My Gleam of Triumph
Okay, that's a completely arrogant title. Watch as I follow it up with a more arrogant statement: I know how the story ends.
No, I didn't break into Scholastic. This is technically just a theory. All the same, I ask anyone who doesn't want a big chunk of the ending spoiled for them to stop reading right here. I'd rather look silly if it turns out I'm wrong than ruin the Book 7 experience for unwitting Potter fans if it turns out I'm right.
'Cause I'm 99% sure I'm right.
The following will not be a hard sell. I wambled for months over how to say this, or if I should even be saying it at all. I've finally decided to just put a quick and dirty version of this out there, and hope that it doesn't do too much damage. I figure that if it's anything like every other Harry Potter theory, it doesn't matter if I'm dead on only a handful of people will believe me anyway.
In case I do spoil the ending for you, let's get one thing clear this is all opera's fault. It was a radio story about a new Beowulf-inspired opera that got me thinking about other things the epic poem may have influenced. Did JKR make one of Dumbledore's middle names Wulfric for a reason? I decided it might be worth picking up a copy of Beowulf next time I was at the library. [1]
All right, here you may be thinking, "Great. Another lame attempt to predict the Potterverse future by making forced comparisons to some completely unrelated work." I don't blame you if you are. After all, how many times can you hear someone emphatically declare that "Harry Potter is just like [insert Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, a popular Jane Austen novel, or an obscure ancient myth here]" before it becomes nothing but white noise? All I can ask is that this time you give me a chance to explain before making up your mind.
Let's start with a quick summary [2]: Beowulf tells the story of the title character's life as a warrior. It's often broken down for discussion into three parts, each based on one of Beowulf’s three major battles with monsters.
The First Monster: Heorot was a great mead-hall built by King Hrothgar. Well, it was great except for one thing every night it was attacked by the monster Grendel. Grendel just loved to kill and eat Hrothgar’s warriors, and there wasn't much they could do to stop him since magic made him invulnerable to their swords. Everyone in the kingdom was pretty bummed out by the whole situation. Luckily for them, Beowulf traveled to Heorot and offered to face the monster. Beowulf proved more than a match for Grendel, the monster ran off to die, and the kingdom was saved. For about five minutes.
The Second Monster: Unfortunately for those at Heorot, Grendel's mother wasn't too happy that her son was killed. She wanted revenge. So after all of the celebrations honoring Beowulf were complete, Grendel's mother snuck in at night and dragged off one of Hrothgar's men. She took him back to her home a cave under a lake that was swarming with creepy water creatures. Beowulf and some other warriors tracked Grendel's mother along the cliffs to the lake where they found plentiful gore and some chunks of human. (Yeah, I know. Ew. But it's warrior poetry. Whatcha gonna do?) Beowulf swam down to the cave, and fought Grendel's mother. She came very close to defeating him, but he rallied at the last moment and killed her. His monster infestation removed, Hrothgar loaded Beowulf down with gifts and sent him sailing home.
The Third Monster: Beowulf eventually became king of his homeland. When he was an older man, one of his subjects stole a goblet from a treasure hoard that was guarded by a dragon. When the dragon realized part of his treasure was missing, he attacked Beowulf's kingdom and burned down Beowulf's home. Despite an apparent presentiment that this may be his last battle, Beowulf decided to face the dragon. He took some men with him, but they were too scared to help. Beowulf fought the dragon alone at first, and was badly wounded. After that, one young warrior named Wiglaf came forward to aid the king. Together they defeated the dragon, but nothing could be done to save Beowulf's life. After Beowulf died, his mourning people burned his body on a funeral pyre and buried his remains in a barrow overlooking the sea.
Now, for anyone who doesn’t already see where I’m going with this I think Beowulf's life story was the inspiration for Dumbledore's life story. Even though JKR made significant changes and smashed some bits together, the underlying structure is still visible enough that even on my most skeptical days I can't write it off as a coincidence. Dumbledore faced challenges that match up with each of Beowulf's three monsters. These events happened in the same order, and they ultimately led to the same outcome.
First, Dumbledore defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald. I'm not even going to try to pretend I was the first to notice that the name "Grindelwald" was suspiciously similar to the name "Grendel" especially when Dumbledore's having the middle name "Wulfric" is taken into account. (We'll have to wait until Deathly Hallows to know for sure, but it's interesting to note that the magic Grendel used to protect himself is somewhat like having a Horcrux. Many people have speculated that Grindelwald possessed a Horcrux.)
