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Harry Potter VII has raised a number of interesting points that can only now be discussed – since it would have been futile to do so before the series was complete.

We can now for example, survey the lives of Dumbledore and Snape with an eye to the six stages and whether or not they go through them.  The answer is, yes, they do.  Let’s look at Snape first.  He is practically an Orphan as we see when Harry surveys his memories in book 7.  Unloved by his parents, unwelcomed by Lily and Petunia, he is unattractive and underconfident.  As an Orphan he makes Hogwarts his home.  Yet he loves Lily, and believes he is destined to be with her since they both produce the same Patronus (a doe).  His status as a scholar makes him a Pilgrim after knowledge, but it’s not until Voldemort conspires against Lily and James that his love for her turns him into a Warrior-Lover.  He’s an unusual version of this archetype, however, since he elects to be a double agent.  He seems to support Voldemort because he wants to save Lily, just as he remains as Harry’s guardian despite his links to Voldemort and despite his own annoyance that Harry is (in his view) so much like his father – who had teased Snape terribly at Hogwarts.  He is doing the right thing, one might say, even against his own feelings of resentment.  This, surely, is one of the great tests for any human being; to continue to love and be just to those one does not even like.  This inner struggle is what makes Snape a truly impressive figure – since he doesn’t like Voldemort much either.

Snape’s death is, in many ways, the exact mirror of Harry’s situation.  He willingly dies for the cause.  He doesn’t attempt to fight Voldemort when Voldemort decides he has to kill Snape for his Wand.  This wand was the one that was used to ‘kill’ (euthanize) Dumbledore so it would seem to be the strongest wand one could have.  Snape stays true to his cover right up until the end.  Perhaps he knows that if his wand is taken from him in this way it will not transfer its full allegiance to its new possessor.  Fortunately his dying action is to release his memories so Harry can capture them, place them in a pensieve, and find out the true story.  Even Snape’s death turns out to be an opportunity for Harry to learn. The mark of the true Magician is to be able to work selflessly, without ego, for a cause, and to make even his death a true gift to those who are willing to learn from it.

It would be hard to think of a more difficult and a more heroic situation than Snape’s.  He has to work at doing what he believes is right and loving and moral, knowing all the time that he will not be understood and not be rewarded.  Yet he continues with no less firmness than before, a Monarch in every sense. When he finally rises to become headmaster of Hogwarts we could say he’s become a full Magician – but not in an easily recognizable form.  He sees his role as being, in part, the manager of events so that Harry’s destiny can unfold properly.  Could it be that Snape’s  undercover work could be seen as the Magician who does not quite believe that a benign universe will cause everything to come right in the end?  Snape seems to need to interfere, to push events along rather than doing as Harry does, which is to respond from his heart to what events seem to demand from him.  Snape seems to need to try and control things.  This is the Magician at Monarch level – still determined to have a firm grip on events.  As we know from Harry, it’s only when one stops trying to control that one achieves true mastery, for that is when one is aligned with the real forces of nature.

This is worth mentioning, since Dumbledore’s one error, the one that costs him his life, is when he puts on the Horcrux ring which is actually one of the Deadly Hallows.  The search for the Hallows was ego-based, a desire for power.  It’s Dumbledore’s one flaw, and it dates back to his youth.  It’s a beautiful image of how old obsessions can come back and surprise us, luring us into ego-space.

Snape, of course, is trusted entirely by Dumbledore.  We are tempted to see this as a grave error, and especially so when we see Snape kill Dumbledore in volume 6.  But as we learn later Dumbledore was already dying and had arranged for Snape to kill him.  Dumbledore expends his last breaths trying to persuade Draco Malfoy not to kill him, and he succeeds.  He has, in fact, saved Malfoy’s soul, preventing him from committing cold blooded murder for gain.  It may look like weakness, but Draco’s weakness is the weakness of moral revulsion, and Dumbledore’s act is the ultimate act of forgiveness and love.  Dumbledore’s death and funeral, of course, do not dismay the forces of good for long.  Their resolve is in many ways made even more firm.  This is the Magician’s gift, again, which turns death into new life.

Notice that Dumbledore starts off as a very successful Hogwarts student, a perfectly adopted Orphan, one could say, and that when he leaves school he meets with Grindelwald, and they become searchers after power together.  It is necessary for Dumbledore to reject Grindelwald’s view, and rather than rise as a pseudo Warrior (with no love in his soul) he finds himself an actual Orphan, and ashamed of his ambition.  The death of his sister leads him to value the tender, female and compassionate part of himself, and this sadness will stay with him as he becomes a Warrior-Lover. He fights Grindelwald for causes that he knows to be right, carrying in his heart the overpowering sense that he is responsible for his sister’s death.  This regret never leaves him.  He needs no female figure in his life since he already has his sister in his heart.  It’s very much like Snape’s memory of Lily in the way it works.

And so Dumbledore becomes Headmaster - knowing that he cannot trust himself with power.  Self knowledge makes him a Monarch in the true, balanced, sense, and he is remarkable for hiring those who have been tainted in some way and need to be reassimilated into the wizarding world.  Hagrid is a Hogwarts reject, for example, and Snape was once a death eater.  Lupin is a werewolf.  Dumbledore seems to be able to gather worthy Orphans around him so that they can grow into their full selfhood.

Snape and Dumbledore, then, are seeming opposites who are in fact closer than one might think.  They are different versions of the Magician.  They remind us that good things come in many forms.