In Book Seven, Harry is on his quest to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes and one of the Horcruxes turns out to be Ravenclaw's Diadem, hidden at Hogwarts in the Room of Hidden Things (a.k.a. the Room of Requirement). Tom Riddle, Jr. (a.k.a. Lord Voldemort) had hidden the Diadem there, believing that nobody else would know where to find it. But until very near the end of the story, Harry doesn't even know that the Horcrux in question was Ravenclaw's Diadem. Speaking during the Battle of Hogwarts with the Gray Lady, the Ghost of Ravenclaw, Harry figures out that the Diadem is in fact one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, and that he had retrieved it from its legendary hiding place and hidden it in Hogwarts during his request for employment from Dumbledore.
But during the few pages in which Harry figures this out, we get the interesting side story of the Gray Lady herself, Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter, Helena Ravenclaw, and, by consequence, the story of Slytherin House's ghost, the Bloody Baron. As for the other ghosts at Hogwarts, we know some things about Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (a.k.a. "Nearly Headless Nick"), the Gryffindor House ghost, especially from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the JKR.com website (the ballad of his nearly-headless history), and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, where a footnote indicates that in the fifteenth century, Nick had been killed by Muggle persecution, after having once been a member of the Royal Court) (Beedle 12). We don't really know that much about the Fat Friar (the Ghost of Hufflepuff House). The question I wish to ponder today is a small one, but may relate to a larger theme in the Potter series, and that question is the following:
Why did the Gray Lady, Helena Ravenclaw, hide the Ravenclaw Diadem in a hollow tree in Albania?
Why the hollow tree?
Why did she (and J. K. Rowling for her story) choose Albania?
First of all, we must backtrack and find out what Helena did tell Harry in those hectic moments during the Battle of Hogwarts. That information is located on pages 615-617 in the American hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To summarize, the Gray Lady's story goes like this:
1. The Ravenclaw Diadem originally belonged to Helena's mother, Rowena. (p.
615)
2. "...the diadem bestows wisdom..." (p. 615)
3. Helena had stolen the diadem from her mother out of jealousy. "I
sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my mother." (p.
616)
4. Helena ran away from her mother, Rowena. Rowena Ravenclaw,
herself, pretended that the diadem was not missing, and none of the other
founders knew this. (p. 616)
5. Rowena Ravenclaw, on her deathbed, wished to see her daughter one more
time and sent the Bloody Baron (the Slytherin House ghost) to find Helena. (p.
616)
6. The baron was obsessed with Helena (unrequited love) for some time;
Rowena knew this. (p. 616)
7. Helena is found by the Baron, refuses him, and is stabbed by him to
death. "He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I
refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a
hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed
me." (p. 616)
8. The Baron then committed suicide, and his ghost wears chains as
penitence for his actions in life. "When he saw what he had done, he was
overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and
used it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as
an act of penitence... as he should." (p. 616)9. Helena had hidden the diadem in a hollow tree when she heard the Baron coming towards her. "[The diadem] remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree." (p. 617) This implies that the diadem did not usually remain hidden, or she did not have the time to retrieve it, or that she chose to conceal it.
10. Helena reveals that the hollow tree was in a forest in Albania, a place in her words which was "a lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother's reach." (p. 617)
There are very big themes in this small passage that Rowling is sharing with her readers through Helena's story. Themes of jealousy, love, passion, betrayal, penitence, the power of will and of knowledge, depression and loneliness. One has to read between the lines here: what was Rowling asking us, as readers, to really ponder here?
We have to deal with the major points of this story, the first two points of which is that the Ravenclaw Diadem had belonged to one of the Four Founders of Hogwarts, and was rumored to "bestow wisdom." In Geo Athena Trevarthen's book, The Seeker's Guide to Harry Potter, there is a discussion on the Hogwarts Houses in the third chapter, entitled "Four Houses, Four Elements." Professor Trevarthen discusses the totemic animal, of Ravenclaw, the eagle, and the raven (from the name of the house) and their traditional meanings in various folk cultures. She then begins a discussion of Ravenclaw house and its key characters in the books, notably Cho, Luna and Professor Flitwick. She doesn't really mention Helena, or Rowena, the founder. But what she does say about Ravenclaw relates to Ravenclaw's motto engraved on the diadem, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." Her explanation of Ravenclaw's house qualities and magical precept is this:
"Wizards must know themselves, know magic, and know the world. Their
knowledge must encompass the unpleasant curses they may be hit with 'out there'
and other unsavory information, like their own deepest fears... What's
more, the knowledge must be of a specific kind, personal and practical..."
(Trevarthen 65).
Professor Trevarthen later goes on to say that to be a wizard means "someone who has personal knowledge, often, knowledge of the sacred. A wizard is a person who can see spiritual reality personally and vividly and who is informed by this experience, so that he becomes wise." (Trevarthen 66).
