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Burn, Harry, burn, mystic inferno...
— Hagrid, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Chapter 4
This series of seven children's books and young adult novels by JK Rowling exploded onto the world literary scene in the late 1990s and has become a phenomenon unlike anything seen before in publishing. Blending fantasy with the nearly extinct British boarding school genre, it made a literary superstar out of its ex-schoolteacher author, and the characters and settings she created have permanently entered popular culture the world over. The books also inspired a series of films and video games.
The basic story is simple: Harry Potter is a seemingly normal schoolboy, living with his resentful, borderline-abusive Aunt and Uncle after being orphaned in his infancy, who on his eleventh birthday discovers he isn't really normal at all. His parents were both powerful wizards, and Harry himself is the renowned defeater of Voldemort, would-be Evil Overlord of the wizarding world. Years earlier, Voldemort had attempted to kill Harry and perished, an occurrence for which Harry had received all the credit.
Harry goes to Hogwarts, the great school of magic, and is happy. There are the normal school troubles — bullies, unpleasant teachers — but nothing serious, until he sees a dark shadow creeping through the forest. Investigating, he eventually discovers that Voldemort did not truly die. Though his body was destroyed, his spirit clung to life, seeking ways to return from death and resume his campaign of terror.
That year Voldemort is defeated, but each new year brings a fresh confrontation between Harry and the forces of evil. Harry grows stronger over the years, mastering his magic, but so too does Voldemort as he recovers from his death. The wizarding world slips back into war as a final battle looms and a prophecy approaches fulfillment.
The series named the following tropes:
Tropes:
Series-wide tropes not already covered above:
- Academy Of Adventure (Given that Hogwarts is not only a school, but where most of the most powerful and influential wizards and the most ancient secrets make their home, this is pretty much to be expected)
- Aerith And Bob (The "Muggle" first names range from Harry to Dudley; the wizarding ones, from George to Draco. All in the UK.)
- Agony Beam (The Cruciatus curse)
- Alliterative Name (Cho Chang, Colin Creevey, Dudley Dursley, Filius Flitwick, Gregory Goyle, Luna Lovegood, Minerva McGonagall, Pansy Parkinson, Padma Patil, Parvati Patil, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, William (Bill) Weasley. And those are just the ones that show up in multiple books.)
- All Of The Other Reindeer
- Animorphism (Animagi)
- Anyone Can Die (Rather minor in the earlier books, but after Goblet Of Fire all bets were off.)
- Artifact Of Death (several, Riddle's diary, the Elder Wand and Marvolo Gaunt's ring.)
- Asshole Victims (The Riddles)
- Badass Bookworm (several, but primarily Dumbledore and Hermione)
- Batman Gambit
- Because Destiny Says So (played with a little... Harry's destiny is self-fulfilling because Voldemort insists on fulfilling it — however, Dumbledore implies that not all prophecies have to be fulfilled)
- Black Cloak (Death Eaters, and Dementors, who seem to generate their own.)
- Blasting It Out Of Their Hands (The Expelliarmus spell, which is intended for exactly this purpose. Amusingly, the spell seems capable of disarming a person of anything, whether it's a weapon or a harmless diary.)
- Boarding School (But also...)
- Boarding School Of Horrors (Hogwarts can be one Family Unfriendly place at times)
- Bond Villain Stupidity (In massive amounts from Voldemort, who does almost everything the Evil Overlord List advises you not to do. Justified and lampshaded in-series as a result of his insane egotism and megalomania.)
- Book Dumb (Harry really isn't a diligent student, though when he does try he proves to be quite adept; good thing he had Hermione for necessary exposition)
- Broken Masquerade
- By The Eyes Of The Blind (Thestrals are only visible to people who have seen death.)
- Calling Your Attacks (Played straight at first, then subverted when a major portion of the sixth-year curriculum is learning not to call them.)
- Cerebus Syndrome
- Changeling Fantasy
- Character Name And The Noun Phrase
- Character Development (Arguably a very good example of how to do long-term devlopment with characters.)
- Chekhovs Armoury (Chekhovs Gun is common in the series, e.g. The Deluminator; fans obsess over details in earlier books, looking for hidden Chekhov's Guns, to the point where J.K. Rowling made a public apology about accidentally giving a minor, unimportant character the same last name as Harry's mum.)
