Character, Choice, and Harry Potter Almost as overwhelming as the hype surrounding the HarryPotter books (and now movies and DVDs) has been the heat gener-ated in some Christian circles, evangelical, fundamentalist, and some-times Catholic. Despite the impressive amount of attention giventhe books, however, the discussion tends to focus only on a few selectthemes. Critics of the book generally claim that the series is leadingchildren to explore the occult by glamorizing witchcraft. Some crit-ics will also mention a disdain for rules on the part of Harry and hisfriends, but such a train of thought is rarely substantial. 1 Rather, how one portrays magic or the occult has lapped up much of the ink. ThatHarry Potter might lead a child to the occult is possible, but we findit highly improbable, for the simple reason that the only kind ofmagic in the book that has real-life occult parallels is fortune-telling,which is pretty much dismissed (more on this later). Some of themore sophisticated Christian critics dissect the portrayal of magic andthe notion of subcreation in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S.Lewis, then compare J. K. Rowling to them. While such a discussioncan be useful and informative, those who pursue this line of conver-

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