Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Sirius Black

Sirius Black (195918 June, 1996), also known as Padfoot or Snuffles in his Animagus form, was a pure-blood wizard, the older son of Orion and Walburga Black, as well as the older brother of Regulus by slightly over a year. Although he was the heir of the House of Black, Sirius disagreed with his family's belief in blood purity and defied tradition when he was sorted into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which he attended from 1971 to 1978.
Sirius Black profileAs Sirius' relationship with his relatives deteriorated, he gained lifelong friendship in James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. The four friends, also known as the Marauders, joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight against Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters during the First Wizarding War. Sirius also became the godfather of Harry Potter, the only son of James and Lily Potter. When Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, Sirius sought to exact revenge on Pettigrew. However, Pettigrew was able to frame Sirius for his betrayal of the Potters, the murder of twelve Muggles, and the staged murder of Pettigrew before Sirius could accomplish this.
Sirius was sent to Azkaban, and after twelve years became the only known person to escape the prison unassisted by transforming into his Animagus form of a massive black dog confused with a "Grim." Sirius exposed Pettigrew's treachery to his old friend Remus and his godson. After Lord Voldemort returned in 1995, Sirius rejoined the Order. He was murdered by his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries and subsequently cleared of all charges by the Ministry of Magic.
He briefly appeared again through the Resurrection Stone on the 2 May, 1998 for Harry, along with James Potter, Lily Potter, and Remus Lupin. Harry later named his first son James Sirius Potter after him.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Dursley Family

DursleyFamilyThe Dursley family is a Muggle family, and the only known living close relatives of Harry Potter. Petunia Dursley was the older sister of Harry's mother, Lily Potter , but took the surname Dursley when she married Vernon Dursley. They had a son named Dudley.

Luna Lovegood

Luna profileLuna Lovegood (b. between 1 September, 1980 and 2 May, 1981[1]) was a witch and daughter of Xenophilius and Pandora Lovegood. Her mother accidentally died while experimenting with spells when Luna was nine, and Luna was raised by her father, editor of the magazine The Quibbler, in a rook-like house near the village of Ottery St. Catchpole. Luna attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1992 to 1999 and was sorted into Ravenclaw house. In her fourth year, Luna joined Dumbledore's Army, an organisation taught and led by Harry Potter, of which she became an important member.
She participated in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996 and the Battle of the Astronomy Tower in 1997, and co-led the reconstituted Dumbledore's Army when Hogwarts fell under the control of Lord Voldemort. Because of her father's political dissidence at the time, Luna was abducted by Death Eaters to be held ransom, and imprisoned in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor for months. She was freed by Dobby along with several other prisoners in the spring of 1998, and stayed at Shell Cottage until she returned to Hogwarts to participate in the final battle of the Second Wizarding War.
Later in life, Luna became a wizarding naturalist (Magizoologist) and eventually married Rolf Scamander, with whom she had twin sons, Lorcan and Lysander. Luna's good friends Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley also named their daughter and third child Lily Luna Potter after her. 

Cho Chang

Cho-chang1Cho Chang (born c. 1979) was a witch who attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1990 to 1997 and was sorted into Ravenclaw House. She was a Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team and a popular student. In Cho's fifth year, she began dating Cedric Diggory while he was a Champion in the Triwizard Tournament. Cedric became one of the first casualties of the Second Wizarding War, as he was murdered by Peter Pettigrew on the orders of Lord Voldemort in June of 1995. His death greatly upset Cho and made her determined to fight against the recently returned Dark Lord.
In her sixth year, against her parents' wishes she joined Dumbledore's Army, an organisation taught and led by Harry Potter. In the same year she also began a romantic relationship with him. However, Cho's best friend Marietta Edgecombe betrayed the D.A., and Cho and Harry's relationship fell apart. Cho remained loyal to her school and to the D.A., returning after she had graduated to participate in the Battle of Hogwarts.
She survived the Second Wizarding War and eventually married a Muggle.

