The power began again to read her
Four classic works of religious fantasy and their approaches to character agency.
Certain tropes in fantasy are tricky to execute without robbing your characters of free will. Prophecies. Time travel. A reification of Good and Evil that means that any wrong choice transforms you into a demon.
It gets even trickier the more Christian, or Abrahamic, your fantasy is. If there’s an omnipotent God-analogue in your story, characters really only get to make one choice: obey or fruitlessly defy? And if God is also omniscient, you’ll find that whichever choice you made was All Part of the Plan.
Any genre and worldview has to deal with some variant of this paradox, but it’s at its most acute here, where the nature and moral orientation of the universe is expected to be clearly expressed.
Here’s my favorite way for writers to handle it. Characters should constantly have reason to question their devotion. They should have reason to worry that their values aren’t aligned enough with their deity’s, or motivation to negotiate rather than simply submit. Sometimes the right choice is to rebel, especially if you have a “squeaky wheel gets the grease” sort of deity. And yes, whatever choice they make will turn out to have been foreseen and be part of a vast plan, but that doesn’t invalidate the choice. If you wouldn’t obey an angel’s command to kill your son, God won’t make a plan that depends on you doing so. If you would, He might.
C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a straight Christian allegory, and falls right into many of the patterns I dislike. Heroes have virtue but next to no agency; they’re mostly just there while the Lion does things. The Witch is part of the basic structure of reality, so she doesn’t have much agency either. Only Edmund’s fall feels like a choice. His internal monologue as he betrays his siblings is some of the strongest writing in the book.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is not quite a straight allegory, but it’s still very Christian. His characters have more agency when they’re doing good, or trying to. They’re acting according to the divine plan, but this is clearly a compatibilist universe. Even the substitution of Gollum’s death for Frodo’s is only possible because of Frodo’s earlier mercy. (Gandalf is aesthetically more of a sacrificial Christ than Gollum is, but his sacrifice and resurrection don’t have the same feel of being part of a grand plan.) The agency tends to fall away as soon as somebody gets corrupted. Frodo’s fall, like those of minor villains, happens offscreen. Sauron’s fall happens in a separate book, the Silmarillion—here he’s just pure evil.
Harry Potter (author unknown) is almost as Christian as Lord of the Rings, but it remains ambiguous throughout whether the Big Good manipulating everybody is Headmaster Dumbledore or God (mostly working through Dumbledore). Dumbledore generally seems to be making intricate plans that will work whether or not Harry makes good choices, but will work better the more altruistic Harry is. Harry has various rebellions, mostly small. His gravest sin is when he refuses to shut out, or at least ignore, visions sent by Voldemort (the knowledge of evil?), resulting in the death of someone close to him. Voldemort himself seems broken from the beginning, incapable of anything but evil, at least partially due to him being conceived under mind control.
Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series is my favorite, in no small part because it has the strongest sense of agency. There’s a plan for everyone, but if you’re the sort of person who will make good choices, the plan gets to be more ambitious and ultimately do more good. Thanks to choices made in the first book, even the Devil gets agency. Nita rarely seems to go into anything with her eyes fully open, but she’s always given an opportunity to retract her consent once she knows more, just at a greater cost.
Below, I’ve put together a little reader of excerpts from each story. I’m confining myself to just The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, not the full Chronicles of Narnia, but in the other cases I’m jumping around in the series.
The Call
Ideally, at some point, your hero decides to be a hero. Sure, they can accidentally walk through a magical portal into Narnia, or somebody can burst into their home and say “yer a wizard!” But at some point, they should make a decision to embrace the role laid out for them.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
"But, Mr. Beaver," said Lucy, "can't we - I mean we must do something to save him. It's too dreadful and it's all on my account."
"I don't doubt you'd save him if you could, dearie," said Mrs. Beaver, "but you've no chance of getting into that House against her will and ever coming out alive."
"Couldn't we have some stratagem?" said Peter. "I mean couldn't we dress up as something, or pretend to be - oh, pedlars or anything - or watch till she was gone out - or - oh, hang it all, there must be some way. This Faun saved my sister at his own risk, Mr. Beaver. We can't just leave him to be - to be - to have that done to him."
"It's no good, Son of Adam," said Mr. Beaver, "no good your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move-"
"Oh, yes! Tell us about Aslan!" said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling - like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.
"Who is Aslan?" asked Susan.
