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Harry Potter (31 July 1980 - 2009) was a British, teenage boy with hereditary magical abilities and Oliver Haddo’s chosen candidate for the Antichrist. He possessed a distinctive scar on his forehead, and was educated at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (though only referred to here as the "Invisible College"), a secret academy which teaches young sorcerers advanced witchcraft. Ultimately, his adventures were revealed to have been staged to fulfil his destiny as the Antichrist, also known as the Moonchild. He appears in the final part of Volume III: Century and functions as the main antagonist in the narrative.

History[]

Early Years[]

Potter was born to James and Lily Potter on July 31st, 1980. Due to the early death of his parents, he was raised by his aunt Petunia and her husband, Vernon Dursley, living at 12, Grumauld Place in London, England. He had a tormented childhood and was abused by them, as well as by their spoiled son, Dudley.

On his eleventh birthday, Harry became aware of his magical powers and was then contacted by practitioners of sorcery, and was taken to Hogwarts, a secret school for young wizards.

While at the college, Harry had many adventures and faced off against many supposed adversaries, always emerging from his trials and tribulations unharmed and victorious. Many of these adventures involved battling a dark wizard known as Voldemort, who Harry appeared to defeat, earning him hero status among the school’s staff and his peers.

During his years as a student, Harry was surrounded by friends and admirers, and he bloomed into a confident, funny, and kind student. However, the magical and adventurous world of "the Boy Who Lived” would soon come to a terrifying end.

Revelation[]

Harry

The Antichrist while attempting to cover his scar.

As Harry neared graduation sometime around the late '90s, he planned to pursue a career as an Auror (a law enforcement officer who fights the dark arts). These dreams came crashing down when he discovered the satanic truth of his fate as the Antichrist, and his destiny to reign in the Apocalypse. It was then that Harry learned many other terrible secrets, including:

  • That the lighting bolt scar on his forehead was actually the infamous "Mark of the Beast".
  • That his magical abilities were the result of him being the Antichrist and not just simply inheriting them from his parents.
  • That the villain, Voldemort, he thought he defeated was ,in fact, the body of wizard Tom Riddle possessed by the spirit of arch-magician Oliver Haddo and that Haddo was alive, in charge of the wizarding world, and responsible for the birth and development of him (the Antichrist).
  • That his entire childhood adventures were staged and all his professors and peers were just forced into hero-worshipping him in order to boost his confidence and prepare him for his role as a false messiah to humanity as foretold in the Book of Revelations.

This knowledge was too much for the young Antichrist, causing a severe mental breakdown in Harry before going on a murderous rampage, massacring all the students and professors of Hogwarts, as well as all the inhabitants of the neighboring village of Hogsmeade, and the families on the secret railway platform to the school.

He then decapitated Oliver Haddo/Voldemort and placed his still living head in a bird cage, which he took with him to the house in which he was raised, presumably killing his adoptive family.

Harry then spent the next years of his life taking antipsychotic medication and never leaving his house, in an attempt to stall the end of days.

Foiled Apocalypse[]

In 2009, Mina Murray and Orlando, on instruction from Prospero, followed Potter’s trail of destruction at the ruins of Hogwarts and tracked his whereabouts at his home in London, and engaged him in combat. Allan Quatermain joined the battle, but was instantly killed by a lightning bolt from Harry's penis.

Orlando used Excalibur to send a signal to the Blazing World that she had located the Antichrist. Prospero received the signal and was able to commune with God, begging for the prevention of the Apocalypse, and the salvation of mankind.

Suddenly, Mary Poppins, a manifestation of God, appeared in during the battle and then intervened, confronted Potter, and turned him into a chalk drawing which was washed away by the rain, thus stopping the Apocalypse from happening.

Personality[]

As a boy, Harry Potter was congenial, friendly, happy, and outgoing, making friends with many students at the Invisible College.

Upon learning of his fate as the Antichrist, he became bitter, depressed, resentful, and addicted to antipsychotic medication. During his battle with Orlando, Mina Murray, and Alan Quatermain, the Antichrist displayed both a bitter acceptance of his fate, and lots of self-pity.

