Who Gave Harry Potter The Invisibility Cloak In The Sorcerer’s Stone?

Content Warning: this article contains a discussion of suicide.

There’s no shortage of mysterious magical objects in the “Harry Potter” universe, but one of the items that’s most frequently wielded and utilized by Harry Potter himself (played by Daniel Radcliffe in the film franchise) is the Cloak of Invisibility, which — true to its name — allows Harry to disappear beneath it any time he needs to move discreetly throughout Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (Harry, to be frank, does this all the time, which is probably why he gets detention and loses House points for Gryffindor on a fairly regular basis.) In the final book (and final two-part movie), “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the Cloak comes in handy as Harry and his two best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) travel the wizarding world to find Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) Horcruxes — magical items containing pieces of the Dark Lord’s very soul — and destroy them. So what’s the deal with the Cloak?

It’s never fully explained how the Cloak functions, but that’s not what’s important here. How did Harry get the Cloak, and how does it connect to his family line (and a famous children’s story)? What journey did this magical artifact take before Harry was even born, and why does it end up with him when all is said and done? Let’s dive in.

Before Harry officially begins his studies at Hogwarts — and is sorted into Gryffindor along with Ron and Hermione in the process — he picks up some essentials for his education, including a wand, a pet owl named Hedwig, and tons of magical textbooks and potion ingredients. Like all of his peers, he doesn’t arrive for his first year of Hogwarts with a cloak that makes you invisible, but during his first Christmas at the castle, he receives a mysterious package containing one along with a cryptic note: “Your father left this cloak in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well.”

Harry does just that, using the Cloak to wander Hogwarts by night to try and figure out the identity of Nicolas Flamel, a man fleetingly mentioned by Harry’s friend and Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (the late Robbie Coltrane in the films) in connection with a treasure hidden in the depths of the school (which is, of course, the Sorcerer’s Stone — or Philosopher’s Stone, depending on where you live). One night, during his wanderings, Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised and sees reflections of his family within; when he’s discovered there by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris in the first two films), Dumbledore advises him not to “dwell on dreams.” This is all to say that Dumbledore and the cloak are connected — and Dumbledore is the one who left Harry the Cloak on Christmas. But why?

Dumbledore tells Harry, at the end of the first book and film, that he put the Cloak under the Christmas tree — and here’s why he had it in the first place. In the book version of “The Deathly Hallows,” Dumbledore — who dies in the previous installment, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” but shows up to see Harry in a sort of liminal space after Harry allows Voldemort to “kill” him — does a deep dive as to why he came into possession of the Cloak, which belonged to Harry’s father James Potter. (Michael Gambon plays Dumbledore in these films; Richard Harris passed away in 2002.)

“You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession the night your parents died,” Dumbledore says to Harry in the novel, explaining that he was inspired to seek the Deathly Hallows of legend after hearing about them for years:

 “James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It explained much of his undetected wrongdoings at school! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look … It was a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect … and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!” 

The other Hallow Dumbledore is referring to is the Elder Wand, which he won in a duel against Grindelwald years prior.

In the novel of “Deathly Hallows” and the first half of the film adaptation, Harry, Ron, and Hermione head to the home of Xenophilius Lovegood (Rhys Ifans) — editor of the offbeat publication The Quibbler and father of their Hogwarts classmate Luna (Evanna Lynch) — to learn about the mysterious Deathly Hallows, at which point Xenophilius tells them that the truth lies in a children’s book left to Hermione in Dumbledore’s will. In “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” there’s a story called “The Tale of the Three Brothers” that Hermione reads aloud, where three brothers (duh) are walking together one evening and, thanks to their magical ability, construct a bridge to cross a dangerous river. When Death, furious that they thwarted him, appears in front of them, he grants a wish to each of them.

The eldest brother asks for an unbeatable wand, the middle asks for a stone that can bring the dead back to life, and the youngest asks for a cloak to shield him from death. Unfortunately for the first two brothers, their hubris gets them in the end; the eldest brother has his throat slit for the wand, and the middle takes his own life after conjuring the faint spirit of the woman he once loved using the stone. Meanwhile, the youngest brother remains invisible to Death until he reaches the end of his life — and when he feels ready, he passes the Cloak to his son and embraces Death.

When Hermione points out that many cloaks can make the wearer invisible, Xenophilius shoots back, “We are talking about a cloak that really and truly renders the wearer completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving constant and impenetrable concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it.” As it happens, that’s exactly how Harry’s Cloak functions … which means that he’s had one of the Hallows in his possession since the age of 11.

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Wait, so how does James Potter factor into all of this? As Dumbledore explains to Harry when they’re hanging out in the boundless void at the end of “Deathly Hallows,” the three brothers from the tale were real — and their last name was Peverell. “Whether they met Death on a lonely road … I think it’s more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating these powerful objects,” Dumbledore tells Harry. “The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems to me the sort of legend that might have sprung up around such creations. The Cloak, as you know now, traveled down through the ages, father to son, mother to daughter, right down to Ignotus’ last living descendent, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.”

So there you have it: James Potter is descended from the Peverells, a fact that Harry realizes much earlier in “Deathly Hallows” while he and Hermione visit Godric’s Hollow at Christmastime to see where his parents are buried. Ignotus just so happens to be the youngest of the brothers — with Antioch as the eldest and Cadmus as the middle child — and as the only one to live a naturally long life, he was the only brother with descendants… one of whom is Harry.

So what does Harry do with the Cloak of Invisibility during his time at Hogwarts? A whole lot of stuff, actually! In “Sorcerer’s Stone” alone, Harry uses it to visit the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, find the Mirror of Erised, smuggle an illegal baby dragon to the top of the Astronomy Tower on Hagrid’s behalf, and approach Fluffy, the three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor that leads to the Stone itself. In the third book and film, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” Harry isn’t allowed to visit the village of Hogsmeade with his friends after his evil aunt and uncle refuse to sign a permission slip — so guess how he sneaks into the hamlet to hang out with his friends? (That’s right: the Cloak.) In that same installment, Harry, Ron, and Hermione use it to secretly enter the Shrieking Shack, discover the truth about James’ former friends Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black (Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman), and later, sneak around with a Time-Turner to help Sirius escape execution.

I could go on and on, but the point is that Harry uses the Invisibility Cloak to sneak around and eavesdrop and trick people … and as far as a narrative device is concerned, it’s undeniably brilliant when you consider that it lets Harry learn information that the reader also needs. (The books are told from Harry’s point of view, so with that in mind, the Cloak is basically indispensable from a storytelling perspective.) If you want to watch Harry skulk around in the Invisibility Cloak on-screen, the movies are streaming on Peacock now.