Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds may be tiny, but they can pack a huge symbolic wallop.

Hahp first encounters hummingbirds in one of the tests that the wizards administer fairly late in the book. Here's how it goes:

I had to sit in a glass enclosure with Servenian hummingbirds. They were in a little cage inside the enclosure. I was told to let them out. That was it. No other instruction. (62.3)

So Hahp does—and then when he realizes that they're in danger of killing themselves by banging into the glass walls, he finds a way to guide them out of the enclosure. That way, they can feast on the honeysuckle flowers nearby. Hahp's learned to pity anyone who feels hunger, now that he's experienced it, so the hummingbirds symbolize his newfound sense of empathy.

But it's a little ambiguous as to whether Hahp was supposed to let them out of the enclosure, or just the little cage. The supervising wizard, Jux, asks Hahp: "Why did you help them?" (62.12). In the academy, there is such a thing as being too helpful, and it seems like Hahp might've toed that line.

The next time Hahp sleeps, his dreams "were about hummingbirds falling to the ground and fluttering, too weak to rise, and a wizard with icy eyes was stepping on them, crushing the life out of them" (62.20). In a way, Hahp and the other boys are like hummingbirds: the wizards are caging them and killing them, and they're helpless to stop it.