The REAL Magic of Harry Potter

'Magnanimity' exemplified...

There's a wonderful scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone where the budding wizard is at Ollivander's to buy his first wand.  There, the proprietor, Mr Garrick Ollivander said to him, "The wand chooses the wizard, remember...  I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter."

And, of course, the greatness of Harry Potter was not so much his magical prowess (leave that to Hermione), but his character in how he uses this skill.  One might even say that it was Harry's virtue that made him the hero of the series.  As Albus Dumbledore said in the last installment, "Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic."  Harry's "unfailingly kind" words--as Professor Dumbledore described it--evidenced the young character's virtue.

Thus, I submit to you, the real lesson of the Harry Potter series is the virtue of Magnanimity--or, in colloquial English, "greatness of soul."  We see this, for example, in his refusal to let Draco Malfoy fall into the flames in the Room of Requirement during the Battle of Hogwarts, or, towards the end, Harry's voluntary self-sacrifice to Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest in order to save his friends.  When I made my rounds to the Catholic schools, my preferred topic for conversation was "The Virtues," and often used the protagonist in R. K. Rowling's series to illustrate just this.

St Thomas Aquinas, in "baptising" Aristotle, retrieved the virtue of magnanimity, which "is about honour and dishonour" (S.th., 2a 2ae, q. 129, art. 1, sed contra).  In the subsequent respondeo, Thomas explains that "Magnanimity by its very name [from the Latin adj. magnus, -a, -um + n. anima] denotes stretching forth of the mind to great things.  ...And since a virtuous habit is denominated chiefly form its act, a man is said to be magnanimous chiefly because he is minded to do some great acts."  He then finds Biblical warrant for this from 2 Maccabees 15:18, "Nevertheless Nicanor, hearing of the valor of Judas and his men and their courage [animi magnitudinem, Vulg.; ἀνδραγαθίαν, LXX] in battle for their country, shrank from deciding the issue by bloodshed."  Here, Aquinas sees beyond the magnanimity/μεγαλοψυχία cognate to the sense of the word itself:  Behind the Latin phrase for 'greatness of soul' stands the Doric Greek word for 'bravery, manly virtue,' but also with the contextual sense of selflessness on behalf of the Jewish nation and the high cause of liberty from pagan oppressors.

This, in turn, suggests a common good for which the magnanimous person spends himself or herself--something very much inimical to the individualism now in vogue (I leave it to Millennials to account for the Orwellian double-think that is both de facto "individualism" and de iure "globalism").  Judas Maccabeus and his companions selflessly gave themselves up not only for the liberty of the Jewish peoples but also as a declaration of their faith.  Harry Potter gave himself up for the common good of saving his friends at Hogwarts and, by extension, the world (wherein Voldemort wanted to subjugate or even exterminate the "Muggle" population).  And, of course, the Theandric Person--the Magnanimous One par excellence--suffered usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis-- for the commonest good of all, namely the entire human race.  The opposite of this is pusillanimity, 'smallness of soul'--so as to be uncorageous, self-centered, and individualistic.

If one is not convinced that pusillanimity is such a vice, simply consider its current symbol--fighting over toilet paper.

...and 'pusillanimity.'