youngwizards_dw | Nita and Kit vs. Harry Potter (Reply)

My friend

handelian asked me in my own LJ whether I thought the Young Wizards books were as good as Harry Potter, or better, or what. After thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided I'd try to answer her question here as our inaugural post.

I read the first Young Wizards book probably when I was in my twenties, and I have kept up with the series eagerly ever since. (I didn't let "growing up" interfere with my enjoyment of good literature, whichever department of the store or library may own it.) I read the first three Potter books shortly before GoF came out and not long after the unexpected suicide of a co-worker, someone not in my department who was known and loved by pretty much everybody in the whole damned system.

I would say that the chief difference between YW and HP is in the treatment of Evil. In the YW evil is embodied in the Lone Power, who is essentially the same as Lucifer in Christian lore or Melkor/Morgoth in Tolkien's Silmarillion: An angelic being who rebelled against the community of angels, created death and entropy, and works to make other beings as unhappy as he is. Duane's protagonists, Nita and Kit, confront the Lone Power directly on more than one occasion, survive, and even succeed, but always at a cost, by a sacrifice. With the sacrifice comes the knowledge that an echo or shadow of the Lone Power is present in every sentient being, in every species which, as humanity did, gave in to the Deceiver's temptation and accepted death. Nita and Kit must confront Evil not merely in an external adversary, but within their own hearts.

In HP Evil is represented by Voldemort, the Dark Lord. Voldemort was formerly an ordinary (or not so ordinary) wizard named Tom Riddle, of mixed Muggle and wizard parentage. Since his unexpected defeat when the curse he cast on the infant Harry rebounded on himself, he is unlovely, barely human, and as of the last two books, existing in a borrowed body created by dark magic from bits and pieces of other bodies. Voldemort's lust for power and hatred of mixed-blood wizards are explained, somewhat inadequately, by his background as a Muggleborn orphan educated at Hogwarts but forced to live in a Muggle orphanage during the summer holidays, much as Harry is forced to live with the Dursleys. His followers all seem to be pureblood wizards possessed of a good deal of wealth and of status within the wizard community; they also, judging from OotP, to be rather stereotypically Bad Villains who carry on operatically rather than really getting bad deeds done. Lucius Malfoy is perhaps the most *organized* of the Death Eaters, and Delores Umbridge, a Ministry official who teaches Defense against the Dark Arts in OotP, is, to me, much scarier than Voldemort and all his pomps and all his works.

At the end of OotP we learn that Harry must either kill Voldemort or die trying, according to the terms of a prophecy which predicted Harry's birth and danger to the Dark Lord. If Harry Potter lived in the YW universe, I am certain that the only way he could defeat Voldemort would be to sacrifice himself. Again and again, Nita and Kit place their lives on the line, and their or another character's willingness to die is what saves the day. Their Adversary cannot be defeated in a showy battle of spells cast and magical fireworks, because he lives inside their hearts as much as anywhere else. In the third YW book, High Wizardry, Nita's little sister Dairine defeats the Lone Power by finding compassion for it in *her* heart; she understands that for all his tortured Byronic hero posturings, what he really wants is to Go Home to the Light.

Will we eventually discover that what Voldemort, too, wants is to go home to the Light and be loved for what he is? Somehow I doubt it--and it is that difference, in my opinion, which makes the Young Wizards series superior to Harry Potter.