Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling

First published: 1997–2007; includes Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 1997 (also known as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone); Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1998; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2005; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007

Type of work: Novels

Type of plot: Fantasy

Time of plot: 1990s and the early 2000s

Locale:England

Principal Characters

• Harry Potter, an orphaned young wizard
• Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Harry's best friends
• Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
• Tom Riddle, the dark lord, also known as Voldemort
• Severus Snape, potions master at Hogwarts
• Rubeus Hagrid, gamekeeper at Hogwarts
• Draco Malfoy, a student

The Story

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harry Potter is an orphan who is being raised by his uncle, aunt, and cousin, the Dursleys. When he is eleven years old, he discovers that he is a wizard and that a magical world exists beyond the "Muggle," or nonmagical, world in which he was raised. He learns that a dark wizard, Lord Voldemort, murdered his parents, and that Voldemort had also tried to kill Harry, but his curse mysteriously backfired, reducing Voldemort to a shadow of his former self and leaving Harry with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead..

Harry is invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His uncle tries to prevent his enrollment, but Harry is fetched by gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid, who takes him to London’s Diagon Alley for money and supplies (including his wand), and put on the train to Hogwarts. During the journey, Harry meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, soon to become his best friends. Ron recognizes Harry by the lightning-shaped scar on Harry’s forehead.

At Hogwarts, the students are sorted into four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Harry and his friends are sorted into Gryffindor, famed for its courage, while another new student, Draco Malfoy, is assigned to Slytherin, famed for its ambition. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore introduces the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirrell.

Professor Minerva McGonagall (head of Gryffindor) allows Harry to play Quidditch, a game like aerial soccer on broomsticks, although first-year students are generally prohibited from playing the game. Severus Snape, the head of Slytherin, appears to despise Harry; in turn, Harry and Ron hate Snape. The friendship of Harry, Ron, and Hermione is cemented at Halloween, as they defeat a troll that had entered the girls lavatory.

Harry and his friends discover a gigantic three-headed dog guarding a forbidden corridor. After they learn that the dog guards the Philosopher’s Stone, which grants immortality to its owner, the three friends target Snape, who they surmise plans to steal it. They calm the dog with music and solve a series of challenges, before Harry confronts and defeats Quirrell, who hosts the weakened Voldemort in his body and who had been seeking the stone to resurrect his master. Harry prevents Quirrell from obtaining the stone and returns it to Dumbledore. Voldemort flees and Quirrell dies. The stone is destroyed.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dobby, a house elf, tries to prevent Harry’s return to Hogwarts because he fears that Harry is in danger. However, Harry does return, thanks to a flying car rigged by Ron’s father, Arthur, and driven by Ron. Ginny Weasley joins Ron and her other brothers at Hogwarts. The narcissistic Gilderoy Lockhart, who writes fictionalized tales of his own adventures, is the new teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Several petrifications of students, including Hermione, raises suspicion that Harry has cursed the victims and that either he or Hagrid has opened the legendary Chamber of Secrets. Harry learns the chamber was last opened fifty years before, a violation for which gamekeeper Hagrid was expelled from the school. Many believe Harry to be the heir of Hogwarts cofounder Salazar Slytherin. Hagrid is arrested and then sends Ron and Harry into the forest to find a giant spider named Aragog, who reveals that Hagrid is innocent.

Harry also finds the diary of a former Hogwarts student, Tom Riddle, from fifty years before, and communicates with young Riddle by writing in the diary. A series of clues leads the boys to believe the Chamber holds a basilisk, a serpent that can kill anyone who looks into its eyes.

