04-J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life

The Harry Potter books may be located in an alternative fantasy world but they're filled with the pain and dilemmas of real life.

They address serious moral questions about the nature of trust loyalty, integrity, and the need to make a stand against evil.

Through the series Harry Potter has to learn what it means to be a force for good against the dark arts of Lord Voldemort.

I think we all understand what an act of evil is.

And Voldemort qualifies extravagantly for acts of evil.

He has killed not out of self-defense, not to protect not for any of the reasons that we might all be able to envisage or most of us could envisage ourselves killing in certain extreme situations.

If people we loved were threatened or in war.

He'd killed cold-bloodedly, sometimes for enjoyment and for his own personal gain. I call that evil.

And, yes, at the end of the book you have a clash of two utterly, utterly different again, for want of a better word, souls.

One that has been maimed and has become less than human because to me " human" includes the capacity to love.