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

Content Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide.

There’s no shortage of mysterious magical objects in the “Harry Potter” universe, but one of the items most often worn and used by Harry Potter himself (played by Daniel Radcliffe in the film series) is the Cloak of Invisibility, which – truly His name allows Harry to disappear under it at any time when he needs to move discreetly through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (Harry does this all the time, to be fair, which is probably why he gets detentions and loses house points for Gryffindor fairly regularly.) The final book (and the final two-part film) states: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows proves The cloak comes in handy when Harry and his two best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) travel through the wizarding world to kill Voldemort (Ralph). To find Fiennes) Horcruxes – magical items that contain parts of the Dark Lord’s soul – and destroy them. So what’s with the cloak?

It’s never fully explained how the cloak works, but that’s not important here. How did Harry get the cloak and how does it connect to his family line (and a famous children’s story)? What journey did this magical artifact take before Harry was even born, and why does it ultimately end up with him? Let’s dive in.

Before Harry officially begins his studies at Hogwarts – and is sorted into Gryffindor along with Ron and Hermione – he acquires a few important things for his education, including a magic wand, a pet owl named Hedwig, and lots of magical textbooks and potion ingredients. Like all of his peers, he does not arrive at Hogwarts for his first year with a cloak that makes him invisible, but for his first Christmas in the castle he receives a mysterious package containing a cloak along with a cryptic note: “Your father. “ I left this cloak in my possession before his death. It’s time to give it back to you.

Harry does just that, wandering around Hogwarts at night with the cloak to discover the identity of Nicolas Flamel, a man fleetingly mentioned by Harry’s friend and Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (the late Robbie Coltrane in the films) in connection with a treasure is hidden in the depths of the school (which of course the philosopher’s stone – or the philosopher’s stone, depending on where you live). One night while wandering, Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised and sees reflections of his family in it. When he is discovered there by Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris in the first two films), Dumbledore advises him not to “dwell in dreams.” This all means that Dumbledore and the cloak have a connection – and Dumbledore is the one who left Harry the cloak on Christmas. But why?

Dumbledore tells Harry at the end of the first book and movie that he put the cloak under the Christmas tree – and here’s why he had it in the first place. In the book version of The Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore – who died in the previous installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – but shows up to see Harry in some kind of liminal space after Harry allows Voldemort to “kill “. “It goes into great depth as to why he came into possession of the cloak that belonged to Harry’s father, James Potter. (Michael Gambon plays Dumbledore in these films; Richard Harris died in 2002.)

“You guessed, I know why the cloak was in my possession the night your parents died,” Dumbledore says to Harry in the novel, explaining that he was inspired to search for the sacred hallows of legend, after hearing about them for years:

“James had only shown it to me a few days before. It explained many of his undetected transgressions at school! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it to examine it. I had long since given up on my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I couldn’t resist, couldn’t help but take a closer look… It was a cloak the likes of which I had never seen before, immensely old, perfect in every way.. . and then your father died, and at last I had two shrines all to myself!”

The other Hallow that Dumbledore is referring to is the Elder Wandwhich he won years earlier in a duel against Grindelwald.

In the novel “The Deathly Hallows” and in the first half of the film adaptation, Harry, Ron and Hermione go to the house of Xenophilius Lovegood (Rhys Ifans) – editor of the unusual publication “The Quibbler” and father of their Hogwarts classmate Luna (Evanna Lynch ) – to find out more about it the mysterious Deathly Hallowswhereupon 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” that Hermione reads aloud and in which one evening three brothers (duh) go for a walk together and, thanks to their magical abilities, build a bridge to cross a dangerous one Flow. When Death appears before them, angry that they have thwarted him, he grants each of them a wish.

The eldest brother asks for an unbeatable magic wand, the middle one for a stone that can bring the dead back to life, and the youngest for a cloak that will protect him from death. Unfortunately for the first two brothers, their hubris ends up getting the better of them; The eldest brother has his throat cut for the wand, and the middle brother takes his own life after using the stone to summon the weak spirit of the woman he once loved. Meanwhile, the youngest brother remains invisible to Death until he reaches the end of his life – and when he feels ready, he passes the cloak to his son and embraces Death.

When Hermione points out that many cloaks can make the wearer invisible, will.” about it.” Coincidentally, that’s how it is Exactly how Harry’s cloak works… which means he’s had one of the Hallows in his possession since he was 11.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call 988, text or chat 988lifeline.org

Wait, how does James Potter factor into all this? As Dumbledore explains to Harry as they hang out in the vast void at the end of Deathly Hallows, the three brothers from the story was real – and her last name was Peverell. “Whether they met death on a lonely road… I think it’s more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who managed to create these powerful objects,” Dumbledore tells Harry. “The story of them being the Deathly Hallows seems to me to be the kind of legend that might have arisen around such creations. As you now know, the Cloak traveled through the centuries, from father to son, from mother to daughter, all the way to…” Ignotus’ last living descendant, who, like Ignotus, was born in the village of Godric’s Hollow.

So there you have it: James Potter is descended from the Peverells, a fact that Harry realizes much earlier in Deathly Hallows when he and Hermione visit Godric’s Hollow at Christmastime to see 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 since he was the only one who naturally lived a long life, he was the only brother with descendants… one of them being Harry .

So what does Harry do with the cloak of invisibility during his time at Hogwarts? A a whole lot of stuffStrictly speaking! In “The Philosopher’s Stone” alone, Harry uses it to visit the inaccessible area 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 meet Fluffy the Three-Headed One , approaching a dog guarding a trapdoor that leads to the stone itself. In the third book and film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is no longer allowed to visit Hogsmeade Village with his friends his evil aunt and uncle refuses to sign a permission slip – guess how he sneaks into the village to hang out with his friends? (That’s right: the cloak.) In the same part, Harry, Ron, and Hermione use it to secretly enter the Shrieking Shack, find out the truth about James’ former friends Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black (Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman), and sneak later with a time turner to help Sirius avoid execution.

I could go on, but the point is that Harry uses the invisibility cloak to sneak around, eavesdrop, and trick people… and as a narrative device goes, it’s undeniably brilliant considering it helps Harry get information find out what the reader also needs. (The books are told from Harry’s point of view, so the cloak is basically essential from a storytelling perspective.) If you want to watch Harry on screen in the invisibility cloak, you can stream the films on Peacock now.