Ginny Weasley disappears one day, and Harry and Ron descend through bathroom pipes into the Chamber to find her. Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes, brings Harry the sword of Godric Gryffindor and blinds the basilisk. Harry defeats the serpent and uses its fang to destroy the diary. He then saves Ginny and learns that the diary had bewitched her. He also confronts Riddle, who reveals himself as Voldemort. Meanwhile, Dobby, the house-elf, is freed from servitude, and the petrified victims are revived.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Sirius Black is an alleged murderer who has escaped from the wizarding prison, Azkaban. On the train to Hogwarts, the children meet the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Remus Lupin. They also encounter dementors, Azkaban guards who inhale souls. The dementors have been stationed outside Hogwarts to guard the school from the fugitive Sirius Black.

Lupin teaches the children to summon a patronus, a protective creature capable of driving the dementors away. Harry’s patronus is a stag, his father’s Animagus shape. Draco Malfoy taunts a hippogriff in Care of Magical Creatures class and is nipped; he pretends to be severely injured to get Hagrid fired. The creature, Buckbeak, is sentenced to death.

Chasing his pet rat, Ron is assaulted by a large black dog and dragged through a secret tunnel toward the village of Hogsmeade. Harry and Hermione follow, only to learn that the dog is Sirius Black’s Animagus. Harry accuses Black of betraying his parents to Lord Voldemort and contemplates killing him, but Lupin arrives and disarms Harry. To the friends’ great surprise, Lupin embraces Black. Ron learns that his rat is the Animagus of Peter Pettigrew, and that Black, Lupin, Pettigrew, and James Potter, Harry's father, had formed a clique of marauders during their Hogwarts years. The rat appears, and Lupin prevents Black from attacking it, arguing that Harry deserves an explanation.

The explanation reveals startling facts: James Potter once saved Severus Snape’s life, and the debt has fueled Snape’s grudge against Harry and his father. Remus Lupin is a werewolf, as Hermione has surmised. It was Pettigrew who revealed James and Lily’s Potter’s location to Voldemort the night they died. Black, enraged, had attempted to kill Pettigrew, who escaped and faked his own death, and Black was sentenced to Azkaban for Pettigrew’s murder. When Black lets Harry choose whether Pettigrew lives or dies, Harry reasons that his father would not have wanted his friends to kill anyone and that Azkaban will be sufficient for Pettigrew. Harry also learns that Sirius Black is his godfather.

Dementors appear as the group returns to the castle. Under the full moon, Lupin unwillingly transforms into a werewolf and, in the chaos, Pettigrew escapes. Across the lake, Harry sees the hippogriff executed. He thinks he sees his father, then watches a stag drive the dementors away. Dumbledore allows Harry, Ron, and Hermione to use a rare device to turn back time and save both Buckbeak and Sirius, who rides to freedom on the hippogriff’s back. Once he understands the time shift, Harry realizes that he saw himself, not his father, across the lake.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Harry begins a trip to the international Quidditch tournament, which later devolves into a riot. Ron, Hermione, and Harry flee into the woods, where they see in the sky a symbol signifying the presence of Death Eaters, Voldemort’s followers. Later, at Hogwarts, students from two other wizarding schools, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, arrive for the Tri-Wizard Tournament, a challenge that will include stealing eggs from dragons, rescuing loved ones from the bottom of a lake, and negotiating a perilous maze. Customarily, the name of one participant from each school is drawn from the Goblet of Fire, but this time the goblet adds a fourth name: Harry. Harry, though much younger than the other competitors, successfully completes the first two challenges.