Next, Dumbledore climbed down a cliff and swam to a cave full of Inferi a convenient combination of the monsters and dead bodies that Beowulf found at Grendel's mother's cave. Dumbledore may not have been pursuing a monster's mother, but he was trying to retrieve a monster's mother's possession Merope's locket. Both Dumbledore and Beowulf came very close to death during their cave battles, but both survived.
Finally, Dumbledore found his castle under attack by Draco, a boy whose name means "dragon." True, Draco wasn't actually the one to kill Dumbledore, but Snape did it on his behalf. Add in the fact that Dumbledore only had his one loyal young warrior (Harry) by his side when he died, and I think it's still a good match. Throw in the funeral arrangements Dumbledore's body engulfed in flame before being encased in a tomb by the lake and I think it's a lock. There's no way JKR could've done all of that on accident. [3]
Before I get to what any of this has to do with the end of Harry Potter, we have to stay on Beowulf just a little bit longer. Those of you who have always wondered how Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald may have noticed that my summary skipped over the details of exactly how Beowulf defeated Grendel. Here's an excerpt of that part of the poem, from the Seamus Heaney translation. [4] (In this passage, "Hygelac's kinsman" refers to Beowulf.)
Then he who had harrowed the hearts of men
with pain and affliction in former times
and had given offence to God
Found that his bodily powers failed him.
Hygelac's kinsman kept him helplessly
locked in a handgrip. As long as either lived,
he was hateful to the other. The monster's whole
body was in pain, a tremendous wound
appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split
and the bone-lappings burst. Beowulf was granted
the glory of winning...
What just happened there? Basically, Beowulf grabbed Grendel's talon and held on with an incredibly strong handgrip. Grendel couldn't escape, so he struggled until his body gave way and his whole arm tore off. That's right: it was death by holding hands. (And you used to think the worst that could happen was catching cooties.)
The Beowulf vs. Grendel conflict was really at the heart of the reason that I looked up Beowulf in the first place. Since reading HBP, I've had a hunch about what happened between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. I was honestly expecting the poem to prove me wrong, but when I got to the part about Beowulf ripping Grendel's arm from his body I knew my hunch was correct. That was when I experienced my own gleam of triumph. [5]
I'm not suggesting Dumbledore tore Grindelwald limb from limb. But remember that Dumbledore is only inspired by Beowulf, not an exact copy. He doesn't have Beowulf's physical strength he has magical strength instead. Isn't it convenient, then, that we just learned about a new bit of Potterverse magic that's based on holding hands?
I think Dumbledore got Grindelwald to make an Unbreakable Vow. It may not have been a Vow that led to Grindelwald's immediate death, but it was at least enough to get him to stop whatever evil he was doing.
Look back over the series with this in mind, and you'll start to notice a lot of little arrows pointing in this direction. There's the PS/SS Chocolate Frog card that says Dumbledore "defeated" Grindelwald not "killed" or "captured" but "defeated." [6] There’s the way the magic Dumbledore has done on more than one occasion (when fighting Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic and the Inferi in the cave) that produced a fiery rope is awfully reminiscent of the way the Unbreakable Vow is sealed with something "like a rope, like a fiery snake." [7] There was the HBP Pensieve memory featuring a lingering handshake as Dumbledore sized up a young Tom Riddle. There's the fact that the Unbreakable Vow is made with the right hand, and that's the hand Dumbledore lost as JKR propelled him to his doom. There have been oodles of hand references, including my current Beowulf-y favorite Draco on the Astronomy Tower telling Dumbledore he’s losing his grip.
And of course there's the real gleam of triumph. The one in Chapter 36 of GoF. I know that people have gotten very caught up in different interpretations of the gleam that range from crazy blood magic to Dumbledore being evil, but let's go back and look at that moment again.
"He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's," Harry told Dumbledore. "He said the protection my my mother left in me he'd have it too. And he was right he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face."
For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes.
What does Harry explain immediately before the gleam? That Voldemort could now touch him. Why does Dumbledore see that as a good thing? Because you have to touch someone to make the Unbreakable Vow it was now possible for Harry to defeat Voldemort using the same method Dumbledore used to defeat Grindelwald. Hooray! (Of course there's still the problem of the Horcruxes to deal with first, and that's why the gleam was "fleeting.")
