The Harry Potter logo, used first in American editions of the novel series and later in movies.J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.A set of all seven UK Edition Harry Potter novels.
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasynovels and eight movies by British author J. K. Rowling. It is named for its main character and hero, Harry Potter. Ten books in the series have sold over 950 million copies across the world in over 133 languages including Latin, Welsh and Ancient Greek, and is the best-selling book series of all time. They were adapted into movies by Warner Bros. Pictures. The first one was released in 2001. The second, third, fourth, and fifth were released respectively in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007. The sixth movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released in 2009. The final movie was divided into two parts. The first part, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1, was released in 2010. The second part, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, was released in 2011. Several spin-off movies have been released in 2016, 2018, and 2022 respectively, as well as some television specials in 2022 and in 2024, and an upcoming television series titled Harry Potter for the streaming service HBO Max will officially premiere in late 2026.
Plot
Harry Potter was born in England, United Kingdom. His parents, Lily and James Potter, were killed by an evil wizard named Lord Voldemort, while Voldemort was trying to kill Harry. Yet Harry escaped with no harm except a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt, and Voldemort ends up presumably dead. Harry is raised by his non-magical Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and cousin (Dudley), and is mistreated by them. He believes the false words of the Dursleys that Harry's parents were killed in a car crash. As a child, he did not know that he was a wizard. He eventually discovers that there are many magical people, living secretly and hiding from non-wizards (known as "Muggles"). When Harry turned eleven on July 31, he received a letter inviting him to go to a school called Hogwarts for young witches and wizards. Each book tells the story of one year of his life at the school and tells how he struggles. On Hogwarts Express, the train they use to get to Hogwarts, he meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who become his best friends. Harry also later meets Myrtle Warren, a ghost, who also becomes his friend. Voldemort tries several times to return to life and kill Harry. In the fourth book, Voldemort comes to life with help from his follower, Peter Pettigrew. The series ends with an epic battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort and a final epilogue that shows Harry and his friends safe and happy with their partners and children.
The seven books were all adapted into different forms of media, including toys, movies, spin-off movies, television series, specials, video games, and a stage play as well.
2024 – Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions (Released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S)
Stage
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play based on a new story by J.K Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany. It is billed as being the "eighth story, nineteen years later." It stars Jamie Parker as Harry, Noma Dumezweni as Hermione, and Paul Thornley as Ron.
"While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places."
The play officially opened July 30, 2016 at the Palace Theatre in London.
Characters and actors
Main characters
Harry Potter (played by Daniel Radcliffe and Dominic McLaughlin): The hero of the stories. Harry is a special young wizard. Harry's parents, James and Lily Potter, were killed by Lord Voldemort when he was a baby. He lives with and is raised by his Aunt Petunia, his mother's sister, and Uncle Vernon, along with their son Dudley for the duration of the series.
Ron Weasley (played by Rupert Grint and Alastair Stout): Harry's best friend. Ron was born to Arthur and Molly Weasley, a large magical family, with five older brothers and one younger sister. He is the second youngest child in the Weasley family. He often helps Harry out on his many adventures, including the fight to defeat the evil Lord Voldemort.
Hermione Granger (played by Emma Watson and Arabella Stanton): Harry's other best friend. Hermione's parents are not wizards, but "Muggles" (non-magical people). She is the brightest student in a class. She also faces much prejudice for her muggle family from both students at school and Voldemort's followers, the Death Eaters.
Ginny Weasley (played by Bonnie Wright, Gracie Cochrane, and Bonnie Hill): Ron's younger sister and the last of 7 children. She is seen having a crush on Harry as a little girl in the first book, and would eventually go on to date him and marry him.
Rubeus Hagrid (played by Robbie Coltrane, Martin Bayfield, and Nick Frost): Hagrid is originally just the Groundskeeper at Hogwarts, but in the third book gets the position of teacher. He teaches "Care of Magical Creatures" from the third book until the seventh, when he leaves the school to escape the Death Eaters. He is a friend of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and a "half-giant."
Sirius Black (played by Gary Oldman): Sirius Black was James Potter's best friend in school and before James' death. He was charged for the murder of another of James' friends, Peter Pettigrew. Sirius was innocent, but convicted anyway. In the third novel, the Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius breaks out of prison (the wizarding prison is called Azkaban). He is Harry Potter's godfather. He is a major character in the third, fourth and fifth books, before his death at the end of the fifth book, the Order of the Phoenix.
