Welcome to the Harry Potter Lexicon
The most compleat and amazing reference to the wonderful world of Harry Potter
est. 2000 A.D.
Phase of the Moon: Waning Crescent
5 GBP = 1 Galleon 
Harry receives a toy broomstick for his first birthday
The toy broomstick is a gift from Sirius. Lily Potter wrote a letter to Sirius, in part to thank him for the present: Dear Padfoot, Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself. I’m enclosing a picture… Read More
Aunt Marge comes to Dudley’s tenth birthday party
She brings Ripper, her favorite bulldog. Harry accidentally steps on Ripper’s tail and the dog “trees” him. Marge finally calls the dog off around midnight. Read More
Dumbledore visits Tom Riddle in the orphanage and offers him a place at Hogwarts
August, 1938: After charming the skeptical matron with magic, manners, and gin, Dumbledore meets Riddle in his room and reveals that the boy is a wizard and invites him to Hogwarts. Tom Riddle proves himself to be a bossy, hostile, independent, and calculating child who terrifies and torments the other orphans. At first, he guesses that Mrs. Cole has brought… Read More
Harry gets his wand at Ollivander’s
After trying out a large number of wands, none of which seem quite right, Harry is handed a holly and phoenix feather wand: Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end… Read More
DH17: Bathilda’s Secret
Leaving the Godric’s Hollow cemetery, Harry and Hermione see the Potters’ old house, then encounter someone who appears to be Bathilda Bagshot, but she does not speak until she gets Harry alone. Too late, Harry discovers that they’ve been led into a trap, and that Bathilda’s corpse is being used as a disguise for… Read More
Albus Dumbledore sits his N.E.W.T.s
June 1899 — He is examined in Transfiguration and Charms by Griselda Marchbanks, who later says that he did things with a wand she’d never seen before. Read More
On this day in 1883...
Hoops replace baskets as Quidditch goals
As reported in the 1883 Daily Prophet article “Bring Back Our Baskets“, this change by… Read More
“You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world… Read More
Latest from the Lexicon Blog
Draco’s Six
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So much has been made of how seven is “the most powerfully magical number” (HBP23) in Harry Potter, with it serving as something of a motif throughout the series… to the point where my podcast, The Three Broomsticks, has a recurring segment about the “seven ingredients of today’s… Read More
The Fallen Fathers of Goblet of Fire
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Jo’s portrayal of mothers in the HP books is fairly straight-forward: mother’s love is the be-all end-all of the series, so we can move right along. But her portrayal of fathers, on the other hand, is incredibly nuanced and intriguing. The turning point appears to be the middle book of… Read More
The Book of Prophecies: How "Order of the Phoenix" Predicts the Plot of "Deathly Hallows" - Part 2
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In Part I of this series, I delved into specific chapter-level comparisons between Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows, and how the events in the former predict or foreshadow those in the latter. In this article, I will… Read More
The Book of Prophecies: How "Order of the Phoenix" Predicts the Plot of "Deathly Hallows" - Part 1
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The Harry Potter series is masterfully plotted, both as individual books and across the series as a whole. Within the fandom, there is a large focus on ring theory for understanding how the series is structured. In ring theory, each book has its… Read More
The Russian Philosopher’s Stone
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It’s a process familiar to most of us trying to brush up on a foreign language – get the Harry Potter books in one of the 85 languages they’ve been translated into, and read the story you know backwards and forwards in a language you may not. My first language… Read More
Mapping the Wizarding World
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Making the Calendar Fit
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I recently received two comments on two different entries in the Lexicon which brought up the same problem: the real world calendar doesn’t always agree with the days and dates in the books. I’m sure some of you are saying “Of course, we know that, this has been discussed in… Read More
The Secrets of Dumbledore ... still a secret?
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