This is where we get right down to how the story will end. Harry will defeat Voldemort with the Unbreakable Vow. She's been setting it up for ages think of the times Harry's faced Voldemort during his career at Hogwarts. There was always a hint! In PS/SS, Harry fought off Voldemort just by placing his hands on the body the Dark Lord was possessing. We couldn't know it at the time, but the language used in OotP to describe Voldemort's possession of Harry ("They were fused together, bound by pain...") was designed to suggest a similarity to the Unbreakable Vow as described in HBP. And my absolute favorite hint, though it took me the longest to catch, was the one in GoF. Harry could've used any spell in his duel with Voldemort. As long as he said it at the same time as Voldemort cast the killing curse, anything would have triggered Priori Incantatem. But he didn't use just any spell. He used Expelliarmus the disarming spell.
Disarming like Beowulf dis-armed Grendel. [8]
Not only does JKR have a sense of humor and love of puns, but she's incredibly patient. Being willing to wait seven years between the set-up and the punchline? That's impressive.
Ages ago, I wrote an entire essay on why the Unbreakable Vow would be a good way for Harry to kill Voldemort. (I had my hunch about Dumbledore at the time, but didn't mention it for lack of evidence.) From here I'll refer you to that piece so I don't repeat myself unnecessarily. You can also just go back to the books and look for yourself. I'm sure there are tons of things you'll notice in a different way now many more than I have time to list right now, and some I probably haven't even found yet. [9] (Though if you need a place to start, try thinking about the implications of Wormtail's right hand being an ingredient in Voldemort's rebirth or Harry having "I will not tell lies" scarred into the back of his own right hand.)
There is one more clue I think I would be remiss not to mention before I go, though. Remember that pesky, cryptic prophecy?
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives....
"At the hand of the other" indeed.
Thanks for the puzzle, Jo.
Note: If you clicked through and read this theory, it was because you made a choice to risk being spoiled. As the type of person who doesn’t peek at the final page of the books first, I can tell you I probably would’ve been upset if someone had just blurted all this information out to me. So on the behalf of everyone like me, I ask that you please give serious consideration to providing a spoiler warning when discussing this theory elsewhere. Thanks.
[1] For background on Beowulf, try BeowulfTranslations.net. I just found it recently, but it looks like it has a lot of good information. And a word search puzzle.
[2] Though I don’t claim to be any kind of Beowulf expert, I think I’ve provided a reasonable simplification of the story. But you don’t have to take my word for it! I encourage anyone who’s motivated enough to check out a copy of the poem from your library (I read the entire Rebsamen translation and parts of a few others), read a version online (such as this free-verse translation or one of the books from Project Gutenberg), or even look at someone else’s summary (Wikipedia, Sparknotes). That way you can keep me honest and make sure I’m not horribly distorting the poem’s story to suit my comparison.
[3] If you read Beowulf, you'll probably notice that there are lots of other things that jump out as possible connections to Harry Potter. Was Dumbledore, like Beowulf, a champion swimmer in his youth? (He did demonstrate "the sudden agility of a much younger man" and "a perfect breaststroke" while swimming in Chapter 26 of Half-Blood Prince.) Does the Hogwarts school motto of "Never tickle a sleeping dragon" have its roots in the story of the sleeping dragon that was grumpy enough to wipe out Beowulf's kingdom after it woke up? Was Harry's melting knife an allusion to Beowulf's melting sword? Could subliterate Aberforth's taunting of goats be roundabout wordplay on the fact that Beowulf was a Geat? You could probably write whole essays on dozens of these side details. (Not that I’ll be doing that, but it could be done.)
[4] Like I said in the second footnote, I mostly used the Rebsamen translation in working this out. I'm quoting the Heaney translation here just so I can have an excuse to point out how hilarious the whole Heaney vs. Rowling kerfuffle must've been from JKR's perspective. (Hilarious, yet frustrating, since she obviously had to keep the joke to herself.)
[5] Okay, so it might not have been a "gleam" so much as a shocked uttering of a nonsensical obscenity. We can't all be classy like Dumbledore.
[6] The same Chocolate Frog card that had the key bit of information the Trio needed in the first book also held the key to the whole series. How great is that?
[7] With that description of the Vow in mind, go back and look at the dream Harry had in Chapter 30 of HBP. Does the part where "Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb" seem a little less random now?
[8] And if you look at it this way, Harry's Triwizard experience was like Beowulf played backwards first he battled a dragon, then he faced water creatures, and finally he disarmed a monstrous killer.
[9] Seeing as how I’ve technically only read each of the books once, and that was around their original times of publication. Please don’t hit me.
ETA: The Deathly Hallows cover art has been released. The front cover of the US edition is pretty much, "Hi, I'm Harry. Look at my hand!"
