Harry Potter: 15 Years Later, a Non-Canon Scene Stands as the Best of the Series

I was driving my daughter home from seeing Wicked: For Good last night (a pretty enjoyable experience in my book - the very last shot of the movie is going to stick with me for quite a while) and loaded up Apple Music, as I often do on long car rides in the dark when my 8-year-old passenger is conked out after two-plus hours of binging M&M and Icees. About halfway through the drive, a song I put into heavy rotation more than a decade ago came on: “O Children,” a 6-minute 50-second ode to life, sorrow, and the slow march of time, by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

I’m not what you would call a huge Nick Cave fan. I haven’t spent a ton of time listening to his catalogue. I find his music enjoyable, but it’s not something I seek out on a regular basis. Except for “O Children.”

I ended up adding the song to my music library for one reason alone: it was featured prominently in 2010’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (in my book the second-best Harry Potter film, runner-up only to Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). I remember seeing the movie in a theater the day it was released exactly 15 years ago today and immediately Googling “What song do Harry and Hermione dance to?” on my Blackberry.

A decade and a half after the movie’s debut, that scene, a 2-minute non-canon sojourn that barrels through grief, joy, and the heavy burden of young adulthood, stands as the single best moment of the entire eight-film Harry Potter cinematic experience.

Let’s set the scene: six-and-a-half movies in, Voldemort is on his way to complete and total power. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) have discovered that the surest way to defeat the Dark Lord is by hunting down and destroying six Horcruxes, physical objects containing pieces of Voldemort’s soul. They find and steal one - a locket - early in the film and take turns carrying it while trying to figure out how to destroy it. After wearing the locket, Ron’s mood darkens as his jealousy of Harry and Hermione’s relationship surges. And so he disapparates and leaves his friends behind.

Harry and Hermione sit alone in a tent, despondent and searching for what to do next. Slowly, “O Children” begins playing on a staticky radio - a jarring moment given that “real-world” music and other media (outside of a few news reports) haven’t appeared in the Harry Potter universe thus far. Harry removes the locket from Hermione’s neck and pulls her into a dance. Their faces slowly morph into smiles and they take turns spinning each other around as the music crescendos.

O children

Lift up your voice, lift up your voice.

Children

Rejoice, rejoice.

Hey, little train, we are all jumping on

The train that goes to the Kingdom.

We're happy, Ma, we're having fun

And the train ain't even left the station.

Hey, little train, wait for me!

I once was blind, but now I see.

Have you left a seat for me?

Is that such a stretch of the imagination?

Hey little train, wait for me!

I was held in chains, but now I'm free.

I'm hanging in there, don't you see?

In this process of elimination.

Hey little train, we are all jumping on.

The train that goes to the Kingdom.

We're happy, Ma, we're having fun.

It's beyond my wildest expectation.

As the song fades out, Harry and Hermione embrace and slip back into the reality of the challenges ahead. The scene is exceptional not just because it lets the audience off the hook for just a moment from the relentless strife of the movie’s central conflict, but also because it grounds the entire film.

Harry and Hermione’s dance reminds the audience that trauma and death (magical or otherwise), political violence, and just being a human being in the world have real stakes, both physical and emotional, that affect adults, children, and teenagers alike.

The entire Harry Potter series is fantastical and escapist - that’s kind of the point. But the brilliance of the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 dance scene is in its normalcy. Tasked with an impossible mission and weighed down by far-reaching and everyday burdens alike, Harry and Hermione do what teenagers do: they look for an escape, however brief, and dance.

I’ve seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 at least 50 times - probably more - over the past 15 years, but I rarely start it up on purpose because the film comes on TV all the time, especially during the holidays. The movie is so familiar and comforting that it often serves as background noise when my wife and I are cooking dinner or folding laundry or wrangling kids before bedtime.

But when that somber tune from Nick Cave comes on, I almost always stop and stare at the screen for a few moments, rapt by the routine brilliance of two friends dancing to a damned good song. In today’s age of second screens and casual viewing, that’s no small task.