Was Dumbledore’s death a case of euthanasia?

[Spoiler alert: those who have not read the Harry Potter books but plan to read the entire series one day should not read any further.]

There’s probably no need to say where this passage comes from, nor to translate the final spell, especially if we exclude readers who don't know what a Muggle is. The killing of the wise Dumbledore by the troubled Severus Snape at the end of the sixth Harry Potter book likely made many readers cry.

Much like Oscar Wilde's declaring that one of the greatest misfortunes of his life was the death of Lucien de Rubempré in Balzac's Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes, many readers of J.K. Rowling must have experienced the death of the headmaster of Hogwarts with real grief and hated the “traitor” Snape.

The seventh book, however, reveals that Dumbledore was doomed in the short term and felt it necessary to die. His last words to Snape contain a perfect double entendre to mislead the reader. “Severus... please!”: not a plea for an enemy about to kill you to spare your life, but, on the contrary, a plea for an ally to kill you. A successful red herring that makes for a perfect literary crime...

To our knowledge, however, moral theology experts have not addressed an important question: Is this a case of euthanasia? In other words, we’d like to know whether this killing is morally defensible.

For those who want to probe Dumbledore's intentions, Harry's final discoveries — the marvel of the “pensieve” — offer some clarification. The reader learns, along with the hero, the content of the dialogue in which Dumbledore, certain that he has less than a year to live, explains his plan to Snape: 

It’s clear that Rowling seems to be trying to mix different reasons, ranging from a sense of sacrifice to a fear of suffering, from concern for the souls of others to weariness with life. If we add that killing Dumbledore is undoubtedly the best way for Snape to win Voldemort's trust once and for all — and thus contribute to the victory of good within the camp of evil — we are even more perplexed about the moral legitimacy of this “Severus... please.”

It should be noted that the novelist herself refrains from making a judgment, ultimately leaving the decision to Snape's conscience. This brings to mind what Frédérique Leichter-Flack writes when she explores literature as a laboratory of moral dilemmas (the title of her essay): “Literature does not tell us where good and evil lie, but teaches us to take a closer look at what we often too quickly take for one or the other.”

Although this is undoubtedly true above all for novels — epics, essays, and much of theater often offer a slightly less muddled lesson — it makes literature ”the refuge of the world's complexity."

“Looking more closely” is a healthy approach that always challenges the status quo and sometimes leads to discoveries that would have been easier to ignore. “Looking more closely” is also what J.K. Rowling herself has done, if we are to believe her recent comments on euthanasia previously reported by Aleteia: "I used to believe in assisted dying. I no longer do, largely because I'm married to a doctor who opened my eyes to the possibilities of coercion of sick or vulnerable people."

Does this statement shed light on Dumbledore's death in retrospect? Probably not. On the other hand, the novelist's evolution at least prevents euthanasia advocates from trying to enlist her under their banner, using this killing as an argument.

To read more about euthanasia and why the Church opposes it, take a look at this summary of a recent Church document:

The 2024 document on Human Dignity also had a section on euthanasia.