Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2

The film begins almost exactly where Part 1 ended. Harry knows that Bellatrix Lestrange reacted with terror when she discovered the Sword of Gryffindor at Malfoy Manor, leading him to suspect that something important is hidden inside her Gringotts vault.

With Hermione disguised as Bellatrix and Griphook reluctantly helping them, the trio break into the wizarding bank.

It quickly becomes one of their most chaotic plans.

Bellatrix's vault is protected by a curse that makes everything inside multiply when touched, burying Harry, Ron, and Hermione beneath an ever-growing mountain of treasure. Among it they find what Harry has been searching for: Helga Hufflepuff's cup, another piece of Voldemort's soul.

Getting into Gringotts was difficult. Getting out requires something considerably less subtle.

They escape on the back of the bank's imprisoned dragon, smashing their way through the building and flying out over London.

It is a spectacular opening, but more importantly, Harry now understands something Voldemort doesn't realise: he can sense the Dark Lord's growing fear.

Voldemort knows someone is hunting his Horcruxes.

Harry's connection with Voldemort reveals that another Horcrux is hidden at Hogwarts.

Returning to the castle should feel comforting. Instead, Harry finds a school transformed by Voldemort's rule.

Severus Snape is headmaster. Students live beneath constant intimidation. Fear has replaced the warmth that once defined Hogwarts.

Harry's arrival changes that immediately.

When Snape confronts the assembled students and demands to know who has helped Harry enter the castle, Harry steps out from the crowd. Then the doors open and the resistance arrives behind him.

Professor McGonagall finally gets the confrontation the audience had been waiting for, forcing Snape from the Great Hall before turning her attention to the defence of Hogwarts.

Maggie Smith gets one of the film's best moments when McGonagall brings the castle's stone guardians to life and allows herself the smallest bit of excitement at finally using the spell.

For a few seconds, it feels like the Hogwarts we remember.

Then Voldemort's army arrives.

The protective barrier surrounding Hogwarts gives the defenders only a little time.

Professors, students and members of the Order prepare for an attack they know they may not survive. Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, the Weasleys and countless familiar faces take their places throughout the castle.

Then the barrier falls.

The Battle of Hogwarts is effective because the location means something to us. These aren't anonymous buildings being destroyed for spectacle. They're corridors we've walked through for years. The Great Hall, the courtyards and the staircases have histories attached to them.

Seeing Hogwarts torn apart makes the battle personal before the casualties are even revealed.

The film also resists turning every death into an elaborate farewell. Some characters simply don't make it.

Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks lie beside one another in the Great Hall. Fred Weasley is surrounded by his devastated family.

War has finally reached the place everyone once believed was safe.

Harry still has a job to do while Hogwarts collapses around him.

His search for the Horcrux hidden inside the castle leads him to Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost known to generations of students as the Grey Lady. She reveals the history of her mother's lost diadem and eventually helps Harry understand where Voldemort concealed it.

The answer takes him back to the Room of Requirement.

Draco Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle follow, leading to a confrontation amid decades of abandoned possessions. When cursed fire consumes the room, the Horcrux is destroyed in the chaos.

Harry even saves Draco.

After everything between them — years of rivalry, Draco's role in allowing Death Eaters into Hogwarts and his family's allegiance to Voldemort — Harry still refuses to leave him to die.

It is a small decision in the middle of an enormous battle, but one that says a great deal about the difference between Harry and the enemy he is trying to defeat.

Voldemort has become increasingly frustrated with the Elder Wand.

He possesses the most powerful wand in existence, yet it doesn't seem to truly belong to him. His conclusion is simple: Snape killed Dumbledore; therefore, Snape must be the wand's master.

And so Voldemort kills him.

It is only after Harry reaches the dying Snape that the truth begins to emerge.

Snape gives Harry his memories and asks him to look at him. Harry then returns to Dumbledore's Pensieve, where years of assumptions about Severus Snape are dismantled in minutes.

The man Harry spent much of his life hating was far more complicated than he ever understood.

Snape loved Lily Potter.

That fact reshapes almost everything Harry believed about him.

His bitterness towards James Potter was real. His cruelty towards Harry was often real too. But so was the danger he repeatedly placed himself in after Lily's death.

Snape became Dumbledore's agent inside Voldemort's ranks. His killing of Dumbledore wasn't the betrayal Harry believed it to be, but part of a plan agreed between them after Dumbledore had already been fatally cursed.

The silver doe that led Harry to the Sword of Gryffindor came from Snape.

