Harry Potter / Tropes S to Y

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S

• Sadist Teacher: Snape, Umbridge, and the Carrows, in order of severity. While Snape's persecution of Harry can be explained, if not excused, by his hatred for James Potter, his persecution of other students like Neville and to a lesser extent, Hermione, can only be pure sadism.
• Said Bookism:
  • To Rowling's credit, there's hardly any of this in the entire series. There is, however, one rather egregious example:
    "We're not going to use magic?" Ron ejaculated loudly.
  • Another time, Slughorn ejaculated.
• Satanic Panic: The series elicited a polarising response from religious groups. Some have denounced it as a gateway to occultism and satanic or wiccan practices, while there have been clergymen who are supportive of the series, and some have argued that the magic as depicted by the books is no different from fairy tales such as the likes of Cinderella and Snow White. Not helping matters was The Onion publishing a satirical article claiming that the series has sparked a rise in youths practicing Satanism, which evangelicals picked up and passed it off as real through email chain letters.
• Satellite Family Member:
  • Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley Dursley are the eponymous character's horribly abusive uncle, aunt, and cousin who only appear when he isn't in the Wizarding World. Their mistreatment of Harry makes him a tragic and sympathetic figure. The cruel, stupid, and spoiled Dudley is used as a Foil to Harry, making the latter appear more kind, intelligent, and humble by comparison. In later books Dudley and Petunia receive a little more characterization beyond being "Harry's awful relatives", but this is not explored with much depth.
  • Exaggerated with Marge Dursley, Dudley's wife and kids, and Harry, Ron and Hermione's kids except Albus because they're satellite family members to satellite family members. Marge exist solely to show that even worse people than the Dursleys exist. Vernon at least has some sympathetic traits (he's a Happily Married and a Doting Parent to Dudley) and a Freudian Excuse for why he hates magic and Harry (James constantly teased him about his wealth) while Marge's only traits are that she's Super Gullible, Locked Out of the Loop, even more cruel and jerkish (to the level of Card-Carrying Jerkass) than Vernon, and Hates Everyone Equally (it's implied that she hates even Vernon and Dudley, her only blood relatives). Dudley's future relatives only show how much he changed and tries to be The Atoner to Harry (they even has no given names) while all the kids in Weasley Bloodline (except Albus) is to show that Harry is a Kid Hero All Grown-Up (and Rose Weasley's role to be Albus' best friend and Foil to his years at Hogwarts).
  • Nothing is said of Hermione's parents apart from the fact they are muggle dentists and accept her being a witch. At the beginning of the seventh book, Hermione erases their memories of her and sends them to Australia to keep them safe, demonstrating how dire the situation has become and how desperate she is to protect them.
• Scenery-Based Societal Barometer: Given that the series commonly remains focused on Hogwarts, the occasional visits to the Ministry of Magic's atrium serve as an effective measure of the state of Wizarding Britain. For example, when Harry first visits in Order of the Phoenix, the main monument on display is the Fountain of Magical Brethren, a series of golden statues depicting a Wizard, a Witch, a Centaur, a Goblin and a House Elf - the latter three looking up to the magical humans in adoration. It's supposed to represent harmony in the magical world, but in practice, it just ends up representing the Ministry's backwards, self-important attitude. During the Death-Eater attack on the Ministry, the fountain ends up being destroyed in the Wizard Duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore, a sure sign that the imagined prosperity of magical Britain is over. After Voldemort takes over the ministry entirely in Deathly Hallows, the fountain is replaced with the Magic Is Might monument, a statue depicting a witch and a wizard sitting on thrones made entirely out of naked Muggles, each one made to look as ugly and stupid as possible - reflecting the new government's philosophy and style of governance.
• School Forced Us Together: Hogwarts sorts its students into Houses. As this sorting is based off the student's traits, this does lead to similar personalities being grouped together. However, there are exceptions. For instance, despite being at odds with each other personality-wise, Ron and Hermione are both sorted into Gryffindor. Slytherin is typically the alma mater for Pure-Blood supremacists, but does admit half-blooded and muggle born students. In fact, the most infamous member of this house was half-blooded himself.
• School Rivalry: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang, the three main European Wizarding Schools, are rivals to the point of keeping their precise locations secret from one another. Every three years, these three schools compete in the Triwizard Tournament—or used to, until the contest was discontinued due to the high casualty rate.
• Scientifically Understandable Sorcery: Apparently, Tergeo heats objects in order to wipe their dirt.
• The Scottish Trope: Subverted by Dumbledore and several other heroic characters who very determinedly say "Voldemort" despite the name's emotional baggage — and by Harry, who just doesn't have that baggage. The seventh book exploits it as He Who-Must-Not-Be-Named creates an enchantment that allows him to locate anyone who dares say his name and tears down any protections around them.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: It's the Harry Potter Drinking Game! Take a drink every time Harry breaks one of the Hogwarts school rules. You'll die of alcohol poisoning three books in!
  • Hermione at first disapproves of Harry's and Ron's constant rule-breaking, but due to Character Development she becomes as disregarding to the rules as the boys are.
  • Fred and George usually break the rules because they just don't care, but one final (and spectacular) example of doing what's right is when they set off the fireworks and leave the school on their broomsticks to oppose the horrible Umbridge. The teachers don't even try to stop them. On the contrary, they encourage it because they all hate that old hag so much. Professor Flitwick even keeps a magical bog the twins conjure in the castle as a roped-off area because it was such a brilliant piece of magic. Professor McGonagall very subtly does this when she mutters out of the corner of her mouth to Peeves that the chandelier he's messing with "unscrews the other way."