Severus Snape (played by Alan Rickman, Alec Hopkins, Benedict Clarke, and Paapa Essiedu): Severus Snape was the Potions master at Hogwarts for the first five books. In the sixth book, he gets the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. After the death of Dumbledore, Snape becomes headmaster. Throughout the books, Snape shows much bias for his own school house, Slytherin. He treats students from the other houses very badly.
Draco Malfoy (played by Tom Felton and Lox Pratt): Draco Malfoy is a Slytherin student. In the first five books, he exists primarily as a foil (opposite) to Harry. In the sixth book, the Half-Blood Prince, he is ordered to kill Dumbledore but cannot bring himself to do it.
Neville Longbottom (played by Matthew Lewis and Rory Wilmot): He is a Gryffindor student and he is one of the members of Dumbledore's Army. His parents were tortured into insanity by Bellatrix Lestrange when he was sixteen months old. At the end of the series, during the battle of Hogwarts, he kills Nagini with Godric Gryffindor's sword, making it easy for Harry to defeat Voldemort.
Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. Took part in the Triwizard Tournament. Took Cho Chang to the Yule Ball. Killed by Voldemort's "Avada Kedavra" curse in the maze during the competition.
Harry's friend. Member of "Dumbledore's Army." Has a pet toad. Great in Herbology. Killed Voldemort's snake, Nagini, the sixth Horcrux, in the Final Battle, making it possible for Harry to finally kill Voldemort.
Harry's friend. She attends one of Professor Slughorn's 'Slug Club' parties with Harry in the Half-Blood Prince. She is strange, yet wise and people often find her company uncomfortable.
She is a student we see in the first movie of Harry Potter. She is in Hufflepuff. Her grandparents have been killed by Voldemort. Her aunt, Madam Bones, works at the Ministry of Magic.
Petunia Dursley (played by Fiona Shaw and Bel Powley) is Vernon's wife and Harry's aunt. Like Vernon, she usually treats Harry badly. She was jealous that her sister lily was a witch.
Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones and played by Lenny Rush) is a house-elf who used to belong to the Malfoy family. Unlike other house-elves, Dobby wishes to be free.
Merope is the descendant of Salazar Slytherin and is also the mother of Lord Voldemort.
Michael Corner (played by Ryan Nelson) is Ginny's boyfriend who makes Harry jealous in the later books.
Madame Rosmerta (played by Julie Christie) is the owner of 'The Three Broomsticks', the pub where butterbeer is often served.
Mr. Ollivander (played by John Hurt and Anton Lesser) Wandmaker, owner of Ollivanders, was taken away by the Death Eaters, but is broken out of his cell by Dobby and Harry Potter.
Rita Skeeter (played by Miranda Richardson) Reporter for the Daily Prophet, author of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, Animagus.
Stanley Shunpike(played by Lee Ingleby) is the conductor of the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard.
Magical creatures
The book has many non-human magical characters. Some of them are from mythology and others Rowling wrote herself. Some of these magical creatures have their own culture and some are like animals. According to the real-world book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Ministry of Magic makes three groups of creatures: Being, Beast and Spirit. Beings are creatures like humans and house elves, who are smart enough to manage their own business and Beasts are not.
Centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest near the school. They are smart and study the stars. They are proud and do not like it when humans bother them. Even though centaurs are smart enough to be called "Being" by the Ministry of Magic, they asked to be called "Beast" instead because that meant more humans would leave them alone. There is a Centaur Liaison Office at the Ministry of Magic, but no one ever uses it.
Mermaids live in the lake near the school. They speak a language called Mermish and have scary faces.
House Elves work in the school and for wizarding families. They cook and clean. A house elf can only be freed if its owner gives it clothes. Otherwise, they wear pillowcases, tea towels or other cloth that is not clothing. House Elves have their own kind of magic, which is very strong.
Veela can look like beautiful women or like winged creatures with scary faces. They can throw fireballs and magically appear attractive to human men.
Giants are large and brutal. Human beings hunted them so that now they have to live close together in mountains. Some giants can have children with humans.
Werewolves are humans who have been bitten by another werewolf. Other humans act as if they have a dangerous disease. There are laws saying they can only work in certain places. Wizards and non-wizards can be werewolves.
Ghosts are dead people who are gray and transparent. There are ghosts at Hogwarts who talk to the students. The history teacher is a ghost.