No, I didn't break into Scholastic. This is technically just a theory. All the same, I ask anyone who doesn't want a big chunk of the ending spoiled for them to stop reading right here. I'd rather look silly if it turns out I'm wrong than ruin the Book 7 experience for unwitting Potter fans if it turns out I'm right.
'Cause I'm 99% sure I'm right.
The following will not be a hard sell. I wambled for months over how to say this, or if I should even be saying it at all. I've finally decided to just put a quick and dirty version of this out there, and hope that it doesn't do too much damage. I figure that if it's anything like every other Harry Potter theory, it doesn't matter if I'm dead on only a handful of people will believe me anyway.
In case I do spoil the ending for you, let's get one thing clear this is all opera's fault. It was a radio story about a new Beowulf-inspired opera that got me thinking about other things the epic poem may have influenced. Did JKR make one of Dumbledore's middle names Wulfric for a reason? I decided it might be worth picking up a copy of Beowulf next time I was at the library. [1]
All right, here you may be thinking, "Great. Another lame attempt to predict the Potterverse future by making forced comparisons to some completely unrelated work." I don't blame you if you are. After all, how many times can you hear someone emphatically declare that "Harry Potter is just like [insert Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, a popular Jane Austen novel, or an obscure ancient myth here]" before it becomes nothing but white noise? All I can ask is that this time you give me a chance to explain before making up your mind.
Let's start with a quick summary [2]: Beowulf tells the story of the title character's life as a warrior. It's often broken down for discussion into three parts, each based on one of Beowulf’s three major battles with monsters.
The First Monster: Heorot was a great mead-hall built by King Hrothgar. Well, it was great except for one thing every night it was attacked by the monster Grendel. Grendel just loved to kill and eat Hrothgar’s warriors, and there wasn't much they could do to stop him since magic made him invulnerable to their swords. Everyone in the kingdom was pretty bummed out by the whole situation. Luckily for them, Beowulf traveled to Heorot and offered to face the monster. Beowulf proved more than a match for Grendel, the monster ran off to die, and the kingdom was saved. For about five minutes.
The Second Monster: Unfortunately for those at Heorot, Grendel's mother wasn't too happy that her son was killed. She wanted revenge. So after all of the celebrations honoring Beowulf were complete, Grendel's mother snuck in at night and dragged off one of Hrothgar's men. She took him back to her home a cave under a lake that was swarming with creepy water creatures. Beowulf and some other warriors tracked Grendel's mother along the cliffs to the lake where they found plentiful gore and some chunks of human. (Yeah, I know. Ew. But it's warrior poetry. Whatcha gonna do?) Beowulf swam down to the cave, and fought Grendel's mother. She came very close to defeating him, but he rallied at the last moment and killed her. His monster infestation removed, Hrothgar loaded Beowulf down with gifts and sent him sailing home.
The Third Monster: Beowulf eventually became king of his homeland. When he was an older man, one of his subjects stole a goblet from a treasure hoard that was guarded by a dragon. When the dragon realized part of his treasure was missing, he attacked Beowulf's kingdom and burned down Beowulf's home. Despite an apparent presentiment that this may be his last battle, Beowulf decided to face the dragon. He took some men with him, but they were too scared to help. Beowulf fought the dragon alone at first, and was badly wounded. After that, one young warrior named Wiglaf came forward to aid the king. Together they defeated the dragon, but nothing could be done to save Beowulf's life. After Beowulf died, his mourning people burned his body on a funeral pyre and buried his remains in a barrow overlooking the sea.
Now, for anyone who doesn’t already see where I’m going with this I think Beowulf's life story was the inspiration for Dumbledore's life story. Even though JKR made significant changes and smashed some bits together, the underlying structure is still visible enough that even on my most skeptical days I can't write it off as a coincidence. Dumbledore faced challenges that match up with each of Beowulf's three monsters. These events happened in the same order, and they ultimately led to the same outcome.
First, Dumbledore defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald. I'm not even going to try to pretend I was the first to notice that the name "Grindelwald" was suspiciously similar to the name "Grendel" especially when Dumbledore's having the middle name "Wulfric" is taken into account. (We'll have to wait until Deathly Hallows to know for sure, but it's interesting to note that the magic Grendel used to protect himself is somewhat like having a Horcrux. Many people have speculated that Grindelwald possessed a Horcrux.)