- Chekhovs Skill (Ron and Chess, Harry and his Patronus, even Neville and his botany)
- Cinderella Circumstances: Harry at the Dursley's household, before he got his acceptance letter from Hogwarts. However, his uncle never does stop treating him like crap.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander (Luna Lovegood)
- Cool But Inefficient (So many of the things the wizards do)
- Crazy Prepared (Hermione and her bag in Deathly Hallows)
- Dances And Balls (The Yule Ball)
- Dying Like Animals (Not just the Muggles, but Wizards too.)
- Easing Into The Adventure (Harry even suggests, in the first novel, that Dumbledore wanted to give them something easy to begin with.)
- Easter Bunny
- Emotion Bomb (Dementors. Cheering Charms are a good example of this.)
- Enforced Cold War (the House rivalries, especially between Gryffindor and Slytherin)
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
- Evil Counterpart (Harry and Voldemort both had very similar beginnings, and Harry occasionally finds himself sympathetic to Voldemort. Nonetheless, the choices that both of them made sent them in totally different directions.)
- Bellatrix and Hermione. Hermione is as devoted to Harry as Bellatrix is to Voldemort. Both intelligent and powerful wizards, on the opposite side of the good/evil divide; both capable of, and shown willing to go to, extremes for their purposes (Bellatrix tortured the Longbottoms into insanity to find Voldemort, Hermione comes up with the same method for Harry to communicate with his DA members as Voldemort used with his Death Eaters, bewitched a document to permanently, facially disfigure anyone who sold them out, blackmailed Rita Skeeter...).
- I wouldn't say Herione's as devoted as Bellatrix. Bellatrix is a deranged, obsessed lunatic who would do anything for Voldemort, and appears to be in love with him. Hermione, on the other hand, has no obsessive romantic relationship with Harry (as Harry says in the seventh book, they're more like brother and sister) and she would probably do almost anything for him but not anything per se.
- Fake Ultimate Hero
- Fantasy Gun Control (Guns exist in the Muggle world, but apparently not even Squibs seem to have them in the Wizarding Community; in an article about Sirius Black, it's mentioned that the Muggles have been warned he's carrying a gun, which is then defined as "a type of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other")
- The series is set in the UK, so this editor is tempted to say this trope is subverted.
- Fate Worse Than Death (Neville's parents)
- Also, the Dementor's Kiss.
- Filleritis (Arguably, a large portion of Hallows.)
- Finding Judas (Snape anyone?)
- First Girl Wins (While she did not enter Hogwarts until the second book, Harry crossed paths with Ginny Weasley at King's Cross Station before he met any other female lead. Ginny, of course, was the person Harry eventually fell in love with.)
- Flaw Exploitation (Voldemort's inability to truly understand love is his biggest weakness. Ironically, Harry often plays into Voldemort's hands because Harry will do anything to protect his beloved ones)
- According to Dumbledore, Voldemort's "inability to realize that there are things much worse than death" is his greatest weakness; but this ties into the whole "love" thing because Voldemort never figures out that Snape's love for Lily helps lead to his downfall.
- Flanderization (The houses suffered from this in an odd way, already having one defining characteristic, but their lesser attribute became more prominent, even according to the Sorting Hat song. Slytherin went from "ambitious" to "pureblood", and Hufflepuff changed from "loyal" to, well, "miscellaneous".)
- However, this is subverted with Professor Slughorn, who despite having the occasional selfish motive (as in the shame of telling Voldy about Horcruxes), is relatively sympathetic. Besides, Hufflepuff always had a reputation for being "a load of old duffers". It's even mentioned in the first book.
- Fluffy Tamer (Hagrid, of course)
- Fluffy The Terrible (Quite a few monsters, but the most famous is actually called Fluffy.)
- Flying Broomstick (The Nimbus, the Firebolt...)
- Forgot I Could Fly (Hermione, towards the end of the first book)
- Functional Magic (JKR says in interviews that she spent time working out the limits of wizard magic, but the novels only touch on these a few times: magic obeys laws of time and space, it's not possible to create food out of nothing, and death cannot be overcome. Among others.)
- Although, food is created out of thin air at least once before the Five Exceptions are ever mentioned, possibly suggesting something of a Ret Con.
- Most instances of this imply it was simply transported from elsewhere. For example the food at Hogwarts is transported from the kitchens via an identical set of tables, and in book 6 Dumbledore states that some mead he summons from nowhere came from the pub in Hogsmeade (which made this troper laugh when reading the book, as his phrasing makes it sound like he just casually stole the mead from the pub by transporting it).
