Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Full Book Summary | SparkNotes (2024)

At Malfoy Manor, Snapetells Voldemort the date that Harry’s friends are planning to movehim from the house on Privet Drive to a new safe location, so that Voldemortcan capture Harry en route.

As Harry packs to leave Privet Drive, he reads two obituariesfor Dumbledore, both of which make him think that he didn’t knowDumbledore as well as he should have. Downstairs, he bids good-byeto the Dursleys for the final time, as the threat of Voldemort forcesthem to go into hiding themselves.

The Order of the Phoenix, led by Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, arrivesto take Harry to his new home at the Weasleys’ house, the Burrow.Six of Harry’s friends take Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselvesas Harry and act as decoys, and they all fly off in different directions.The Death Eaters, alerted to their departure by Snape, attack Harryand his friends. Voldemort chases Harry down, but Harry’s wand fendsVoldemort off, seemingly without Harry’s help.

Harry arrives at the Burrow, and when his friends getthere, he learns that Moody has been killed and George Weasley maimedin the chase. Harry begins to have visions in which he sees whatVoldemort is doing through Voldemort’s eyes, and witnesses Voldemort interrogatinga wand maker, trying to find out how to defeat Harry.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione assemble the books and toolsnecessary to embark on the quest that Dumbledore left them: to findand destroy the Horcruxes into which Voldemort placed fragmentsof his soul, making himself immortal as long as the objects survive. RufusScrimgeour, the Minister of Magic, delivers to them the items Dumbledoreleft them in his will. Harry is left the Snitch he caught in hisfirst Quidditch match, as well as the Sword of Gryffindor, which Scrimgeourdoes not give him, claiming it did not belong to Dumbledore. Ronis left a device called a Deluminator that turns lights off, andHermione is left a book of wizard fairy tales. None of them have anyidea what the items mean.

The Weasleys host the wedding of their son Bill to FleurDelacour. At the reception, Harry hears Ron’s Aunt Muriel tellingterrible rumors about Dumbledore: that his sister was a Squib (anon-magical person born to wizard parents) kept prisoner by herfamily, and that Dumbledore had dabbled in the Dark Arts as a youngman. The wedding is interrupted by Death Eaters, as Voldemort hastaken over the Ministry of Magic and is now in charge of the wizarding world.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione Disapparate (i.e., teleport)to a busy street in London, where they are soon attacked by DeathEaters. They find safe haven in the enchanted house left to Harryby Sirius Black, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. There, they discoverthe significance of the letters R.A.B. In the previous book, HarryPotter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Dumbledorehad undergone trials to find a locket that Voldemort had made intoa Horcrux, but at the end they found that the locket had been stolen,with a fake locket and note left behind, signed R.A.B. Now, theysee that the initials belong to Sirius’s dead younger brother, RegulusArcturus Black, who had been one of Voldemort’s followers. Theyremember that they have seen a locket in the house that is now gone.

Harry and his friends summon Kreacher, the house-elf whocame with the house. Kreacher explains that Voldemort had used himto test the magical defenses guarding the locket, having borrowedhim from Regulus. Afterward, Regulus had a change of heart aboutserving Voldemort, and Kreacher had helped him to steal the locketand leave the fake one in its place. The real locket had been inKreacher’s possession for many years, but was recently stolen byMundungus Fletcher. Harry orders Kreacher to find Mundungus andbring him back.

Kreacher returns later with Mundungus, who reveals thatthe locket was confiscated from him by Dolores Umbridge, a seniorofficial at the Ministry of Magic. Ron, Harry, and Hermione disguise themselvesas Ministry employees and sneak into the Ministry, stealing thelocket from Umbridge, while witnessing the Ministry’s efforts topersecute wizards who don’t come from pureblood wizard families.

As they Disapparate back to the house on Grimmauld Place, Hermioneaccidentally leads one of the Death Eaters inside the protectiveenchantments, so they are forced to abandon the house and go onthe run, moving from place to place and camping in the woods. Theydon’t know where to look for the next Horcrux, and they don’t knowhow to destroy the locket, which is protected by powerful magic.Harry has a vision of Voldemort tracking down another famous wandmaker and looking for a young man who stole a wand.

One night, in the forest, Harry and friends overhear agoblin saying that the Sword of Gryffindor that had been in theheadmaster’s office at Hogwarts is a fake. Harry realizes that thereal Sword of Gryffindor has the power to destroy Horcruxes, andthat they need to find it. Ron, frustrated at their lack of progress,gets fed up and abandons Harry and Hermione.

