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    J 
  • Jerk Jock:
    • Played With for Dudley Dursley in Order of the Phoenix. Though never outright shown, it is mentioned that he has taken up boxing and managed to turn most of his excess weight into muscle, and he even became his school's boxing champion.
    • Played Straight with Cormac McLaggen in Half-Blood Prince, when Harry is appointed Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. He arrogantly believes in his own Quidditch abilities and belittles Ron Weasley, and he also bosses the other players around, even though he doesn't have the authority to do so.
    • Draco Malfoy arguably becomes this when, having been a complete jerkass from his first appearance, he joins the Slytherin Quidditch Team. Also, you could make the argument that the entire Slytherin Quidditch Team qualifies as well, especially in the first two books.
  • Jerkass: Many characters are of the sour, unpleasant variety.
    • The Dursleys — the family that raises Harry — are a deeply unpleasant group of people who reflexively loathe anything even slightly out of the ordinary, leading them to relentlessly abuse and neglect Harry in an effort to "stamp the magic" out of him. Dudley starts out even worse than his parents, due to being heavily spoiled by every authority figure in his life, and is a gluttonous, brutish bully who is so stupid as to be barely literate.
    • The Malfoys are a family of snobbish, self-important racists who look upon nearly everyone and everything around them with disdain. Their one and only redeeming quality is that they genuinely love each other, which isn't much, but does distinguish them from the worst of the worst that the series has to offer.
    • Snape, a bitter, misanthropic, cynical bully, is one of the major sources of suffering for Harry and his friends for most of the series. He's hateful and antagonistic to nearly everyone, but especially to the children he teaches. Like the Malfoys, his one redeeming quality is that he is capable of loving someone other than himself, though this isn't demonstrated until very late in the series.
    • Dolores Umbridge is installed as the government-sponsored professor (and later headmaster) in Book 5, and manages to maintain a 0% Approval Rating throughout her entire tenure through a combination of her shamelessly pushing government propaganda, heavy-handedly usurping the authority of other professors, inflicting cruel punishments on students for the most minor infractions, creating a secret police force out of the worst students she can find, and doing all of it in the most obnoxious manner she can. It's noted that many readers reserve more hatred for her than even the main villains of the series.
    • It's eventually revealed that this was true of James Potter. Despite the glowing compliments of his friends after his death, when we're shown scenes of how he was in life, the picture is far from flattering. He's shown to be a self-righteous, preening, pampered Jerk Jock who had no qualms about bullying weaker, more vulnerable students. Coming to terms with who his father really was is a major part of Harry's Character Development.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • Snape is right that Harry is a serial rule breaker at Hogwarts, to the point where he risks expulsion on a number of occasions, yet almost always escapes any serious punishment.
    • And while the Malfoys are complete Jerkasses about it, they're right about Hagrid being a generally incompetent teacher with a fetish for dangerous animals who puts his students at risk. Lucius was right to be pissed about his son getting gored by a hippogriff in Book 3 (though Draco almost entirely brings it on himself, a better teacher would have made sure he was never in a position to be harmed in the first place); Draco is correct about the ridiculousness of Blast-Ended Skrewts in Book 4. Hermione rather uncomfortably admits this on a couple of occasions, and note also that Luna Lovegood, one of the good guys, agrees that Hagrid is a joke as a teacher.
    • Umbridge and Fudge in Book 5, believe it or not. The fact is that Hogwarts's standards are incredibly lax. To an outsider, the past 4 Defence Against The Dark Arts teachers have been: A death eater, a werewolf, a fraud, and a terrified man who was hosting the dark lord. There's also the fact that Trelawney's class is bogus—Book 6 later reveals that Dumbledore has his own reasons for keeping Trelawney on staff, but Umbridge is correct that Trelawney is a fraud who doesn't deserve a job.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Too many instances to count; throughout the series random bits of information suddenly become hugely important. The concept of the Horcrux is introduced in book 2 with Riddle's diary, but just what the diary is and why Riddle stuck a bit of himself in a magic book isn't explained until book 6. There's a completely random mention of a locket that Hermione throws away while they're cleaning out Grimmauld Place in book 5; that locket becomes hugely critical in book 7.
  • Join or Die: The Death Eaters, a group of fanatical wizards that hates anything related to the unmagical, kill anyone who refuses to join their forces. This becomes relevant in The Half-Blood Prince, where Horace Slughorn is on the run out of fear of murder by the Death Eaters.

    K 
  • Kappa: Kappas are one of the creatures Lupin teaches his class about in the third book, and they're described as looking like scaly monkeys with webbed hands that like to drown people. Snape incorrectly claims that they're native to Mongolia, whereas Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them correctly identifies them as a Japanese monster with a side note from Ron saying "Snape hasn't read this."
  • Karma Houdini:
    • The Malfoys, who escape death and/or imprisonment due to their one redeeming quality: love and devotion to each other. (Unless one assumes that the one huge action Narcissa Malfoy takes at the end of Deathly Hallows to help Harry wipes the slate clean for the Malfoy family.)
    • Rita Skeeter never suffers any punishment for all the lies she writes about Harry and his friends, despite the consequences it has for them, not to mention being an unregistered animagus. invokedWord of God says she even rushed out a biography of Harry following Voldemort's final defeat.
      • On Pottermore, Rita Skeeter is one of the two commentators on the 2014 Quidditch World Cup, so she's still practicing journalism 20 years after Goblet of Fire.
    • The trio gets away with the magical equivalent of setting off a bomb in a classroom, used as a distraction from them stealing Polyjuice ingredients. One student had to hold his eyeballs in his hands to keep his optical nerves from tearing.
    • Hermione never suffers any consequences for facially disfiguring Marietta or scarring Ron with her bird missiles.
  • Kid Detective: The Power Trio. A big part of the books' structure (and their appeal) is that most of the plots are mysteries that Harry, Ron, and Hermione can solve ("What's hidden beneath the school?", "who is Slytherin's heir?", "who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire?", etc.), which is the main reason why three underage wizards can have any impact on the story at all.
  • Known by the Postal Address: The Dursleys' house is most often referred to in the narrative as "number four, Privet Drive". The street name "Privet Drive" was possibly chosen to reflect the Dursleys' pride in their house, and that they are ordinary folk, with no connections to nonsense such as magic. Some of the letters brought by owls are very specific indeed with the addresses, saying "Mr H. Potter, the cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive".
  • Kudzu Plot: All of the Harry Potter books (except Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) end with some answers being revealed but also leave the reader asking several questions which will not be revealed until later books. Some questions that are asked in the first book aren't answered until the last book. Thankfully, they are all resolved in the end.

    L 
  • Lack of Imagination: The Dursleys have very limited imaginations, and disapprove of anything fanciful, even if it comes from a dream.
  • Lady Drunk
    • Trelawney, who is drawn more and more as a sad alcoholic in the later books. She's first mentioned to be drunk in Order of the Phoenix when Umbridge fires her. In Half-Blood Prince Harry blunders into her while she's trying to hide sherry in the Room of Requirement.
    • Winky the house elf seems to spend most of Goblet of Fire drinking herself into oblivion after she's set free by Barty Crouch.
    • And then there's the very brief Half-Blood Prince appearance, via Pensieve Flashback, of Mrs. Cole, the director of Tom Riddle's orphanage. She seems generally well-intentioned towards her charges but worn down by stress. When Dumbledore (in the flashback) produces some gin to loosen her tongue, a watching Harry notes how she downs most of the bottle during their conversation.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The effect of a Memory Charm on the recipient is the erasure of any memories the caster specifies.
  • Latin Is Magic: Zig-zagged. Most spells consist of pseudo-Latin phrases, although others are in mangled English or just plain gibberish.
  • Legendary Weapon:
    • The Sword of Godric Gryffindor was claimed by one of Hogwarts founders, the first Gryffindor, and is made from Goblin silver that renders it unbreakable.
    • The Elder Wand is an unbeatable wand rumored to be forged by Death itself which has inspired the deaths of hundreds of wizards.
  • Letter Motif: Marvolo, Morfin, and Merope Gaunt; Albus, Aberforth, and Ariana Dumbledore.
  • Living Drawing: Paintings and pictures can talk and even move into other paintings. According to Pottermore, the degree to which they can interact with the real world depends on the power of the wizard or witch in the picture. This is seen as a fact of life to the magical community, to the point that Ron is surprised when he sees a sports poster brought by Muggleborn Dean Thomas. One of the most notable is the fat lady who acts like a gatekeeper to the Gryffindor dormitory.
  • Living Is More than Surviving: Until the end of the series, Harry and Voldemort were both able to survive, but "neither can live while the other survives."
  • Living Labyrinth: Hogwarts is a labyrinthine castle said by some to be sentient. The most overt evidence is the staircases' tendency and alleged fondness for shifting around.
  • Living Legend:
    • Harry himself, from day one. He is described in whispers as The Boy Who Lived, a nearly mythical person who is the only one to have ever survived a murder attempt by Voldemort and being somehow responsible for the loss of his power. All as a baby. Harry himself is deeply uncomfortable with this, as he was too young to even remember the event that made him famous. And said event also made him an orphan.
    • Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts, believed to be the most powerful wizard to have ever lived. He's the only wizard that Voldemort, the greatest dark wizard of the age, has ever feared, and is responsible for defeating Voldemort's predecessor Gellert Grindlewald. The final book reveals that the truth is far more complicated than the legend purports, and Dumbledore himself is extremely humble because of it.
  • Living Photo: Photographs developed in a special potion are able to move, and are common in the Wizarding World. However, they cannot speak or interact. Painted portraits, on the other hand, have more interactivity and retain the personality of their subjects, though the level of depth captured depends on the power and impression of the painter. The portraits of deceased Hogwarts headmasters are especially lifelike, according to Word of God, because the painting's subjects will impart knowledge to their painted selves while they are still alive. Acting headmasters and others will take advantage of this to seek advice from leaders past.
  • The Load: Mundungus Fletcher, the worst member of the Order of the Phoenix. Harry is puzzled as to why a sleazy thief and petty criminal is part of the Order and he is told that Mundungus has contacts and knows people that are useful. But every time Mundungus has a job he screws it up. He abandons his post guarding Harry in book 5, and nearly gets Harry killed. He panics and Disapparates when the Death Eaters attack in book 7, and that time he does get Mad-Eye Moody killed. And if that's bad not bad enough, one of the valuables he stole from the Black house was a Horcrux, which forces the Power Trio to go on an extremely dangerous mission into the Ministry of Magic to get it back.
  • Logical Weakness: Performing spells involves speaking an incantation clearly, and so anything that garbles or hinders a wizard's ability to speak also renders them incapable of casting spells.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • There are certain things that magic simply cannot do, such as reawaken the dead (per the fourth book) or conjure money out of nothing. But with the help of magical artifacts such as the Resurrection Stone or the Philosopher's Stone, it is possible to summon the spirits of the dead (or something very similar to the spirits of the dead) or create gold out of lead or other cheap metals (which is practically the same thing as conjuring money out of nothing).
    • In a more mundane example than fabulous wealth or defying mortality, when Ron complains that his mother can conjure fabulous feasts out of thin air, Hermione tells him that food is one of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration (presumably, currency is another). You can summon food if you know where it is, duplicate it if you have it, or transfigure food into different food, but not spontaneous generation. Oddly, this begs the question of whether only prepared food is subject to this, as it is presumably possible to create animals (like Hermione's birds in Book 6) or plants that are inedible unless prepared like cashew fruits (which have to be roasted extensively to get rid of the poison).
  • Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot:
  • Loose Lips:
    • You can trust Rubeus Hagrid with your life, you can even trust him with underage children, but you can't trust him with your secrets, through no malice of his own.
    • Goblet of Fire has Bertha Jorkins, whose only known attribute is this due to her chronic tendency to gossip — to her own cost.