Ginevra Molly Potter (Weasley)

Ginny Weasley hbp promoGinevra[4] Molly[13] "Ginny" Potter (née Weasley) (b. 11 August, 1981) was a pure-blood witch, the youngest of Arthur and Molly Weasley's (née Prewett) seven children, and the first female to be born into the Weasley line for several generations. She attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1992 to 1999 and was sorted into Gryffindor house. During her first year, she came under the influence of the memory of Tom Riddle's sixteen-year-old self, preserved in a diary, and was forced to re-open the Chamber of Secrets, endangering the lives of many students, including herself.
Following that ordeal, Ginny grew into a confident young woman, becoming an important member of Dumbledore's Army, an organisation taught and led by Harry Potter. She would later fight in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996, the Battle of the Astronomy Tower in 1997, and the Battle of Hogwarts in 1998. She was also an accomplished Quidditch player, playing Chaser and Seeker at different times for the Gryffindor House team.
After the Second Wizarding War she became a professional Quidditch player for the Holyhead Harpies. Upon retiring from the Harpies, Ginny became the senior Quidditch correspondent for the Daily Prophet. She married Harry Potter at some point in the early 2000s, and they had three children; James Sirius, Albus Severus, and Lily Luna Potter.

Lord Voldemort and Tom Marvolo Riddle

before you know the other character, meet my favorite villain of all...............
Lord Voldemort (born Tom Marvolo Riddle) is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Voldemort first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was released in 1997. Voldemort appeared either in person or in flashbacks in each book and film adaptation in the series, except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where he is mentioned.
Lordvoldemort.jpgIn the series, Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". Almost no witch or wizard dares to speak his name, instead referring to him by epithets such as "You-Know-Who", "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
According to an interview with Rowling, "Voldemort" is pronounced with a silent 't' at the end, as in the French word "mort", meaning "death". This was the pronunciation used by Jim Dale in the first four U.S. audiobooks; however, after the release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in which the characters who dared refer to him by name pronounced it with the "t", Dale altered his pronunciation to that in the films.
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the main protagonist of the series), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard [...] And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. [...] When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry — he tried to curse him. [...] Harry has to find out, before we find out. And – so – but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a Taboo is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death," and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors.

Ronald Billius Weasley

Ronald Bilius "Ron" Weasley is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. His first appearance was in the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as the best friend of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. He is a member of the Weasley family, a pure blood family, who reside in "The Burrow" outside Ottery St. Catchpole. Along with Harry and Hermione, he is a member of the Gryffindor house. Ron is present in most of the action throughout the series.
 

Ron Weasley poster.jpgAccording to Rowling, Ron was among the characters she created "the very first day".[1] Ron is inspired by Rowling's best friend Sean Harris (to whom Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is dedicated), but she has clearly stated that she "never set out to describe Sean in Ron, but Ron has a Sean-ish turn of phrase."[2] Like Harris is to Rowling, Ron is "always there" when Harry needs him. The character of Ron fits many of the stereotypes expected of the sidekick; he is often used as comic relief, is loyal to the hero, and lacks much of the talent Harry possesses, at least in terms of magical power; however, he proves his bravery several times, such as playing 'real wizard's chess' in the first book, and entering into the Forbidden Forest with Harry during the second book despite his arachnophobia.
Some of Ron's qualities serve as foils to Harry. While Harry is an orphan with more gold than he needs, Ron comes from a loving but poor family; many of his possessions are hand-me-downs. Harry is famous but would prefer to avoid the spotlight; Ron, in comparison, is often perceived as a mere lackey and sometimes becomes jealous of the recognition Harry receives. Finally, Ron is the most mediocre of his siblings, being (as of the first book) neither an excellent Quidditch player, a noteworthy student, nor the daughter his mother always wanted. All these factors have combined to cause Ron serious insecurities; this inferiority complex, and his need to prove himself, is the main thrust of his character arc.

Hermoine Jean Granger

Hermione Jean Granger (/hərˈm.əni ˈn ˈɡrnər/) is a fictional character in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She initially appears in the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as a new student on her way to Hogwarts. After Harry and Ron save her from a mountain troll in the girls' toilets, she becomes close friends with them and often uses her quick wit, deft recall, and encyclopaedic knowledge to help them. Rowling has stated that Hermione resembles her at a younger age, with her insecurity and fear of failure .