• Screw the Rules, I'm Famous!: This trope is frequently discussed by Snape, who seems to be under the impression that Harry will use his fame as the person who defeated Lord Voldemort when he was just a baby to try and escape punishment. Harry doesn't do anything of the sort on purpose, but it does come with a certain privilege which he remains unaware of.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
    • The titular chamber contains Slytherin's monster, an enormous basilisk.
    • Also in the same volume, Tom Riddle's diary has the "memory" of the teenage Voldemort sealed inside, which Ginny unknowingly awakens through her liberal use of the diary.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
    • It's implied that Voldemort's final fate is to remain in a sort of limbo (specifically, the netherworld where Harry met Dumbledore after he died) forever, incapable of harming anyone ever again.
    • Slytherin's Locket, which is impossible to open unless one is a parselmouth. Opening it is the only way to destroy it, but the piece of soul sealed inside comes out fighting.
• Second Love:
  • Ginny, whom Harry Potter fell in love with in Book 6 after the whole Cho thing fell apart in earlier books.
  • Harry in turn served this role for Cho, whose first love was Cedric Diggory.
• Secret Room: The Room of Requirement is a magical room known only to those in the know. Ordinarily, it has no door, but if one paces back and forth at the right corridor visualizing something you need, a door will appear and the room will be filled with what you need. The room can be filled with anything in principle, although in practice it's mostly used for secret meetings and to hide things.
• Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: At least in Magical Britain, witches and wizards are registered to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at birth, including Muggle-borns and other individuals outside the mainstream of magical society. Needless to say, this usually results in a good deal of shock when the existence of magic is finally revealed to them, as was the case with Harry himself.
• See the Invisible:
  • There are several ways in which Invisibility Cloaks can be thwarted:
    • The ability of dementors to sense people is not impaired by invisibility cloaks.
    • Moody's magical eye can see through invisibility cloaks.
    • A person wearing an invisibility cloak still shows up on the Marauder's Map.
    • The cloak's user also remains solid and the cloak doesn't muffle sound or disguise smell at all, meaning that anything with acute senses like cats or snakes, or even a normal human being that happens to be paying attention to such cues, can notice and locate the wearer.
  • Thestrals are invisible to anyone who has not witnessed death.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Professor Trelawney's whole "neither can live while the other survives" prophecy. Voldemort indirectly hears half of the prophecy about a boy about to be born who will be his nemesis. With two possible choices, Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom, he chooses Harry, but in the process of trying to kill him, inadvertently gives him both the power to defy him and a reason to.
• Sentenced Without Trial: During the First Wizarding War, Barty Crouch Sr. sentenced many people to Azkaban without trial, including Sirius Black, as part of the extremes he went to in order to take down Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Because of this, Sirius was blamed for betraying the Potters to Voldemort and imprisoned in Azkaban for 12 years. The truth is only discovered by Harry years later: that Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters' location to Voldemort, then framed Sirius by blowing up a street full of Muggles and faking his own death by cutting off his finger and using his ability as an Animagus to shapeshift into a rat and hide.
• Servant Race: House-elves really enjoy serving wizards and witches. Most are offended by the idea of having human liberties, like labour rights.
• Severely Specialized Store: Mr. Ollivander sells wands. Just... wands. (Which is enough, since every wizard has to have one to perform most magic.)
• Shapeshifter Struggles:
  • People use Polyjuice Potion in many of the books, to transform into somebody else. This is introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which they learn how painful the transformation can be, and Hermione accidentally transforms herself into half a cat, when she mistakenly uses a cat hair as an ingredient.
  • Related to this is that Apparating (disappearing and reappearing somewhere else) is extremely difficult, and if not done correctly, can result in Splinching: leaving part of one's body behind.
• Shapeshifting Heals Wounds: Subverted: Peter Pettigrew cut off his own finger before faking his death by living as a rat for more than a decade, and the missing digit was used as proof that he had been masquerading as Ron's pet rat Scabbers (before he was forced out of the transformation).
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Harry says this about Hermione and means it. In Book 7, Harry further says that he sees Hermione as a sibling but doesn't love her in the romantic sense.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Starting with Order Of The Phoenix, Harry starts exhibiting all 6 of the clinically accepted signs of chronic PTSD. Several others, like Snape and Moody show signs of it, as well.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Signature Move:
  • Harry has Expelliarmus, aka the Disarming Charm, which causes the spell's target to drop anything they're holding. In Chamber of Secrets he uses it against Lockhart and in Prisoner of Azkaban against Snape because it's the only combat spell he knows at the time, but Harry gradually comes to use it first and foremost even after he learns other spells. In Goblet of Fire he uses it against Voldemort because Voldemort's use of the word "duel" made Harry think of the Dueling Club, where he learned it. In Order of the Phoenix he teaches it to Dumbledore's Army as the first spell because of his experience with it. In Deathly Hallows he uses it against an Imperiused Stan Shunpike because other spells would have knocked him off a high-flying broom and Harry doesn't want to kill innocent victims of the Imperius Curse. This exposes him as the real Harry in a group of fakes. Later in Deathly Hallows he uses it to kill Voldemort.
  • Harry also uses the summoning charm Accio a lot, having gone to a lot of trouble to master it in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
  • Harry also has a reputation for producing Patronuses. These are essentially anti-Dementor apparitions. Dementors are Harry's worst fear, so it would make sense. Considering the effort he had to put into getting the spell to work at all, it's deserved. When he told (and in one case, show) a group of older wizards, likely in their forties and older, that he could produce a full body Patronus and not amorphous shield, they were shocked and impressed. It should be noted that Harry's Patronus is the same as his father's Patronus and Animagus form, a stag, which makes it even more significant.
  • Ginny Weasley has the Bat Bogey Hex.
