got a minute free; as much as I enjoy pointing at trashcans and saying they remind me of him, he is actually pretty talented, and is definitely worth a watch, if not a cheeky little subscribe. Yay for collaboration!