Hermione Granger poster.jpgHermione Jean Granger is a Muggle-born Gryffindor student, and the best friend of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. J.K. Rowling states that she was born on 19 September 1979 and she was nearly twelve when she first attended Hogwarts. She is an overachiever who excels academically, and is described by Rowling as a "very logical, upright and good" character. Rowling adds that Hermione's parents, two Muggle dentists, are a bit bemused by their odd daughter but very proud of her all the same." They are well aware of the wizarding world and have visited Diagon Alley with her. Rowling orignally planned for Hermione to have a sister, but the character never made an appearance in the novel and in 2004 Rowling noted that it "seemed too late" to introduce the character at that point. Rowling confirmed in a 2004 interview that Hermione is an only child.
Rowling has described the character of Luna Lovegood as the "anti-Hermione" as they are so different. Hermione's foil at Hogwarts is Pansy Parkinson, a bully based on real-life girls who teased the author during her school days.
Rowling claims the character of Hermione carries several autobiographical influences. "I did not set out to make Hermione like me but she is...she is an exaggeration of how I was when I was younger." She recalled being called a "little know-it-all" in her youth. Moreover, she states that not unlike herself, "there is a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure" beneath Hermione's swottiness. Finally, according to Rowling, next to Albus Dumbledore, Hermione is the perfect expository character; because of her encyclopaedic knowledge, she can always be used as a plot dump to explain the Harry Potter universe. Rowling also claims that her feminist conscience is saved by Hermione, "who's the brightest character" and is a "very strong female character".
Hermione's name is derived from William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; Rowling claimed that she wanted it to be unusual since if fewer girls shared her name, fewer girls would get teased for it and it seemed that "a pair of professional dentists, who liked to prove how clever they are...gave [her] an unusual name that no-one could pronounce." Her original last name was "Puckle", but Rowling felt the name "did not suit her at all", and so the less frivolous Granger made it into the books.

Harry Potter


When the first novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (published in some countries as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone), opens it is apparent that some significant event has taken place in the wizarding world—an event so very remarkable, even the Muggles notice signs of it. The full background to this event and Harry Potter's past is revealed gradually through the series. After the introductory chapter, the book leaps forward to a time shortly before Harry Potter's eleventh birthday, and it is at this point that his magical background begins to be revealed.
Harry's first contact with the wizarding world is through a half-giant, Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of grounds and keys at Hogwarts. Hagrid reveals some of Harry's history. Harry learns that as a baby he witnessed his parents' murder by the power-obsessed Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who then attempted to kill him also. For reasons not immediately revealed, the spell with which Voldemort tried to kill Harry rebounded. Harry survived with only a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead as a memento of the attack, and Voldemort disappeared afterwards. As its inadvertent saviour from Voldemort's reign of terror, Harry has become a living legend in the wizarding world. However, at the orders of the venerable and well-known wizard Albus Dumbledore, the orphaned Harry had been placed in the home of his unpleasant Muggle relatives, the Dursleys, who kept him safe, but hid his true heritage from him in hopes that he would grow up "normal".
With Hagrid's help, Harry prepares for and undertakes his first year of study at Hogwarts. As Harry begins to explore the magical world, the reader is introduced to many of the primary locations used throughout the series. Harry meets most of the main characters and gains his two closest friends: Ron Weasley, a fun-loving member of an ancient, large, happy, but poor wizarding family, and Hermione Granger, a gifted and very hardworking witch of non-magical parentage. Harry also encounters the school's potions master, Severus Snape, who displays a deep and abiding dislike for him, and the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Quirinus Quirrell, who later turns out to be controlled by Lord Voldemort. The plot concludes with Harry's second confrontation with Lord Voldemort, who in his quest for immortality, yearns to gain the power of the Philosopher's Stone, a substance that bestows everlasting life.
The series continues with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets describing Harry's second year at Hogwarts. He and his friends investigate a 50-year-old mystery that appears tied to recent sinister events at the school. Ron's younger sister, Ginny Weasley, enrols in her first year at Hogwarts, and finds an old notebook which turns out to be Voldemort's diary from his school days. Ginny becomes possessed by Voldemort through the diary and unconsciously opens the "Chamber of Secrets," unleashing an ancient monster which begins attacking students at Hogwarts. The novel delves into the history of Hogwarts and a legend revolving around the Chamber that soon frightened everyone in the school. The book also introduces a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, a highly cheerful, self-conceited know-it-all who later turns out to be a fraud. For the first time, Harry realises that racial prejudice exists in the wizarding world even before, and he learns that Voldemort's reign of terror was often directed at wizards who were descended from Muggles. Harry also learns that his ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of snakes, is rare and often associated with the Dark Arts. The novel ends after Harry saves Ginny's life by destroying a basilisk and the enchanted diary which has been the source of the problems.