"Aslan?" said Mr. Beaver. "Why, don't you know? He's the King. He's the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father's time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He'll settle the White Queen all right. 1
"She won't turn him into stone too?" said Edmund.
"Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say!" answered Mr. Beaver with a great laugh. "Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it'll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He'll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.You'll understand when you see him."
"But shall we see him?" asked Susan.
"Why, Daughter of Eve, that's what I brought you here for. I'm to lead you where you shall meet him," said Mr. Beaver.
"Is-is he a man?" asked Lucy.
"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
"I'm longing to see him," said Peter, "even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point."
"That's right, Son of Adam," said Mr. Beaver, bringing his paw down on the table with a crash that made all the cups and saucers rattle. "And so you shall. Word has been sent that you are to meet him, tomorrow if you can, at the Stone Table.'
"Where's that?" said Lucy.
"I'll show you," said Mr. Beaver. "It's down the river, a good step from here. I'll take you to it!"
"But meanwhile what about poor Mr. Tumnus?" said Lucy.
"The quickest way you can help him is by going to meet Aslan," said Mr. Beaver, "once he's with us, then we can begin doing things. Not that we don't need you too. For that's another of the old rhymes:
When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone
Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,
The evil time will be over and done.
Lord of the Rings:
“None here can do so,” said Elrond gravely. “At least none can foretell what will come to pass, if we take this road or that. But it seems to me now clear which is the road that we must take. The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril-to Mordor. We must send the Ring to the Fire.”
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard,” Cirdan of Mithlond spoke for the first time. “And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
…
Bilbo nodded, “But then who is to go? That seems to me what this Council has to decide, and all that it has to decide. Elves may thrive on speech alone, and Dwarves endure great weariness; but I am only an old hobbit, and I miss my meal at noon. Can’t you think of some names now? Or put it off till after dinner?”
No one answered. The noon-bell rang. Still no one spoke. Frodo glanced at all the faces, but they were not turned to him. All the Council sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought. A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice.2
“I will take the Ring,” he said, “though I do not know the way.”
Harry Potter:
"See Professor Dumbledore?" Professor McGonagall repeated, as though this was a very fishy thing to want to do.
"Why?"
Harry swallowed -- now what? "It's sort of secret," he said, but he wished at once he hadn't, because Professor McGonagall's nostrils flared.
"Professor Dumbledore left ten minutes ago3," she said coldly. "He received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic and flew off for London at once."
"He's gone?" said Harry frantically. "Now?"
"Professor Dumbledore is a very great wizard, Potter, he has many demands on his time -- "
…
"Well, that's it then, isn't it?" Harry said.
The other two stared at him. He was pale and his eyes were glittering.
"I'm going out of here tonight and I'm going to try and get to the Stone first." "You're mad!" said Ron.
"You can't!" said Hermione. "After what McGonagall and Snape have said? You'll be expelled!"
"SO WHAT?" Harry shouted. "Don't you understand? If Snape gets hold of the Stone, Voldemort's coming back! Haven't you heard what it was like when he was trying to take over? There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! Losing points doesn't matter anymore, can't you see? D'you think he'll leave you and your families alone if Gryffindor wins the house cup? If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there, it's only dying a bit later than I would have, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side! I'm going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?" He glared at them.
"You're right, Harry," said Hermione in a small voice.4
Young Wizards:
She ate her supper slowly, for it hurt to chew, and she tried to think about something besides Joanne or that book. The Moon was at first quarter tonight; it would be a good night to take the telescope out and have a look at the shadows in the craters. Or there was that fuzzy little comet, maybe it had more tail than it did last week.
It was completely useless. The book lay there on her bed and stared at her, daring her to do something childlike, something silly, something absolutely ridiculous.
Nita put aside her empty plate, picked up the book, and stared back at it.
“All right,” she said under her breath. “All right.”
She opened the book at random. And on the page to which she opened, there was the Oath.
It was not decorated in any way. It stood there, a plain block of type all by itself in the middle of the page, looking serious and important. Nita read the Oath to herself first, to make sure of the words. Then, quickly, before she could start to feel silly, she read it out loud.
“‘In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake,'” she read, “‘I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so — till Universe’s end.'”
The words seemed to echo slightly, as if the room were larger than it really was. Nita sat very still, wondering what the ordeal would be like, wondering what would happen now. Only the wind spoke softly in the leaves of the trees outside the bedroom window; nothing else seemed to stir anywhere.