- Geeky Turn On (Ron and Hermione's first kiss)
- Girls Need Role Models (Accusations of outdated gender roles led to Rowling adding more "strong women" in book 5, including punky Auror Nymphadora Tonks, and Luna Lovegood. Neville's mother was only given as "Frank's wife" in book 4 but is an ex-Auror in 5. Ginny became a lot more assertive, too — some called it Character Derailment — and her mother, a housewife, became a member of the Order of the Phoenix.)
- Goddamn Orks (Slytherin House)
- Go Look At The Distraction
- Hanging Separately
- Happiness In Slavery (Most house-elves love being servants)
- Heroes Want Red Heads (Ginny)
- Hero Secret Service (the Order of the Phoenix)
- Hidden Depths
- Hypocrite
- Idiot Plot (Order of the Phoenix would have been a lot shorter if the adults had just levelled with Harry about what was going on instead of making him dig through all their obfuscation. The major tragedy of the story takes place because Harry had incomplete information. After defeating or stalemating the Basilisk, Death Eaters, and Voldy himself (three times) you would think they might start giving him some credit.)
- No, the major tragedy of Book 5 occurs because Harry didn't open his Christmas present.
- On the other side of the conflict, the entire point of The Goblet of Fire is a hideously over-complicated, year-long plot by the disguised Barty Crouch, Jr. whose goal could have been accomplished better and faster simply by abducting Harry at wand-point during the first week of school. [EIGHTY-EIGHT FAN JUSTIFICATIONS REDACTED]
- Seriously. The only rational explanation I've seen is that Voldemort has an inclination towards high drama and wanted to make his big comeback in total style. And, to top it off... Using Harry's blood to resurrect himself, rather than that of anyone else who was an enemy of Voldemort (oh, about three-quarters of the wizarding population), is what causes Voldemort's downfall.
- Impoverished Patrician
- Ineffectual Loner (Harry often tries to discourage his friends from helping him. This in spite of the fact that he's often quite helpless without them)
- Is That What He Told You (Lots of well-meaning deception from Dumbledore.)
- Its Not You Its My Enemies (Harry's breakup speech to Ginny)
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
- Killed Off For Real (Time doesn't permit us to list. At least one big death per book from Goblet of Fire on.)
- The books affirm to the reader at several points that despite the great prevalence of magic, death is final and cannot be reversed by any magical means. Some see this as being subverted, though, in the third book, when Harry and Hermione travel backwards in time to save Buckbeak from execution, as well as Sirius and Harry's former self from a fate that most likely would have led to their deaths. Then again, Buckbeak's execution was never actually seen, just assumed from a chopping sound heard in the distance; and other events suggest not that fate was changed, but rather that they were traveling a closed time loop.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover (Mrs. Figg)
- Loads And Loads Of Characters (Since it takes place at a boarding school and all. Let's see: The protagonist Power Trio, about a baker's dozen worth of significant classmates, the entire Potter and Weasley families, about a dozen teachers (two of which are hardly ever shown, admittedly), another dozen guys from the Ministry of Magic, and about half a dozen on the antagonist side. Phew.)
- Not Phew. You forgot Krum and Fleur. Ok <Phew>.
- Love Redeems (Snape's motivation for his Heel Face Turn.)
- Machiavelli Was Wrong (Voldemort is betrayed a few times by people who, despite being Slytherins, actually have feelings. Snape, for example, betrayed him for over a decade; Regulus was willing to die to stop him, and Narcissa lied to him to protect her son.)
- Not the mention that he created his own worst enemy in Harry when he tried to kill him. It's safe to be feared, eh?
- Somewhat subverted by Dumbledore, whose philosophy of love and trust clashes with a number of his actions that are very manipulative indeed.
- Magic A Is Magic A (Followed fairly closely, mainly with the teleporting power; the reader is repeatedly told that it's impossible to teleport in or out of Hogwarts, and is also repeatedly shown it happening. In Book 7 we find out why this is perfectly in line with the rules.)
- Magic Hat (The Room of Requirement turns into whatever people need. For a more literal magic hat, there's the Sorting Hat, but ironically, only one, specific item can be pulled from it.)
- I don't know that only one item will come out of it — Dumbledore says that only a true Gryffindor (ie someone who embodied the best in the things Godric Gryffindor valued) could pull that particular sword from the hat, but he never said that was all that would ever come out of it. If nothing else, presumably if a student from another house had found themselves having to use the Sorting Hat in a dire situation, they would have been able to produce a signature tool of their house's founder to help them out.