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: Magic wands allow wizards to "channel" their magic and only function for the wizard they "chose." How exactly a wand chooses a wizard is unknown to all but the most senior wandmakers. That said, they do sometimes betray their owners if that owner is defeated.
  • Lucky Seven: Seven books, based on Harry's seven years in school. Seven Weasley children. Voldemort tries to split himself seven ways using himself + six horcruxes (and doesn't quite succeed; He accidentally makes Harry his seventh Horcrux.). This is foreshadowed in the Deathly Hallows film with the rock broken into seven pieces in young Tom's room. In-universe, seven is stated to be a very powerful magical number.

    M 
  • MacGuffin Blindness:
    • After Harry learns what horcruxes are, he attempts to hide a potions book in the Room of Hidden Things. In order to distinguish this cupboard so he can find it again, he puts a bust of a wizard on top of it, and puts a battered old tiara on top of that. That tiara is actually the Diadem of Ravenclaw, one of the horcruxes Harry is supposed to hunt down. Ignorant of Form, as he is supposed to be actively hunting down horcruxes, but he does not know that the diadem itself is a horcrux and just believes it to be another fixture of the Room of Hidden Things.
    • Weaponized by the Lestranges, who would charm every object in their vaults with a fire and a cloning charm. If the objects were touched directly, the object would multiply and grow unbearably-hot to touch, creating a Needle in a Stack of Needles in the hopes that the intruder would continue to find and touch the wrong object and eventually be crushed/incinerated under the weight of the constantly-expanding burning matter. Harry, Ron, and Hermione find this out the hard way during their attempt to steal Hufflepuff's Cup from the vault, though they are able to ultimately succeed.
  • Machiavelli Was Wrong:
    • Subverted by Voldemort. Despite having a legion of followers who seem utterly loyal, he is betrayed a few times by people who, despite being Slytherins, start to hate him for various reasons. 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 to mention that he created his own worst enemy in Harry when he tried to kill him. Voldy clearly missed the part about "avoiding hatred".
    • Played with by Dumbledore, whose philosophy of love and trust clashes with a number of his actions that are very manipulative indeed. His manipulation often does more harm than good, and Dumbledore acknowledges this, such as at the end of the fifth book.
  • MacGuffin-Person Reveal: Harry spends a book and a half looking for Voldemort's six Horcruxes before finding out that Harry himself is the seventh.
  • Made of Good: A Patronus is a positive memory made manifest; unlike a person, it can't feel despair, so Dementors can't feed on it.
  • Made of Indestructium: Implied of the Deathly Hallows. The Invisibility Cloak's flawless state despite its ancient age is the first clue to its true nature, the fact that the same strike that destroyed the Horcrux within the Resurrection Stone did nothing to impede its function as a Hallow, and the fact that the Elder Wand survived through the ages despite being constantly in the centre of violent conflicts all point to this.
  • Mage Born of Muggles: Called "muggle-borns," or derisively, "mudbloods." A witch or wizard born outside of existing magical families is looked down on by more conservative mages, and Voldemort's racism against them goes all the way to genocidal.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Rules of magic that are directly stated tend to be followed in the book they first appear in at minimum, although there are some instances of previously mentioned rules being contradicted in later books. For example, it is repeatedly stated that it's impossible to teleport into or out of Hogwarts, which remains true throughout the series. Even during an Apparition test it's explicitly noted that the room they're practicing in has temporarily had the blocking field suspended, so they shouldn't try it after the lesson's over. Whenever someone wants to teleport to Hogwarts, they're instead forced to teleport nearby and travel the rest of the way through another means.
  • Magical Camera: Photographs and paintings alike are animate and semi-sentient, due to some kind of special darkroom process.
  • Magic Carpet: These are banned in Britain because they're defined as a Muggle artifact by the Registry of Proscribed Magical Objects, though they're apparently used by wizards in other countries.
  • Magic Feather: Suspecting that Ron's struggles on the Quidditch pitch are largely mental, Harry pretends to spike his pumpkin juice with Felix Felicis potion, known as "liquid luck". After Ron performs spectacularly, Harry reveals that he never actually gave Ron the potion and it was just Ron's skill that allowed him to perform. The resulting confidence boost helps Ron throughout the rest of the season.
  • Magic Fire:
    • Flames enchanted with the Flame-Freezing Charm don't burn and will instead give off a pleasant sensation such as a warm summer breeze or light tickling.
    • Fires created with Floo powder, as first introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, are emerald green and harmless, and are used either to travel between fireplaces or to communicate between them by sticking one's head alone into the fire.
  • Magic Hat: The Room of Requirement turns into whatever people need. For a more literal magic hat, there's the Sorting Hat which can speak and is somehow able to judge which house students should go into, It's also where the Sword of Gryffindor can be pulled by a true Gryffindor.
  • Magical Library: The school library at Hogwarts contains information on all sorts of magic from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.
  • Magic Map: The Marauder's Map, showing everything and everyone on the Hogwarts grounds and giving insults to Severus Snape.
  • Magic or Psychic?: Mind-reading and defending against being read are specific schools of magic known as Legilimency and Occlumency, though when Harry describes it as mind-reading, Professor Snape gets annoyed before stating that calling Legilimency "mind-reading" barely scratches its full potential.
  • Magic Potion: Potions are frequently used in the series, and there's a dedicated class at Hogwarts for teaching how to make them. Potions are a very "passive" form of magic, in that no active spellcasting is used in the preparation or use; instead, they draw upon the properties of the items used in making them and modified through very careful mixing and brewing. Properly brewed potions can do almost anything when drunk; improperly made ones tend to explode, become highly poisonous or just dissolve the cauldron.
  • Magic Versus Science:
    • Magic generally interferes with electronics, to the extent that they don't work in Hogwarts at all. Most Muggles have no idea magic exists, and wizards are largely disdainful or entirely ignorant of Muggle technology, to the extent that they often use far less convenient tools (like using quills and inkwells rather than pens). Interestingly, although wizards can do many things much more quickly and efficiently with magic, there are a few cases where the wizard method just sucks compared to the technology. For example wizards have nothing as effective as (albeit then-primitive) cell phones or Internet. They send letters by owl, which is better than the postal service, but nowhere near as good as an e-mail. The closest commonly-used thing they have to a phone is sticking your head in a magical fireplace, and although there are enchanted two-way mirrors that work like magical webcams they don't seem to be widely used, for some reason. On the other hand, there are implications, primarily in Order of the Phoenix, that owls can be teleported for more secure communications. Why the letters themselves aren't just sent this way by default isn't clear.
    • Subverted by one Arthur Weasley, who seems to be one of the few (along with Hermione, who was brought up in the Muggle world) who sees the usefulness of taking common Muggle inventions then enhancing them further with magic. Everyone else just thinks he's eccentric.
    • Much of this is clearly intended to reflect the cultural differences between those who live entirely in Wizarding society and those who mingle in both. For example, by the end of the series Ron, who is now married to Hermione, a Muggle-born, has gotten a driver's license. However because electronics do not work in Hogwarts, where young witches and wizards spend a large chunk of their childhoods, they naturally become distanced from technology and learn to get by using magic in their daily lives instead.
    • There is also a legitimate question as to what is "magic" and what is "science". In the book Harry Potter and Philosophy, one contributor, Gareth B. Matthews, observes:
      Matthews: The natural assumption is that any subject that can be taught to students in such a way that their competence in this subject can be tested by examination is a science.
    • This is further illustrated by the fact that it is frequently shown that magic, much like science, operates under comprehensible laws and that if performed correctly will produce a predictable result. If performed incorrectly (something often shown in the series) it will likewise produce an incorrect result. This is most explicitly demonstrated in the subject of Potions, where in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Professor Snape states it unequivocally (emphasis added):
      Snape: You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic.
  • Mama Bear: Several, and they seem to be the bane of Voldemort's existence. Twice he's been undone by a mother trying to protect her son. The first was Lily sacrificing herself for Harry, and the second is Narcissa Malfoy, who lies to him about Harry being dead for the chance to save Draco.
    • Mrs. Weasley who kills Bellatrix Lestrange, who had almost killed Ginny Weasley.
  • Mammal Monsters Are More Heroic:
    • Downplayed as it's only really present in the Animal Motifs of rival Hogwarts houses Gryffindor and Slytherin — respectively a lion and a serpent— and not in monsters. These animals are meant to characterize the students who belong to those houses. Gryffindors are courteous, brave, and honorable, with the house as a whole being Always Lawful Good. On the other hand, Slytherins are cunning, ambitious, and underhanded, with the house having a reputation of being Always Chaotic Evil.
    • The setting contains all sorts of mythological and folkloric creatures. The ones that are featured most prominently tend to follow this trend. Unicorns Are Sacred, the part-horse Hypogriff Buckbeak is prideful but not malicious, and Fluffy the Cerberus is a guardian and only ever harms the bad guys. Then we have the Basilisk (the king of serpents) who was bred to purge the school of muggle-borns and the Acromantulas (giant, man-eating spiders) whom only Hagrid calls adorable. The trope is subverted with dragons. They are always antagonistic and portrayed as very dangerous, with their viciousness being explained as being either breeding mothers or enslaved guardians who prompt Hermione's sympathy. Thestrals (winged, skeletal horses) downplay the trope a bit, as they can only be seen by those who've witnessed death but are not evil and even help the heroes at a crucial moment.
  • Market-Based Title:
    • Philosopher's Stone is changed for two markets. It's Sorcerer's Stone in the US because Scholastic thought the word "philosopher" was too cerebral for a kids' series. They suggested School of Magic, Rowling didn't like it and proposed Sorcerer's Stone as a compromise. It's Harry Potter Ă  l'Ă©cole des sorciers (Harry Potter at the Wizards' School) in France because the local publishers thought that since Nicholas Flamel is such a well known folk character there, it would be too much of a spoiler to use a directly translated title.
    • Deathly Hallows is nigh-untranslatable so most markets use some approximation of "relics of death".
  • Masquerade: The Muggle world is under the masquerade that magic does not exist.
  • Masquerade Paradox: This is a textbook example; a discussion of it even provides the page quote. The stated reasons for the Masquerade are that Muggles are inclined to mistrust wizards and not ready to learn the truth, and Muggles would want magical solutions to all their problems. Wizards cite medieval Burn the Witch! sentiment as the reason to enact the Masquerade to begin with, but that fails to address why the Masquerade is necessary today. And even then, the books point out that few witches or wizards were actually harmed by medieval witch hunts, as they could create the illusion of their suffering and death and walk away from a witch-burning unscathed (that said, Dumbledore's notes in The Tales of Beedle the Bard point out that a wizard separated from his wand could easily be killed by mundane means, and magical children were often targeted by Muggle persecutors due to Power Incontinence and their inability to protect themselves). There's also the possibility of informational exchange, as wizards are shown to be absolutely hopeless with technology but good with healing power (and supplemental material suggests this is exactly how wizards and Muggles interacted before the witch hunts). And wizards not only have superior firepower to Muggles (the question of whether Muggle weapons could take down a wizard is a bit of a contentious topic in the fandom), but magic explicitly neutralizes technology — so why not just take over? The Masquerade seems to hit pretty much every point of contention the Paradox raises. Perhaps the most interesting explanation is wizard prejudice — they hate Muggles and don't want to interact with them in principle. Arthur Weasley has an interest in Muggles and likes tinkering with Muggle devices, but this gets him seen as a kook by other wizards and the entire Weasley family is disparaged by pure-bloods for not having Fantastic Racism against Muggles.
  • Master-Apprentice Chain: Harry is given special lessons from Lupin, and uses it and more to train the DA.
