Whether or not Rowling did this intentionally we’ll probably never know, unless one of us gets to be her best friend. I suspect it’s the sort of thing she’ll never say in an interview. Though she has thrown in some things none of us expected, but which were quite a delight to learn.

And all that is the reason, John, that you’ll be around talking Potter for quite a while–there’s still so much to discover and discuss.

Pat (who has also been a bad student of late by not attending class as I should–and it’s taking me a while to catch up on all I’ve missed)

“Parable – a short, simple story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth by comparison with actual events. A parable is often an allegory in which each character represents an abstract concept—such as obedience or honesty—and is illustrated through real-life events.” [http://www.enotes.com/literary-terms/parable]

What I still maintain to be the Parable of Kreacher teaches us the value and necessity of repentance and the total change such repentance can bring in a life by showing us Kreacher as absolute evil, turned to Kreacher as absolute good; and in that lesson, at least for me, it breathed new life into the narrative of Saul of Tarsus as portrayed by the passage in the 9th Chapter of Acts.

As I assemble together the story of Kreacher the House Elf from its beginning in Order of the Phoenix to its climax in Deathly Hallows, I certainly find that it reminds me very forcefully of the story of Saul of Tarsus who later became Paul. Not the specific events, Saul after all was on a road outdoors, Kreacher was in a kitchen, Saul was struck blind, Kreacher was not; but the form of the story elements, both protagonists being in full rage, both suddenly confronted by the unexpected, both finding love and kindness where he had every right to expect hatred, both being turned 180 degrees by the experience.

It is the story, the scripture passage in Acts 9:1-22 and following events, which forms, at least in my mind, the higher moral lesson, the “throwing alongside”, required of the parable form.

When I read the climatic passage in DH [Chapter 10, Kreacher's Tale], I immediately thought, “Oh this is ridiculous this does not happen, people don’t change on a dime like that. ” And in the next moment I remembered the story of Paul and I actually put the Deathly Hallows down to marvel how a passage of scripture that I had read so many times that I was inured to its true magnitude and impact had just been brought into totally new focus for me.

I realized that something like callouses had dropped off of my understanding of scripture, I had always known intellectually that Ananias had reason to distrust Saul, but I realized that because of the emotional involvement I had established with the story of Kreacher, I now had an emotional involvement in Ananias reactions as well, now when I read that passage from Acts, my whole being literally cries out “Ananias! how can you trust this man! He betrayed Sirius to his death!”

That’s the power of a parable, it gets you into the moment. That’s why Jesus taught so often in parables, as He explains in Matthew 13:10-18.

So I have been a very bad student, John. I have ignored the Professor’s instructions to leave aside Kreacher and get on with Neville, and got on with Kreacher instead. But I’m only auditing the course so you can’t flunk me, so there….nyahhh.

I promise, I will return to Neville and friends soon. But I’m out of time and energy for tonight.

So what did you mean when you said that Neville is a parable of St. John’s Gospel and Book of Revelations?

You said above: “You don’t strike me as someone who chooses his words carelessly; can you share instances from English literature — and Harry Potter specifically — in which a character represents in some way the message of a specific passage from or whole book of the New Testament?”

With pleasure: Kreacher as a parable of the Apostle Paul.

Paul tells us of his original fanatical love of all traditions Jewish, of his pure blood ties to that faith, and of his faithful service in defense of those traditions against the impurities of Christianity; how he held the coats of those who stoned Stephen and sought to encourage the eradication of every follower of the one called Christ. How he considered all the trappings of traditional Jewishness to things of beauty and priceless beyond measure. THEN in a heartbeat on the Damascus road it all changed. “Something like scales fell from his eyes” and he saw all things differently. He reversed course completely and now saw all that he previously treasured as being filth and trash. [c.f. Acts and various epistles.]

Does this not sound like our Kreacher? Stunned on the floor of Grimmauld Place, suddenly seeing that his whole faith and life had been wrongly placed, he went from there to labor in the kitchens of Hogwarts carrying the new Gospel to all the House Elves so that on the day of Armageddon [Battle of Hogwarts] he bursts from the kitchens at the head of an army of converts who had once been thought to be outside the Covenant.

