As I've already mentioned in my posts this week, the Harry Potter books have a strong theme of self-sacrifice to save others. Reading through the whole series, again and again, you see a character who loves someone (or multiple people) so much that they are willing to die to protect them. This message is, at its simplest, a very Christian message. Yet, ironically, many Christian groups, parents, teachers are quick to challenge or try to remove these books from schools and library simply because of the words "witchcraft" and "magic" in the synopses of the books.
That's not to say that all Christians oppose the books - it seems to be those that aren't willing to give the books a chance, to read them and see what they are about, before they assume that they are bad. It is worth noting that an Episcopal priest, who was the middle school chaplain at a local Episcopal school, urged me for months to pick up Harry Potter before I finally started reading it in college.
In the first book, we find out that the reason that Harry lived, the reason that Voldemort's curse couldn't touch him, was that Harry's mother's final act, her offering of her life to protect her son, was such a strong and powerful mix of love and magic that evil couldn't overcome it.
In the sixth book, Dumbledore makes a choice. He knows his time is limited - he has a slowly growing curse that is killing him. He also knows that Voldemort is going to try to force Draco Malfoy to prove his loyalty and guesses that it's likely that Voldemort will assign Draco to be the one to kill him (Dumbledore). Dumbledore wants to spare the boy - to prevent him from losing his innocence - so he asks Snape, who he trusts, that if it comes down to it, to kill him so that Draco will not have to.
In the last book, Snape is left mortally wounded by Voldemort's snake. Rather than begging Harry to help him, to get him somewhere that he can be saved, he gives up his memories to Harry, so that Harry will understand what he has done and why.
And finally, fueled by Snape’s memories and the new knowledge that he must die so that Voldemort's power can be broken and his friends, teachers, schoolmates, and other wizards and witches can live and live freely, Harry doesn't run. He doesn't hide. He doesn't try to find a way out. A 17-year-old boy makes the decision to walk up to Voldemort with his head held high and let himself be hit full-on by the killing curse that felled his parents and so many other people he cares about throughout the course of the books. And he dies. Maybe. He survives, or maybe he even returns from the dead. But he didn't know that would happen. That's the thing; he walked in with blind trust in Dumbledore and Snape. He had no idea that he would survive; he wasn't even sure that his death would completely fix everything. He just knew that he had to die before Voldemort could be killed; the little piece of Voldemort that lived inside of him had to be killed and there was no way to do that without killing Harry too.
Harry. Gandalf. Aslan. Jesus. Pretty cool dudes who are worth reading about.