The Fall
Somebody’s got to make a deal with the devil at some point. You don’t really have free will if everybody’s all making decisions the same way.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
And now of course you want to know what had happened to Edmund. He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight — and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food. And he had heard the conversation, and hadn’t enjoyed it much either, because he kept on thinking that the others were taking no notice of him and trying to give him the cold shoulder. They weren’t, but he imagined it. And then he had listened until Mr Beaver told them about Aslan and until he had heard the whole arrangement for meeting Aslan at the Stone Table. It was then that he began very quietly to edge himself under the curtain which hung over the door. For the mention of Aslan gave him a mysterious and horrible feeling just as it gave the others a mysterious and lovely feeling.
Just as Mr Beaver had been repeating the rhyme about Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone Edmund had been very quietly turning the door handle; and just before Mr Beaver had begun telling them that the White Witch wasn’t really human at all but half a Jinn and half a giantess, Edmund had got outside into the snow and cautiously closed the door behind him. You mustn’t think that even now Edmund was quite so bad that he actually wanted his brother and sisters to be turned into stone. He did want Turkish Delight and to be a Prince (and later a King) and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didn’t want her to be particularly nice to them — certainly not to put them on the same level as himself; but he managed to believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldn’t do anything very bad to them, “Because,” he said to himself, “all these people who say nasty things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isn’t true. She was jolly nice to me, anyway, much nicer than they are. I expect she is the rightful Queen really. Anyway, she’ll be better than that awful Aslan!” At least, that was the excuse he made in his own mind for what he was doing. It wasn’t a very good excuse, however, for deep down inside him he really knew that the White Witch was bad and cruel.
Lord of the Rings:
The path climbed on, and Sam climbed with it, though heavy and tired. Soon it bent again and with a last eastward course passed in a cutting along the face of the cone and came to the dark door in the Mountain’s side, the door of the Sammath Naur. Far away now rising towards the South the sun, piercing the smokes and haze, burned ominous, a dull bleared disc of red; but all Mordor lay about the Mountain like a dead land, silent, shadow-folded, waiting for some dreadful stroke.
Sam came to the gaping mouth and peered in. It was dark and hot, and a deep rumbling shook the air. “Frodo! Master!” he called. There was no answer. For a moment he stood, his heart beating with wild fears, and then he plunged in. A shadow followed him.
At first he could see nothing. Fearfully he took a few uncertain steps in the dark, and then all at once there came a flash of red that leaped upward, and smote the high black roof. Then Sam saw that he was in a long cave or tunnel that bored into the Mountain’s smoking cone. But only a short way ahead its floor and the walls on either side were cloven by a great fissure, out of which the red glare came, now leaping up, now dying down into darkness; and all the while far below there was a rumour and a trouble as of great engines throbbing and labouring.
The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.
“Master!” cried Sam.
Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.
“I have come,” he said. “But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.5 I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight. Sam gasped, but he found himself unable even to cry out.
Harry Potter:
“Well, spit out what you’ve got to say, because we’re wasting time here!” Harry shouted.
“I’m trying to say — Voldemort knows you, Harry! He took Ginny down into the Chamber of Secrets to lure you there, it’s the kind of thing he does, he knows you’re the — the sort of person who’d go to Sirius’s aid! What if he’s just trying to get you into the Department of Myst — ?”
“Hermione, it doesn’t matter if he’s done it to get me there or not — they’ve taken McGonagall to St. Mungo’s, there isn’t anyone left from the Order at Hogwarts who we can tell, and if we don’t go, Sirius is dead!”
“But Harry — what if your dream was — was just that, a dream?”
Harry let out a roar of frustration. Hermione actually stepped back from him, looking alarmed.
“You don’t get it!” Harry shouted at her. “I’m not having nightmares, I’m not just dreaming! What d’you think all the Occlumency was for, why d’you think Dumbledore wanted me prevented from seeing these things? Because they’re REAL, Hermione — Sirius is trapped — I’ve seen him — Voldemort’s got him, and no one else knows, and that means we’re the only ones who can save him, and if you don’t want to do it, fine, but I’m going, understand? And if I remember rightly, you didn’t have a problem with my saving-people-thing when it was you I was saving from the dementors, or” — he rounded on Ron — “when it was your sister I was saving from the basilisk —”
“I never said I had a problem!” said Ron heatedly.
“But Harry, you’ve just said it,” said Hermione fiercely. “Dumbledore wanted you to learn to shut these things out of your mind, if you’d done Occlumency properly you’d never have seen this —”
“IF YOU THINK I’M JUST GOING TO ACT LIKE I HAVEN’T SEEN —”
“Sirius told you there was nothing more important than you learning to close your mind!”