Source material[]

Although he is never directly named in any League of Extraordinary Gentlemen media, the Antichrist is shown in this story is clearly a twisted, parodic version of famous boy-wizard Harry Potter, as much as the Invisible College is a twisted version of Hogwarts, both from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Harry's appearance in Century: 2009 is in great contrast to his personality and character from the source. The Independent reviewer Laura Sneddon said in her review of Century: 2009 that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's portrayal of Potter as the Antichrist is a form of satirical commentary on the degradation of the publishing industry. "As the publishing industry takes fewer risks, originality is visibly dwindling, while major franchises and celebrity biographies are relentlessly pushed upon us," says Ms. Sneddon. "[Alan] Moore is always keen to point out that the League books are satire and that he has respect for all characters that he uses and hints at, expressing hope that people will look beyond the Harry Potter connection to appreciate the whole." 

Because of the thin-veiling of the Antichrist's connection to the Harry Potter series, his appearance as a boy is never seen, though his wand and robe sleeves are recognizable. As an adult, Potter is disfigured to point that there is virtually no visual resemblance to his original counterpart, becoming a monstrously tall, bald creature with eyes growing around his distinctive scar (which is covered by a plaster due to his efforts to scrape it off).

It seems that other characters have also been worked into the portrayal of the Antichrist: most obviously, the concept of the "Moonchild" is lifted from Aleister Crowley's 1917 novel of that title. Meanwhile, some of the Antichrist's dialogue, such as the line "this is, like, so unfair", is reminiscent of Kevin the Teenager, a character played by comedian Harry Enfield.

As Orlando holds up a document clearly labeled "Will Stanton" (the name of an adolescent magician in Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence) while looking through the Antichrist's school records, some readers have speculated that the Antichrist is a combination of Stanton and Potter. However, she also mentions the Antichrist's name being burnt off his file, so Will Stanton was presumably a different student whose documents happened to be in the same pile as Potter's. Possibly this is meant to suggest that Stanton was, like Turner in Century: 1969, a prior candidate for Haddo's Antichrist.

Finally, the Antichrist bears a possibly coincidental resemblance to Tetsuo Shima, a character from Katsuhiro Otomo's comic and animated feature Akira. Tetsuo is a teenage boy who develops incredible psychic powers and initially uses them to destroy the building in which he is held captive and later a bar in which he used to hang out, paralleling the Antichrist's destruction of his school. Both dress similarly, with Tetsuo wearing a white vest and jeans for the climax to Akira, although he also dons a red cape. The most iconic moment in Akira comes when Tetsuo mutates into a giant mass of flesh after attempting to regrow a lost arm; this is echoed when the Antichrist undergoes grotesque transformations when Orlando attacks him with Excalibur. The Antichrist's monstrous final form also appears to take influence from H.P. Lovecraft's works; particularly the titular monster described in The Dunwich Horror.

The otherwise whimsical Harry Potter lore is deformed into a grotesque, occult horror story in the comic seems to reflect the normalization of violence in media and its often-presumed (though debunked) relation to American mass shootings, with Potter's massacre of Hogwarts resembling real-life events such as the 1999 Columbine massacre. A contributor on Jess Nevin's Annotations of Century: 2009 adds: "Since the main theme of [Volume III] is how entertainment, pop culture, and literature have gone to the dogs and this mirrors the deteriorating affairs of mankind [e.g.] the now-not unusual American school shootings, it's very clever how the Antichrist's Hogwarts massacre is directed and viewed exactly like a first-person shooter video game. It's often claimed that violent video games contribute and occasionally are critical in real-life massacres: Anders Breivik even admitted he was playing them as practice".

Harry Potter's true identity in the story as the Antichrist and bringer of the Apocalypse also parallels the conservative moral panic and conspiracy theories surrounding the Harry Potter franchise during the late 1990s and early 2000s, where Christian fundamentalist groups accused the urban fantasy series as being a plot by satanic cults to popularize the occult and demonic to children and (similar to his depiction in Century: 2009) claimed Potter's signature scar on his forehead and magical powers were all signs that he was the Antichrist disguised as an innocent fantasy character.

Trivia[]

  • It is also implied that several parodies of Harry Potter also exist in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe; the name "A. Button" is seen on a file in Hogwarts, a likely reference to Angelica Button, a parody of Harry Potter on an episode of The Simpsons.
  • Coincidentally, co-creator Alan Moore featured a character of the name "Harold Potter" as the husband of Wendy Darling in his erotic graphic novel Lost Girls, which similarly crosses over characters and stories of literature. There is obviously no relation between the two characters since Harold Potter was created years before J. K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book.
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