- Given that the Sorting Hat belonged to Godric Gryffindor originally, it's probably a fair assumption.
- Masquerade
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover
- Meaningful Name (Indeed, certain characters "just happen" to have names that relate to what they are to the point of providing more astute readers with a possible spoiler.)
- Methuselah Syndrome
- Mind Your Step (The sinking stair.)
- The Mole
- Moral Dissonance (Harry and others are seen using the so-called Unforgivable Curses in the last book. This could be chalked up to being in a war. However, the Cruciatus curse (which causes mind-destroying pain) is used, despite it being less practical than either a killing curse or a simple stun. Worse yet, McGonagall refers to Harry taking out a Death Eater who insulted her with the curse as "Noble". Seriously.)
- Admittedly the Killing Curse is considered pretty much infinitely worse than the other two Unforgivable Curses, and so saying that they should've used it over the Cruciatus curse is kinda skewed. Still, yeah, torture over a stun or something similar is pretty ridiculous.
- Although when Harry used it against Amycus Carrow, Cruciatus worked more like a particularly painful blasting attack rather than the usual agonizing but otherwise non-harmful torture technique.
- On a smaller scale, the level of unthinking cruelty inflicted on animals by students at Hogwarts is quite alarming- from turning them into inanimate objects to vanishing them altogether (made worse in book 7 when no less an authority than Mc Gonagall states that vanished objects go "into nonbeing".
- Moustache De Plume: "J.K. Rowling" is a pseudonym forced upon the author, Joanne Rowling, because her publisher feared that young boys (the target audience) wouldn't read books written by a woman. Rowling didn't even have a middle name by then, so she used her grandmother's name, "Kathleen", in the pseudonym.
- Near Death Experience (The effect of multiple magical curses/charms takes Harry about as near death as anyone can go without actually dying.)
- The fact that Harry is the only known being to ever survive the Killing Curse is actually part of what makes him famous in the wizarding world, causing many to refer to him as "The Boy Who Lived".
- Near Misses
- No Ontological Inertia (Some spells are made to last after death, most others cease.)
- Now Or Never Kiss ( Ron and Hermione)
- The Noun Of Adjective
- Numerological Motif
- Sevens: seven years, seven novels, seven subjects (to start with), seven Horcruxes, seven players on a Quidditch team
- Nine and three-quarters: Kings Cross platform; length of school year in months (Sept 1 - late June); Harry's exile from the wizarding world in years (1 Nov 1981 - 31 July 1991)
- Twelves: twelve subjects offered at Hogwarts (Charms, Transfiguration, History of Magic, Defense Against Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Astronomy; Care of Magical Creatures, Diviniation, Muggle Studies, Runes, Arithmancy), twelve-a-side in the Dept. of Mysteries
- Older Than They Think
- Only I Can Kill Him (ugh. Far too much.)
- Parental Substitute (The Dursleys are a bad version of this; the Weasleys, Sirius, and Lupin do a better job.)
- The Phoenix (Fawkes)
- The Power Of Love (alluded to throughout the series. It can protect a loved one from deadly curses, and block mental magic)
- Post Dramatic Stress Disorder (A lot)
- Plot Coupons
- Politically Incorrect Villain (Umbridge and Voldemort.)
- Prophetic Fallacy
- Prophetic Names
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old (Wizards live longer, much longer.)
- Reinventing The Telephone (Owls, floo powder, patronuses...)
- Reverse Mole
- The Scottish Trope (Subverted by Dumbledore and several other heroic characters, who very determinedly say "Voldemort" despite the name's emotional baggage — and Harry, who just doesn't have that baggage. The seventh book has a Double Subversion, as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named creates an enchantment that will ping his Mini Map whenever someone does say his name.)
- Second Love
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy (More than one.)
- Sadist Teacher (Umbridge especially. Also Snape and perhaps Filch.)
- She Is Not My Girlfriend (Hermione. Harry actually says it once.)
- Side Bet
- Significant Anagram ("Tom Marvolo Riddle" <-> "I am Lord Voldemort". Other languages revise the anagram to make sense in their tongues — or change his birth-name, resulting in some backronyms.)
- I particularly like the French one: Tom Elvis Jedusor = Je suis Voldemort. "Jedusor" sounds like jeu de sort, meaning
"riddle" "gamble" or "lottery", and Elvis is not really dead.