  • Master Race: Many pureblood families of wizards view themselves this way; Voldemort, whose reasons for hating Muggles are much more personal in nature, plays on this to attract followers.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
    • From the books alone, Voldemort's curse on the role of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher may or may not actually be a magical curse (although Rowling confirmed a jinx on the position), and some of it is down to a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the very rumour that it is cursed (Gilderoy Lockhart was the only applicant for that role during Harry's second year). All of the teachers meet their end in very different circumstances, only one directly influenced by Voldemort.
    • Divination is treated ambiguously by the series. The only Divination experts we meet are Sybil Trelawney, who is all but stated to be an arrant fraud, and Firenze, one of the notoriously superstitious centaurs. The methods they use, such as tarot cards, tea leaves, and astrology, are ones that even muggles could use, and Dumbledore has considered axing the subject at Hogwarts for good. On the other hand, Trelawney is a genuine seer — though her powers are not under her control and come in short bursts — and her predictions are generally accurate, even if her ability to interpret them correctly is woefully subpar. It's never made entirely clear whether it's a legitimate field of magic that is simply too imprecise to be practically useful, a hereditary skill that cannot be meaningfully taught or learned, or simply a bunch of dressed-up guesswork that may occasionally offer accidental insights.
  • Massive Numbered Siblings: The Weasley family have seven children.
  • Meaningful Name: Has its own page.
  • Medicinal Cuisine: Chocolate is the best restorative for a person who has been in the presence of Dementors. It instantly restores happiness and warmth to the body, both of which are siphoned away by the Dementors whenever they get too close.
  • Memory Jar: Pensieves are used this way and for the selfsame Pensieve Flashback.
  • Memory-Wiping Crew: Obliviators, employed by the Ministry of Magic. Their entire purpose is to protect wizarding secrecy by modifying the memories of any Muggle who witnesses a magical disaster or gets involved to closely in wizarding business by accident or curiosity.
  • Memetic Badass: In-universe example. Rumours about the incredible (and possibly dark) powers that Harry possessed were circulating before he'd even arrived at Hogwarts. And the Power Trio are absolutely on the receiving end of this during Deathly Hallows, when the Wizarding World is hearing stories about three high school students who rescued prisoners from the headquarters of the Ministry of Magic itself, escaped Malfoy Manor (Death Eater HQ) from under the nose of Bellatrix Lestrange, and broke into Gringotts and escaped by stealing a dragon(!!!), on top of regularly fighting Death Eaters and repeatedly escaping from right under Voldemort's... umm... slits.
  • Men Are the Expendable Gender:
    • The characterization part of this trope is averted, but the numerical part is played very straight - not counting backstories, the major characters who are Killed Off for Real in the series are overwhelmingly male. All told, the body count is quite high, particularly since a whole host of both men and women who only get one or two mentions die. There are a handful of major female characters who die including Hedwig (although she isn't human), Nymphadora Tonks (who is killed off-screen), and Bellatrix Lestrange (a villain who, let's face it, absolutely had it coming).
      • The fate of Lavender Brown is left ambiguous but bleak in Deathly Hallows, but she's given a proper Death by Adaptation in the film. The closest we get to a book-canon confirmation is from Pottermore, where her status is listed as "presumed dead".
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Dumbledore is often analogized to Obi-Wan Kenobi in terms of his appearance, demeanor, and role in Harry's life, so readers naturally expected this to come to pass. Sure enough, this is exactly what happens the sixth book.
  • Mighty Whitey: Although allegorically speaking, Muggles and Muggleborns are people of colour, and Purebloods are white people, there is still a bit of this in Muggleborns joining a culture they haven't grown up in and besting the people who have grown up in that culture at magical subjects, as is the case with Hermione Granger and Anthony Goldstein. Inverted with Squibs (people whose parents are witches and wizards but cannot do magic themselves) who basically get the worst of both worlds, being unable to fully be a part of the magical world for their lack of magical ability, but are always worse at Muggle things than Muggles due to a lack of exposure to it.
  • Mind Probe:
    • Legilimency is the art of probing into another person's head and reading their thoughts and emotions. It can be used in relatively harmless ways to detect lying and read surface thoughts, but deep searching can completely destroy the target's mind.
    • The mental link between Harry and Voldemort potentially allows a two-way channel for either one to search the other's mind. However, whereas Harry can, if willing, look inside Voldemort's mind with relative ease and end up only a few nasty headaches worse for wear, Voldemort can't reach too deeply into Harry's mind without suffering unspeakable pain. Dumbledore theorizes that Voldemort's unstable maimed soul is unable to come in contact with Harry's pure soul.
  • Mind Rape:
    • Dementors are living embodiments of this, as their very nature saps a person's ability to feel positive emotion. Just a short amount of time in their presence will have you craving death and prolonged exposure permanently damages a person's psyche. The only people who seem immune to this are the genuinely insane and those who are already lacking positive emotions to feed on.
    • A skilled Legellimens is capable of this. As Snape sneeringly points out, the Legellimency goes far beyond mere mind reading and involves delving into a person's mind against their will, often influencing their thoughts in imperceptible ways.
  • Mind Your Step: The staircases at Hogwarts have several stairs that your foot will sink through. In Goblet of Fire, Harry gets caught out by one of these, and ends up very stuck in his Invisibility Cloak, while Filch and Snape are around him, unaware of his presence.
  • Misery Builds Character:
    • Implied to be the reason why Harry has more humility than his father had at the same age; growing up with his abusive Aunt and Uncle made him a better person. Though, this is carefully qualified because there are other cases where misery did not build character, namely the young Tom Riddle and Severus Snape who suffered bad childhoods and became jerkasses, with the latter undergoing Heel–Face Turn only after realizing he made a terrible mistake and even then not changing his genuinely unpleasant personality one bit.
    • Dumbledore himself notes that Harry is exceptional for coming out of his childhood with the capacity to love that he imbibed from the memory and sacrifice of his Good Parents. And Harry himself mocks this concept when he tells Remus off for trying to abandon his family under the misplaced idea that his child is better off without his werewolf Dad.
    • According to J. K. Rowling, this trope is why Dumbledore lets Snape get away with being such an asshole to his students. ("Dumbledore believes there are all sorts of lessons in life ... horrible teachers like Snape are one of them!"). Dumbledore is perhaps the biggest example; his youthful relationship with Grindelwald and the resulting death of his sister made him a lifelong atoner for an action he never forgave himself for.
  • Misfit Mobilization Moment:
    • In Order of the Phoenix, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are already-mobilized misfits, but they're joined by Neville (who Took a Level in Badass); Ginny, who up to that point was nearly an extra and only Ron's little sister; and Luna, Hogwarts's own Cloudcuckoolander.
    • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Kreacher leads the house-elves employed at Hogwarts into battle against the Death Eaters.
    • The whole final battle is this for the good guys: Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army, teachers and staff of Hogwarts, Grawp-the-giant, thestrals and hippogriffs, centaurs, house-elves, and probably others. Even the non-Junior Death Eater Slytherins led by Lovable Coward Slughorn. Just think of a good guy who's still alive by this point in the story. Any good guy at all, no matter how obscure. They show up. note 
  • Missing the Good Stuff: This is almost a recurring theme, often involving the main characters missing Quidditch, or the Sorting Ceremony.
    • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: When Harry and Ron are sent to Professor McGonagall's office instead of attending the feast at the start of term, Ron is disappointed to have missed seeing Ginny being Sorted, but is relieved to learn she is in Gryffindor.
    • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Harry and Hermione are summoned to Professor McGonagall's office at the very beginning of the year (for minor reasons), and are slightly disappointed to miss the Sorting ceremony.
    • In the same book, Harry has to miss out on the first visit to Hogsmeade, because the Dursleys refused to sign his permission form. Later, Fred and George show him how to get there by stealth.
    • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Because of Harry being given multiple detentions by Professor Umbridge, he misses Ron's tryout for the Quidditch team, to the anger of Angelina, the team captain. When he is later banned from playing Quidditch at all, he and Hermione get ready to suffer through Ron's utter humiliation of being the Keeper in the final, when Hagrid shows up to ask them to follow him. They do, discovering that he has a (literal) giant half-brother. When they get back, they hear the crowd chanting a mocking song the Slytherins came up with, and realize the lyrics are now celebrating Ron, and sung by Gryffindors. It turns out Ron started blocking goals like a champ after they left, and while initially put off that they missed the whole thing, Hagrid's problem is enough to make him forgive them.
    • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: When Harry has been given detention by Snape, he misses playing in the Quidditch final, and has to ask Ginny to take his place as Seeker.
  • Mistaken for Granite: The guardian statue at the entrance to Dumbledore's study. It turns out to be a gargoyle that is fully capable of speech, and will move from the entrance when a password is spoken.
  • Mocking the Mourner: Mocking Harry for being an orphan is a favourite move by Draco Malfoy, and Bellatrix Lestrange taunts Molly Weasley with Fred's death during their duel. This turns out to be the last thing she does.
  • Moe Couplet: Harry and Luna. Luna is a Cloudcuckoolander who hardly seems troubled by anything and helps her father run the magical equivalent of a tabloid magazine, whereas Harry becomes more traumatized as increasing numbers of his friends and loved ones die. Some of them right in front of him. Yet, Luna understands what losing a loved one feels like, enabling her to empathize with his grief over Sirius — and Harry knows what being picked on feels like, so he naturally wants to help her out when people hide Luna's things and mock her behind her back.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: Somewhere between this and Black-and-Gray Morality. The Death Eaters are pretty consistently on the black side, but the protagonists can vary from saints to assholes.
  • Moral Myopia: 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, and using Unforgivable curses against Death Eaters was perfectly legal during the previous war. But then Harry uses the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow for spitting at McGonagall (and presumably for torturing his classmates all year, though Harry doesn't outright say so), causing him excruciating pain when simply stunning him would have solved their immediate problems.
  • Morally Bankrupt Banker: The goblins at Gringotts, though they are portrayed less as evil and more as possessing a Blue-and-Orange Morality that makes them unpredictable. Their views on ownership make them highly possessive of goblin-made goods and generally have more regard for objects than people. Its also suggested that wizard distrust of goblins is rooted in them simultaneously viewing goblins as an inferior species and depending heavily on them for commerce and smithing, which has enough Real Life subtext to create the Unfortunate Implications that their portrayal is infamous for.
  • Mortality Grey Area: Amortal beings are a distinct category from immortal beings, despite functionally being the same. Their immortality comes from the virtue of never being alive in the first place, and thus technically can't die. "Non-beings" like poltergeists, boggarts, and the Dementors fall under this category of not being recognized as living or dead.
  • Moustache de Plume: "J.K. Rowling" is a pseudonym forced upon the author, Joanne Rowling, because her publisher feared that young boys (a major part of 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.
  • Muggles: The Trope Namer. "Muggle" is a term to refer to any non-magical person. Muggles generally have no idea magic is real and the wizarding governments work to keep them in the dark, both to simplify wizarding existence and to prevent war between them.
  • Muggle Born of Mages: A person who was born to magical parents but has no magical abilities themselves is known as a Squib. They're usually cast off into Muggle society as soon as they start school and have no contact with the Wizarding World. Notable examples include Filch (whose animosity towards the Hogwarts students is probably due to being this) and Mrs. Figg. An unseen cousin of Mrs. Weasley's is one. Neville isn't one, but it took so long for his magical abilities to manifest that his family almost thought he'd be one. The greater Wizarding World also believes that the long dead Ariana Dumbledore was one but that wasn't actually the case.
  • Muggle–Mage Romance: These are reasonable common in the setting. Seamus Finnigan is the result of one, and so are Lord Voldemort and Severus Snape, though Voldemort's and Snape's parents' relationships were far from healthy. Ron has this to say about this sort of romance:
    Ron: If we hadn't married Muggles we'd've died out.
