the thing that was making the noise

In Chapter 35 of the final book of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – spoiler alert – Harry awakens after having sacrificed himself to his enemy, Lord Voldemort. Voldemort performs the killing curse on Harry – but Harry goes to an in-between spiritual space that looks like a scrubbed-clean version of Kings Cross Station in London.

At first he’s just trying to figure out where he is and what’s happened; then, he hears a flapping noise. He tuns and sees, under a bench, a figure with “the form of a naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking … shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.”

Harry’s teacher Dumbledore appears, and explains that the small figure is the part of Voldemort’s soul that had been inside Harry – and that now that Voldemort tried to kill Harry, he inadvertently killed that part of himself. “He destroyed it,” Dumbledore says. “Your soul is whole, and completely your own.”

Voldemort, a wizard obsessed with living forever, had heard a prophecy that a child would destroy him someday, and, believing the infant son of James and Lily Potter was that child, he decided to kill Harry. But instead of dying, Harry survived.

Yet throughout Harry’s life, and especially as Harry grew into his selfhood as a wizard and a young man, there was always a connection between him and the Dark Lord who tried to kill him. Many times Harry feels conflicted, confused – in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he asks his godfather, Sirius, “This connection between me and Voldemort … what if the reason for it is that I am becoming more like him? I just feel so angry, all the time. What if after everything that I’ve been through, something’s gone wrong inside me?”

Partly, Harry is angry all the time because he’s 15. But Harry is expressing the same thing many of us feel when we sense that there is a part of us, that is guiding our behaviors and beliefs, which doesn’t belong to us. As if something else is inside us. Some other voice or influence. In Harry’s case, it is literally an energy that belonged to someone else: Voldemort.

A story work exploration takes us to our own Kings Cross Station so we can see the thing that’s been making the noise within us. Harry has wondered for years what was “wrong” with him; now he sees it. And, now that it’s outside himself, he can see that it’s not about him, at all; it’s something that was projected into him by someone else, someone’s fears and story.

Harry and Dumbledore talk about what Harry might do now, to go confront Voldemort. Harry has already done the bravest possible thing: he has faced his fear, and is willing to die. All the great spiritual traditions call for the death of our egos, our preferences, and our attachments in this world. That’s what this kind of death is. And all the great spiritual traditions promise that when we are open to dying, to letting go, the new life that comes is far more rich and satisfying.

Before long, Rowling says, “the whimpering of the creature behind them barely disturbed Harry anymore.” That’s what happens when we are brave. When we are willing to look at the thing within us – and place it outside ourselves. Then we can see it – without its having the ability to manipulate or deceive us any further.