  • Inverted for Antonin Dolohov, a minor Death Eater appearing in the book series, where he is almost always at the receiving end of the Full Body-Bind Curse (if he appears, that is). Played straight with a curse that's only ever identified as "Antonin Dolohov's curse," which causes massive internal damage as though being run through with a sword.
  • Gilderoy Lockhart is stated to have a talent in Memory Charms, though we only get to see him directly using it once where it backfires on him.
  • While certainly not the only wizard to use it in the series, it's hard to say that Lord Voldemort's signature move is anything other than Avada Kedavra. Crucio is his other signature move, as is Bellatrix Lestrange's main one.
• Significant Anagram: Has its own page.
• Silly Spook: The ghosts are mainly there for comic relief, though they do become relevant to the plot occasionally.
• Silver Has Mystic Powers: Goblin-wrought silver is nigh-invulnerable, and can absorb the properties of what it pierces in order to make itself stronger. It's unclear how the goblins make it this way, or whether it's truly silver or simply called that because it's the same colour. There are many other objects in the series which are made of silver (the Pensieve) or have the appearance of silver (unicorn blood). Furthermore, silver is not mentioned to be relevant to killing werewolves.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: The spell Accio, learned by Harry in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has the very convenient power to summon an object from a great distance. This is a significant plot point in that book, but unfortunately virtually every MacGuffin in subsequent books is protected from its effects.
• Single-Target Law: After Harry gives an interview to the fringe magazine The Quibbler revealing Voldemort's return, Umbridge puts out a blanket ban on the magazine as part of her ongoing campaign to discredit Harry. Naturally, this ensures that everyone in Hogwarts will try to get their hands on it to know why it was banned (and Luna Lovegood, the editor's Cloudcuckoolander daughter, is amazed at how popular the magazine has gotten), which was actually what Hermione was targeting when she convinced Harry to give the interview.
• Single-Target Sexuality:
  • Severus Snape is still obsessed with Lily Evans twenty years after she ended their friendship and years after her death, to the point where he mistreats her son because Harry is the reminder that she loved someone else. She is the only person he is known to have loved over his thirty-eight years on Earth.
  • Albus Dumbledore's first and last love was Gellert Grindelwald, and after that relationship imploded, leading to the death of his sister and his estrangement from his brother, he avoided romance thereafter. In his case, however, he intentionally avoided love because he was afraid of how easily Grindelwald convinced him to become an aspiring fascist dictator by preying on Dumbledore's love for him.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Hermione and Ron, most prominently, but it seems to be a trend for non-villainous female characters: Molly Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Cho Chang, and resident babe Fleur Delacour are all very hot for good guys whereas the "bad boys" seem barely a blip on their radars.
  • Lily Potter is a debatable case, considering that James Potter is remembered as a Loveable Rogue by some people and a complete Jerkass by others, and she appears to have had a crush on him before his famed reformation. But she didn't date him until he grew up enough to make Head Boy in their seventh year.
• Skeleton Motif: The Death Eaters are often described as wearing skull-like masks, partly to cover their identity, but also to scare the crap out of their targets. The "Dark Mark" that they leave as a calling card displays a glowing skull in the air with a snake-like tongue. The films didn't remove this entirely, but did make them resemble the KKK to a degree.
  • Thestrals, which can only be seen by those who have witnessed death, are described as skeletal.
• Slave Race: House elves.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: The first three books' storylines don't directly depend on the stories of the previous books; they each explain basic premises like the wizarding world, Voldemort, Harry's backstory, etc., Harry continues to live at the Dursleys', go to Hogwarts every year, have friends named Ron and Hermione, etc., and the actual events of the first two books don't matter by the third. The rest of the series, well...
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: As the series gets Darker and Edgier, the central theme of death is made more apparent, as a number of people are killed and maimed in a variety of tragic or incredibly gruesome ways, Harry shows obvious signs of PTSD and trauma, and it took so long to create what he never had in the first place; a family. Right up to the end, he expresses his fear for the future and the sadness caused by the events of the past, and one of the reasons the series is so successful is its tendency to be hellishly dark, violent, and quite thematically mature, discussing topics of genocide, violence and hatred, corruption, prejudice and bigotry, depression and trauma, war, torture, fascism and naziism, even rape, sadomasochism, cruel and unusual violence and body horror, and vengeful murder, torture, and anger.
• Small Parent, Huge Child: Being half-giant, Hagrid positively towers over his more diminutive father. There's even a picture of the teenage Hagrid happily hefting his proud papa up on his shoulder the day they got Hagrid's acceptance letter from Hogwarts.
• Smart People Play Chess: Averted. Hermione, the best student at her school, is terrible at chess while Ron is a prodigy who manages to win against a teacher (by proxy) when he was a first year. Somewhat justified in that strategy is only part of the game in wizarding chess; the other part is convincing your pieces to do what you tell them.
• Sneaking Out at Night: Students weren't allowed to leave their dormitories at night, a rule staunchly enforced by caretaker Filch. So, of course, Harry had to sneak out constantly in order to get things done. He wouldn't always bring his invisibility cloak, leading him to get caught by Filch on occasion, and in book one, the likelihood of getting caught and punished (or killed by monsters, or worse, expelled) made both Hermione and Neville try and protest against Harry's plans. Harry's habit of wandering the corridors at night is even lampshaded by Snape in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
  Snape: I just thought that if Potter was wandering about at night again, it's an unfortunate habit of his, he ought to be stopped, for his own safety.
• Snowball Fight: Happens a few times during winter breaks at Hogwarts. Fred and George at one point enchant snowballs to pelt the back of Professor Quirrel's turbaned head.
