Voldemort makes Lucius Malfoy lend him his wand. Voldemort taunts
Lucius and the rest of the Malfoy family, accusing them of being
uncomfortable with his presence. Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy’s
sister, declares that his presence is the greatest possible pleasure,
but Voldemort taunts all of them about the fact that Narcissa and
Bellatrix’s niece (Nymphadora Tonks) has just married Remus Lupin,
the werewolf.
Finally, Voldemort turns the room’s attention to the bound
prisoner above the table, revealing it to be Charity Burbage, a
Hogwarts professor who taught Muggle Studies and promoted the view
that Muggles are not so different from Wizards, and that the increasing prevalence
of Mudbloods is a good thing. Charity Burbage appeals to Snape,
who does nothing to help her, and Voldemort kills her with the Killing
Curse.
Analysis: Epigraphs–Chapter One
The two epigraphs are a startling way for the book to
begin, because they’re not what we might expect of the Harry Potter
series. While the books in the series have steadily evolved, with
the first three being clearly children’s literature, and the subsequent
ones being longer, darker, and featuring more challenging and ambitious themes,
the epigraph from Aeschylus goes a step further in this direction,
associating the new book with great literature, specifically tragedy.
The series has not abandoned its roots, and it will indeed contain
a lot of action, with wizards in black masks zipping around on broomsticks,
shooting green death rays that miss Harry by millimeters. But the
epigraphs alert us to the fact that the book presents themes and
conflicts that run deeper than the action-oriented plot, and the
epigraphs tell us exactly what those themes are.
As in the Aeschylus passage, Harry will have to confront
the death and suffering of those he loves and struggle with the
question of whether that suffering can somehow be redeemed by his
own struggles. Harry has already lost very close friends, most notably Dumbledore
and Sirius, and he will spend much of the book wrestling with the
question of whether those friendships have been extinguished forever,
or if he can somehow commune with the dead. The quote from William
Penn clearly expresses that dead friends are not lost to us—though
it will not be clear to Harry for a long while how to achieve the
perfect communion that Penn describes, which truly seems to banish
death.
The first chapter shines a spotlight on Severus Snape,
that most fascinating of characters in the series. Throughout the
previous books, Snape has intrigued us by showing contradictions
that have never really been resolved. He has always seemed to hate
Harry, and he cuts a very villainish figure, with his icy manner
and association with Slytherin House. Later, we find out that he
was a Death Eater—a servant of Voldemort. Yet he saved Harry’s life
in the first book, and we’ve seen that Dumbledore’s trust in him
was virtually unshakable, and that he supposedly spied for Dumbledore
on Voldemort. At the end of the last book, we saw Snape kill Dumbledore,
apparently settling the question once and for all. And yet we expect
more of this mysterious and complex character—we feel that we don’t
know him and the reasons for his actions, as compared with clear-cut
villains like Bellatrix Lestrange.
The first chapter follows Snape’s point of view but does
not take us inside Snape’s mind or show us his emotions. Snape’s
actions seem straightforwardly evil: he delivers excellent and damaging intelligence
against Harry and the Order of the Phoenix, he is treated as Voldemort’s
most trusted servant, and he lifts no finger to save his fellow
Hogwarts professor. But because his point of view is presented objectively—from
outside of his head—we are left to speculate what his motives are,
and whether he still might not be what he seems.