The parallels go even further. Consider for a moment the only known description of St. Paul taken from the apocryphal book The Acts of Paul:

“3 And he went by the king’s highway that leadeth unto Lystra and stood expecting him, and looked upon them that came, according to tbe description of Titus. And he saw Paul coming, a man little of stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace: for sometimes he appeared like a man, and sometimes he had the face of an angel.” [text available here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/actspaul.html

Does that not sound like the very description of Kreacher at the close of DH? But more importantly, in an age when we are so attuned to the reformed Paul that we tend to condemn the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem for not immediately welcoming him; does the parable of Kreacher not restore the proper level of hatred, fear and distrust that they would have felt? Thus a perfect example of the parable–a story that shows us a principle in simple ordinary terms, and then allows “those who have ears to hear” to comprehend through that understanding the meaning of a higher spiritual message.

“Of such a horse we say, in English, he has bottom, good staying qualities or good wind. Hence un cheval de fond is a horse of bottom, or good bottom, …”

links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0149-6611(189511)10%3A7%3C222%3ACDF%3E2.0.CO%

“Keyes called for one of his orderlies and said, “If your horse has bottom enough to catch up with the Vermont Brigade, I want you to overtake them and order …”

books.google.com/books?isbn=0786412623…

http://www.bartleby.com/61/42/B0414200.html

Check out the very last definition of ‘bottom’:

15. Staying power; stamina. Used of a horse.

Its use as a transitive verb is also telling:

1. To provide with an underside. 2. To provide with a foundation. 3. To get to the bottom of; fathom.

For a survey of online dictionary definitions for ‘bottom,’ go to:

http://www.onelook.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/bware/dofind.cgi?word=bottom

I should note that your belief that Neville is a “parable” of the Gospel of St. John and the Book of Revelation is one of the more bizarre assertions ever made on this site. How does a character become a “parable” of scripture? You don’t strike me as someone who chooses his words carelessly; can you share instances from English literature — and Harry Potter specifically — in which a character represents in some way the message of a specific passage from or whole book of the New Testament?

Curious John

Even though it should have been, it was not at all obvious to me! I guess I inherited Ron Weasley’s sensitivity.

But what a beautiful observation, and again, involving one of Lady Rowling’s signature tricks of reversing some aspect of a situation to make us look more closely at what is under our noses.

Under the Cruciatus Curse, the mind is destroyed while the body is little affected until the very end. Under the MS curse, the body is destroyed while the mind is little affected until the very end. In the reversal, Lady Joanne perhaps finds the distance she needs to make a fair portrayal of the condition as seen by the eyes of strangers. Thus she speaks to us through Neville of the emotions that she experienced as the child of an MS sufferer in a world that does not look beyond the outer defect to seek the perfection within. Perhaps also in Neville’s reaction to references and incidents of the Cruciatus Curse we also get to share Lady Joanne’s awareness that MS susceptibility is an inheritable genetic condition; that until a cure is found, she and her children are particularly exposed to its dangers.

Neville also gives us a parable of Neville Chamberlain in his effort to stop the three adventurers from setting out to oppose evil on the grounds that “…Gryffindor [England] will be in even more trouble….”[Philosopher's Stone (in the paperback Scholastic Edition with the Bowdlerized title) page 272] quite easy to find echoes of Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time.”

From the name however, we also have:

Neville — meaning “new city” which may tie in with the elements of the “New Jerusalem” from Revelation strongly present in the final volume.

Longbottom — which though comical in appearance, really means some one with true grit or moral courage that sustains across time.

Of all the books in the bible, Revelation is the only one whose events are still playing out ( I often remind my Sunday School classes that we are living today, somewhere in the middle of the Book of Revelation). likewise, of all our protagonists, Neville is the only one still teaching at Hogwarts in the epilogue. A character, who though scared of his very shadow, never once backs down, and who silently demonstrates the incredible courage required to stick the course no matter how much anyone stares, or laughs, or ridicules. As such he presents a parable of the Spiritual Jesus whose strength comes not from arms or armies, but from His Soul.

So I also believe that Neville is a parable of the message of the Gospel of John/Revelation and the faith and solace a seeker can draw from them.