Who gave Harry Potter the Invisibility Cloak in the Sorcerer’s Stone?

Content Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide.

There’s no shortage of mysterious magical objects in the world of “Harry Potter,” but one item that Harry Potter himself (played by Daniel Radcliffe in the film franchise) uses and uses frequently is the Cloak of Invisibility, which – true to its name – allows Harry to disappear under it at any time. A time when he needs to move discreetly throughout Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (Harry, to be honest, does this all the time, which is probably why he gets detained and loses house points to Gryffindor on a fairly regular basis.) In the final book (and final two-part film), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The cloak comes in handy when Harry and his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) travel the wizarding world to find Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Horcruxes – magical items containing pieces of the Dark Lord’s soul – and destroy them. So what’s the deal with the cloak?

It’s not fully explained how the cloak works, but that’s not the point here. How did Harry get the cloak, and how does it relate to his family (and a famous children’s story)? What journey did this magical artifact take before Harry was born, and why did it end up with him after all was said and done? Let’s dig deeper.

Before Harry officially begins his studies at Hogwarts – and is sorted into Gryffindor alongside Ron and Hermione in the process – he picks up some essentials for his education, including a wand, a pet owl named Hedwig, and several magical textbooks and potion ingredients. . Like all of his peers, he does not arrive for his first year at Hogwarts with a cloak that makes him invisible, but during his first Christmas in the castle, he receives a mysterious package containing one with a mysterious note: “Your father left this cloak in my possession before he died, and it is time to return it.” To you.

Harry does just that, using the cloak to wander Hogwarts at night to try to discover the identity of Nicholas Flamel, a man mentioned in passing by Harry’s friend and Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (the late Robbie Coltrane in the films). Hidden in the depths of the school (which is, of course, The Sorcerer’s Stone – or the Philosopher’s Stone, depending on where you live). One night, while wandering, Harry discovered the Mirror of Erised and saw the reflections of his family within it; When Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris in the first two films) discovers him there, Dumbledore advises him not to “dream too much.” This all means that Dumbledore and the cloak are related – and that it was Dumbledore who left Harry the cloak at Christmas. But why?

Dumbledore tells Harry, at the end of the first book and movie, that he put the cloak under the Christmas tree – which is why he got it in the first place. In the Deathly Hallows version of the book, Dumbledore dies in the prequel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” but emerges to see Harry in a kind of liminal space after Harry allows Voldemort to “kill” him – looking deeply into why he got the cloak that was Owned by Harry’s father James Potter (Michael Gambon plays Dumbledore in these films; Richard Harris died in 2002).

“I have guessed, I know, why the cloak was in my possession the night your parents died,” Dumbledore tells Harry in the novel, explaining that he was inspired to research the Deathly Hallows legend after hearing about them for years:

“James showed it to me only a few days ago. He explained many of his errors that had not been discovered in school! I could not believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the saints, but I could not resist, and I did not I couldn’t help but take a closer look… It was a cloak the likes of which I had never seen before, so ancient, perfect in every way… And then your father died, and I had two Sacred Ones in me at last, all to myself!”

The other is Halo Dumbledore refers to It’s the old stickwhich he won in a duel against Grindelwald years ago.

In the novel The Deathly Hallows and the first half of the film adaptation, Harry, Ron, and Hermione head to the home of Xenophilius Lovegood (Rhys Ifans) — editor of the offbeat publication The Quibbler and father of their Hogwarts classmate Luna (Evanna Lynch) — to find out… The mysterious Deathly Hallowsat which point Xenophilius tells them that the truth lies in a children’s book left to Hermione in Dumbledore’s will. In “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”, there is a story called “The Tale of the Three Brothers” which Hermione read aloud, in which three brothers (duh) were walking together one evening, and thanks to their magical ability, they built a bridge to cross a dangerous river. When Death appears before them, angry that they have thwarted him, he grants a wish for each of them.

The eldest brother asks for an unbeatable wand, the middle asks for a stone to bring the dead back to life, and the youngest asks for a cloak that will protect him from death. Unfortunately for the first two brothers, their arrogance eventually gets the better of them; The eldest brother has his throat cut with a stick, and the middle one commits suicide after conjuring the faint spirit of the woman he once loved using the stone. Meanwhile, the younger brother remains invisible to Death until he reaches the end of his life – and when he feels ready, he passes the mantle to his son and embraces Death.

When Hermione pointed out that many cloaks could render the wearer invisible, Xenophilius responded, “We’re talking about a cloak that renders the wearer completely invisible, and lasts forever, providing constant and impenetrable invisibility, no matter what spells are cast.” . In it.” As it happens, this exactly How does Harry’s cloak work…which means he’s had a sacred one in his possession since he was 11 years old.

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Wait, how is James Potter dealing with all of this? As Dumbledore explains to Harry when they are hanging out in the endless void at the end of Deathly Hallows, the three brothers from the tale He was Real – and their last name was Peverell. “Whether they met death in a lonely way… I think it is more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply talented and dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating such powerful objects,” Dumbledore told Harry. “The story of their being Deathly Hallows seems to me like some kind of legend that might have arisen around such creations. The mantle has been passed, as you now know, through the ages, from father to son, from mother to daughter, down to the last living descendants of Ignotus, Who was born, like Ignotus, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.

So there you have it: James Potter is descended from the Peverell family, a fact Harry realizes early in Deathly Hallows as he and Hermione visit Godric’s Hole at Christmastime to find out where his parents are buried. Ignotus happens to be the youngest of the brothers – with Antioch as the eldest and Cadmus as the middle child – and as the only one to have lived a naturally long life, he was the only brother to have grandchildren… one of whom is Harry.

So what does Harry do with the Invisibility Cloak during his time at Hogwarts? A Lots of thingsIn reality! In “The Sorcerer’s Stone” alone, Harry uses it to visit the restricted section of the Hogwarts Library, find the Mirror of Erised, smuggle an illegal baby dragon to the top of the Astronomy Tower on Hagrid’s behalf, and get closer to Fluffy, the Three-Headed One. A dog guards the trapdoor that leads to the stone itself. In the third book and movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is not allowed to visit Hogsmeade with his friends anymore. His evil aunt and uncle He refused to sign the permission slip – so guess how he sneaks into the small village to hang out with his friends? (That’s right: the cloak.) In the same episode, Harry, Ron, and Hermione use it to secretly enter the Shrieking Shack, discover the truth about James’ former friends Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black (Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman), and later, sneak in using the Time-Turner to help Sirius escape From execution.

I could go on, but the point is that Harry uses the Invisibility Cloak to sneak, eavesdrop, and trick people… As for the narrative device, it’s definitely cool when you consider that it allows Harry to learn information. Which the reader also needs. (The books are told from Harry’s point of view, so with that in mind, the cloak is basically indispensable from a storytelling perspective.) If you’d like to watch Harry rock the Invisibility Cloak on screen, the movies are streaming on Peacock now.