Harry isn’t the only one to experience this “New Jerusalem understanding” of transcendence to a non-binary moral system. In the epilogue, nineteen years after the events in the last chapter, Rowling reveals Harry named his middle child Albus Severus, giving him both Dumbledore’s and Snape’s first names. More than signaling Harry’s acceptance of each of their ambiguous moral qualities, Albus Severus symbolizes the end of the wizarding world’s metanarrative of prejudice.
At Hogwarts students are sorted into four “houses,” or dormitories. Each is named for one of the founders of Hogwarts, and is known for different personality traits – Hufflepuffs are loyal, Ravenclaws are smart, Slytherins are ambitious, and Gryffindors are brave. Under these simple adjectives, however, lies the dualistic metanarrative of inter-house conflict, which survives past graduation and affects relationships in the wizarding world at large. Slytherins are suspicious characters, if not downright evil. As Hagrid tells Harry in Book 1, “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin. You-Know-Who [Voldemort] was one” (Sorcerer’s Stone). In addition to Voldemort, Harry’s hated Professor Snape was in Slytherin, as was his childhood nemesis Draco Malfoy. Harry’s personal experiences with those characters reinforce the stereotype of Slytherins as prejudiced against Muggles, power-hungry, and devious. Gryffindors, on the other hand, can do no wrong.
This dualism is reinforced throughout the story, from the earliest days of Hogwarts when “Gryffindor had been the champion of Muggle-borns, the wizard who had clashed with the pureblood-loving Slytherin” (DH 307) up to and including the final battle, during which all the Slytherins leave the school to save themselves or go fight with Voldemort, and almost all the Gryffindors try to stay and fight with the teachers (DH 610-611). The only hint that there might be an alternative to the divisive house system is Dumbledore’s speech to all of the students after Voldemort is reborn. “Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust” (GoF 723). That Harry names his son after members of both houses who defied the stereotypes and were not wholly good or evil shows the wizarding world finally recognizes the need to bridge the rift between the two houses. The Gryffindor-Slytherin combination is a unification of opposites, and represents the end of binary morality in the wizarding world.