“WELL, I EXPECT HE’D SAY SOMETHING DIFFERENT IF HE KNEW WHAT I’D JUST —”
The classroom door opened. Harry, Ron, and Hermione whipped around. Ginny walked in, looking curious, followed by Luna, who as usual looked as though she had drifted in accidentally. “Hi,” said Ginny uncertainly. “We recognized Harry’s voice — what are you yelling about?”
“Never you mind,” said Harry roughly.
Young Wizards:
Nita didn't like the sound of that.
“Guys,” she said, “last chance. Agree to stop doing what you're doing, or I must abolish you.” It was the formal phrasing of a wizard who, however reluctantly, discovers that he or she must kill.6
The snarling scaled up; the waters in the pools all around her roiled. Shaking, Nita squeezed and manipulated the power-strands in the kernel until she found the one control sequence that managed the shapes of proteins in this internal space. She stroked it slowly and carefully into a shape that would forbid this kind of viral shape to exist in the local space-time.
“One last chance, guys,” she said.
The snarling only got louder.
Nita took a deep breath, flicked the charm bracelet around to bring the power-feed configuration she'd designed into place, then brought it together with the kernel. “I'm sorry!” she said, and pushed the power in...
And nothing happened.
Nita stared at the kernel, horrified. She tried feeding the necessary power into the kernel again, twisted that particular strand of power until it bit into her fingers—
But that spell is now invalid, said a dark voice inside her. It uses a version of your name that is no longer operational. Your name has changed; you have changed. When you were looking at your mother in the hospital last night, you made up your mind to pay my price, and therefore the spell cannot work.
The Sacrifice
Even when its not a straight allegory, Christian fiction is almost always going to have someone dying to save a sinner, and their sacrifice having profound magical consequences. Once the Christ-analogue dies, the forces of evil don’t stand a chance. The resurrection is optional but standard.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
The rising of the sun had made everything look so different — all colours and shadows were changed that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.
“Not now,” said Aslan.
“You’re not — not a — ?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost.
Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her. “Do I look it?” he said.
“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. And now -”
“Oh yes. Now?” said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.
“Oh, children,” said the Lion, “I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!”
Lord of the Rings:
The fires below awoke in anger, the red light blazed, and all the cavern was filled with a great glare and heat. Suddenly Sam saw Gollum’s long hands draw upwards to his mouth; his white fangs gleamed, and then snapped as they bit. Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire. ‘Precious, precious, precious!’ Gollum cried. ‘My Precious! O my Precious!’ And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.
…
‘Yes,’ said Frodo. ‘But do you remember Gandalf’s words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him!’
Harry Potter:
“But you’re dead.” said Harry.
“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.
“Then . . . I’m dead too?”
“Ah,” said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. “That is the question, isn’t it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.”
They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.
“Not?” repeated Harry.
“Not,” said Dumbledore.
“But . . . ” Harry raised his hand instinctively towards the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. “But I should have died— I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!”
“And that,” said Dumbledore, “will, I think, have made all the difference.”
Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palpably, content.
“Explain,” said Harry.
“But you already know,” said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.
“I let him kill me,” said Harry. “Didn’t I?”
“You did,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Go on!”
Young Wizards:
One by one, finding one another by song, the other Celebrants breached and began to gather around them. Neither Kit nor Nita had any words for them until, last of the group, S’reee surfaced and blew in utter weariness. She looked at Nita. “Areinnye—”
“Gone,” Kit said.
“And the Master-Shark—”
“The Sacrifice,” Nita said, “was accepted.”
There was silence as the Celebrants looked at each other. “Well,” S’reee said, “the Sea has definitely never seen a Song quite like this—”
…
She didn’t answer questions when she got home. She did eat; and then she went to her room and fell onto her bed, as Kit had done in his room across the hall, to get some sleep. But before she dropped off, Nita pulled her manual out from its spot under her pillow and opened it to one of the general data supply areas. “I want a readout on all the blank-check wizardries done in this area in the last six months,” she said. “And what their results were.”
The list came up. It was short, as she’d known it would be. The second-to-last entry on the list said:
BCX 85/003—CALLAHAN, Juanita L., and RODRIGUEZ, Christopher K.: open-ended “Mobius spell” implementation.