In the maze during the third challenge, Harry and Cedric Diggory, the other Hogwarts contestant, finish together and decide to share the prize. They grab the goblet together, but the prize is a portkey, an object that is rigged to transport them to a graveyard where Voldemort and Pettigrew wait. Voldemort kills Cedric and attacks Harry, hoping to use the boy’s blood to reinvigorate himself. They duel, and, through a strange connection between Harry and Voldemort's wands, the spirits of Voldemort’s most recent victims are drawn out of his wand. Harry sees the ghosts of his parents, and the sight gives him the courage to defeat Voldemort. He also learns that Voldemort set up their meeting by having Harry’s name planted in the goblet by Barty Crouch Jr., who has been using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Mad-Eye Moody, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Crouch, the son of a famous politician, is exposed; he kills his father at Hogwarts and is condemned to receive the dementor’s kiss before he can confirm Voldemort’s return.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Countless witches and wizards oppose Voldemort and the Death Eaters; they form the Order of the Phoenix to fight Voldemort's rise to power. The order includes Sirius Black, Ron Weasley’s parents, Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin, and a number of others. Ironically, they meet in Sirius’s home, despite his family’s allegiance to Voldemort. Sirius’s cousin, Narcissa, is married to Lucius Malfoy, and Narcissa’s sister, Bellatrix Lestrange, is deeply loyal to Voldemort and once tortured the parents of Neville Longbottom, Harry's friend.

At home with the Dursleys for the summer, Harry witnesses a dementor attack his cousin, Dudley; Harry protects him but must then answer to the ominous Ministry of Magic for using magic outside Hogwarts. Harry is acquitted and returns to Hogwarts, where the ministry has installed the simpering and cruel Dolores Umbridge as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. She is later selected by the government, which refuses to acknowledge Voldemort's return, to replace Dumbledore as the school’s headmaster.

A number of students form Dumbledore’s Army meet in a secret room for self-defense lessons from Harry. The group includes Cho Chang, who is Cedric Diggory’s former girlfriend and now Harry’s love interest. Hagrid, who has been missing for quite some time, returns with his strong but dim-witted half-brother, Grawp, from the land of the giants, whose help he has solicited in the conflict with Voldemort.

One horrible development follows another: Harry discovers that he can sometimes see and hear what Voldemort sees and hears, so he knows before anyone else when Voldemort, in the form of a snake, attacks Ron Weasley’s father at the Ministry of Magic. Dumbledore is disturbed by this strange connection between Harry and Voldemort and encourages Harry to take lessons in Occlumency with Professor Snape in order to protect his mind from infiltration by Voldemort. Harry believes that his ability to see into the mind of Voldemort is beneficial and does not take his lessons with Snape seriously. Bellatrix Lestrange and several other Death Eaters escape Azkaban. Headmaster Umbridge continues to torment all of Hogwarts, forcing Harry to write lines with a pen that etches the words into his skin. In a dream, Harry learns that Voldemort has captured Sirius Black. Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to contact Sirius but are caught in Umbridge’s office. On pretense, Hermione convinces Umbridge that they were trying to contact Dumbledore to tell him that they have completed a weapon for him, which they have hidden in the forest. Hermione then leads Umbridge into the forest, where Umbridge insults the centaurs and is captured by them.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, and their friend Luna Lovegood go to the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic to try to rescue Sirius Black. Harry realizes that Sirius has not in fact been taken prisoner, but that he has been tricked by Voldemort into believing so and lured into a trap. Harry and his friends try to hold off the Death Eaters and are losing badly when the Order of the Phoenix arrives to rescue them. During a fight between members of the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters, Sirius is killed by Bellatrix Lestrange, and an archived prophecy concerning Harry and Voldemort is destroyed. Harry returns to Hogwarts, devastated at the loss of Sirius. Dumbledore finally tells him why Voldemort wants him dead: before Harry's birth, the Divination teacher at Hogwarts, Sibyll Trelawney, had prophesied that a boy born near Harry’s birth date will try to destroy Voldemort and that “neither can live while the other survives.” It was this prophecy that prompted Voldemort to seek out and kill Harry and his parents.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The prime minister of the United Kingdom meets the Minister of Magic to discuss recent disasters caused by Voldemort. Dumbledore tells Harry that Sirius had left his godson everything he owned, including his house and the house-elf Kreacher.

Severus Snape has finally become Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and Horace Slughorn replaces Snape as the potions master. Slughorn is impressed with Harry, both because Lily Potter was one of the professor’s favorite students and because Harry excels at potions, thanks to a textbook with mysterious annotations that once had belonged to someone called the Half-Blood Prince. Harry’s success in Slughorn’s class earns him a bottle of liquid luck.

