all was well

hp 시리즈 에필로그의 마지막 문장.
http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/the-epilogues-all-was-well-context-themes-and-possible-echoes-of-the-closing-words/




MV: The end of the book: I had read that the last word was supposed to be “scar.” But the last–

JKR: And it was for a long, long time. For a long time the last line was something like: “Only those who he loved could see the lightning scar.” And that was a reference to the fact that as they were on the platform, people were milling around. And that Harry was kind of flanked by, you know, his loved ones. So they were the only ones who were really near enough to see it, even though peo– other people were looking. And it also had a kind of ambiguity. So it was– is the scar still really there? But I changed it because I wanted a more– when I came to write it, I wanted a very concrete statement that Harry won. And that the scar, although it’s still there, it’s just– it’s now just a scar. And I wanted to say it’s over. It’s done. And maybe a tiny bit of that was to say to people, “No, Voldemort’s not rising again. We’re not going to have Part Two. Harry’s job is done.” So that’s why I changed it.

MV: To “All was well.”

JKR: “All was well.”, yeah.

MV: And you knew when you came up with that line, that was it.

JKR: It just felt … I felt a kind of [sighs]. And that– that felt right. Yeah…. And I really wanted Harry to have some peace.




Back, then, to what “All was well” might mean.

Just as the first words of the story, “The Boy Who Lived,” are meaningful, so are the last. Unlike the first, however, the last may require a review of their context and a speculative leap or two. This speculation may take us pretty far afield but I pledge my best efforts to make the trip a rewarding one. Chasing a rabbit trail to and through Kyoto may not be the fastest or surest way to London or Hogwarts but we’d all learn something on the detour, right?

Literary Alchemy? The Epilogue is full of that, too. Start with the second line: “The morning of the first of September was crisp and golden as an apple.” Okay, I’ve eaten my share of Golden Delicious apples so I know there are yellow apples. But when you hear the word “apple,” do you see the color “gold”? Red, maybe green if you’re a Granny Smith sour apple fan like I am, but gold? We’re at the end of an alchemical drama so we should be expecting cues like this one that echo the Alchemical Wedding of Bill and Fleur and the sunrise in the Great Hall at Harry’s victory over Voldemort. Gold is the end and the resolution of all contraries and imbalances…



We’ve seen Teddy Lupin, the philosophical orphan or “philosopher’s stone” and echo of Harry that marks the beginning and end of this alchemical work, but it is the name of Ron and Hermione’s daughter that tells us that Quicksilver and Sulfur have at last been resolved and are at rest as reagents. “Rose” is another name for the Philosopher’s Stone so this revelation and the happiness of the Weasleys on the platform (especially Ron’s joke about his fame when standing next to Harry) let us in on the most important alchemical marriage with a helpful pointer to the remaining conflict in one of Ron’s asides.



Ron says to his daughter and Albus, “If you’re not in Gryffindor, we’ll disinherit you, but no pressure.” Hermione protests and denies what he says to the very nervous Albus and Rose (a meaningful pair, the White Rose) and Ron nods to Harry so he looks over through the fog to Draco Malfoy and boy Scorpius. Ron immediately suggests and fosters a conflict between his daughter and Scorpius, to which suggestion, of course, Hermione protests. Ron apologizes but adds, meaningfully, “Don’t get friendly with him, though, Rosie. Granddad Weasley would never forgive you if you married a pureblood.”

Okay, I understand this is a joke. Arthur Weasley is a pureblood and his son has married a Muggle-born witch so the fun turns on Granddad’s Muggle fascination and Blood Traitor celebrity. But think how much Ron has changed since his appearance on the King’s Cross Platform 9 3/4 twenty six years ago. His parents were both purebloods if very poor and they didn’t talk about the Squib accountant in their family. Now Ron is apologizing about making Gryffindor/Slytherin rival noises and telling jokes about purebloods and, by implication, Muggle-borns. Big changes have happened, if Harry and Draco still aren’t drinking buddies.

Perhaps with one more turn of the seven cycle alchemical process, this time with Albus Severus as the material to be worked and Scorpius and Rose as his “quarreling couple” friends, we can resolve the Gryffindor/Slytherin metanarrative antagonism in an echo of Lily and Severus with a positive resolution via Rose and Scorpius. Ron’s joke points to this possibility and Albus Severus’ name and his conversation with dad point to it as well.

Harry came to the platform way back when as the son of two Gryffindor icons but with the burden of a Horcrux scar that made him the de facto Heir of Slytherin. He chose to be in Gryffindor House and “worked out” his Slytherin baggage. His son Albus, the only child with Lily’s eyes and hence Harry’s echo in this generation, is very worried that he will be sorted into Slytherin. Why would he be thinking this is a strong possibility? James his older brother is teasing him about it, of course, but I doubt this would have bothered him except for his name. Albus — Severus — Potter.

Now, take a second and think about that name. To veterans of the Battle of Hogwarts, it would sound much like the name “Winston Adolph Roosevelt” would to survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. What a burden to hang on a child, no? But it’s meaningful. It signals, as I’ve said above, that the Potters, Deliverers of the World from Lord Voldemort and Gryffindor champions, have embraced as their own a Slytherin namesake. The boy’s initials say it all: A. S. P. This Potter is a serpent — and, as a Gryffindor legacy with what seems to be a Slytherin destiny, he has every right to be concerned and confused, especially after Uncle Ron’s disinheritance joke. Can you be a Potter and a Slytherin?

