Every Halloween, we return to Godric’s Hollow: Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived was also the boy who lost

Harry’s journey is punctuated by death. His parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, Dobby, Hedwig – each loss strips away a layer of childhood and forces him to rebuild, differently each time. What makes his story so enduring is not that he is “The Boy Who Lived,” but that he keeps learning how to live after each loss.

When I first read about the death of James and Lily, I saw them only as names in a legend. Heroic, tragic, gone too soon. But over time, as the realities of adulthood – of absence, distance, and grief – became clearer, that scene in Godric’s Hollow began to weigh differently. The image of a baby crying in the ruins of his home is no longer about prophecy or destiny. It’s about survival. It’s about how love leaves traces even when people don’t.

That’s what Dumbledore meant when he said Harry was protected by love. The love that endures in the spaces left behind. Lily’s love wasn’t a shield, it was a legacy of compassion that shaped every choice Harry made – from sparing Peter Pettigrew’s life to standing up to Voldemort. In losing his parents before he could know them, Harry inherited something far rarer: the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone who has already lost.

The loss of the Godfather

Fans were devastated by the death of Harry Potter’s fugitive godfather Sirius Black, who died two years after escaping prison, Azkaban, where he had landed after a wrongful conviction.

Then came Sirius, the godfather, who promised the home Harry never had. His death felt like a betrayal, even to readers. After years of watching Harry’s loneliness, we wanted Sirius to be the one constant, the adult who’d stay. But his death, abrupt and almost casual in its staging, captures a particular kind of grief – the one that arrives just when you start to believe you’re safe. Sirius’ death marked the end of Harry’s adolescence. It was the moment he learned that love doesn’t always save you, but it still gives you the strength to go on.

When I read that scene as a teenager, I cried along with Harry. I was devastated at my favourite character’s death. When I read it again later, I cried because I knew what it meant to lose something just when you’d found it. Grief, like magic, changes a person.

Dumbledore, Hedwig, Dobby: The losses mount

Dumbledore’s death, in contrast, is quieter but more devastating. By then, Harry is no longer a boy seeking guidance; he’s a young man forced to face the truth. Dumbledore’s fall from the tower is less about the loss of a person and more about the shattering of certainty. When I reread that scene now, I can’t help but think about how growing up often means learning to live without the people we once depended on to make sense of the world.

Even the deaths of Hedwig’s and Dobby’s carry symbolic weight. Hedwig, the owl who accompanied Harry since his first birthday at Hogwarts, is more than a pet; she represents his innocence. Her death, early in The Deathly Hallows, feels like a quiet but deliberate severing of his childhood. Dobby’s, on the other hand, is a lesson in freedom and gratitude. A creature once enslaved dies saving his friend. It’s not noble blood or prophecy that makes Harry “the Chosen One,” but the love he inspires in others.

Revisiting these losses as an adult, I see how Rowling’s world mirrored life’s harsher truths. We begin by believing that love can conquer all. We grow older and realise that love sometimes means letting go and that grief never truly ends, it just changes shape.

When I think about James and Lily now, I no longer see them only as tragic figures. I see them as the story’s moral core. Their death isn’t just a narrative trigger; it’s the invisible thread that binds every act of courage and compassion that follows. Without their sacrifice, there would be no story, no resilience, no Harry.

And perhaps that’s why their anniversary still feels so personal. For many of us who grew up alongside Harry, these losses marked our first exposure to grief. Safe enough to process, distant enough to contemplate.

When Harry walks into the Forbidden Forest, ready to die, he does so surrounded by the ghosts of everyone he has lost. And when he returns, reborn in spirit if not in body, he carries them within him. That, to me, is the quietest magic of all: the idea that love, once given, doesn’t end with death. It endure, reshape, and sustain.

The boy who lived, after all, is also the boy who learned to lose, and in that, he taught a generation how to keep living too.