  • Muggles Do It Better:
    • Never demonstrated by direct comparison due to the extreme segregation of the wizards from the general population, but the most powerful, deadly, unforgivable curse in the wizard world is basically the equivalent of an (admittedly more lethal) magical handgun, and whatever the wizards do to feed themselves and maintain quality of life can only support a population density so low that one school with a handful of instructors can train the entire wizard population of the British Isles through every grade level at once. Even accounting for extended lifespans, that means the muggle technology overall is at minimum three orders of magnitude better than wizardry at keeping things running.
    • The wizard world also hasn't even invented fiat currency, and their economy still runs on shiny rocks. Though the author might not realize exactly how inferior that makes themnote .
    • Wizards also don't seem to have a method of communication as quick and easy as cell phones, or if they do, it's not shown in the books. The closest thing we see is the two-way mirror that appears at the end of Book 5, but this seems to be uncommon (it's the only one that appears in the series), and it only works between two people who each have to have one side of the mirror, making it more akin to a walkie-talkie than anything else.
    • Pottermore delves into this and suggests that the one area where Muggles have wizards beat is transportation. Only the most vehement anti-Muggle wizards will attempt to deny that the automobile and train are excellent modes of transport that really have no magical peer. The Hogwarts Express specifically came about because all of the wizarding solutions proved to be inefficient and difficult to implement with so many underage wizards. Wizards do have several different ways to teleport, but every one has significant limitations, dangers, or both. Portkeys, for example, resulted in up to a third of students failing to arrive because they were late or couldn't find the object while many of the ones who did would have to be hospitalized from nausea.
  • Multiple-Choice Chosen: Trelawny's prophecy about The Chosen One to defeat Lord Voldemort could apply to both Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom at the time that she said it, but Voldemort himself chose Harry when he tried to kill him, which applied the final part of the prophecy to Harry only.
  • Multiple Demographic Appeal: Because the books were released over the course of a decade, they had a strong appeal both for the kids who they were aimed at and adults who grew up with the series. This was a major factor in the series' runaway success.
  • Mundane Object Amazement: Justified by the insular nature of the wizarding community. Mr. Weasley is considered a bit of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander for his hobby of collecting Muggle devices, as he finds it amazing what they can do without magic.
    Mr Weasley: [to Harry] You've lived among Muggles; can you tell me exactly what is the function of a rubber duck?
  • Multiple-Choice Future: It strongly implied that there is no set destiny, with various character's choices and instances on fulfilling prophecies being the catalyst for many of such prophecies in the first place. Dumbledore flat-out states that the only reason Harry Potter became Voldemort's undoing was because he believed in the prophecy that he would be defeated by him so much that his own attempts at curtailing it led to his own undoing. Because of this, Divination is considered an especially fickle skill to master given that the future is constantly in flux, Hermione Granger once describing it as "woolly" and "a lot of guesswork."
  • Mundane Utility: Wizards use magic for basically every part of their daily lives, including things like cooking and cleaning. Spells like Alohamora, Accio, and Reparo were designed for opening doors sealed by non-magical locks, summoning objects from great distances, and repairing broken objects (like glasses), respectively.
    Tonks (unsuccessfully trying to pack Harry's trunk with her wand): I never did get the hang of these householdy spells.
  • Mutually Unequal Relationship: Dumbledore theorizes some of Voldemort's followers believe themselves to be his True Companions and closest friends. Voldemort is of course entirely unattached to them and given his views on love, would certainly not want them as friends.
  • Mystical Plague: Lycanthropy. It's an obvious parallel to AIDS, being communicable, and causing people to have it to be discriminated against—Lupin resigns after Snape outs him.

    N 
  • NaĂ¯ve Newcomer:
    • The conceit of the series, with Harry Potter as a child who is dumped into the magical world at the age of 11 without knowing a thing about it, allowed Rowling to use him as an exposition sponge to explain the Potter universe to the audience. This trope is heavily leaned on in the first book but still keeps coming up later. In the fourth book Arthur Weasley spends a chunk of narrative explaining to Harry and the audience what Portkeys are, something that later proves crucial to the book's climax.
    • Sometimes all the children, being children, are Naive Newcomers; when Moody gives his lesson on the Unforgiveable Curses in Book 4, none of the students know what they are.
    • As late as the seventh book, Ron the pureblood explains to Naive Newcomers Harry and Hermione, both raised in the Muggle world, what The Tales of Beedle the Bard is. (It's a collection of wizard fairy tales, roughly equivalent to Grimm's Fairy Tales.)
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There are quite a few of these from the villains' side.
    • "Malfoy" literally means "bad faith" in French, and it's most prominent members are Draco (dragon and/or notoriously brutal Greek legislator), Lucius (Lucifer), and Narcissa (Narcissus/narcissism).
    • Voldemort means "flight of death" or "theft of death" in French, and his followers are called the Death Eaters.
    • Voldemort's maternal family is the House of Gaunt.
    • Alecto Carrow's first name means "unceasing anger" in Greek and is also the name of one of Hades's Furies
  • Narm: Plenty of it in-universe, as we see practically the whole series through Harry's point of view. It gets lampshaded whenever the Dursleys have an emotional moment, usually coupled with some variant of the phrase "Harry suppressed the urge to laugh."
  • Narm Charm: Word of God confirms that In-Universe, the Quibbler is "appreciated for its unintentional humour."
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: At length. The books contain a great deal of profanity being uttered, more often than not by Ron, just filtered through a fairly tongue-in-cheek narration. To quote a few:
    • Goblet of Fire:
      The leprechauns had risen into the air again, and this time, they formed a giant hand, which was making a very rude sign indeed at the veela across the field.
      Ron told Malfoy to do something that Harry knew he would never have dared say in front of Mrs. Weasley.
    • Half-Blood Prince:
      Frustration was running high and there was a certain amount of ill-feeling towards Wilkie Twycross and his three Ds, which had inspired a number of nicknames for him, the politest of which were Dog-breath and Dung-head.
    • The seventh book, as befitting its dark themes and high body count, dispenses with this trope and employs a couple of choice Precision F Strikes.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name:
    • The Death Eaters believe in the superiority of "pure blood", and will kill anyone they feel is inferior to them. Their leader, Voldemort, hates anyone not of pure wizard blood, yet he himself is not a pureblood; Adolf Hitler viewed "Aryans," commonly portrayed as blonds with blue eyes, as the master race, yet he himself was brown-haired with brown eyes, and may have had a bit of Jewish ancestry. J.K. Rowling acknowledged the Death Eaters are supposed to represent the Nazis. In the fourth movie, they're also symbolized as Klansmen—check out the KKK-inspired headgear, torches and "burning signal".
    • And that's not even getting into the seventh book, for most of which the Power Trio are on the run in one of the most blatant parallels of Nazi-occupied Europe ever seen. The Ministry of Magic has become so corrupted from the inside by Les Collaborateurs that they essentially pass the Nuremberg Laws against Muggle-born wizards, and under the guidance of Umbridge are shown creating pamphlets touting purity of blood whose content and saccharine covers call to mind the publications of Julius Streicher. The various Death Eater minions inside the Ministry are dressed in khaki clothes, with red, white, and black armbands bearing the Dark Mark. The sign of the Deathly Hallows has a history very similar to that of the swastika, as well—originally an innocent symbol, then used by wizard-supremacist Grindelwald, etched on walls by stupid pricks to get attention...
    • Naturally, Grindelwald was defeated in 1945, of all years, and was banged up in a prison called Nurmengard (which sounds like Nuremberg, and has the very "Arbeit macht frei"-like slogan "For the Greater Good" carved over the gate). Fans have used this to speculate on whether Grindelwald actually had something to do with the rise of the Nazis themselves. Also, a lunatic, old loner as the last inmate of an incredibly guarded prison? That sounds like Rudolf Hess.
      • Regardless, the possibility of a task force of wizards and muggles contributing to the Allied victory over the Nazis is invoked in-universe.
    • Polish translation of Deathly Hallows explicitly calls those who hunt muggleborns and La RĂ©sistance for profit szmalcownicy. Real Life szmalcownicy sold hiding Jews to the Nazis during The War. Said Snatchers can also be compared to the Einsatzgruppen that hunted Jews, inter alia, in occupied Europe.
    • One of the books Hermione the know-it-all occasionally mentions, namely the history of dark magic, is called The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. This is an obvious Shout-Out to William Shirer's all-time classic history of Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
  • Near-Death Experience: The effect of multiple magical curses/charms takes Harry about as near death as anyone can go without actually dying. Being the only person to ever survive the Killing Curse twice is actually part of what makes him famous in the wizarding world, causing many to refer to him as "The Boy-Who-Lived".
  • Needle in a Stack of Needles: Part of the reason why the search for Voldemort's horcruxes is so fraught is because literally any object can be made into an horcrux, and the Trio have no idea what they're looking for. This becomes subverted when Harry realizes that Voldemort's personality would compel him to make horcruxes out of objects of great signifigance to him, which narrows the list down considerably.
  • Nemesis Weapon: Harry's wand is one of two which share cores from the same phoenix. Whereas his is made of holly, a wood well-suited to his dangerous life, its brother, which went to Voldemort, is made of yew, a supreme material for Black Magic. The connection between the wands makes them almost unable to defeat each other, and every showdown between Harry and Voldemort using them ends in a draw. Voldemort catches on to this late in the series and starts looking for a more powerful wand.
  • Never the Obvious Suspect: This trope pops up more than once.
    • Severus Snape is a sly, abusive teacher who has a clear affinity for the Dark Arts throughout Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It turns out that Snape is not only not the antagonist, he is actively protecting Harry from the antagonist.
    • Draco Malfoy is a schoolyard bully who vocally supports the actions of the mysterious Heir of Slytherin in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and co. spend months investigating the connection between the two, but it becomes obvious Draco has nothing to do with the Heir.
    • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sees Harry suspect Snape and Malfoy yet again, this time of hatching several failed assassination plots from within Hogwarts. By this point, Harry's friends and allies attribute his suspicion to his dislike for both people. As it turns out, Harry is completely right about both, even if their situations are much more complex than Harry assumed.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Each book adds spells and techniques as the characters gain new skills, but other characters (namely adults) who should already know such thing typically don't use them until the main characters learn about them.
    • More generally new magic systems are introduced as the plot demands. From Books 1-5, magic fights had consistency among the adult and teenage fights we see on-screen. It involved Calling Your Attacks, and pointing the wand at a target and using it tactically, defensively and strategically, with duels being about timing, defence and careful offence. Book 6 introduced wordless magic (i.e. non-verbal spells) which we had seen bits off, but was presented in Book 6 as advanced spell work, and we see offensive legilimency, which we see both being used tactically in a duel (between Snape and Harry and then never again by either Voldemort or any other Death Eater or anyone else in the Order).
    • Book 7 likewise introduces entirely new principles of wizard combat, with the idea being introduced that disarming your opponent can transfer the allegiance of the opponent's wand to the new master. This had never been introduced before this book and it's more or less crucial to how Harry defeats Voldemort in the end, but it's a system that only really gets explained more than halfway into Book 7.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • At one point in Half Blood Prince, we see inside the memories of a Ministry official who was responsible for the arrest of a father and son who abused the daughter of the family, enabling her to go after the Muggle love of her life. All very well, right? Well, there's just one teensy-weensy problem — said daughter happens to go on to become the mother of the most evil and maniacal wizard this century.
    • Also in Half-Blood Prince, we learn R.A.B. stole a Plot Coupon and replaced it with a fake and a taunting note, which forces the main characters to find it again later because R.A.B. didn't manage to destroy it. Especially annoying because of the circumstances of pointlessly gaining the fake.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Voldemort's killing of Lily Potter was his downfall. By choosing to kill her when she wouldn't step aside, he lost his powers and physical body, created a new nemesis in Harry with the power to kill him and lost the loyalty of Snape. If he had simply stunned her, he could have killed Harry with no harm to himself and handed the unconscious Lily over to Snape and would have effectively won.
  • Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
    • Downplayed with the main trio, who all have their faults, failings, virtues and successes. Generally speaking, Harry is a compassionate All-Loving Hero (Nice), Ron is quick-tempered and prone to jealousy (Mean), and Hermione is kind and well-meaning if a little proud and vain about her smarts (Inbetween).
    • Played Straight among the three Black sisters. Andromeda is a White Sheep among their virulently racist family, and an ally to the Order of the Phoenix (Nice). Bellatrix is a violent, sadistic, fanatically loyal and deranged Death Eater who commits familicide if she perceives her own family-members as "blood traitors" (Mean). Narcissa is a racist, elitist distant supporter of the Death Eaters and she helped Lucius raise Draco, but she's not as fanatical as Bellatrix, and love for her family comes first (Inbetween).
    • The Peverell brothers linked to the Deathly Hallows' origins are portrayed this way in The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Ignotus (Nice) lacked the other two's arrogance, never did anything obnoxious, and accepted his death as an old man while passing his Hallow which had enabled him to evade Death onto his son. Antioch (Mean) thought about nothing but power when tailoring his Hallow, and he went on to use it to murder a man in a bar brawl, then sealed his fate by arrogantly boasting of what he possessed. Cadmus (Inbetween) tailored his Hallow for two purposes: to humiliate Death even further than the brothers already had, and to resurrect his dead fiance; killing himself when he realized that his Hallow couldn't achieve the latter.
  • No Adequate Punishment: Creating a Horcrux is considered the ultimate evil, beyond even using any of the three 'Unforgivable curses' which carry a life sentence in Azkaban with no parole, and yet the Wizarding world has no punishment for creating a Horcrux... because creating one involves literally tearing parts off your soul, and they don't know of a way to make the punishment worse than that. Of course considering their rarity and that their creation specifically requires murdering someone (for which there is a legal punishment), there really isn't any need.
  • Nobody Poops: Subverted in that toilets are mentioned quite a few times.
    • Fred and George talk of sending their mother a Hogwarts toilet seat.
    • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a disused bathroom is central to the plot, and Polyjuice Potion is brewed actually on a toilet, in a cauldron above a magical waterproof fire.
    • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore tells the story of how when he had an exceptionally full bladder, he came across a room containing a magnificent selection of chamber pots.
    • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore excuses himself to go to the bathroom, so that Harry can talk to Horace Slughorn. When he has spent a long time there, Slughorn asks Dumbledore if he had an upset stomach.
  • No Communities Were Harmed: Though few of the places mentioned in the books are real, many are based on real places in the British Isles (for example, Harry's home town of Little Whinging is a generic London commuter-belt suburb). However, one fan attempted to figure out the precise locations of some of the locations in the series:
    • Hogwarts is in the Scottish Highlands, though in the Kintail area rather than Lochaber as is depicted in the films. note 
    • The Burrow is in Devon, near the river Otter and the town of Chudleigh (note that the nearest settlement In-Universe is called Ottery St. Catchpole and Ron's favourite Quidditch team is the "Chudley Cannons").
    • Grimmauld Place is in Holloway, north London.
    • The island that Vernon brings the Dursleys and Harry to in Philosopher's Stone is located in the Blackwater Estuary, off the coast of Essex.
    • Shell Cottage (aka Bill and Fleur's house) is situated on the southern coast of Cornwall.
    • The Horcrux cave in Half-Blood Prince is most likely at Porthclais in southern Wales.
  • No Eye in Magic: Some of the spells in the series are like this.
    • In Book 1, the main villain puts a spell on Harry's broom during a Quidditch game in an attempt to make him fall off and drop to his death. Hermione stops the spell by creating a fire, which startles him into breaking eye contact with Harry.
    • In Chamber of Secrets, the basilisk can kill someone just by looking them in the eye — fortunately, the only people we see who have encountered it manage to not quite look it in the eye: they see it in a reflection, or through a camera lens, or through a ghost, so it only stuns them rather than killing.
    • There is also Legilimency, the ability to extract emotions and memories from a person's mind, which usually works via eye-to-eye contact. Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort are expert Legilimens, and scattered through the series (even before we know what Legilimency is) we can find instances where Harry feels that they can "read his mind." Almost a "missed" example, but once or twice, Harry does look away from their gaze; initially, the reader would just assume he felt uncomfortable under scrutiny — now we know better.
  • No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Rowling modelled Bellatrix on the famous Eva Braun:
    • Bellatrix Lestrange's love and devotion to Voldemort is based on Eva Braun who was married to Adolf Hitler.
    • Bellatrix was 25 years younger than Voldemort and Eva was 23 years younger than Hitler.
    • Bellatrix's maiden name was Black which is the name of a colour in Bellatrix's native language and Braun means brown in Eva's native language, which is also a colour.
    • Bellatrix had two sisters, Narcissa was in favour of Voldemort's cause and was in his inner circle while Andromeda was opposed to it and stayed out of politics. Eva also had two sisters, Ilse and Gretl Braun. Ilse was not involved in politics while Gretl was in Hitler's inner social circle.
    • Eva met Hitler when she was 17 and Bellatrix joined Voldemort after leaving Hogwarts when she was either 18 or 19, depending on whether she was born after or before September the 1st.
    • Eva Braun was kept hidden from the public and while Bellatrix worked for Voldemort, her sexual relationship and child with him were hidden.
    • Bellatrix was the closest Voldemort came to caring for a living being and Hitler cared enough to be in a long term relationship with Eva.
    • In the end, they both died unnaturally for the men they loved at a very young age, Eva at 33 and Bellatrix at 46.
  • No More Lies: Eventually, Dumbledore realizes that hiding the truth from Harry will only hurt him in the end and tells him about Voldemort, such as he knows.
  • Non-Natural Number Gag: Platform 9 3/4 has a fractional ID, where train platforms normally only use whole numbers. Of course this is because it is magically situated between platforms 9 and 10
  • No Ontological Inertia: Unless a spell is specified to be permanent, it will expire with the caster's death. (This apparently does not apply to permanent curse-caused physical or mental damage.)
  • No OSHA Compliance:
    • Hogwarts is a rather dangerous place for kids, often times for no apparent reason. Staircases move through the air (and have false steps), certain books literally attack students, and the school thing is right next a forest apparently full of potentially deadly creatures. And at least once students are sent into the forest at night as part of detention. Of course anyone playing quidditch is quite literally risking their lives as well. You would think that the parents would be upset about this, but the only protests we ever see are when the Chamber of Secrets is opened and after a Wounded Gazelle Gambit by Malfoy in Prisoner of Azkaban.
    • Apparently the school is actually relatively safe, as when students actually start getting injured (like when the Chamber of Secrets opens, or during book 6 when Voldy is back) parents yank their kids out of school. (Ironically, once Voldemort shows up in Hogwarts in person, he waxes philosophical about his love for the place and offers the students a chance to go unharmed.)
    • The Hogwarts Potions class doesn't have fume hoods over the cauldrons, nor does it require that the students wear goggles or gloves while brewing.
    • The Department of Mysteries, which is full of weird death traps.
    • The Triwizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire, an official event staged by the Ministry of Magic and held at Hogwarts, despite the fact that there is a non-zero chance it could get teenaged wizards killed—the first task is getting past a dragon!
      • The Triwizard Tournament had actually been discontinued for about 200 years after there had been too many champions' deaths. The seventeen-year-age limit was one rule they put in place in Goblet of Fire to limit the possibiliy of deaths.
  • Noodle Incident: In Half-Blood Prince, during the Quidditch trials an accident occured. The book doesn't give much detail other than a crashed 260 and several broken teeth.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Several In-Universe examples:
    • In Chamber of Secrets, Lockhart is very happy when a fight breaks out at a book signing for his latest book.
    • And then averted later in the series when the Daily Prophet, Wizarding England's primary newspaper, does a massive (and successful) smear campaign on Harry and Dumbledore.
    • Played straight in the fifth book, wherein the Ministry of Magic's propaganda campaign against Harry's story that Voldemort has returned is reversed when Umbridge bans a copy of The Quibbler that tells Harry's story about his encounter with Voldemort. The issue is then sold out and must be reprinted due to curiosity about why it was banned.
  • No Tech but High Tech: Hermione stated that technology doesn't work around Hogwarts due to all the magic. While things such as the flying car, Hogwarts Express and Colin's camera are hand waved to be running on magic, it's never explained why candles work fine, or why quills are immune to the effects of magic but ballpoint pens aren't.
  • Not Evil, Just Misunderstood:
    • Severus Snape. He's clearly a Jerkass, particularly to Harry, and the main trio are convinced he's a villain, yet it turns out he loved Harry's mother and was actually a Double Agent spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore, which ultimately cost him his life.
    • Slytherin House in general. Early on the house is basically just there to be the bad guys, but J.K. Rowling has stated that not all Slytherins are bad people, and specifically introduced Horace Slughorn to show that.
  • Not Quite Dead:
    • Voldemort was presumed dead after his failed attack on the infant Harry and subsequent disappearance. It turns out his soul survived thanks to his horcruxes.
    • At one point Harry himself is assumed to be dead and goes into a kind of limbo afterlife, before returning back to life.
  • No True Scotsman: The pureblood bigots are of the opinion that anyone who isn't a pureblood is inferior. Those purebloods who disagree are "blood traitors," i.e. not "true" purebloods.
  • The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: Detentions at Hogwarts often involve dangerous tasks, such as searching for an injured unicorn (running into whatever hurt it, and possibly needing to deliver a Mercy Kill) in the Forbidden Forest. Then there's the Umbridge/Carrows version of detention, which involves Cold-Blooded Torture.
  • Not Using the "Z" Word: Zigzagged - in the books, reanimated bodies are called Inferi. However, according to Pottermore, zombies actually do exist in the Potterverse, the primary difference being that, while Inferi can be enchanted to do one's bidding, zombies are merely mindless, shambling corpses. Neither one plays much of a role in the series, however.
  • Not What I Signed Up For: Draco Malfoy. For the first five books of the series he is a sneering, arrogant little shit, and a racist as well, taking delight in calling Hermione a "Mudblood". But in Half-Blood Prince when he's tasked with actually murdering Albus Dumbledore, it's clearly too much for Draco. Harry catches him crying in the girls' toilet and pouring out his troubles to Moaning Myrtle. At the end, despite his bluster he can't pull the trigger on Dumbledore, physically shaking and actually lowering his wand just as Snape barges in and thrusts him aside. It's strongly implied that Draco lies when he says he can't positively ID Harry at Malfoy Manor in Deathly Hallows. Draco never makes a Heel–Face Turn, possibly because he's in too deep, and in fact he's in the Room of Requirement trying to catch Harry at the end, but he's also screaming "DON'T KILL HIM!" to Crabbe. The epilogue and Draco's "curt nod" to Harry imply that if they never managed to actually become friends, they were at least past their antagonism for each other.
  • The Noun Who Verbed:
    • Harry is often called "The Boy-Who-Lived" as he was the only one to ever survive the Killing Curse or Voldemort.
    • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Malfoy mocks this just before a Quidditch game, saying "they'll be waiting for The Boy who Scored, or whatever they call you these days".
    • Lord Voldemort is often referred to as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "You-Know-Who", as people are afraid that speaking his name might summon him. In the last book, he puts a "taboo" on his name such that everyone who speaks it can be located and protections around them fail, exploiting the fear (because only his enemies would call him Voldemort) and also making it justified.
  • Numerological Motif
    • Sevens: seven years, seven novels, seven subjects (to start with), seven Horcruxes, seven players on a Quidditch team, Harry and Neville being born in the seventh month, seven Weasley children. The dedication for the seventh book is "split seven ways".
    • Nine and three-quarters: King's 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, Defence Against Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Astronomy; Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Muggle Studies, Runes, Arithmancy), twelve-a-side in the Dept. of Mysteries. Twelve uses of dragon blood.
