I n t e r p r e t a t i o n1 6 9actually comes true. He really does belong to a more glamorous
family than the Dursleys. In fact, he discovers on first entering
Hogwarts school in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that he
is already a celebrity. He belongs to a breed of magicians who are
superior not only to the Dursleys, which wouldn’t be difficult, but
to Muggles (non- magical humans) as such. His parents were not
only accomplished wizards, but illustrious, highly respected ones.
In a reversal of Great Expectations, the fantasy is true after all.
Unlike Pip, Harry does not need to become a special person. He is
a special person. In fact, there are unmistakable overtones of the
Messiah about him, a status that not even the upwardly mobile Pip
aspires to. Rather as Jaggers arrives to break the news of his great
expectations to Pip, so the shaggy, gigantic Hagrid appears to
reveal to Harry his true history and identity, ushering him into the
privileged future prepared for him. Since Harry is a modest lad
with no ambitions of his own, he is a more sympathetic figure than
the uppish Pip. His good fortune is simply handed to him on a
plate, without his having worked for it.
Harry has a bad substitute father in the brutish Mr Dursley, but
makes up for this misfortune with a whole array of good substitute
fathers, from the wise old Dumbledore to Hagrid and Sirius Black.
He has a real home with the Dursleys that is no home at all, and a
fantasy home (Hogwarts) where he truly belongs. The Harry Potter
novels thus make a distinction between fantasy and reality, but they
also bring this distinction into question. Dumbledore tells Harry
that just because something is happening inside his head doesn’t
mean it is not real. Fantasy and everyday reality converge in the
writing itself, which hovers somewhere between realism and non-
realism. The books portray a realistic world in which grossly improb-
able events take place. Readers need to recognise their own reality