I Only Just Realized The Coolest Thing About The Harry Potter Series After 17 Years

Harry Potter series uses a chiastic structure with Goblet of Fire serving as the axis point for reflecting themes and concepts in reverse order.
Each book mirrors another in the series, with clear parallels between events, characters, and magical objects explored in reverse order.
From immortality themes to character arcs, Harry Potter books perfectly reflect one another, revealing a balanced and interconnected poetic structure.

It’s been 17 years since I finished reading the Harry Potter books, and I’m only now noticing the genius way the series reflects in on itself. Over the last couple of months, I’ve spent a great deal of time looking at the parallels between Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it dawned on me that the connective tissue that fuzes the heart of both novels isn’t exclusive. There is a fairly clear pattern that exists from the beginning to the end of the Harry Potter series, and zooming out allows us to see the perfectly parallel picture that is Harry’s story.

Once I noticed the Harry Potter series’ reflective nature, I went to the internet to see if anyone else had reached the same conclusion. Of course, they had, and I quickly dove into what has come to be called the “ring composition” or “chiastic” theory of Harry Potter, analyzed stupendously by John Granger. This theory reveals a clever formulaic structure to the Harry Potter series, which brings immense balance to Harry’s story. What’s more, it also reveals how, back when we all first read Harry’s story, we should’ve known precisely how the last three novels would end.