    • Primes: 17 sickles to the galleon, 29 knuts to the sickle, and of course all the sevens above.

    O 
  • Obvious Crossover Method: [Crossover character] raises Harry instead of the Dursleys might be the single most common crossover mechanism for Potter Fanfic.
  • Oddly Common Rarity: Hermione says there were only seven Animagi registered with the Ministry during the entire century, but the trio encounters two unregistered Animagi within two yearsnote , and another within five years, which strongly implies that it is far more common ability than she believes, and the actual rarity is for the Animagi to be registered. Hermione is just a law-obsessed teenager and doesn't consider that others. It wouldn't be terribly surprising to find out it is the Wizarding equivalent of speeding.
  • Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Played for Laughs with Ron and Hermione before they actually start going out. Played Straight with Harry and Cho (a mild version), Lupin and Tonks, and Snape and Lily.
  • Offstage Villainy:
    • We hear Neville's accounts of the abuse the Carrows have been dishing out to students during his seventh year, but never actually see any of it.
    • Dolores Umbridge, arguably the most evil non-Death Eater villain in the series, is seen threatening a few characters with the Cruciatus Curse and the Dementor's Kiss, but whether she ever actually subjects anyone to these things remains unknown.
  • Older Is Better: The series' best magics and artifacts can generally be assumed to be ancient.
    • Somewhat averted as well: Hermoine in particular creates a number of brand new and very useful magical items.
  • Old Magic: Harry being imbued with protection by Lily's Heroic Sacrifice is referred to by Dumbledore and Voldemort as "old magic", apparently predating the spells-and-potions type magic that is currently widespread. When Voldemort uses more old magic to resurrect himself, he incorporates Harry's blood so that he'll gain Lily's protection for himself. In so doing, he inadvertently gives Harry an extra layer of protection against himself.
  • Old Money:
    • The Malfoys, being the series's most visible Blue Bloods, have also been fabulously rich for generations and have connections in the highest echelons of government, business, and high society. It's also implied that James Potter was Old Money, having descended from wizarding blue blood like the Peverells and having left his son a huge pile of gold in Gringott's.
    • The Lestranges had a large vault deep underground at Gringotts and was guarded by a dragon. Only the oldest and richest families utilized those vaults.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten: In Chamber of Secrets Harry receives a warning for performing magic outside of school due to a Hover Charm in the Dursley home that was actually performed by Dobby. Whenever the incident is brought up again in later books, including Half Blood Prince, Harry is still mad that he was the one who got blamed for it.
  • One-Hit Kill: The Killing Curse shoots a green light that immediately extinguishes the life of anyone caught in it.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • Tom Riddle/Voldemort's father was also called Tom Riddle. A Bit Character, Tom the bartender at the Leaky Cauldron, also shares the name and, in a scene invoking this trope, a young Tom Riddle is disappointed to hear that they share the common and unremarkable name.
    • Harry names his children James Sirius Potter, Albus Severus Potter and Lily Luna Potter.
    • A random kid named Mark Evans is an example of why this trope exists. In the fifth book, Harry mentions to Dudley that he'd heard that Dudley's gang had beaten him up. Later in the book, we learn that that was their mothers' maiden name. Much speculation was had that he was a long lost relative due to the liberal use of Chekhov's Gunman throughout the rest of the series. Rowling later admitted that she'd just used the same common name without thinking twice and he was just a random kid.
  • Only I Can Kill Him: Far too much. Mainly between Harry and Voldemort.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Until Dumbledore calls him "Alastor", it doesn't occur to Harry that "Mad-Eye" isn't Moody's first name.
  • Only the Knowledgable May Pass: Gryffindors and Slytherins need a password to gain entry into their residences. Hufflepuff has similar security (namely tapping one of the barrels against a wall near the kitchens to the rhythm of "Helga Hufflepuff"), but we never see it. Ravenclaw has a different arrangement, see the trope below.
  • Only Sane Man: Hermione tends to come across as this, sometimes due to Values Dissonance between Muggles and wizards.
  • Only Smart People May Pass:
    • Ravenclaw Tower uses riddles instead of simple passwords before allowing students entry.
    • In the first book, the safeguard that Snape creates for the Philosopher's Stone entails solving a logic puzzle.
  • Only the Chosen May Ride: Hippogriffs choose whom they will allow to ride them. As Malfoy finds out, insulting one is a good way to get sent to the hospital.
  • The Order: The Order of the Phoenix, introduced in... Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The Death Eaters also count as an evil example.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: The Forbidden Forest is home to a herd of centaurs, who take pride in their detachment from human affairs and would rather examine the stars than get involved.
  • Our Dwarves Are Different: They're present, but mostly as background colour (much like vampires). In the second book, Lockhart somehow gets a bunch of dwarves to act as "cupids" on Valentine's Day. It's a toss-up who's less happy, the dwarves or the students.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: Fairies and pixies are generally viewed as household pests, and their excellent Muggle press is a source of some confusion to wizards.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Only witches and wizards can become ghosts, and even then they have the choice to either "go on" (presumably this means to move on to the afterlife) or remain as ghosts in a "feeble imitation of life", as Nick puts it in Order of the Phoenix.
  • Our Liches Are Different: Voldemort is a pretty straightforward example. He split his soul into 7 pieces with successive murders, and stored each one inside a Horcrux. When his Killing Curse backfired and killed him, he remained stuck in the mortal world as "less than a ghost," yet unable to die. Eventually, one of his followers helps him to create a new body (although whatever he then becomes, it is doubtful it can truly be called human), and he gets back in business.
  • Our Pixies Are Different: Pixies are depicted as winged humanoids that are electric blue in colour and fond of mischief. They also don't wear any clothing and appear to be incapable of speech like other magical races.
  • Our Sphinxes Are Different: Sphinxes are classed as beasts (bestial or unintelligent creatures) rather than beings (intelligent magical entities), as they are highly instinct-driven and cannot truly function in societies — they only speak in riddles and puzzles and react violently if given the wrong answer.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolves here are forced to undergo Involuntary Shapeshifting every full moon, and The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body if he hasn't taken a Wolfsbane potion. Due to this affliction, even civilized werewolves are despised by the wizarding populace and most are forced to join werewolf communities, which are generally poor and somewhat feral.
  • Our Witches Are Different: Witches are the name used for female human magic users in general, while wizard is for the males.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: They're apparently accepted enough by wizard society for sweet shops to stock blood-flavoured lollipops. One gets invited to a Hogwarts party.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The Inferi (singular: "Inferius") are slaves to a master, much like classic zombies, and unlike the George Romero flesh-eating version. The word's root is "inferus", which means "below" in latin (it shares its root with "Inferni", the latin name for the Underworld in Classical Mythology).
  • Out of Focus: Given that all the major characters are either Gryffindors or Slytherins, there's not much attention to paid to Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. Cedric is the most prominent Hufflepuff but he's only physically in two of the books. Luna is the most important Ravenclaw but she's not introduced until the fifth book.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: According to their O.W.L. scores, both Harry and Ron are competent at their subjects (with several "Exceeds Expectations" in the core classes, plus one "Outstanding" for Harry in Defence Against the Dark Arts), but they're both overshadowed by Hermione (who got a lone "E" for Defence, and "Outstanding" for all the other classes she attended).
  • Overzealous Underling: After Fudge orders the Daily Prophet to libel Harry as a delusional attention seeker for claiming that Voldemort returned, Umbridge takes it on herself to ensure his silence by siccing Dementors on him. While Fudge is later forced to admit that Voldemort is back, having seen him with his own eyes, she isn't punished for this, staying with the Ministry until she is finally sent off to Azkaban after Voldemort's defeat.

    P 
  • Padding the Paper: The trio talks about writing an essay and Ron suggests they write in huge letters so they can fulfil the length requirement (as their papers are measure by inches of parchment, rather than something like word count). Hermione is not amused.
  • Page-Turn Surprise: There is a page of stars in between every chapter, which means no matter what happens with fonts or translation you will always have to turn a page to get to the next chapter. This is sometimes used for dramatic pauses, such as in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, when revealing who is in the room with the stone: It wasn't Snape. It wasn't even Voldemort. (chapter break) It was Quirrell..
  • Panacea: The bezoar is an imperfect one, but it will save you if you've been poisoned. Unicorn blood will fix you at the cost of being cursed. Phoenix tears seem to work on anything with no catch.
  • Parental Substitute: The Dursleys are a bad version of this, even though they are the only ones who can truly protect Harry from Voldemort, because living with Petunia and Dudley, his only relatives who share his mother's blood, renews Lily's protection spell every year until Harry comes of age. The Weasleys, Sirius, and Lupin do a better job.
  • Patricide: Several instances in the series:
    • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we learn that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents as soon as he discovered they were Muggles, and not the Wizards he imagined.
    • At the end of the same book, we learn that Barty Crouch, Jr. murdered his father. Then transfigured his body into a bone and buried it. Barty makes much of how both he and Voldemort had very disappointing fathers and the pleasure of killing those fathers. He also seems to regard Voldemort as a father substitute.
    • Also, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows we have a rare case of Matricide when it's revealed that Ariana Dumbledore accidentally killed her mother Kendra.
  • Personal Horror: The Imperius Curse can result in this. Both times when Voldemort took over many people were being mind controlled by him.
  • Pet Monstrosity: Caring for magical beasts, the more dangerous the better, is Hagrid's most cherished pastime. He has owned acromantulas, Hippogriffs, Blast-Ended Skrewts, a Hellhound, thestrals, and a dragon, among others.
  • Pictorial Letter Substitution: The American editions of the novels feature a lightning bolt as the left half of the letter "P" in the series word font logo. The same logo would later be used for the film adaptations.
  • Pinball Protagonist: Somewhat in the earlier books. This has been parodied to no end, with one work replacing Harry with a literal inanimate object. Some fans actually joke that Hermione should have been the protagonist, as for the first few novels she's the one who does the most stuff.
  • Plot Armour: The trio has it in spades. The other characters do not, which is driven home quite strongly in the last book.
  • Playful Otter: Hermione's Patronus.
  • Plot Coupons: Quite a few, most notably the Horcruxes.
  • Plot Hole:
    • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it is stated that the Chamber of Secrets was opened before, which led to similar attacks that are happening during the events of the book and eventually the death of a student. Assuming the attacked students were petrified in a similar manner to the students attacked during the second opening of the Chamber, one would assume the students - once unpetrified - would've been able to provide at least some clues as to what sort of a creature the Monster of Slytherin was. Furthermore, one would think that someone would've interviewed the ghost of the dead student during the 50 years between the first and second openings and made the connection between the dead student having heard a boy being in a girl's bathroom speaking a different language, her having seen a huge pair of eyes and dying right away, Salazar Slytherin being a Parselmouth and there being a monster loose inside the castle. At least Dumbledore, possibly the greatest wizard alive, would've been able to figure it out, especially since he knew that Tom Riddle was a Parselmouth.
    • In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Fred and George somehow know how to work the Marauder's Map, including the exact phrases necessary to make the map show up on the parchment and then disappear. This, despite the fact that they stole it from Filch who obviously wouldn't have known the magic words, (and wouldn't have told them even if he did). Of the four people who did know the code phrases, one is dead, one is missing 12 years and presumed dead, one was serving a life sentence in Azkaban when Fred and George got the map, and the fourth, Lupin, wasn't at Hogwarts when Fred and George got the map and never knew they had it. On the other hand, there are spells of revelation (such as the one Snape whips out that the map basically laughs at) and it's not hard to imagine Fred and George examining magic items they "liberated" and not giving up until they cracked it (as they tried to crack getting at the Goblet of Fire in the next book).
    • For that matter, why would Filch have confiscated a piece of blank parchment, and held onto it for years?