Harry and Hermione go to Godric’s Hollow, where they visitthe graves of Harry’s parents and see the house where he lived before Voldemortkilled them. An old woman named Bathilda Bagshot leads them intoher house, and they follow, hoping that she knew Dumbledore andcan give them the sword, but she turns out to be dead, her bodyinhabited by Voldemort’s snake, Nagini. They barely escape, andHarry’s wand is destroyed in the fight.

Harry reads the new (and malicious) biography of Dumbledore, whichclaims that Dumbledore helped the Dark wizard Grindelwald as a youngman and may have been responsible for his own sister’s death. Harryrecognizes in a photograph in the book the young man whom Voldemortis seeking, and it is Grindelwald.

One night, while Harry is keeping watch, a silver doePatronus appears and leads him to the Sword of Gryffindor, buriedbeneath the ice in a pond. Harry dives in, and the locket Horcruxaround his neck tries to strangle him. Ron, who has returned, savesHarry, recovers the sword, and destroys the locket.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to visit Xenophilius Lovegood, becauseHermione has discovered a strange symbol in the book Dumbledoreleft her, and they had seen Xenophilius wearing it. Xenophiliusexplains that the symbol represents the Deathly Hallows, three objects—theElder Wand, Resurrection Stone, and Invisibility Cloak—that weremade by Death and that give the owner of the three objects masteryover death.

Xenophilius betrays them to the Death Eaters, hoping tofree his daughter Luna, whom the Ministry has imprisoned, and theynarrowly escape from his house. Harry is tempted to pursue the Hallowsand abandon his quest for the Horcruxes. Harry accidentally saysVoldemort’s name, which triggers a tracking spell, and they are caughtby Voldemort’s followers and taken to Malfoy Manor.

At Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix Lestrange tortures Hermionefor information about where they got the sword they are carrying,since she thought it was in her vault at Gringotts bank. She isvery concerned about anything else they might have taken. Dobby,the Malfoys’ former house-elf, helps Harry and his friends to escape,along with Ollivander the wand maker, Luna Lovegood, and Griphook thegoblin. Harry takes them all to Ron’s brother Bill’s cottage.

Harry guesses that Voldemort has a Horcrux stored in Bellatrix’s vault,since she seemed so worried about it, and he persuades Griphookthe goblin to help him break into the vault. With Griphook’s help,Harry, Ron, and Hermione break in and steal the Hufflepuff Cup fromthe vault, then escape on the back of a dragon.

Harry learns from a vision of Voldemort’s that the finalHorcrux is at Hogwarts, so they travel to the nearby village ofHogsmeade. There they meet Aberforth, Dumbledore’s brother, whohelps them get into Hogwarts through a painting by summoning NevilleLongbottom, who has been organizing meetings of Dumbledore’s Army inthe hidden Room of Requirement. Harry asks the members of the D.A.,who are all his supporters, if they can think of an important itemassociated with the school, hoping such an item might be the finalHorcrux. The Ravenclaw students tell him about the lost diadem ofRavenclaw.

While Harry looks for the diadem, the professors and studentsof Hogwarts rally to his defense, having been warned that Voldemort ison his way. Voldemort and his followers attack the school in a greatbattle, and Harry finds and destroys the diadem Horcrux.

Harry witnesses Voldemort murdering Snape in order totake possession of Dumbledore’s powerful wand (since Snape killed Dumbledore,Snape is presumably the wand’s true master until someone kills him).Before he dies, Snape gives Harry his memories, extracted for viewingin the Pensieve.

Harry goes to the Pensieve in the headmaster’s officeand views the most important moments of Snape’s life. He learnsthat he has been completely mistaken about Snape, who loved Harry’smother, Lily Potter, his whole life. Snape had spent his entireadult life spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore and working to protectHarry.

From one of Snape’s conversations with Dumbledore, Harry learnsthat there’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside him (Harry is in factthe final Horcrux), and that he will have to let Voldemort kill himbefore Voldemort can die. He goes into the forest and lets Voldemortkill him, then wakes up in a dreamlike version of King’s Cross trainstation, where Dumbledore meets him and tells him that he hasn’tdied, and that the protective charm Lily Potter placed on Harryis kept alive inside of Voldemort, because Voldemort used Harry’sblood to reconstitute himself. Thus, Voldemort could not kill Harry,and Harry can now go back and finish him off.

Voldemort takes Harry, whom he believes to be dead, backto Hogwarts to demand its surrender. The students and teachers defy Voldemort,and Neville uses the Sword of Gryffindor to kill the giant snake,Nagini, which was the last Horcrux keeping Voldemort invulnerable.A final battle erupts, and Harry reveals that he’s still alive,going on to kill Voldemort in a duel.

In an Epilogue set nineteen years later, Harry is marriedto Ginny and is sending their children to Hogwarts. Ron and Hermioneare married, and their families are both thriving.