• Snowballing Threat: Voldemort and his followers after the former's resurrection at the end of Goblet of Fire. Throughout the end of that book and the majority of the next book, the corrupt and inept Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge actively denies Voldemort has returned and goes out of his way to suppress any idea of such among the wizarding public, severely hampering the heroes' ability to build up countermeasures while enabling Voldemort to smoothly rebuild and expand his forces under the radar, recruiting Death Eaters and giants to his cause; for a whole year. By the time the Ministry for Magic and the wizarding public do realize that the Dark Lord has returned, Fudge's inaction has cost the Wizarding World's chances against Voldemort dearly, with Voldemort's forces easily overthrowing the Ministry and taking control of the Wizarding World in Deathly Hallows.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Somewhat justified in that much of the action takes place in the wizarding world and culture. Still, one would expect the Dursleys to have gotten at least a slap on the wrist from Muggle authorities, if not Dumbledore. Somewhat subverted once Sirius and friends enter the picture, though.
• The Sociopath: Voldemort himself, along with Bellatrix, and Umbridge. The first two are utterly casual murderers while Umbridge is known to break out the Cruciatus Curse.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Voldemort's long-term goal was to become one of these, being an immortal dark wizard who would rule over a fascist magocracy. However, for most of the series, he's more of an underground terrorist against the current rulers. Even after usurping control of the Ministry of Magic in the last book, he elected to control it behind the scenes through a puppet minister, as basically crowning himself would have been too blatant a move for the wizarding world to ignore.
• Soul Eating: The Dementors generally feed on human emotions. Their deadliest attack, the Dementor's Kiss, literally sucks out the soul of a person's body, turning the victim into a body that lives but can't feel any emotions or think any thoughts. This is treated as a Fate Worse than Death.
• Soul Fragment: What a Horcrux houses.
• Soul Jar: A Horcrux is an object that holds a piece of a person's soul that has been separated by Dark Magic.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Voldemort and Dumbledore's decades-long Gambit Pileup often gets messed up thanks to an intricate series of decisions and minor hiccups that sends their Rube Goldberg-esque machinations careening Off the Rails. A theme in the series is choice, and ultimately, for better and worse, every major and minor choice made by characters ends up making a difference, in ways nobody can predict.
  • The Elder Wand tends to make its wielder overconfident, as noted by Dumbledore in his notes in The Tales of Beedle the Bard, as despite being "an unbeatable wand", it is routinely defeated and passes over through the centuries. When Dumbledore acquired it, he hoped to die undefeated, which he would have had Snape killed him as per their Thanatos Gambit. Instead, Draco beats him without knowing what he's doing and becomes master of the Elder Wand without ever even laying hands on it. Then, to top this, Harry simply yoinks Draco's own wand out of his hand, and this ends up giving him the advantage to defeat Voldemort.
  • The backstory, specifically the night James and Lily were murdered and Harry survived the Killing Curse, is an even more tangled one, with tiny bits and pieces of information accumulated over the seven books. To sum it up, Severus Snape asked Voldemort to spare Lily, and Voldemort went along with it. He told Lily to "step aside", but she refused, which created a binding magical contract that essentially bartered Lily's sacrifice for Harry's life. When Voldemort went ahead and tried to kill Harry anyway, the curse backfired on him.
• Sparse List of Rules: As early as the first book, it's mentioned that there are 700 ways to commit a foul in Quidditch (and every single one happened in the 1492 World Cup), but the series only shows a few of them. According to Quidditch Through the Ages, most of the rest are Obvious Rule Patches such as, "It is illegal to attack your opponent with an axe." Actually addressed in-universe in a rather amusing way. The full list of rules for Quidditch is kept secret by the international leagues to prevent players from being tempted to break them.
• Specifically Numbered Group: Of all schools shown in the series, Hogwarts is the only one whose students are divided into four Houses, created by the four founders.
• Stalking Is Funny if It Is Female After Male:
  • Magical date rape drugs are sold out in the open and it's considered wacky hijinks when Ron gets accidentally dosed by an obsessed fangirl, though that might be because the potion was intended for Harry and they quickly handle the situation. Harry, at least, doesn't find the prospect of love potions funny — at one point, he actually compares them to Dark magic.
  • Becomes really not funny when it turns out that Voldemort was conceived as the result of one of these being used. His father Tom Riddle fled back home as soon as he was freed from the enchantment, and it is possible he never recovered from the experience — sixteen years later, he was still living with his parents in their isolated manorhouse.
• Standard Evil Organization Squad: Known in this series as the Death Eaters.
• Staying with Friends: Harry often stays at the Weasleys' over the latter parts of his summer holidays, as does Hermione in the later books.
• Steam Never Dies: The Hogwarts Express train that the characters ride to school each year is pulled by a bright red steam locomotive. Justified, as wizards know little of the Muggle world and Muggle technology and are basically stuck in a 19th-century-with-magic existence, so a steam train makes sense enough. Incidentally, the route of the Hogwarts Express shown in the films has had summer passenger service behind steam since 1984, in an inverted sort of invokedDefictionalization.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The entrance to the headmaster's office is disguised by a golden griffin statue that splits open to allow passage, thus making it a griffin door as well as a griffon d'or (French for "golden griffin").
  • The History of Magic professor is so rubbish at teaching that he puts his students to sleep each class. His name is Professor Binns.
  • The wizard shopping area in London where the gang goes for school supplies is called "Diagon Alley" (diagonally), and the other shopping area where Borgin and Burkes and other Dark Arts-associated establishments are located is called "Knocturn Alley" (nocturnally).