Next, Dumbledore climbed down a cliff and swam to a cave full of Inferi a convenient combination of the monsters and dead bodies that Beowulf found at Grendel's mother's cave. Dumbledore may not have been pursuing a monster's mother, but he was trying to retrieve a monster's mother's possession Merope's locket. Both Dumbledore and Beowulf came very close to death during their cave battles, but both survived.
Finally, Dumbledore found his castle under attack by Draco, a boy whose name means "dragon." True, Draco wasn't actually the one to kill Dumbledore, but Snape did it on his behalf. Add in the fact that Dumbledore only had his one loyal young warrior (Harry) by his side when he died, and I think it's still a good match. Throw in the funeral arrangements Dumbledore's body engulfed in flame before being encased in a tomb by the lake and I think it's a lock. There's no way JKR could've done all of that on accident. [3]
Before I get to what any of this has to do with the end of Harry Potter, we have to stay on Beowulf just a little bit longer. Those of you who have always wondered how Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald may have noticed that my summary skipped over the details of exactly how Beowulf defeated Grendel. Here's an excerpt of that part of the poem, from the Seamus Heaney translation. [4] (In this passage, "Hygelac's kinsman" refers to Beowulf.)
Then he who had harrowed the hearts of men
with pain and affliction in former times
and had given offence to God
Found that his bodily powers failed him.
Hygelac's kinsman kept him helplessly
locked in a handgrip. As long as either lived,
he was hateful to the other. The monster's whole
body was in pain, a tremendous wound
appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split
and the bone-lappings burst. Beowulf was granted
the glory of winning...
What just happened there? Basically, Beowulf grabbed Grendel's talon and held on with an incredibly strong handgrip. Grendel couldn't escape, so he struggled until his body gave way and his whole arm tore off. That's right: it was death by holding hands. (And you used to think the worst that could happen was catching cooties.)
The Beowulf vs. Grendel conflict was really at the heart of the reason that I looked up Beowulf in the first place. Since reading HBP, I've had a hunch about what happened between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. I was honestly expecting the poem to prove me wrong, but when I got to the part about Beowulf ripping Grendel's arm from his body I knew my hunch was correct. That was when I experienced my own gleam of triumph. [5]
I'm not suggesting Dumbledore tore Grindelwald limb from limb. But remember that Dumbledore is only inspired by Beowulf, not an exact copy. He doesn't have Beowulf's physical strength he has magical strength instead. Isn't it convenient, then, that we just learned about a new bit of Potterverse magic that's based on holding hands?
I think Dumbledore got Grindelwald to make an Unbreakable Vow. It may not have been a Vow that led to Grindelwald's immediate death, but it was at least enough to get him to stop whatever evil he was doing.
Look back over the series with this in mind, and you'll start to notice a lot of little arrows pointing in this direction. There's the PS/SS Chocolate Frog card that says Dumbledore "defeated" Grindelwald not "killed" or "captured" but "defeated." [6] There’s the way the magic Dumbledore has done on more than one occasion (when fighting Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic and the Inferi in the cave) that produced a fiery rope is awfully reminiscent of the way the Unbreakable Vow is sealed with something "like a rope, like a fiery snake." [7] There was the HBP Pensieve memory featuring a lingering handshake as Dumbledore sized up a young Tom Riddle. There's the fact that the Unbreakable Vow is made with the right hand, and that's the hand Dumbledore lost as JKR propelled him to his doom. There have been oodles of hand references, including my current Beowulf-y favorite Draco on the Astronomy Tower telling Dumbledore he’s losing his grip.
And of course there's the real gleam of triumph. The one in Chapter 36 of GoF. I know that people have gotten very caught up in different interpretations of the gleam that range from crazy blood magic to Dumbledore being evil, but let's go back and look at that moment again.
"He said my blood would make him stronger than if he'd used someone else's," Harry told Dumbledore. "He said the protection my my mother left in me he'd have it too. And he was right he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face."
For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes.
What does Harry explain immediately before the gleam? That Voldemort could now touch him. Why does Dumbledore see that as a good thing? Because you have to touch someone to make the Unbreakable Vow it was now possible for Harry to defeat Voldemort using the same method Dumbledore used to defeat Grindelwald. Hooray! (Of course there's still the problem of the Horcruxes to deal with first, and that's why the gleam was "fleeting.")