And his Patronus remained the same as Lily's.

When Dumbledore asks whether he still loves her after all those years, Snape answers with a single word:

“Always.”

It became one of the defining moments of the entire film series because it transforms a character without pretending he was ever simple. Snape wasn't secretly warm or gentle. He was bitter, damaged, courageous and capable of extraordinary loyalty all at once.

But his memories contain an even more devastating revelation.

Harry himself is a Horcrux.

When Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby, a fragment of his damaged soul attached itself to the only living thing in the room.

Harry.

Dumbledore had understood the implication long before Harry did. Voldemort cannot be completely destroyed while that fragment remains alive.

Harry must allow Voldemort to kill him.

There is no grand speech when Harry understands this. He simply leaves the castle and walks towards the Forbidden Forest.

That restraint is what makes the sequence work.

For years, Harry has survived because other people sacrificed themselves for him. His mother. Sirius. Dumbledore. Dobby. Lupin. Tonks. Fred.

Now he chooses to walk towards death himself.

Before entering the forest, Harry uses the Resurrection Stone and is joined by the people he has lost. James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin walk beside him.

They cannot save him.

They can only make sure he doesn't walk alone.

Harry reaches Voldemort and makes no attempt to defend himself.

Voldemort casts the Killing Curse.

Harry wakes somewhere that resembles King's Cross station, except everything is bright, empty and strangely peaceful.

Dumbledore is waiting.

Their conversation gives Harry — and the audience — answers to questions that have followed the final films. Dumbledore acknowledges his mistakes, explains more about the connection between Harry and Voldemort and gives Harry a choice.

He can move on.

Or he can return.

Harry chooses to go back.

Voldemort has destroyed the fragment of his own soul living inside Harry, not Harry himself. And because Voldemort used Harry's blood when he returned to physical form, the protection created by Lily's sacrifice still binds them together.

For the first time, Harry is no longer Voldemort's accidental Horcrux.

He is simply Harry.

Believing Harry to be dead, Voldemort returns to Hogwarts expecting surrender.

Instead, Neville Longbottom steps forward.

It is one of the most satisfying character arcs in the series. The nervous boy introduced in Philosopher's Stone has grown into someone willing to face Voldemort when everyone around him believes the war is already lost.

Harry reveals that he is alive, the battle erupts again, and Neville eventually draws the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat.

His target is Nagini.

With one strike, Neville destroys Voldemort's final Horcrux.

The boy who once struggled to remember a password has become one of the people responsible for making Voldemort mortal.

The final confrontation comes down to something Voldemort has consistently failed to understand.

The Elder Wand never truly belonged to Snape.

Draco became its master when he disarmed Dumbledore on the Astronomy Tower. Harry later defeated Draco at Malfoy Manor, meaning the wand's allegiance passed to him.

Voldemort is trying to kill Harry with a wand that recognises Harry as its true master.

Their final spells collide.

The Elder Wand refuses to kill Harry; Voldemort's curse rebounds, and the Dark Lord finally dies.

There is no Horcrux left to preserve him.

No resurrection waiting.

No fragment of soul hidden somewhere else.

Tom Riddle, after spending his entire life trying to conquer death, is finally mortal.

And Harry survives.

The series finishes at King's Cross.

But this time Harry isn't an eleven-year-old boy staring in amazement at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

He and Ginny are parents. Ron and Hermione have a family of their own. Their children are preparing to board the Hogwarts Express.

Harry's son Albus Severus is frightened that he might be sorted into Slytherin. Harry reassures him by explaining that one of the men he was named after was a Slytherin — and one of the bravest people Harry ever knew.

The train pulls away.

For a series that spent so much time dealing with death, the final scene is appropriately about life continuing.

Ending a series this large was never going to be easy.

By 2011, audiences had spent a decade watching Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson grow alongside the characters they played. Hogwarts had become one of cinema's most recognisable locations, while supporting characters who might once have seemed insignificant had accumulated years of history.

Deathly Hallows – Part 2 succeeds because it understands that history matters.

Neville's courage matters because we remember the frightened child he used to be. Snape's memories matter because we've spent years distrusting him. The destruction of Hogwarts matters because we remember when simply seeing its Great Hall felt magical.

And Harry's decision to walk into the Forbidden Forest matters because we remember the boy who once desperately wanted somewhere to belong.

The series began with Harry discovering that another world existed beyond the cupboard under the stairs.

It ends with him sending his own children into that world.

For Harry Potter, the journey is finally over.