Using a Pensieve, a bowl of liquid through which people archive memories, Harry and Dumbledore investigate Voldemort’s past, including his Slytherin-descended mother and his Muggle father. Finding a corrupted memory involving Slughorn, Dumbledore tells Harry to find a way to get Slughorn to tell him the true memory. Harry uses the liquid luck and learns that, while a student at Hogwarts, Slughorn had told Tom Riddle about Horcruxes, objects that can store bits of the soul and that are created through murder. Dumbledore has figured out that Voldemort seeks immortality through the creation of Horcruxes, probably seven of them. He believes that one of these Horcruxes was Riddle’s diary, which Harry had destroyed in his second year at Hogwarts, and one is a family ring that Dumbledore had destroyed. The seventh Horcrux is inside Voldemort, so there are four more to be found and destroyed before Voldemort can be killed.

Dumbledore and Harry go to a cave to find a Horcrux, and Dumbledore drinks a potion there that greatly weakens him, only to find that the Horcrux is gone. The two return to Hogwarts, which has been overtaken by Death Eaters. Draco Malfoy tries to kill the headmaster, but he cannot. Instead, Snape kills Dumbledore with the Avada Kedavra curse. As Snape escapes, he reveals himself to Harry as the Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore’s funeral is held on the Hogwarts grounds.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry is now seventeen years old and is no longer protected by his dead mother’s love. He is evacuated from Sirius's home, now the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, to the Weasleys’ home for Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour’s wedding. Despite being heavily guarded, Harry and several members of the Order of the Phoenix are attacked by Death Eaters on their way to the Weasley home. In the chase, Mad-Eye Moody and Harry's pet owl, Hedwig, are killed.

In his will, Dumbledore has left Hermione a book of folk tales, Ron a Deluminator, and Harry the first snitch he had caught in a Quidditch match. Dumbledore’s death raises controversy about his past, particularly his friendship with the notorious dark wizard Grindewald.

Kreacher, now Harry’s house-elf, describes going with Sirius’s brother Romulus to get the Horcrux that Harry and Dumbledore sought in the cave. Harry also learns that Dolores Umbridge now has the locket containing Voldemort's Horcrux.

Severus Snape has replaced Dumbledore as headmaster at Hogwarts. The Ministry of Magic, now overtaken by Death Eaters, has launched a racial purity inquisition. Using Polyjuice Potion, Harry, Ron, and Hermione enter the ministry to get the Horcrux from Umbridge, and they barely escape. In their attempt to reenter the Black house, they accidentally let a Death Eater in and are forced to flee.

In Godric’s Hollow, where Harry lived with his parents when he was a baby, the three friends find the graves of James and Lily Potter and of Dumbledore’s mother and sister. They visit Bathilda Bagshot, the author of a biography of Dumbledore. Harry is attacked by Voldemort's snake, Nagini, harbored in Bagshot’s body. Hermione rescues Harry but destroys his wand in the process. They all learn that as young men, Dumbledore and his friend Gellert Grindewald had wanted wizards to dominate Muggles. Dumbledore eventually rejected that idea and fought the Dark Arts, but Grindewald had persisted.

Frustrated with the hiding and searching for Horcruxes, Ron leaves briefly. He reappears when Harry dives into a lake to retrieve the sword of Godric Gryffindor, shown to him by a silver doe. Because the locket Horcrux weighs Harry down, Ron must retrieve the sword and save his friend.