    • The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, establishes the existence of Veritaserum, a magical potion that makes everyone who drinks it tell the absolute truth. Well, if veritaserum exists, why does the wizarding world have trials? Why did Sirius Black spend 12 years in Azkaban when the Ministry could have just had him chug some veritaserum and find out whether or not he killed Peter Pettigrew and all those Muggles? Rowling was asked this, and claimed that wizards would do things like seal their throats with magic to prevent them being dosed etc. However, this is implausible as a reason for them not using the serum. A) Why can't the Aurors simply undo a spell like that and then dose the suspect? B) The Goblet of Fire itself showed how to circumvent such trickery — just stun a suspect, then dose them. Barty Crouch Jr. had this happen to him, and then confessed everything. C) While guilty parties would obviously avoid being dosed, certainly some of those who are on trial, but innocent would happily take the potion to prove their innocence. Of course, considering Sirius never had a trial thanks to Barty Crouch Sr. railroading him to Azkaban, Veritaserum would probably be skipped over as well.
    • Goblet of Fire also doesn't explain why the whole complex plot was necessary in the first case, since the bad guy could have just turned any object into a Portkey. Dumbledore does exactly that in Book 5 when he needs to get Harry and the Weasleys out of Hogwarts in a hurry.
    • In the seventh book, it's established that George's ear, sliced off by Snape's dark magic, can't be reattached. Wounds caused by dark magic can't be magically healed. However, in the previous book Harry uses the Sectumsempra spell (which he doesn't fully understand) on Malfoy, slices him all to hell, and nearly kills him...only for Snape to come charging in and mumble some magical incantation that heals Malfoy's wounds.
  • Plot-Induced Illness: The Weasley twins develop a range of sweets that make one ill and test them on fellow students. Hermione is unamused and shuts them down. Well, tries to, anyway.
  • Police Are Useless: The Ministry of Magic proves to be very ineffectual throughout the entire series, and often get in the way of the heroes. This is exemplified best when Voldemort returns and they refuse to acknowledge that he's back, instead choosing to antagonize Harry and Hogwarts. Voldemort even keeps them around because they are more helpful than detrimental to him.
  • The Pollyanna: Luna probably suffers more at the hands of her classmates than Harry does, but never complains or shows any signs of self-pity or even annoyance.
  • Portal Cut: Apparition done poorly results in "splinching." This is where a person attempts to Apparate, but leaves a part of him- or herself behind. Not in a comical bloodless way, but in a "neatly sliced off" kind of way. Wizard healing is such that these kinds of injuries are curable within a day or two, but that leads to splinching being played almost as light comedy — until it happens to Ron in the last book, and nearly kills him.
  • The Power of Friendship: Emphasized as extremely important throughout the series, which is one of the most strongly-played examples of this trope.
  • Power Of Hate:
    • The power of hate is explicitly said to be why Dumbledore is considered weaker (technically) than Voldemort. Voldemort, being fuelled by hate, is willing to use Black Magic like horcruxes or curses. Dumbledore doesn't because he's still sane enough to realize the cost of such power.
    • The first time Harry attempts an Unforgivable Curse against Bellatrix Lestrange, she brushes it off fairly quickly and tells him that righteous anger won't fuel an Unforgivable as well as genuine malice. ("You have to mean them!")
    • This is also what drove Sirius Black out of Azkaban. Dementors could take out happiness, but hate gave him direction while knowing that he was innocent kept him sane.
  • The Power of Love: Alluded to throughout the series. A person sacrificing their life for someone they love can protect a loved one from deadly curses and the grief of losing a loved one can block mental magic.
  • Power Trio:
    • Harry (ego), Ron (id), and Hermione (superego).
    • And the secondary trio consisting of Neville (ego), Ginny (id), and Luna (superego).
  • Pragmatic Villain: Slytherins are repeatedly described as being cunning.
    • An alternate interpretation of the declaration to hand Harry over to Voldemort in the last novel is that they are simply pointing out that there is no sense in everyone dying in order to protect Harry, when he's the only thing that Voldemort actually cares about.
    • The Slytherins all left before the final battle. However, we later find out that a significant number of them led by Slughorn actually did this in order to reach Hogsmeade and raise the alarm, before coming back with reinforcements. (There is debate as to whether this really counts, as Rowling only mentions it in an interview, and it is never hinted at in the books. In fact, Voldemort says that "all" the Slytherins joined him. In the actual text, the only Slytherin seen fighting with the good guys is Slughorn.)
  • Precision F-Strike: The series makes liberal use of Narrative Profanity Filter and using wizarding expressions that are stand-ins for real cursing but there are a few occasions where some stronger language is used.
    • Aunt Marge uses the term "bitch" literally in reference to a female dog in the third book but Mrs. Weasley uses it in the not literal way in the seventh book when she kills Bellatrix.
    • There's an implied use of the word "bastard" in the third book as well but it's used twice in the seventh. Aberforth calls the Muggle boys who attacked Ariana such and Ron calls Malfoy a "two-faced bastard".
    • Morfin Gaunt calls his sister a "slut" in the sixth book. Ron had previously used the less crude "scarlet woman".
    • The seventh book also uses mild profanity more in general than the others. Words like "arse", "damn", and "hell" are used quit often.
  • Prejudice Aesop:
    • The hatred against Muggle-borns is as close as you can get to racism without actual racism. Hermione is the smartest kid in her year—possibly the whole school—but "purebloods" still treat her like an inferior and call her hateful slurs because of her birth. In Deathly Hallows, Bellatrix chooses Hermione to torture first out of the trio because she's a Muggle-born.
    • Rowling's use of Fantastic Racism to make a point about prejudice is nothing truly "new", but she also fleshes out a fictional universe with a long, sordid history of societal prejudice that goes beyond one villain, making a point about how people like Lord Voldemort don't arise in a cultural or historical vacuum. Salazar Slytherin committed atrocities in the name of blood purity centuries before the start of the series, and Gellert Grindelwald was advocating the murder of Muggles before the world had ever heard of Voldemort. As in Real Life, bigots are dangerous because they feed on the prejudices of the masses, and it takes years for those prejudices to become ingrained in the minds of the people.
  • Pre-Meeting: In the first five books, Harry always meets (or at least hears about) his new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher before school starts. And he already knew the sixth.
  • Previously on…: Chapter 1 (sometimes 2) is always a recap of "the story so far" for the benefit of new readers. Rowling stopped doing it after book five, figuring that people stupid enough to start a book series in the middle deserved to get confused.
  • Primitive Clubs: Trolls, depicted in the series as ugly and barely sapient, are always shown carrying clubs. Giants are also shown carrying clubs, and they, too, are shown to be unintelligent and brutal.
  • Projectile Spell: Spells are generally depicted as being "fired" from the tip of a wand and moving at a perceivable speed through the air. Even Avada Kedavra, which ignores any overtly magical shield, can be dodged or hindered by a suitably solid object.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: Toyed with and inverted multiple times (see Because Destiny Says So), but ultimately played straight. Although the Divination teacher Professor Trewlawney is usually portrayed as a massive fraud, shockingly, every genuine prophecy she makes throughout the series turns out to be (at least somewhat) correct.

    She only made two known real predictions in the books, though, which makes it hilarious when even her random mystical BS turns out to be true (like Lavender's rabbit dying, a student leaving her class, or Umbridge being in great danger). She's also always predicting Harry's early demise. Nobody ever believes her. He dies in Book 7 at age 17. He does come back to life, of course.
  • Prophetic Names: Quite a few of the characters' names reflect some gained personality quirk or their adult job description, but no one ever remarks on this oddity. The allusions range from the blindingly obvious (a werewolf named Remus "lupine" Lupin) to the Genius Bonus-worthy (Voldemort's ruthless female fighter and lieutenant is named Bellatrix "the Amazon warrior star" Lestrange).
  • Protagonist-Centred Morality:
    • Harry (and the narration) freely mock Dudley's weight issues, but when Draco makes fun of Mrs. Weasley's weight, it's treated as crossing some kind of line. However, this is understandable, Dudley is a spoiled fat bully who Harry understandably hates, and the reader is supposed to hate him for his appalling behavior; also, Dudley's known to be the size of a small whale because of his spoiled overeating. While Mrs. Weasley has been shown to be a good parent and person despite her flaws and being overbearing, her weight is because of her having multiple children.
    • It's shown as a negative when Slytherin's quidditch team is given preferential treatment, such as when Mr. Malfoy buys them top tier brooms or Snape allows them to practice when the Gryffindor team has the field reserved. However, it's treated as a positive when McGonagall similarly bends the rules to allow Harry, as a first-year student, to own a broom, and similarly buys him a top tier broom.
    • The so-called "Unforgivable Curses" are introduced in Book Four, wherein it's said casting one of them even once is a life-sentence in Azkaban. By Book Seven even the heroes are casting them with abandon, including the Cruciatus Curse, where you need to enjoy inflicting pain in order for it to work.
  • Psychic Block Defence: Occlumency is a whole discipline dedicated to this.
  • A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Some of the Death Eaters qualify as this, as many, if not all of them, were students at Hogwarts during either Dumbledore's time as a transfiguration teacher or from when he was headmaster. Snape and Sirius are subversions though, as Snape performed a Heel–Face Turn after Lily's life was in danger, and Sirius was a Red Herring for Peter Pettigrew.
  • Punishment Detail: Detention at Hogwarts usually involves doing some menial custodial task like polishing trophies, or cleaning the hospital bedpans without magic. Sometimes it can also lean into the dangerous by assisting Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest.
  • Put on a Bus: The story is set at a boarding school and features students from every year, meaning that at the end of every book characters graduate and stop hanging around Hogwarts. With the exception of Percy, Fred and George, who Harry sees during summer and winter breaks, graduated characters usually aren't seen again outside of cameos.

    R 
  • Raised by Humans: Hagrid tries to raise Norbert(a), a dragon. It doesn't work.
  • Randomized Transformation: The process of becoming an Animagus involves becoming an animal once the spell is completed, but there's no way to control the animal you turn into. This isn't a big deal for wizards who can turn back, but if the process goes wrong, then they'll be stuck as that random animal forever.
  • Randomly Gifted: Being a wizard can run in families but also sometimes manifests in muggles, and magicless squibs can be born to wizards. Subverted in a 2007 interview where Rowling reveals that all muggleborns have a squib- and thus witches and wizards- somewhere in their ancestry.
  • Rapid Hair Growth:
    • At one point during his childhood, Harry's aunt cut off his bangs, almost shaving him except for the part that hides his scar. It looked ridiculous, but magically grew back before Harry's next school day.
    • The Goblet of Fire is protected by an age line to prevent underage students from submitting their names; when Fred and George attempt to cross the line, they instantaneously grow long white beards.
  • Really 700 Years Old:
    • Wizards live longer than Muggles. (Although members of the Black family seem to die relatively young.) It's implied that there are so few pure-blood wizards left that keeping the pure-blood line alive might have required some inbreeding somewhere along the line. That might have shortened the lifespan a bit.
    • Nicolas Flamel and his wife, through the use of the Philosopher's Stone, reached the ages of around 665 and 658, respectively.
  • Red/Green Contrast: Each of the four houses at Hogwarts have their own respective colour schemes that reflect their ideologies: Gryffindor is red and gold, Slytherin is green and silver, Ravenclaw is blue and bronze, and Hufflepuff is yellow and black. While competition between all four houses exist, the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin is by farther most prominent, their founders (Godrich Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin) having had a particularly iconic falling out and this animosity being carried on between the houses to this day.
  • Redheads Are Ravishing: Ginny and Lily (and also Ron and Bill, if you argue that Heroines, or known beauties at least, want them as well). JKR confirmed that she really likes red hair, so she stuck an entire extended family of them into her series and made one her hero's best friend and the other his (eventual) love interest.
  • Red Herring: The first four books each have at least one related to the main plot. Played With in the sixth.
