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: Third Quarter
5 GBP = 1 Galleon 
Making the Calendar Fit
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 fandom for years and years.” That’s because you’ve been in… Read More
Gilderoy Lockhart’s book signing at Flourish and Blotts
19 August 1992 – Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys visit Flourish and Blotts to buy school books. There they discover that Gilderoy Lockhart is signing his new book, Magical Me. When Lockhart spots Harry, he drags the boy up in front of the camera with him and announces the crowd that he will be the new… 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
Aragog the Acromantula is released into the Forbidden Forest
Hagrid has been raising the baby Acromantula in a cupboard in the Hogwarts dungeons, but his arrangement is revealed to the teachers by Tom Riddle, suggesting to them that the Acromantula was responsible for the death of Myrtle Warren. Hagrid is expelled from Hogwarts for supposedly causing the death of a student. Hagrid will later find Aragog a wife, Mosag,… Read More
Harry imprisoned in his room after Dobby’s visit
Harry is punished by being locked in his room and only allowed out to use the bathroom twice a day (CS2). Furious with Harry for Dobby’s effect on the Dursleys’ dinner with the Masons and newly aware that Harry cannot legally use his magic to avoid punishment, Uncle Vernon has bars put on Harry’s bedroom window and installs a… Read More
The Ford Anglia arrives at the Burrow early in the morning
4 August 1992 — Leaving Privet Drive in Surrey, Fred and George fly the Anglia west to Devon, toward the Burrow. The trip apparently takes several hours, since when they leave it’s nighttime and when they arrive the sun is coming up (which would be just before 6 am at that location and on that date). Read More
The three Ds of Apparition are Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. Thanks, Wilkie Twycross!… Read More
“One can never have enough socks … Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”… 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
• Article
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?
• Article