Ron, Harry, and Hermione read the book that Dumbledore left for Hermione and begin searching for a triangular mark they find in it, one worn by Luna Lovegood’s father at Bill Weasley’s wedding. When they visit the Lovegoods, the father asks Hermione to read the story of three brothers who trick Death and are awarded one wish each. The brothers receive the powerful Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and an Invisibility Cloak. The three objects are known as the Deathly Hallows. Harry, Ron, and Hermione recognize two of the Hallows: Harry’s Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone, which concealed the second Horcrux that Dumbledore destroyed.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are captured and taken to Malfoy Manor, where they find Luna and other captives, including Griphook, a goblin who used to work at the bank Gringotts. Dobby is killed attempting their rescue. They escape and go to Bill and Fleur’s cottage to recover, and then plan to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes.

Griphook tells Harry that another Horcrux is hidden in Bellatrix Lestrange's bank account in exchange for Gryffindor’s sword, which Harry promises but does not intend to give. Griphook, Harry, Ron, and Hermione break into Gringotts. From Bellatrix's vault, they get Helga Hufflepuff’s cup and escape on a dragon, who takes them to Hogsmeade, where they are saved by Dumbledore’s brother, Aberforth. In the chaos at Gringotts, Griphook escaped separately, stealing the sword.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione return to Hogwarts, which is now infiltrated by Death Eaters. Neville, Luna, and Ginny have been leading Dumbledore’s Army in the counterattack. Ron and Hermione destroy the Hufflepuff cup with a basilisk’s fang from the Chamber of Secrets. In the Room of Requirement, they search for Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem, another Horcrux. Draco Malfoy and his lackeys, Crabbe and Goyle, plan to deliver Harry to Voldemort. They attack with fire, nearly killing them all. Harry, Ron, and Hermione escape, taking Malfoy and Goyle with them; they cannot save Crabbe, who dies in the blaze. The Fiendfyre destroys the diadem.

Fred Weasley is killed in the battle at Hogwarts. Ron, Harry, and Hermione go to the Shrieking Shack to confront Voldemort. They arrive in time to see Voldemort use the snake, Nagani, to kill Snape and secure the Elder Wand, which Snape had taken after Dumbledore’s death.

In Dumbledore’s office, Harry looks in the Pensieve and sees answers to several mysteries. Dumbledore had trusted Snape’s loyalty because from childhood, Snape had loved Harry’s mother and had deserted Voldemort for killing her. He had promised to help protect Harry for her sake. The Silver Doe who showed Harry where Gryffindor’s sword was Snape’s patronus. Dumbledore had asked Snape to kill him to spare Draco Malfoy the responsibility. Harry also learns that on the night Voldemort murdered his parents and attacked him, Voldemort inadvertently created a Horcrux in Harry, and destroying it would mean destroying Harry.

Harry realizes he must die to destroy Voldemort. He asks Neville to kill Nagani and then goes to meet his nemesis. Remembering the Snitch, he tells it he is going to die and then acquires the Resurrection Stone. It summons all the dead people he has loved, not in the flesh but in forms that reassure him that death is not painful. Still, he realizes how precious life is.

Voldemort’s attack does not kill Harry but instead destroys the part of Harry that is Voldemort. In a state of limbo, Dumbledore appears to Harry, explaining that as an adult he had seen the folly in the obsession he and Grindewald once had with the Deathly Hallows. Harry can now choose to die or return to the living. He awakens with Narcissa Malfoy asking him her son’s fate; when Harry replies that Draco lives, she tells Voldemort that Harry is dead, saving his life.

Hagrid carries Harry back to Hogwarts, where his friends grieve. Neville kills Nagani, triggering an attack by Dumbledore’s Army. Molly Weasley kills Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry, under the Invisibility Cloak, moves toward Voldemort. When Harry reveals himself, great rejoicing greets him. He explains to Voldemort that the Elder Wand is rightfully his own, as he had taken it from Draco Malfoy after Malfoy had taken it from Dumbledore. Voldemort attacks Harry, but his curse rebounds and kills him. Harry gives up the Elder Wand after using it to repair his own wand.

Nineteen years later, Harry and Ginny are married, as are Ron and Hermione. The couples send their own children to Hogwarts. Peace has returned to the wizarding world.

Bibliography

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