Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [10]
The Resurrection Stone
In the Potterverse, death is all around. Harry sees dead people everywhere: headless ghosts and deathday parties, the haunting Mirror of Erised, the headmaster portraits, the Pensieve, the Priori Incantatum spell, the gaunt thestrals, and the voices he hears through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, for example. But Harry never truly accepts the possibility of his own death until he uses the Resurrection Stone in DH to raise the spirits of Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and his parents, James and Lily Potter. To Harry, bringing back his loved ones is so much more important than hiding under the Cloak or using the Elder Wand because the Resurrection Stone is mystical and teaches him the spiritual lesson that death is a natural outcome of life.
The spirits of Harry’s loved ones are able to talk to him, smile at him, and walk with him in the forest, explaining death to him. So his request for their presence is not selfish at all, but gives him closure on his own life so he can walk toward Voldemort bravely. He never wanted his family and friends to die for him, and now he is unafraid because he believes he will join them soon in the afterlife. All he asks in return is the knowledge of whether his own death will be painful. The answer from Sirius—that death is “easier than falling asleep”—is so simple and comforting that Harry is able to face death with courage and not waver [DH, p. 699].
And thanks to the stone, Harry is able to master death and later save other people’s lives, plus he goes on to destroy Voldemort. So while the Cloak and the Elder Wand are useful tools in the fight, nothing is more important than love, which is represented by the stone. And that’s always cool. Unlike the original Peverell owner, who pined away when his sweetheart returned to the grave, Harry is able to move on from grief. Mourning doesn’t have to lead to sadness and depression, and death is perhaps not as final as it appears. That’s a deep truth more profound than a super-wand for dueling or a magical Cloak used for child’s play.
The Invisibility Cloak
Harry’s Invisibility Cloak is, indeed, amusing in its possibilities. But look—it isn’t just a child’s toy, since it has kept the Potter family safe for hundreds of years. It is the only Deathly Hallow particularly associated with Harry’s family, and it’s been around since Dumbledore gave it to him for Christmas in his first year at Hogwarts. So the Cloak of Invisibility is definitely the coolest and most important of the three Hallows and the one that Harry decides to keep forever at the end of the books.
While the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand can be used only by their particular owners, the Cloak can be shared by anyone who needs to be protected, including the Trio in every book, the Marauders in the old days when they followed Lupin to the Shrieking Shack as described in PoA, or even Snape when he enters the Shrieking Shack to save the children. The other two Hallows cause more problems than they solve. The Resurrection Stone is all about clinging to spirits of the dead who don’t want to be in the world, so why bring them back? And the Elder Wand is only for dominating or killing people—it is called the “Deathstick” after all. Few could resist the urge to use it for some evil purpose.
The Cloak is so much better because everyone would love to be invisible sometimes and sneak around Hogwarts, as Harry realizes from the first time he wears it. It’s great for avoiding detection from Mr. Filch, although Mrs. Norris was a bit tricky, along with Mad-Eye Moody’s eyeball, which could see through it. According to Dumbledore, James Potter hid under it back in the day to steal food from the Hogwarts kitchens, and, unbeknownst to Dumbledore, James had good times on the prowl as a teenage Marauder. So it’s not all gloom and doom, like the other two Hallows. It’s fun! As a grown-up, Harry can definitely use it in undercover work as an Auror, or