238 Chapter 7: Rebirth Harry, in his final conversation with the portrait of Dumbledore, chooses the Invisibility Cloak to keep as his own. But when he first hears the Tale of the Three Brothers, it is the Resurrection Stone he yearns for. Its promise of resurrection seems to be one of calling back to life; but as the fable of the three brothers makes clear, this is a promise it betrays. Instead of offering avenues into a new future, the Stone entraps in a dead past in ways more like reburial than rebirth. Harry's attraction expresses his tendency to be pulled backwards in time. This has been a strong impulse from the very first. It is Harry's dead parents and lost family that he sees in the Mirror of Erised. His encounters with the Dementors too have been pastward plunges into memory, if of the worst kinds. Memory in this guise brings despair, the desperate sense that there is no escape from a terrible past. You retreat backward through the paths of mind to traumas that trap you there, to be relived without ever ending, without exit. A similar process occurs during Harry's dreadful lessons in Occlumency with Snape in Book 5. Here he moves backwards into memories of his horrible childhood with the Dursleys. And it is his desire to recover a lost past that lures him to Godric's Hollow in Book 7, almost to disaster. The visions he has through Voldemort at times also return him to his parents, that is, to the terrible moment of their murder. Yet, however terrible these memories are, they involve a double pull, both away and towards. They are both feared and prized, as Harry admits to himself (7:22, 436). They are connections that Harry wants, even though they are painful and can even be destructive and entrapping. I. The Resurrection Stone