• Step Servant: The orphaned Harry was adopted by his aunt and uncle but is essentially treated like a servant rather than a son. While the Dursleys endlessly spoil their biological son, they force Harry to do endless chores, wear only hand-me-downs, eat substandard food, and live in a cupboard. In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," for example, they force him to spend all day (on his birthday!) cleaning the house and mowing the lawn in preparation for a dinner party, only to lock him in his room during the actual party. Fortunately, the Dursleys suffered the karma for their actions, with the party ruined. Later in the series, the Dursleys lose their power over Harry as he gains guardians and friends who care for him. By book 5, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" " the Dursleys were threatened by Harry's new friends and family not to mistreat him, which they fearfully complied with. When Dumbledore pays them a visit in Book 6, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," he delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Dursleys outlining what terrible guardians they were.
• Stern Teacher: McGonagall and Madame Hooch. Snape walks the line between Stern Teacher and Sadist Teacher.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Plenty — for instance, Sirius Black turns into a black dog; Sirius is the Dog Star. Pottermore explains that parents used to take their newborn children to "naming seers" so they could choose a name that would best suit their future nature, but that practice has fallen out of fashion by Harry's generation.
• Strange Secret Entrance:
  • Platform 9¾ is a secret train platform at King's Cross station that's accessed by walking through a pillar between platforms nine and ten.
  • The door to the Room of Requirement only appears when someone focused on what kind of place they want crosses in front of it three times in succession (or, presumably, three people focused on wanting the same place). This usually means someone pacing in front of a blank stretch of wall across from a tapestry of a wizard trying to teach trolls to do ballet.
  • The Ministry of Magic has multiple strange entrances. The visitor's entrance is accessed by dialing 62442 ("magic") in an abandoned telephone booth, while the main entrance is a set of public toilets that people use a Ministry-issued token to open before flushing themselves down into the Atrium.
• Strictly Formula:
  • The first three books play this fairly straight: Dursleys, Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, Quidditch, Christmas, the big plot issue, end-of-year feast, everyone goes home. Some formula stays for the later books (Harry always starts out at the Dursleys in the books, no matter what) but Rowling then breaks these down as the universe gets darker and more complicated — and as Harry matures.
  • In Deathly Hallows the fact that these youth are used to the formula of three large meals a day and adults looking over them gets yanked out from under their feet.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • This is the result if the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra) hits an inanimate object instead of its intended target; it will explode. Trees tend to catch fire.
  • Played for laughs in the sports sections. Making fun at the fact that Americans generally aren't as enthusiastic about soccer/football as the rest of the world, American wizards have an alternate sport to the popular wizard-esque football Quidditch: Quodpot, in which the players try to catch an explosive quaffle and not let it fall down.
• Stupid Evil:
  • Voldemort, especially by the end. He never learns from his mistakes, and his arrogance proves to be his undoing.
  • Bellatrix. She has Kick the Dog moments everywhere.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Lupin has this attitude towards his fellow werewolf, Fenrir Greyback.
• Sudden Name Change:
  • Up until Harry Potter finds out the actual name of the creatures that guard Azkaban, a wizarding prison, everyone refers to them as "the Azkaban Guards." After he experiences their happiness-draining power and is told their name, Dementors, in Prisoner of Azkaban, no one refers to them as the Azkaban Guards ever again.
  • A meta-example: J. K. Rowling had long established in interviews that Hermione's middle name was "Jane," which the fifth book also established as Umbridge's middle name. Invoking the One-Steve Limit (because Hermione didn't deserve to share a middle name with Umbridge), the final book establishes "Jean" as Hermione's middle name instead.
• Sufficiently Analysed Magic:
  • Magic is very much a science in-universe. Even minor deviations from magical procedures can produce undesired effects. Conversely, wizards and witches with the inclination can improve existing magics or devise new ones.
  • Professor Snape states it outright at the beginning of his first year Potions class.
    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.
  • Hermione pedantically informs Ron that the reason he was having trouble with the levitation charm was because he was putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable of the incantation "Wingardium Leviosa". Meticulously precise, Hermione often masters new spells before any of her classmates because she knows that performing magic correctly is as important as intent.
• Summon to Hand: The spell Accio. Brooms also rise into a wizard's hand when commanded properly.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: There are two creatures with this kind of power (both introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban):
  • The Dementors are creatures who make people re-live their worst (including scariest) memories to remove all happiness from their victims.
  • The Boggart is a Shapeshifter who can sense what people are the most afraid of, and takes that form. It can be defeated by the power of laughter. For Harry, the Boggart turns into a Dementor, implying that what he's most afraid of is fear itself.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Magical ability seems to be mostly inherited, though there are exceptions in both directions (meaning that, under the laws of Mendelian genetics, it can't be determined by a single gene; Rowling has also hinted that the gift of magic "preserves itself" somehow).
• Super Supremacist:
  • Gellert Grindelwald planned a revolution in order to establish the wizards' power over the muggle world. Even Dumbledore bought into these ideas for a while, though his motive was a personal one: his sister was tormented by a group of Muggle boys, which had tragic consequences for all of his family, and he believed at the time that this sort of regime was the only way to prevent such things from ever happening again.
  • Years later, Voldemort may not be a straight example (being more of a himself supremacist), but draws most of his Death Eaters from this crowd. He preaches wizard superiority over Muggles to his followers, and when they take over the Ministry of Magic from within in the last novel they basically turn it into a full-on fascist state.

T

• Take That!:
  • Both Aunt Marge in Book 3 and Dolores Umbridge in Books 5-7 are thinly veiled expies of Margaret Thatcher, whom J. K. Rowling had a dislike for.