This is where we get right down to how the story will end. Harry will defeat Voldemort with the Unbreakable Vow. She's been setting it up for ages think of the times Harry's faced Voldemort during his career at Hogwarts. There was always a hint! In PS/SS, Harry fought off Voldemort just by placing his hands on the body the Dark Lord was possessing. We couldn't know it at the time, but the language used in OotP to describe Voldemort's possession of Harry ("They were fused together, bound by pain...") was designed to suggest a similarity to the Unbreakable Vow as described in HBP. And my absolute favorite hint, though it took me the longest to catch, was the one in GoF. Harry could've used any spell in his duel with Voldemort. As long as he said it at the same time as Voldemort cast the killing curse, anything would have triggered Priori Incantatem. But he didn't use just any spell. He used Expelliarmus the disarming spell.
Disarming like Beowulf dis-armed Grendel. [8]
Not only does JKR have a sense of humor and love of puns, but she's incredibly patient. Being willing to wait seven years between the set-up and the punchline? That's impressive.
Ages ago, I wrote an entire essay on why the Unbreakable Vow would be a good way for Harry to kill Voldemort. (I had my hunch about Dumbledore at the time, but didn't mention it for lack of evidence.) From here I'll refer you to that piece so I don't repeat myself unnecessarily. You can also just go back to the books and look for yourself. I'm sure there are tons of things you'll notice in a different way now many more than I have time to list right now, and some I probably haven't even found yet. [9] (Though if you need a place to start, try thinking about the implications of Wormtail's right hand being an ingredient in Voldemort's rebirth or Harry having "I will not tell lies" scarred into the back of his own right hand.)
There is one more clue I think I would be remiss not to mention before I go, though. Remember that pesky, cryptic prophecy?
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives....
"At the hand of the other" indeed.
Thanks for the puzzle, Jo.
Note: If you clicked through and read this theory, it was because you made a choice to risk being spoiled. As the type of person who doesn’t peek at the final page of the books first, I can tell you I probably would’ve been upset if someone had just blurted all this information out to me. So on the behalf of everyone like me, I ask that you please give serious consideration to providing a spoiler warning when discussing this theory elsewhere. Thanks.
[1] For background on Beowulf, try BeowulfTranslations.net. I just found it recently, but it looks like it has a lot of good information. And a word search puzzle.
[2] Though I don’t claim to be any kind of Beowulf expert, I think I’ve provided a reasonable simplification of the story. But you don’t have to take my word for it! I encourage anyone who’s motivated enough to check out a copy of the poem from your library (I read the entire Rebsamen translation and parts of a few others), read a version online (such as this free-verse translation or one of the books from Project Gutenberg), or even look at someone else’s summary (Wikipedia, Sparknotes). That way you can keep me honest and make sure I’m not horribly distorting the poem’s story to suit my comparison.
[3] If you read Beowulf, you'll probably notice that there are lots of other things that jump out as possible connections to Harry Potter. Was Dumbledore, like Beowulf, a champion swimmer in his youth? (He did demonstrate "the sudden agility of a much younger man" and "a perfect breaststroke" while swimming in Chapter 26 of Half-Blood Prince.) Does the Hogwarts school motto of "Never tickle a sleeping dragon" have its roots in the story of the sleeping dragon that was grumpy enough to wipe out Beowulf's kingdom after it woke up? Was Harry's melting knife an allusion to Beowulf's melting sword? Could subliterate Aberforth's taunting of goats be roundabout wordplay on the fact that Beowulf was a Geat? You could probably write whole essays on dozens of these side details. (Not that I’ll be doing that, but it could be done.)
[4] Like I said in the second footnote, I mostly used the Rebsamen translation in working this out. I'm quoting the Heaney translation here just so I can have an excuse to point out how hilarious the whole Heaney vs. Rowling kerfuffle must've been from JKR's perspective. (Hilarious, yet frustrating, since she obviously had to keep the joke to herself.)
[5] Okay, so it might not have been a "gleam" so much as a shocked uttering of a nonsensical obscenity. We can't all be classy like Dumbledore.
[6] The same Chocolate Frog card that had the key bit of information the Trio needed in the first book also held the key to the whole series. How great is that?
[7] With that description of the Vow in mind, go back and look at the dream Harry had in Chapter 30 of HBP. Does the part where "Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb" seem a little less random now?
[8] And if you look at it this way, Harry's Triwizard experience was like Beowulf played backwards first he battled a dragon, then he faced water creatures, and finally he disarmed a monstrous killer.
[9] Seeing as how I’ve technically only read each of the books once, and that was around their original times of publication. Please don’t hit me.
ETA: The Deathly Hallows cover art has been released. The front cover of the US edition is pretty much, "Hi, I'm Harry. Look at my hand!"