- Created a meta-text flurry during the sixth book, when a locket signed by "R.A.B." became important to the plot. One of the first guesses on this mystery character's identity was Sirius Black's brother Regulus... Especially after foreign readers noticed that, whenever Sirius' surname was changed to that language's word for "black," R.A.B's last initial had followed suit.
- Smooch Of Victory (Harry kisses Ginny after she wins Gryffindor the Quidditch cup.)
- Snowball Fight
- Soul Fragment
- Soul Jar (Horcruxes)
- Spotting The Thread: In the film The Goblet of Fire Crouch Sr. discovers that his son is impersonating Moody when he sees Moody do his son's signature tongue flick. In the Book, The Deathly Hallows, Luna Lovegood sees through Harry's disguise at Bill and Fleur's wedding because of Harry's expression.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero
- Tell Me About My Father (Actually, unusually, both parents.)
- Noteworthy in that the emphasis starts with his father (Except for his eyes, he has his mom's eyes). However we later find that Harry father was only a good person towards the end of his short life. Dumbledore mentions that his true nature is much more that of his mother.
- Theme Naming (Not just the characters; there's also Diagon Alley and the nearby roads, which are all puns on words that end in '-ally'.)
- The Trope Without A Title
- They Walk Among Us
- Tonight Someone Dies
- Trope2000 (There's a whole series of Nimbus Exty-Thousand broomsticks. Harry himself owns a Nimbus Two Thousand... well, until it gets crushed by an animate tree. Magic is fun.)
- Twin Banter
- Unnecessary Roughness
- Unusual Euphemism
- Villain With Good Publicity (Lucius Malfoy)
- The Virus (Lycanthropy)
- Wangst (Harry's teenager angst, while perhaps justified, was still an annoyance to many readers)
- Whatevermancy (Arithmancy.)
- What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway (Voldemort doesn't believe The Power Of Love will stop him.)
- What The Hell Hero (Plenty of Dumbledore's decisions have a helping of this, chronologically starting with the Secret Keeper fiasco that led to James and Lily's deaths (or his refusal to confront Grindelwald during the pillaging of Europe) and ending with the metric ton of secrets kept from Harry, often for no good reason. (Due to esoteric rules of magic, not telling Harry in advance that he would have to die and that he might get better is one of the few justified cases.))
- Witch Species
- Wizard Beard (Dumbledore, just look up at the picture.)
- Wizarding School (Actually, more than one.)
- Wizards Live Longer
- Word Of God (Rowling's interviews)
- Writers Cannot Do Math (Where to begin?)
- Xanadu
- Xanatos Gambit (Voldemort's plan in the Half-Blood Prince, and Dumbledore's plan revealed near the end of Deathly Hallows)
- Xanatos Roulette (Dumbledore's plans
occasionally strain credibility)
- Xanatos Sucker (Pretty much the entire wizarding population other than Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort)
Fanon tropes:
Other tropes associated with the series:
- Americanitis (Editors at Scholastic Books forced a change from "Philosopher's Stone" — a genuine item of folklore and alchemy — to "Sorcerer's Stone" for the American editions on the grounds that American children would have no idea what a Philosopher's Stone was. David Morgan-Mar has an alternative explanation.
 They have received more than a decade of excoriation since. Due to the negative reaction, British terms and slang in the later books, such as "jumper", "taking the mickey", and "snogging", were left in.)
- Parodied wonderfully in the book "Barry Trotter and the Philosopher's Scone", where it is stated that in America, said scone was renamed "The Magic Biscuit".
- The Board Game (yes, and there's even been more than one)
- Door Stopper (all of the books from the fourth onwards; the fifth (weighing in at 766 pages for the Bloomsbury hardback edition) is the winner here)
- Moral Guardians (The seemingly endless parade of whackos who insist that the books entice children into the occult and devil worship.)
- Multiple Demographic Appeal (A major factor in the series' runaway success)
- No Such Thing As Bad Publicity (In real life, Harry Potter got publicity just for being banned in some places for promoting witchcraft. And in the story, this is echoed a few times; for example, in Chamber of Secrets, Lockhart is very happy when a fight breaks out at a book signing for his latest book.)
- And then averted in the story when the Daily Prophet, Wizarding England's primary newspaper, does a massive (and successful) smear campaign on Harry.
- Popcultural Osmosis
- What Do You Mean Its Not For Kids (arguably the later installments)
- Then again by the time we hit Order of the Phoenix, the original readers (and there were many) had already hit teendom. Rowling was just showing us greater development of the series.
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