  • Umbridge states that the purpose of education is to make sure that the students can pass their exams. Emphasis on standardized testing and the resulting pressure to "teach to the test" and ignore everything else (like problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, underlying theory, fine arts, and any attempt to make students into well-rounded individuals) is the bane of many an educator's existence. Umbridge is shown to be a terrible teacher, prohibiting students from actually practicing what they're taught.
  • Many of the early memories of Voldemort viewed in Book 6 are meant invokedto refute the assertions by some fans that Voldemort is really a woobie with a Freudian Excuse. In fact, he was an irredeemable Creepy Child who made everyone's lives miserable for no reason.
  • An argument between Ginny and her older twin brothers about the grand total of two non-Harry boys she'd dated can be taken as a slight against the "Ginny is a slut" shippers. But it doesn't stop there. Book 7 features kisses between Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione and having Harry firmly state that he sees Hermione as a sister to him, but he never was in love with her. And then, of course, Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione are Happily Married 19 years after everything is good and done with.
  • In real life, Dursley is the name of a British town JK Rowling dislikes. Dursley is located near to her hometown, Yates.
• Taught to Hate: Most who have been raised in elitist "pure-blood" families are generally taught to hate "mudbloods" and "blood traitors." The most prominent example is Draco Malfoy, who very much embraces his parents' hateful values, at least for most of the series. Some good characters, however, have backstories in which they were raised with this sort of indoctrination but rejected it.
• Teen Genius: Hermione and Luna are probably the smartest students at Hogwarts during Harry's years there. They both are incredibly intelligent, but they think in very different ways.
  • The Marauders were the most brilliant students at Hogwarts in their day. James, Sirius, and Peter managed to become animagi in their fifth year, and with Remus, they invented the Marauder's Map, possibly the only map of Hogwarts (with its ever-changing floorplans and moving staircases) ever created. The Map also shows where every person in the castle is at any time, and can see through disguises and concealments such as Polyjuice Potion, Animagus transformations, and Invisibility Cloaks.
  • Snape was altering potions recipes and inventing new spells while he was a sixth-year (or at least wrote down his inventions in his sixth-year textbook).
  • By the time Dumbledore left Hogwarts, he was Head Boy, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot, Gold Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International Alchemical Conference in Cairo. He was also corresponding with adult geniuses, who were all amazed by his brilliance.
  • Voldemort had created two Horcruxes by the time he left school, which meant he not only found out what Horcruxes were and how to create them, but he also figured out how to modify the procedure to create six of them and split his soul into seven pieces. Evil, but brilliant.
  • Lily Evans was very talented and, according to Horace Slughorn, particularly adept at Potions. She does not seem to have been a genius like her contemporaries the Marauders and Snape, however.
  • Harry is smart, intuitive, and competent in every field of magic, but he excels at Defensive magic. According to JKR, he's even better at it than Hermione is and he could beat her in a duel (reflected by their O.W.L. grades, where Harry got the highest possible score in D.A.D.A, while that class was Hermione's lone "Exceeds Expectations" in a sea of Outstandings).
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • Snape and Sirius despise each other despite being on the same side; Snape has never forgiven Sirius for encouraging him to go look for a fully-transformed werewolf while they were at school, while Sirius trusts anyone who worked for Voldemort as far as he can throw them. Dumbledore has to cajole them into shaking hands at the end of book four, and they continue to trade insults through every scene they have in the following book.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore delegates Snape to teach Harry Occlumency, which does not go well, because of the severe animosity between them.
    Snape: It is a headmaster's privilege to delegate less enjoyable tasks. I assure you I did not beg for the job.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: There are three main methods of teleportation in the wizarding world:
  • Floo Powder enchants fire to be part of a Portal Network for warping to any other fireplace. Two drawbacks from this: first, there's a rough landing from tumbling out of a fireplace. And second, if you don't say where you want to go clearly enough, you can wind up several buildings away from where you wanted to be.
  • The second is Portkeys, where a seemingly innocuous object such as an old boot — although it could be anything — teleports anything that is touching it at the right moment. These are usually timed precisely so that a user has to reach it by a certain point, otherwise it teleports without them.
  • The third is Apparition, which is mentioned by name long before the characters use it themselves — this is where a wizard/witch teleports of their own volition to anywhere they wish. One has to pass an Apparition test at the age of 17, making it a close analogue of driving. Apparition is difficult enough that it requires several weeks of training to earn a licence. The main issue is that if one's concentration falters, there's a high chance of a Teleporter Accident — they call it getting "splinched" in-universe, and the upshot is that you leave part of yourself behind. This sounds comical when it's first mentioned in Goblet of Fire (Harry has a mental image of an eyeball rolling around someone's driveway) but when we see it actually happen it's much clearer that it's a severe injury. And the risk increases with distance — intercontinental Apparition should only be attempted by the highly skilled.
  • There are a small number of other methods; notably, the Vanishing Cabinets, which allow access to Hogwarts by Death Eaters in Book Six. House-elves are also able to Apparate where wizards can't. Phoenixes can also take a wizard/witch with them when they teleport in a burst of flame.
• Teleporter's Visualization Clause: A prerequisite to successful Apparition is being able to accurately visualize the place the witch or wizard is trying to teleport to. Distance is also a factor; Apparition gets harder to perform safely the further someone tries to travel in one teleport. Most Apparition in the series is consequently used for travel to locations that characters have been to before within the British Isles.
• Teleport Interdiction:
  • The Government can track and limit use of the Floo network; this becomes especially relevant in Deathly Hallows after Voldemort takes control of it.
  • Apparition can't be used in Hogwarts. It's also dangerous in any circumstances: you might leave body parts at your starting point or somewhere along the way. (Presumably Apparition is banned at Hogwarts as a security measure. In Book 6 the ban is temporarily lifted in a certain area so students can take Apparition lessons. Later in the same book Dumbledore says that he himself is allowed to Apparate in and out.)
