LUMOS!

Welcome to this guest series on Harry Potter written by my colleague Dr. Priscilla Hobbs. In this series, Dr. Hobbs explores each of the twelve archetypes identified in the PMAI®. She illuminates the ways in which these archetypal energies find narrative form in Potter-verse characters. Keep a watchful eye out for a perspective that offers a balance between archetypal analysis and strong cultural critique. We hope you enjoy this collaboration. Please get in touch with any questions or feedback. Let’s conjure a magical conversation.

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The Idealist

By Priscilla Hobbs, Ph.D.

When Harry (and we, the readers) first meets Luna Lovegood, she’s sitting alone in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express wearing funny-looking glasses and reading a magazine upside down. Immediately, Harry and his friends peg her as different and weird, made all the more potent by the fact that the magazine she’s reading—The Quibbler—is regarded as a conspiratorial tabloid. What Harry and his friends initially fail to realize is that Luna’s father is the magazine’s editor, and he’s always fostered a curiosity in his daughter that makes her the series’ archetypal Idealist. 

Central to Luna’s character is that she doesn’t take anything for granted, but also doesn’t judge others if their beliefs are different from her own. Rather, she embraces the difference of perspective as an opportunity to learn about new ideas and things, which is why she willingly reads her father’s magazine even if she knows the information within its pages might not be entirely true. She’ll champion all the things that are different, blurting out names of creatures or conspiracies that she’s learned from her father, and holds her head high when people laugh at her.

Luna starts to become one of Harry’s friends during the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix, because she is the lone character throughout the year that validates Harry’s struggles. This happens initially when he can see thestrals for the first time pulling the carts of students from the train to the school at the start of the term. Previously, the carts seemed to be enchanted and self-moving. This year, however, they’re pulled by strange looking beasts—except that they’re invisible to anyone who hasn’t directly witnessed death. Because Harry witnessed the death of a student at the end of the previous school year, he’s now able to see them when no one else can. Luna is the first character to validate that he’s not hallucinating.

Idealists are not always rewarded within society, but they bring an optimism to even the darkest time because they simply experience the world differently. This is because they see the world through faith and belief, a trust that things have purpose and meaning, even if it’s something greater than ourselves. Luna serves as a constant reminder for Harry to see things just a little bit differently, which gives him comfort during a time when he’s not feeling supported by the adults that matter to him, and when no one will believe him that Voldemort has returned.

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As an Idealist, Luna demonstrates a grounding that helps Harry through the last stages of his Horcrux hunt during his seventh year. One of the artifacts he needed to find on his quest was Ravenclaw’s diadem, believed to be lost. Luna helped Harry find it by being willing to ask Ravenclaw’s ghost for her story and to see if she had any ideas where they could look. That conversation gave Harry the clue he needed.

Luna also becomes Harry’s cheerleader. Always a funky dresser, she would show up to his Quidditch matches wearing a large hat designed after Gryffindor’s mascot, the lion, that would roar when his team scored. While it was a little embarrassing for Harry, it was also a welcome relief from the sea of sneers that came from the other sides. As he felt more isolated, she helped bring him back into the fold, giving him the confidence to be the leader of the secret Defense Against the Dark Arts club, Dumbledore’s Army.

Fans resonated with Luna from the first time they met her, but really rallied behind a quote from The Deathly Hallows, in which she tells Harry, “Being different isn’t a bad thing. It means you’re brave enough to be yourself.” In this one quote, Luna gives those struggling with their identities permission to embrace their authenticity. Recognizing that this difference needs support helped the Harry Potter fandom become allies and advocates for safe spaces for fans to feel like they belong. It isn’t for nothing that a number of people credit the Harry Potter series as helping them to come out or to surface aspects of themselves they repressed in order to fit in.

Luna becomes an excellent counterweight to Harry’s central friends Ron and Hermione, because she sees the world differently in exactly the kind of way Harry needs. He was never allowed the space to develop the type of creative thinking and imagination that her perspective provides—so might not have been successful in defeating Voldemort.

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Dr. Priscilla Hobbs is a senior associate dean at Southern New Hampshire University. She is the author of Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials: Identity, Reception, and Politics. Her work takes an interdisciplinary view of Harry Potter, as a series and as a phenomenon, to uncover how the appeal of Harry became a lifestyle, a moral compass, and a guiding light in an era fraught with turbulence and disharmony. She argues that this prepared an entire generation for the chaotic present marked by the 2016 election and 2020 pandemic by shaping the political attitudes of its readers, many of whom were developing their political identities alongside Harry. Her analysis focuses on both the novels themselves and the ways in which fans connect globally through the Internet to discuss the books, commiserate about the events swirling around them, and answer calls to action through Harry Potter-inspired activism. In short, the book examines how Harry Potter became a generation’s defining mythology of love, unity, and transformation. Her recent TEDx talk focuses on transformation and the American Dream.

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