Phoenixes are fire birds. They catch fire once every five hundred days and come out of the ashes a young baby bird again. Their tears can heal even an almost dead person. In the second book, a phoenix saved harry from the Basilisk, another venomous creature. In the books, Dumbledore has a pet phoenix named Fawkes.
Vampires are magical creatures of the night which appear in the series only sporadically. The only known vampire in the Harry Potter series is Sanguini.
Leprechauns are magical beings; tiny, bearded men, they are the official mascots of the Irish National Quidditch Team.
Librarian Nancy Knapp pointed out the books' potential to improve literacy by motivating children to read much more than they otherwise would. The seven-book series has a word count of 1,083,594 (US edition). Agreeing about the motivating effects, Diane Penrod also praised the books' combination of simple entertainment with "the qualities of highbrow literary fiction", but expressed concern about the distracting effect of the large amount of merchandise that accompanies the book launches.
However, the assumption that Harry Potter books have increased literacy among young people is "largely a folk legend". Research by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has found no increase in reading among children as a result of the Harry Potter publishing phenomenon, nor has the broader downward trend in reading among Americans reversed during the rise in the popularity of the Harry Potter books. The research also found that children who read Harry Potter books were not more likely to go on to read outside the fantasy and mystery genres. NEA chairman Dana Gioia said the series, "got millions of kids to read a long and reasonably complex series of books. The trouble is that one Harry Potter novel every few years is not enough to reverse the decline in reading."
Many fan fiction and fan art works about Harry Potter have been made. In March 2007, "Harry Potter" was the most commonly searched fan fiction subject on the internet. Jennifer Conn used Snape's and Quidditch coach Madam Hooch's teaching methods as examples of what to avoid and what to imitate in clinical teaching, and Joyce Fields wrote that the books illustrate four of the five main topics in a typical first-year sociology class: "sociological concepts including culture, society, and socialisation; stratification and social inequality; social institutions; and social theory".
From the early 2000s on, several news reports appeared in the UK of the Harry Potter book and movie series driving demand for pet owls, and even reports that after the end of the movie series these same pet owls were now being abandoned by their owners. This led J. K. Rowling to issue several statements discouraging Harry Potter fans to buying pet owls. Despite the media coverage, research into the popularity of Harry Potter and sales of owls in the UK failed to find any evidence that the Harry Potter series had influenced the buying of owls in the country or the number of owls reaching animal shelters and sanctuaries.
By 2003, a sign marking Platform 9 3/4 was put up at the London King's Cross railway station, with a trolley fixed to the wall added by the year 2005. The location of the trolley moved after renovations, and a Harry Potter-themed shop opened nearby in 2012. Prince Charles visited the location in 2013.
On 1 September 2017, identified by Rowling as the date the events at Kings Cross in the epilogue of the seventh book and the beginning of the stage play take place, the official Harry Potter website promoted activities using the hashtag #BacktoHogwarts, including a livestream of Kings Cross, where actor Warwick Davis made an in-person appearance with fans. The date had been become popular on social media starting in 2015 with posts by Rowling about Harry's son James starting at Hogwarts. In the following years on the day, Warner Brothers continued to organize in person and virtual events at Kings Cross and around the world with appearances by film series actors such as Tom Felton and Eddie Redmayne and made announcements about products and experiences related to the series. Variety reported in 2023 that "Back to Hogwarts Day has morphed into a global phenomenon, with Warner Bros. Discovery now taking charge of proceedings" and quoted a Warner Brothers representative in noting that Kings Cross Station had to close its doors at 11 a.m. due to the large number of fans. On the date in 2024, fans showed up at King's Cross Station even though no event was held and fans were discouraged from attending, reportedly due to the crowding issues the year before, and booed when no Hogwarts Express announcement was made at 11 a.m. as in previous years. Since that year organizers have encouraged fans to participate in virtual events, while in-person events are held at other locations like Grand Central Terminal in New York City and Hamburg, Germany, after promoting in-person attendance at Kings Cross in previous years.
British book publisher Bloomsbury announced the launch of "Harry Potter Book Night" and related promotional events in 2014, first held in February 2015. In 2023, the event was rebranded to "Harry Potter Book Day" and moved to October.
↑Knapp, N.F. (2003). "In Defense of Harry Potter: An Apologia"(PDF). School Libraries Worldwide. 9 (1). International Association of School Librarianship: 78–91. Archived from the original(PDF) on 9 March 2011. Retrieved 14 May 2009.