• Tell Me About My Father: For both parents. The emphasis starts with Harry's father (except for his eyes; he has his mother's eyes). However, we later find that Harry's father was a bit of an idiot as a teenager (though he grew out of it), and the focus turns more and more to his mother. Dumbledore mentions that his true nature is much more like hers, though he's inherited his diehard loyalty to his friends from his father.
• Tempting Fate: "If I'd died as many times as she said I would, I'd be a medical miracle." Guess what happens in book seven.
• Terrible Trio: Draco Malfoy and his henchthugs Crabbe and Goyle. Their higher-up is Draco's father, Lucius Malfoy, and later Voldemort himself, although he gives Draco an important mission to make his parents squirm as much as anything else. Lucius is a legitimately nasty piece of work, giving Ginny the diary that caused the events of the second book, but prefers a life of luxury with the occasional Muggle-hunting party to being a full-time villain.
• Theme Naming: Not just the characters (most notably, everyone in the Black family is named after a celestial object, with the exception of Narcissa; and even Narcissa's son and grandson are named after constellations); there's also Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley, which are puns.
• They Walk Among Us: Wizards everywhere, Muggles unaware.
• Third-Person Flashback: Pensieves work like this; that's why Harry was able to hear the Marauders' conversation when he went into Snape's memory.
• Third-Person Person:
  • The house-elves refer to themselves this way.
  • Due to his megalomania, Voldemort occasionally refers to himself in the third-person as "Lord Voldemort", though this may be done intentionally to scare his victims or to sound condescending to establish authority over them (in the same way that a parent would call themselves "mommy" or "daddy" when talking to a child).
• This Is Gonna Suck: The Trio in the first couple books when they get busted and sometimes almost expelled for breaking various rules, such as being out of bed after hours or flying a car to Hogwarts.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself:
  • Applies to Harry and Voldemort. Harry cannot bear anyone to die or suffer on his behalf, so he frequently refuses help. In the final book, Voldemort makes it clear to his supporters that he must finish Harry himself.
  • A much less important example is in Chamber of Secrets, when the Mandrakes must have socks and scarves put on them: a tricky mission which Professor Sprout would entrust to nobody else.
• Throwing the Distraction:
  • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione instructs Harry and Ron to cause mayhem in Snape's class to distract him while she steals ingredients for Polyjuice Potion. They throw a firework into a cauldron.
  • In the book and film of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry distracts some Ministry workers with a rambunctious Weasley toy in order to sneak into Umbridge's office. Justified, both because that's what the toy was built for and because, apparently, the Ministry sees that sort of thing fairly often.
• Toilet Teleportation: The employee entrance to Ministry of Magic is accessed by flushing oneself down a disgusting public pay toilet. Visitors take a decrepit phone booth.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Dolores Umbridge. Surrounded by centaurs aiming arrows at you... and you still insult them for being "filthy half-breeds"? Dumbledore has to personally bail her out of that one — and she's not even grateful for it in the slightest!
  • Harry himself defies this in ''Prisoner Of Azkaban.''
    Mr. Weasley: Harry, promise me that whatever you do, you will not go looking for him.
    Harry: Mr. Weasley, why would I go looking for someone who wanted to kill me?
  • Then played hilariously straight, as he feels an urge to go looking for Black after he finds out some of the Awful Truth. He ends up hating Sirius so much that, when they meet at the end of the book, Harry charges at him and tries to choke him with his bare hands, forgetting that he is unarmed, much weaker than Black, and that Black has several wands on him at that point. Lucky for him, Black was there to protect Harry, not kill him.
  • Vincent Crabbe casting Fiendfyre, a jinx so deadly and unpredictable that even Hermione says she wouldn't dare try it^note for extra emphasis, Hermione was aware that Fiendfyre could destroy a horcrux, and for most of the story, they are hard up for ways to destroy them - and she still never mentions it, since it is so deadly and uncontrollable. For most of the series, he and Goyle are portrayed as too stupid to think without Malfoy. In the second book, they choose to eat cakes left in a random location without showing the slightest suspicion. The film makes it even more jarring when they eat cakes that are floating in midair.
  • Vernon Dursley. When Hagrid shows up Vernon spends the entire time acting like an abusive jerk to Harry and insulting his parents and Dumbledore, that after knowing Hagrid really cares for them both. For perspective: Hagrid is half-giant, has Super-Strength, and can use magic. Dudley ends up paying for it instead of his father in this case, but still...
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Literally everyone in the DA, but Neville Longbottom did it most spectacularly. He grew out of being the worst wizard of his year to fighting alongside the Golden Trio, Ginny, and Luna at the Department of Mysteries in Book 5 and leading the DA in Harry's absence in Book 7.
  • Prisoner of Azkaban gets the ball rolling with Harry learning a complex piece of magic, then it gains momentum in Goblet of Fire when Harry uses his copious free time (and help from Hermione) to pick up a variety of offensive and defensive spells.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Percy and Cornelius Fudge. They get better, though. After he's sacked as Minister, Fudge reverts to the kindly, feeble old man he used to be, and Percy redeems himself in Book 7.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Voldemort is the Trope Namer, whose real name, despite being the most evil wizard since Grindelwald, is Tom Riddle.
• Training the Gift of Magic: You're either a witch/wizard or a Muggle. However, witches and wizards can only perform minor and largely uncontrolled magic without training and the assistance of a wand; still, a Muggle can study all they like, they'll never be able to do it.
• Transferable Memory: The Pensieve is a memory receptacle that allows people to view the memories contained in it from a third-person view, even the owner of the memory, and displays events in the area surrounding the subject of the memory regardless of his/her awareness of them at the time.