An object, like the Ravenclaw diadem, that bestows consciousness of oneself so that they become wise, instead of the person themselves journeying through life to become wise (and so not needing such an object), is both a symbol of power and beauty and on a practical level, a dangerous object indeed. To bestow wisdom... perhaps before a person is ready for that kind of understanding? In the summary of the story, point three (above) reminds us that Helena had stolen the diadem from her mother out of jealousy. What stopped her from wearing it? And as noted above, Rowling's words imply that the diadem may not have always been hidden. Why did Helena really flee? Was she fleeing her mother's anger at her thievery? This seems improbable; Rowena never made any mention of it being missing (point four).
And then Helena fled to a lonely place. The diadem had bestowed wisdom upon Helena of, as Prof. Trevarthen noted, "knowledge of the sacred... to see spiritual reality personally and vividly and who is informed by this experience." But Helena didn't become wise by figuring this out herself. She was granted wisdom, and hence learned this about herself. What was her spiritual reality on a personal level? Out of jealousy (greed and envy come to mind) she stole from her own mother a great item so that she could become better than her mother. Her want of knowledge stemmed directly from the will to be better, more clever, more powerful than her own family.
So why did she flee? She fled to a lonely place, where she thought the diadem could be hidden, where she could hide. I believe that she fled because upon learning so much, so quickly about herself, she was ashamed, and depressed, and her penitence was to spend the remainder of her life alone in that forest in Albania.
For how do you stumble upon a hollow tree? You don't. Helena spent a long time hiding there.
Her mother, on the other hand, became wise through the course of her long life. She didn't send the Baron to find her daughter in any immediate time after the diadem was stolen (though of course, we don't know how much time elapsed between the thievery and Rowena's fatal illness). But I believe that the writing implies that much time had passed. She only sent the Baron when she was on her deathbed and wished to see her daughter. She had, no doubt, become wise without the aid of the diadem, figured out what her daughter had done, and figured the one place on the earth (note Prof. Trevarthen's words "know the world") where her daughter would be.
So the question is mostly answered about "why the hollow tree?" Helena had been in that forest for quite a while. And the symbolism of a hollow tree is also a big point here - Helena, upon being granted wisdom from the diadem knew herself to be shallow and empty for the deed she had done - she herself was hollow. Trees can certainly symbolize natural life and knowledge; for a tree to be hollow... I am sure you will like to ponder this point for yourself. But to understand why Rowling chose Albania as the location of the forest, we have to "know the world." What do we know about Albania?
I read in an essay entitled "The Peasant, the Tramp and Hepzibah Smith: A Horcrux Cas Study" by WaggaWaggaWerewolf (available at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/essays/issue22/HorcruxCaseStudy) that "[t]he Sorting Hat gives some clues when it associates Ravenclaw with mountains and eagles. Albania is a small, isolated, and rather poor country, named for its mountainous terrain, which is heavily forested in places. The people who live there speak a language similar to the one spoken by hardworking Ancient Trojans, and in that language, Albania... translates as the Land of the Eagles. Albanian members of the cult of the snake consider it an important household benefactor." The author then goes on to ponder whether or not this is where the idea for the snake nailed to the door at the Gaunt house came from and what exactly drew Voldemort to stay there in isolation for ten years.
Rowena, becoming wise on her deathbed, no doubt knew that her "wise" daughter would go to the "Land of the Eagles." It is also no wonder why her daughter, then, is named Helena. The story of "Helen of Troy" comes to mind here. And in the Gray Lady's story, Rowena may have considered "the snake" a.k.a. the Bloody Baron, a "household benefactor," whom she hoped to use to repair her household, alas to no avail.
But to bring us back to the original question? Why did the Gray Lady hide the Ravenclaw Diadem in a hollow tree in Albania? Because she was ashamed of herself, and what she had done. She had gained this personal knowledge by becoming wise, and fled to the ancient "Land of the Eagles" to repent her sin. Later, upon forgiving her daughter, Rowena (at the end of her life) sent the Baron (the "household benefactor" snake) to retrieve her daughter, for she had become wise as to the same premature knowledge Helena had gained of the "Land of the Eagles." She probably also fully understood, at that point in her life, the words "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Didn't Rowling state that out of the two biblical passages she presents in Deathly Hallows, that one sums up about half of the whole story?
This doesn't even skim the surface, though, of the whole story between the Baron and the Gray Lady, of which I haven't even begun to analyze, and I won't do right now. But I do believe that there are parallels, and very obvious ones here, between the character of the Bloody Baron and Severus Snape. With the exception that Snape, I believe, "will have gone on" in Nick's words (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). I'll leave that discussion for another time.
I hope you've enjoyed my efforts at analysis. :)
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