The Boy Who Lived could never actually die. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked, theoretical reader.

Don’t mistake could never with should never. I’m not talking about what a terrible creative decision it would have been to murder the titular character in a children’s book series, which would ultimately render a generation of young readers horrified and forever disenchanted. What I mean is nothing but the magic of the world’s most badass wizard could possibly kill him. Everyone else? Witch, please.

Harry Potter was a Horcrux. Oh knock it off, you’ve had a good two years to see the movies and even longer to read the books.

Oh alright, fine. This post contains SPOILERS.

As I said, Harry was magically impregnated with the soul of He-Who-Must-Have-A-Deviated-Septum, also known in AOL chat rooms as Voldemort_26, and eventually shortened to Voldemort. Like most impregnations, this was purely accidental, and resulted in awkward conversations for years to come.

So here was Harry, living his confusing little life learning about magic and puberty; getting intro trouble with professors, trolls, recreational herbs and escaped convicts; running for his life while horrible people demanded his death in vaguely Latin conjugations while hurling torrents of magic murder in his general direction. And here we were, hanging on his every move, willing the plucky young wizard onward, and hoping that he would survive the increasingly perilous threats.

The truth is, we didn’t have to give such a shit because Harry was never going to die. He was imbued with some inexplicable form of magical protection just like those annoyingly elusive Horcruxes that Harry and friends spent at least five and a half on-screen hours tracking down. If you can recall, those resilient little trinkets could withstand a barrage of curses without even losing that fresh-off-the-corpse, new Horcrux shine. And those were just bits of glass and tin. Harry was the walking, talking, slightly more charismatic version of a Horcrux – Horcrux 2.0. Harry Potter essentially had a free pass to the final boss battle, because only Voldemort could unmake his own magical abomination. That means the most powerful wizards and witches on the planet could hit Harry with their combined might and do little more than ruin a perfectly good Hogwarts uniform.

Oh, there was also Basilisk venom, because for whatever reason J.K. Rowling decided that, with her godlike power of creation, she would make Basilisk venom a potent Horcruxicide. That sort of makes perfect sense, as Harry needed a means of destroying those otherwise impenetrable soul vessels, and because Rowling needed a reason for readers to draw significance from the oft-maligned Chamber of Secrets, which up until the series finale could have been considered an inconsequential one-off without any implications towards the overarching story. So yes, Harry’s weaknesses consisted of the most tyrannical spell caster in existence, and, um, snake spit.

Therefore we can conclude that save for the Basilisk mishap and odd run in with Darth Volder, Harry Potter was for all intents and purposes immortal. All those times you were worried about his well being, you were just being stupid. But don’t feel bad, everyone else was too. Now every subsequent re-read can be thoroughly enhanced with the knowledge that Harry could have played out the whole adventure with killing curses bouncing off his chest and laughing maniacally. The Boy Who Lived…to the extreme!