    • Philosopher's Stone: Harry believes Snape is trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone. It's actually Quirrell.
    • Chamber of Secrets: At different points, Harry believes that Hagrid, Lucius and Draco Malfoy, and Percy are all in some way connected to or responsible for opening the Chamber of Secrets. He is correct in Hagrid's and Lucius' connection, but not responsibility.
    • Prisoner of Azkaban: Sirius Black is painted up to be a loyal servant to Lord Voldemort and responsible for the deaths of Harry's parents. In reality, it was Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius is trying to hunt Pettigrew down.
    • Goblet of Fire: Igor Karkaroff has the heaviest suspicion cast on him as the one who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, due to being a former Death Eater. In reality, Alastor Moody did it, though Moody is not who he appears to be.
    • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Double Subverted. Harry is absolutely convinced that Draco Malfoy is up to no good and refuses to see reason that it could be anyone else. Brief suspicion is cast on Snape as well, but is shot down by Dumbledore. However, at the end of the novel, it turns out Harry was right all along, and Draco was trying to kill Dumbledore. But when Draco isn't able to go through with it, Snape comes along to do it himself.
  • Red Herring Mole: Snape, who is actually a Double Agent and then a mole.
  • Red Is Heroic: Red is one of the colours of Gryffindor, the Hogwarts House of the protagonists.
  • Reformation Acknowledgement: Dumbledore vouchs for Severus Snape, stating he reformed. Although at first some are very cautious about this claim and are later seemingly proved right, Dumbledore was ultimately proved right about Snape.
  • Reinventing the Telephone: Floo powder, patronuses (patroni?)...
  • Relative Ridicule: Professor Snape regularly mistreats Harry because of antagonism between Snape and the latter's father, James, even insultingly comparing Harry to James regarding how he perceives their demeanour and attitude.
  • La RĂ©sistance: Dumbledore's Army, against the Ministry's interference at Hogwarts in Order of the Phoenix; Potterwatch and the Order of the Phoenix, against Voldemort's regime.
  • Retcon: There are several details in the earlier books that were conspicuously changed for the later books; presumably, Rowling hadn't thought up certain events that far in advance. One example is a mention of "werewolf cubs" in Chamber of Secrets. In Prisoner of Azkaban, we learn that werewolves are humans who become werewolves after they're bitten by one. Voldemort refers to "cubs" in Deathly Hallows in a way clearly intended to be offensive and not factual, so this likely stems from wizarding society's ignorance and fear of werewolves.
  • Renowned Selective Mentor: Harry has a much closer relationship with the headmaster, Dumbledore, than is usual for a student, to the point of the Professor being almost a surrogate (grand)father. In the sixth book Dumbledore even gives him special lessons.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: A snake is the motif for Slytherin House, the unpopular, "evil" house at Hogwarts, and for the Death Eaters. In Book 2, Harry fights a giant venomous snake. Voldemort has obvious reptilian features and a Right Hand Attack Snake named Nagini, who goes out to do his dirty work and is one of his spirit vessels. Speaking Parseltongue is considered a mark of the Dark Arts. The only time snakes are ever portrayed in a truly sympathetic light is the incident with the harassed boa constrictor in Book 1. However, after the fall of the Death Eaters, the snake is no longer an evil motif and plays the same role of symbolism for Slytherin House as the lion, eagle and badger do for the other Houses.
  • The Reveal: Each book has one, though what each reveal is about varies from book to book.
    • Several books feature a Red Herring (as seen above), and it comes out who the real antagonist is. This may or may not coincide with the climax, or it may take place during the denoument.
      • Philosopher's Stone opens the final chapter revealing that Quirrell is the one seeking the Philosopher's Stone.
      • Chamber of Secrets reveals that Tom Riddle is Voldemort, and he has been masterminding the basilisk attacks instead of Harry's other suspects.
      • Prisoner of Azkaban reveals that Peter Pettigrew betrayed Lily and James, and he has been disguised as Scabbers for years; Sirius Black is innocent and is on Harry's side.
      • Goblet of Fire reveals that Barty Crouch Jr. has been masquerading as Alastor Moody for the full year, with the aim of helping Lord Voldemort return.
      • In Half-Blood Prince, it is revealed that there is no red herring, and Malfoy is responsible for each near-death throughout the book, all part of a plot to kill Dumbledore. He fails, but Severus Snape succeeds.
    • Other books make the antagonist apparent, and the reveal is about something else entirely.
      • In Order of the Phoenix, the "weapon" Lord Voldemort seeks in the Department of Mysteries is Trelawny's first prophecy, which he believes contains the knowledge of how to kill Harry. In reality, it prophesies the birth of the one who will bring about the Dark Lord's downfall.
      • In Deathly Hallows, the final questions of the series are laid to rest, such as the question of Severus Snape's final loyalty, the person whose Patronus is a silver doe, Dumbledore's past, Harry's final fate, and so much else.
  • Revenge: Subverted in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix immediately after Sirius Black is killed by Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry is so overcome by grief that him, prepared to deal with any Death Eater he pursues Bellatrix and says he's going to kill her, and he even tries to use the Cruciatus Curse on her. However, the duel between them is interrupted by Lord Voldemort's arrival and Bellatrix's subsequent escape.comes across.
  • Rich Bitch: The Malfoys. Mostly Draco, particularly in his interactions with the Weasleys.
  • Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling: Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley are not brothers, they're cousins. However, they do live together, and while Dudley is pampered with excessive amenities and treats, Harry is made to do all the chores, is yelled at all the time, and hardly gets any luxuries.
  • Riddle for the Ages: The series contains several of these....
    • What was behind the unlock-able door in the ministry in Order of the Phoenix?
    • Did "Death" literally create the Deathly Hallows or did the Peverell brothers actually create them? If it's the latter, how were they seemingly able to bend the rules of magic?
    • If someone unites the Hallows, do they actually become the master of death? If so, what does that mean? Dumbledore and Harry, the two people who definitively had possession of all three at various points, don't think there's anything inherently special about doing it. However, neither was in physical possession of them at the same time so there's not a definitive answer.
    • What did those Muggle boys do to poor Ariana? Also, who killed her? One of her brothers or Grindelwald?
    • What is the process of creating a Horcrux?
    • What is a dementor?
    • Did Crouch Jr. really torture Neville's parents? Sirius says he isn't sure and thinks he genuinely could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Winky was. Dumbledore tells Harry that the Longbottoms themselves weren't capable of testimony and since Neville was just a toddler, he has no recollection of what happened. While no one disputes he was a Death Eater when he went to Azkaban and Voldemort calls him his most loyal supporter, there's also the fact that he had been in Azkaban for at least several years. The Dementors' and other Death Eaters' influence could have driven him legitimately into madness or radicalized him from a run of the mill Death Eater into a true fanatic. He doesn't seem to have any regret for what he did or any empathy for Neville while he is his teacher. When he gets busted, there are far more important matters at hand so he's never directly asked. He dies quickly thereafter so it's never made clear.
    • It's unclear if some of the limits on magic throughout the series are truly limits or if the solution just hasn't been found yet. Some of these include: charming someone to fly, true resurrection of the dead, and truly creating food out of nothing. Another one is a lack of a reliable form of magical transportation as it's noted that only the most extreme of wizards won't admit that this is a place where muggles truly have wizards beat. Portkeys and Floo Powder have limited ranges. Quidditch Through the Ages says apparition across continents is limited to only extremely powerful wizards and even then they have to know exactly where they're going to be able to do it. (Deathly Hallows also alludes to this in the chapter where Bellatrix calls Voldemort to Malfoy Manor from Nurmengard. There is a time delay as Voldemort moves and Harry thinks "soon he would be close enough to Apparate to them".) Brooms and magical carpets just aren't feasible for long distances. There are also the logistics of having to bring your stuff with you which is hard with these means of transportation. In theory, could you make some sort of, say, a magical plane or is it simply something magic can't do?
  • Ridiculously Long-lived Family Name: While many old wizarding families in Britain did experience name changes through the centuries (e.g. the Gaunts were direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin but did not carry the Slytherin name), some can trace their surnames back over a thousand years. Justified, since wizards tend to live longer and thus are better able to pass on their family names, and certain wizarding families (usually those associated with Slytherin House) became obsessed with proving their blood purity, so kept strong records.
    • Sirius Black states that the House of Black could trace their name back to the Middle Ages, and many members intermarried to "keep the line pure", not something he was particularly proud of. With his death, the Black family name died out, though their blood lives on in the Tonks and Malfoy families.
    • Armand Malfoy arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror as part of the invading Norman army. The Malfoy Family has since lived on the same plot of land for ten consecutive centuries.
    • The Potter name traces back to the 12th Century, when Linfred of Stinchcombe became known as "The Potterer", passing his name to his son, Hardwin Potter.
  • The Rival: Harry vs. Draco; James vs. Snape. Sirius later takes up James's position after his death.
  • Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Happens several times in the books.
    • One example in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is when Harry has a vision of Voldemort torturing Sirius at the Department of Mysteries, so he immediately runs off to go rescue him, prepared to deal with any Death Eater he comes across.
  • Rummage Sale Reject: Wizards who are inexperienced at blending in with Muggles will often end up as this. One wizard is mentioned as wearing a kilt and a poncho together, of all things.
  • Runic Magic: Ancient Runes is one of the subjects taught at Hogwarts. However, since it's an optional course that Harry doesn't take, we never see how runic magic actually works in the setting.
  • Running Gag: A few which span most of the series.
    • Harry and Ron never bothering to read Hogwarts: A History and Hermione's indignant responses. Often with Apparation inside Hogwarts being the subject.
    Hermione: But Hogwarts is hidden. Everyone knows that... well, everyone who's read Hogwarts, A History, anyway.
    Ron: Just you, then.
    • Hermione figuring something out and running off to deal with it without adequately explaining to Harry and Ron what's going on, and Ron's indignant response (usually a Lampshade Hanging).
    • Hermione running off to the library in general, which gets tons of lampshades and humorous references in the later books even when she's not actually doing it.
    • The Dursleys humorously coming off worst when interacting with wizards, not that they don't deserve it. Becomes not-so-funny in and after the fifth book, though Dumbledore has a bit of fun with them before getting serious in the sixth.
    • Harry having incredibly ridiculous dreams, with different aspects of his life zanily mashed together in one absurd package, which he naturally never remembers when he wakes up. Leads to Mood Whiplash in the fifth book when one such dream suddenly segues into a terrifying vision.
    • Ron unintentionally offending Nearly Headless Nick with some tactless remark during the feast at the beginning of every year. Nick lampshades it in Half Blood Prince.
    • When the discussion is about Snape, and it involves adults and Harry, expect Harry to call him Snape, and the adult to respond with "Professor Snape."
    • Tiny Professor Flitwick seems to get knocked down and/or tossed across a classroom by a student's miscast Charm roughly once per school year.
    • Arthur Weasley's obsession with Muggle tools/technology
    • Hagrid's bone-crushing hugs.
    • After the introduction of Luna Lovegood, fictitious beasts called crumple-horned snorkacks become one. Luna really believes in the existence of these creatures because her dad is the publisher of The Quibbler, a satirical tabloid that regularly publishes stories about the non-existent creatures. Other characters regularly joke about this, and Luna herself gets defensive, claiming they actually do exist. Oddly enough, this actually gets subverted in the seventh book, when a character comments that there wasn't any mention of the creatures in the latest issue of the magazine, because Luna's dad is publishing real stories about the resistance now.
    • Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts are a running joke since Goblet of Fire
    • Whenever Aberforth gets mentioned, expect a nod to his proclivity for goats.
    • A subtle one: Whenever the Auror Dawlish is mentioned, he's been jinxed, defeated or humiliated in some way. Neville's grandmother even puts him in St. Mungo's.

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