The Power of Three

"The crowd had almost dispersed now, the stragglers giving the monumental figure of Grawp a wide berth as he cuddled Hagrid, whose howls of grief were still echoing across the water.

'We'll be there, Harry,' said Ron.

'What?'

'At your aunt and uncle's house,' said Ron. 'And then we'll go with you wherever you're going.'

'No—' said Harry quickly; he had not counted on this, he had meant them to understand that he was undertaking the most dangerous journey alone.

'You said to us once before,' said Hermione quietly, 'that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?'

'We're with you whatever happens,' said Ron." (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, p. 671)

Harry Potter is the main character of J.K. Rowling's sequence of books, but he rarely goes anywhere by himself. Ron and Hermione are as much a part of the story as he is. In fact, in a survey of more than 5000 readers, only 549 people listed Harry as the character they most identify with. More than 1600 listed either Hermione or Ron, with Hermione being the character listed most often by far. Harry couldn't do it alone.

J.K. Rowling followed a long-standing tradition when she allowed her Harry to meet the Weasleys at the train station outside Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Harry met Ron, then the two of them befriended the lonely and bookish Hermione to form one of literature's inseparable trios. They are part of a great tradition of heroic trios, following in the footsteps of dozens of others: Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker. And (there's a reason why they call them "Three Musketeers") Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Even at Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are following in the footsteps of another generation: James, Sirius, and Lupin.

One of tenets of the Christian faith that is often the most difficult for people to grasp is the idea that God exists in three persons, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost simultaneously. The Trinity is one unified whole that functions in three beings, a difficult concept because we cannot see it. There is no physical manifestation. At the same time, this difficulty makes it compelling: for centuries, authors, artists, musicians, architects, and countless others represented the Trinity in creative works, partly in an effort to fully understand and comprehend. The idea of one being three is impossible to represent faithfully in a physical way, but even partial representations can be beautiful. Heroic trios in fiction are one way that some authors and storytellers have represented their ideas about the Trinity: body, mind, and spirit separate, but unified.

In his book Looking for God in Harry Potter, John Granger writes, "Man is most obviously an image of God in that his soul is three parts; it has three faculties or powers symbolizing the three persons of the Godhead. We call these powers 'belly,' 'head,' and 'chest,' or more commonly 'body,' 'mind,' and 'spirit'" (Granger 88). He gives examples of six literary trios that follow this interpretation of the Trinity:

With Harry, Ron, and Hermione, it is almost impossible to imagine that J.K. Rowling did not create them with this symbolism in mind. Hermione perfectly represents the mind, and Ron, the body. And Harry is undoubtedly the heart and spirit of the trio.

The trio is powerful. Alone, the three individuals are weak, and together, they are more than the sum of their individual abilities. It took all three to pass the obstacles guarding the Sorcerer's Stone: none of them could have done it alone. Now, with Harry facing his most dangerous challenge, both Ron and Hermione refuse to let him go on by himself. Truly, their response to hearing his plan seems to indicate that they can't even contemplate letting him face Godric's Hollow or the search for the Horcruxes alone. Body, mind, and spirit, the three friends form a whole that is stronger than the sum of it's parts.

In the past week, several people have asked me whether I think any of these three will die in the next book. I have no doubt that there will be more deaths: Voldemort is not an evil that can be easily defeated or ignored, and I am sure that many will battle and die to defeat him. Yet I firmly believe that the trio will be whole and intact at the end. Joss Whedon, creator of the Buffy the Vampire television series, followed this unwritten rule: in bringing the series to a close, his characters battled a powerful evil and their entire world was destroyed. In the end, however, his trio—Xander (body), Willow (mind), and Buffy (spirit)—was intact. I hope that J.K. Rowling will do the same for Harry, Ron, and Hermione.