Beedle Talks: 'Hairy Heart' Explained

"Beedle the Bard was a storyteller who wove his tales in the 15th century. Although much of his life remains a mystery, we do know he was born in Yorkshire and that he was a wizard. There is also one surviving woodcut that depicts him with ‘an exceptionally luxuriant beard’. Aside from his facial hair, it’s impossible to truly know Beedle, but perhaps we can catch a glimpse of him in his stories. A wizard who was sympathetic to Muggles, ‘mistrusted Dark Magic’ and believed that ‘kindness, common sense and ingenuity’ were more admirable than even the most powerful magic". (W.W. Feature, "Everything you need to know about The Tales of Beedle the Bard)

This tale is the darkest story of the five in Beedle's collection and it is also my favorite told.

The third story Beedle told is about a family who lived in a castle, had money, but they needed a lineage to their name, their blood. The story is about a warlock whose siblings married and bore kids after their parents died. But the warlock never did get married for no single woman ever showed a liking to him. The Warlock's servents, his only source of communication, wondered why for he has money, a castle, handsome, but one day he sought out for that woman. A beautiful woman showed up with so much gold, yet she would equally have his amount. She was a witch and that was a goal in need to have a bloodline with magic. The Warlock invited her to a party and everyone was aghast to finally see him with one he likes and she who likes him. But something was off for while she liked him she was also feeling disgusted for the young warlock. He was reciting poetry that he stole from other writers. His way of acting was demeaning, or so she felt. After dinner, he wanted to show her a gift in a dungeon, and in a glass container lies something that was breathing. In the container lies the warlock's beating heart, where he placed it in the beginning after he cast dark magic to be immune to any feeling of love. She begs him to put it back for it was growing hair and it was shrinking. But he could not take the feeling he was absorbing from her once she hugged him and took a knife to cut her heart out as an exchange for his own. Alas, they died on the floor reaching each others heart with both of their chests cut open in a pool of blood.

Albus interpreted this as someone who was suffering from a bite of a werewolf and he tore out her heart in transformation. Albus said, however that; he "performs a piece of Dark Magic that would not be possible outside of a storybook" In a similar way to how one can not bring back the dead. But I see a young man who can't find love because he is immune to it. Take away the fact that he caused himself to be immune, he is just a boy who is struggling to wonder why he can't find love. He shows this witch why he is immune, or tells her this, so he retains that feeling by hugging. Love is an energy that flames from two collided bodies of warmth. The Warlock felt this energy and it grew and grew and it got warmer and he was confused about it. He wanted it to stop so he pushed her away violently due to his behaviors shown over time. He was not just a boy who was facing a hard time with the absence of love but, he was also a boy with violent behavior who was cheeky and wanted to show anyone can get a woman; "You speak well, Warlock, if only I thought you had a heart".

In that line, she very well could have known that he had no heart, literally. But when she found out she took it by surprise. Maybe she knew but the other take on her response is that she was referring to his nasty attitude. This is shown in the expression used as "You have a hairy heart".

That is one interpretation. In the end, he wanted to exchange his heart for hers, which is a common phrase in marriage or engagement. To give one's heart for the other is to give their ever-dying heart to be with that person. Beedle took that phrase and made it literal but in the wizarding world, it is still not possible. Of course, the exchange could have only be seen as in interpretation by the guests as the story went on to tell the reader how he simply cut it out.

With rules and life ever-changing, more views will unearth itself through the change. I can say this warlock was Acesexual and did not have any sexual feelings or responses to others. Maybe he was gay.

But if he could not have taken out the heart, then how did she know?

Albus then revealed how it took it as a tale of a Horcrux, which is when a witch or wizard tears the soul and places it in an object to ensure resurrection or immortality. The casting of the warlocks heart; "Tamper with the deepest mysteries- the source of life, the essence of life- only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind", a fundamental law of Adalbert Waffling.

The attraction with this story to me is how love can be hard to attain because I can relate to the complexity of finding "the one". In the case of the warlock, after numerous women, he does meet "the one" who chooses him in the end. The idea of "the one" is a fairy tale and yet many people do believe that there is that one person who is meant to share every detail of life with. That universal concept of The One is a primary archetype of love that would take years before crossing paths. It is about the right moment and the right person at that moment. But while that is what connects me, I also see a reflection of this tale with the tale of two notable and popular stories by Orsen Welles and James Barrie.

Orsen Welles; author and filmmaker behind the famous story of a journalist in "Citizen Kane", did a novel called "The Portrait of Dorian Gray"; published in 1890. It is a story about a handsome boy who met a man that asked him if he would sell his soul for immortally. He ended up accepting that idea and became young forever as his soul remained in his painting by Basil. It is a dark rendition of the story Peter Pan by Barrie. In "Peter Pan", a play published in 1904, Peter is a boy who refuses to grow up and part of that is avoiding love because to be loved is to grow up, the lack of it is to be young forever. This reflects Dorian as an inverse due to Dorian having sinful relationships all the time. But he was not Dorian, but the devil. The Heart in "The Warlock's Hairy Heart" is the painting that is diseased with all the bad choices and negativity of the man like the painting with Dorian and his sins. So perhaps like Pete Pan, the Warlock immunity to love caused him to be a child and a child can sometimes be playfully cruel.

In some groups, to bed with someone is a sin if its only for pleasure. While the Warlock did not bed with someone, he removed a very important human instinct, and would that not be a sin of another kind? He removes all temptation and in the end, he wanted to feel what goes on between the witch and himself and finds out he is not immune to lust as it grows. He was disconnecting himself from that sin of Lust ( The Witch who represents the sin as normal in one's daily life) to save himself and with a little taste of it..... He knew he made the right decision at first and had to revert back to give in to the 7 deadly sins.

What about the perspective as a Pure-Blood ideology? He wanted a witch to ensure a magical bloodline yet he ends up killing her after knowing what love flows through him from her. Could it be seen that the Warlock, in the end, did not want to fulfill the plan of a Pure-Blood family? Was she pregnant? The story took place in a small number of days, but that can easily be seen as a simple condensed story of the real story. What if she was pregnant with a child and he knew and he was afraid about something else? Going back to the bit on Lycanthropy, the idea she was having a child could not be far from the possibility of why he killed her. His child would bear what he had genetically. What if this was the story of a relative of Remus Lupin? In the world, most people are related because of the need to marry one another even if he or she is a sister or brother, or cousin. So essentially, Remus could be a line to the warlock of another branch. This would also mean its a curse in the family and the reason behind the curse, the open to blame, is the warlock in this story. This would be, to me, a far stretched possibility. The Warlock, and his family, are unnamed. But, if he killed her to do to the sudden realization of what would become of the child, he kills that ideology do to a, alarmingly, last positive act before death, the only shred of light from the first contact.

"Although Beedle's hero is not seeking to avoid death, he is dividing which was clearly not meant to be divided- body and heart, rather than soul..." - The Notes of Albus Dumbledore