Harry says, “Yes, you can,” when he tells the ASP, “It doesn’t matter to us, Al.” The alchemical baton has been passed. The ASP may very well deliver the Wizarding World at last of what vestiges remain of the Grand Myth dividing magical folk.

Which brings us to “postmodern themes,” right? There was no great destruction of the metanarrative or eucatastrophe re-ordering the magical world after Voldemort’s defeat. Sure, the houses at Hogwarts on the night of the battle all sat at each others’ tables but it was a snapshot of what could be rather than a lasting eclipse of their divisions. But with ASP and Rose and Scorpius there is a suggestion that, in time, as contraries continue to resolve, that these dividing lines will continue to erode and dissipate.

How? By choices that individuals make.

Harry points to the importance of this, sharing the great Dumbledore lesson with Albus, his younger self, when he tells the boy he will “be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin” and that this was what Harry himself did years ago. Albus is astonished at this revelation and we are left to wonder what he makes of it.

Whatever he chooses, either ASP destiny in Slytherin or the Potter legacy by special request in Gryffindor, we know this Severus-namesake and Lily/Harry echo will further the dissolution of the metanarrative. I think the suggested Albus-Rose-Scorpius trio will, as Harry-Hermione-Ron (Longbottom) versus Draco did to James-Remus-Sirius (Pettigrew) versus Severus, dramatically change Gryffindor-Slytherin polarity by incorporating the Slytherin antagonist. ASP’s choice is not critical except in how he gets along with Scorpius.

Fan fiction? Maybe. The pieces are laid out pretty deliberately for this trio, though, with few distractors or alternatives and several explicit pointers. The most important one of which is Harry’s recognition that “All was well.” Remember, this comes to him only after he has passed the World Savior baton to the ASP, after the train has pulled out, and he has “absentmindedly” “touched the lightning scar on his forehead.”



I was unable to confirm the following speculation in several searches of wonderful etymological dictionaries online; if anything, my research was contra-indicated. So this is only a possible suggestion of the last words, not a connection of any substantive kind. Please take it at that.

“All is well” to me set off alchemical alarms. It is something of a truism that the words “hale,” “healthy,” and “holy” all are derivations of the Old English word “hal.” (“Hal’s” association with “Harry” is notable in this regard.) They each contain a sense of being “whole,” another progeny of “hal.” Physical and spiritual well-being in English, to be healthy or holy, consequently, resonate with the meanings of completeness, harmony, having-it-all-together, even “whole-i-ness.”

So what?

Harry touches his scar, the remnant of the duality he carried with him from Vapormort’s murder of his parents to his destruction of the scar-Horcrux by willing sacrifice as a seventeen year old. Or was he only “well” or “whole” after sharing the secret of his choice with Albus Severus on the platform? That exchange launches his son’s alchemical odyssey to resolve his serpent nature and Gryffindor destiny, a resolution only possible via the choices he will make. Harry has passed the postmodern key: choose the right, hard thing rather than the easy metanarrative belief. In Ms. Rowling’s 2005 interview with MuggleNet Emerson and Leaky Melissa she said about Slytherin in Hogwarts that:

the deeper answer, the non-flippant answer, would be that you have to embrace all of a person, you have to take them with their flaws, and everyone’s got them. It’s the same way with the student body. If only they could achieve perfect unity, you would have an absolute unstoppable force, and I suppose it’s that craving for unity and wholeness that means that they keep that quarter of the school that maybe does not encapsulate the most generous and noble qualities, in the hope, in the very Dumbledore-esque hope that they will achieve union, and they will achieve harmony. Harmony is the word.

In one of Ms. Rowling’s two alchemical moments in more than ten years of interviews (this one followed up by the inevitable shipping question, “Was James the only one interested in Lily?” which, of course, she wouldn’t answer beyond, “No”), she explains the qualities of the four Houses:

It is the tradition to have four houses, but in this case, I wanted them to correspond roughly to the four elements. So Gryffindor is fire, Ravenclaw is air, Hufflepuff is earth, and Slytherin is water, hence the fact that their common room is under the lake. So again, it was this idea of harmony and balance, that you had four necessary components and by integrating them you would make a very strong place. But they remain fragmented, as we know.

“All was well,” Ms. Rowling told her interviewer post-Deathly Hallows, was meant to be:

a very concrete statement that Harry won. And that the scar, although it’s still there, it’s just– it’s now just a scar. And I wanted to say it’s over. It’s done. And maybe a tiny bit of that was to say to people, “No, Voldemort’s not rising again. We’re not going to have Part Two. Harry’s job is done.

At the departure of the train, “Harry’s job is done.” His scar no longer represents his internal Gryffindor/Slytherin polarity. He has harmonized these contraries, he is in balance, he is a union of opposites, he is whole, “all was well.” I don’t think his “absentmindedness” is a throw-away, either. At a point of peace and love, when contraries no longer play, there is a nothingness or absence of activity. Harry is in a no-mind condition quite different than his brain-challenged state through most of the novels.