Incurred: 5/25/08
Paid: 7/15/08, by willing substitution. See “Current Events” précis for details.Nita put the book back under her pillow, and quietly, bitterly, started to get caught up on her crying.
The Devil
While the Big Good rarely makes house calls, the Devil tends to have an active presence. The Witch personally tempts Edmund with imported fudge. Sauron controls his minions through magic rings and corrupts others through crystal balls. Voldemort shows up to accidentally defeat himself at least once a book. And the Lone Power plays many roles, in many guises, in Young Wizards. Some shards of it even achieve repentance and redemption.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the firestones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Beaver. “So that’s how you came to imagine yourself a queen — because you were the Emperor’s hangman. I see.”
“Peace, Beaver,” said Aslan, with a very low growl.
“And so,” continued the Witch, “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
“Come and take it then,” said the Bull with the man’s head in a great bellowing voice.
“Fool,” said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, “do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.7”
“It is very true,” said Aslan, “I do not deny it.”
“Oh, Aslan!” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear, “can’t we — I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”
“Work against the Emperor’s Magic?” said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.8
Lord of the Rings:
And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.
Harry Potter:
“But before you try to kill me, I’d advise you to think about what you’ve done. . . . Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle. . . .”9
“What is this?” Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry saw his pupils contact to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.
“It’s your one last chance,” said Harry, “it’s all you’ve got left. . . . I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise. . . . Be a man . . . try . . . Try for some remorse. . . .”
“You dare—?” said Voldemort again.
Young Wizards:
As the power began again to read her, she could hear it reading Kit too, his voice matching hers as it had in their first wizardry, small and thin and brave, and choked with grief like hers. She couldn’t stop crying, and the power burned in her tears too, an odd hot feeling, as she cried bitterly for Fred, for Kit’s Lotus, for everything horrible that had happened all that day—all the fair things skewed, all the beauty twisted by the dark Lone Power watching on his steed. If only there were some way he could be otherwise if he wanted to—for here was his name, a long splendid flow of syllables in the Speech, wild and courageous in its own way—and it said that he had not always been so hostile; that he got tired sometimes of being wicked, but his pride and his fear of being ridiculed would never let him stop. Never, forever, said the symbol at the very end of his name, the closed circle that binds spells into an unbreakable cycle and indicates lives bound the same way.
Kit was still reading. Nita turned her head in that nova moonlight and looked over her shoulder at the one who watched—His face was set, and bitter still, but weary. He knew he was about to be cast out again, frustrated again; and he knew that because of what he had bound himself into being, he would never know fulfillment of any kind. Nita looked back down to the reading, feeling sorry even for him, opened her mouth and along with Kit began to say his name.
Don’t be afraid to make corrections!
Whether the voice came from her memory or was a last whisper from the blinding new star far above, Nita never knew. But she knew what to do. While Kit was still on the first part of the name she pulled out her pen, her best pen that Fred had saved and changed. She clicked it open, The metal still tingled against her skin, the ink at the point still glittered oddly—the same glitter as the ink with which the bright Book was written, Nita bent quickly over the Book and, with the pen, in lines of light, drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upward, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen—if, only if—and together they finished the Starsnuffer’s name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real.
Here the protagonists try to take on more agency than the world has room for. I think we’re meant to see this as virtuous, but ignorant. Their role, essential for ineffable reasons, is really is basically just to be there while Aslan does things.
This phrasing complicates the moment, as I think it’s supposed to. It feels like this is the first and most important free decision Frodo makes, but also that the decision, in some sense, comes from either the voice of Good within him or from the new person he’s becoming in response to this moment.
“Aslan’s out of the office, kids. You’re going to have to defeat the Witch yourselves.”
The moment when you choose to answer the Call, you speak in a small voice. Harry has been marked since he was a child, but Hermione could walk away at any time, and never does.
Arguably, the pivotal sin came slightly earlier, when he apparently uses the Ring’s power of control for the first time. That’s a theme in the others, too—the decision that corrupts you is different from your first overt sin.
I don’t think this is meant to be a sin, although it’s very unusual in the series.
This strongly implies that she literally can’t repent, because doing so would destroy the world.
In other words, don’t defy God even if it means complicity in people getting tortured. Ratfic is very often a reaction to this dynamic. As far as I know, nobody writes ratfic of Young Wizards, because it doesn’t have this category of “problem.”
Voldemort’s soul has been dying in pieces, and Harry’s seen that the shards that die unrepentant have a bad time in the afterlife.