• Transformation Conventions: There are two things that reveal a lot of a character's personality through animal manifestations.
  • The first is the Animagus transformation, only possible after a time-consuming, complicated ritual. To put some examples, James Potter is a vain braggart yet noble at heart, so he becomes a stag; Sirius Black is loyal, stubborn, and mischievous but also tied to grief and death, so his form is a Grimm-like dog; Peter Pettigrew is a sneaky Dirty Coward who follows the strongest leader, so he's a rat; Minerva Mc Gonagall is the Head of Gryffindor (a lion-themed House), as well as a strict, elegant old woman, so she's a cat; and Rita Skeeter, an unscrupulous journalist, is a blue beetle (as in, bugging people).
  • The second is the corporeal Patronus, which can coincide with a character's Animagi form (e.g., Mc Gonagall) or, more commonly, match the memory that powers it. For instance, Harry Potter's deepest desire is the love of a family, so he casts a stag. Meanwhile, Nymphadora Tonks' love for werewolf Remus Lupin causes her Patronus to manifest as a wolf.
• Translation Convention: In-universe example. Parseltongue sounds like any regular language to those with the innate talent to speak it. This becomes an important plot point in the second book, and facilitates Nagini's ambush on Harry in the seventh.
• Transforming Conforming: It's mentioned that, under normal circumstances, a witch or wizard who turns into an animal would have the animal's mind and forget how to turn back. An Animagus, of course, averts this and keeps their human mind... which is part of why it's such a difficult bit of magic to learn.
• Transmutation: Transfiguration is the magic of turning one object into another. The more two objects are alike, the easier it is to transfigure one into the other.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Most wizards first show their magic in such circumstances, well before puberty, but don't learn to control it until they get a wand and some training.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • Rereading the third book after the seventh makes Snape's hatred of Sirius much clearer: In addition to his grudge against him from his schoolkid bullying, he, like everyone else, thought Sirius had betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, and thus was partly responsible for Lily's death.
  • Taken slightly too far in the fourth book, where Ron considers Hermione dating Viktor Krum (the Durmstrang champion) as aiding the enemy to cover his jealousy (causing a Broken Pedestal moment, as he'd been a big fan of Krum's up to then). Hermione doesn't see what the big deal is, but then she also doesn't get why Quidditch is seen as a good thing when all it does is cause tension and resentment between Houses (she's not wrong, but as the viewpoint character is a Quidditch player...).
  • Peter Pettigrew is on the receiving end from both sides: When Sirius realizes Pettigrew survived his betrayal of the Potters, he becomes obsessed with hunting him down and avenging them, nearly succeeding if it weren't for Harry interceding. Pettigrew sacrifices his living hand to bring Voldemort back, and is rewarded with a magical silver hand. In the seventh book, Pettigrew has a moment's hesitation (due to Harry saving his life four years prior) when carrying out Voldemort's orders, which is enough for the hand to strangle him.
  • The fake Mad-Eye Moody claims he can't abide traitors, which is why he looks down on former Death Eaters like Karkaroff and Lucius Malfoy. He's even telling the truth: they're Death Eaters who escaped imprisonment by claiming they were Double Agents or mind-controlled, while Bartemius Crouch Jr. went to Azkaban along with other loyalists before escaping to serve Voldemort in disguise.
• The Trope without a Title:
  • Voldemort is known casually as You-Know-Who, formally as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and by his followers as The Dark Lord.
  • Harry is occasionally referred to as "The Boy-Who-Lived" and, after Voldemort's return is proven, "The Chosen One."
• Tragic Dropout: Dumbledore was orphaned in his teens, and was forced to give up many of his ambitions in order to become the new patriarch of his family and care for his younger siblings.
• Tragic Villain: There are several of them.
  • We learn all about Severus Snape's tragic backstory in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; his becoming a villainous character was all brought upon by his abusive childhood, the bullying he suffered as a student at Hogwarts, and his unrequited love for Lily Evans.
  • Draco Malfoy goes down this path in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because of his struggle to follow through with the mission given to him by Voldemort to kill Dumbledore, especially since he reveals that Voldemort would kill him and his family if he were to fail.
• Trapped in Villainy: Draco Malfoy, who for the first five books is just a nuisance for Harry to deal with at school. Once he joins the Death Eaters, however, things change. He's given the job to kill Dumbledore, which seems simple enough in theory, but once Draco realizes that he can't follow through with murder, he remains hesitant throughout the next book, and only stays in Voldemort's service because he's terrified of the man.
• Tsundere:
  • Hermione is a type B, as demonstrated to Ron after the Yule ball (note: she was just asked out by a Quidditch star):
    Hermione: "Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!"
  • Lily whenever James is around. She's nice to almost literally everyone else.
• Two-Act Structure: All seven books collectively follow this format, with Goblet of Fire as the turning point. Everything changes the moment Voldemort says, "Kill the spare!" during its climax.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Professor Umbridge's horrible misrule, so much so that she was the former Trope Namer.

U

• Ultimate Job Security: Ignoring the fact that Hogwarts remains in operation despite having a running body count, Argus Filch is an exceedingly bitter man who explicitly enjoys causing students pain because he's jealous that they're learning magic while he's incapable of using it. At no point is the idea of firing him ever entertained. It's even a matter of public record that he actively co-operated and supported Umbridge with the explicit intent of getting permission to brutally torture students. Water under the bridge. (What makes this even odder is that Filch is a Squib and can't do magic. While Squibs are usually looked down up on by wizards and sent out into the Muggle world, somehow Filch gets a job at Britain's only wizard school.)
• Unexpected Inheritance: Harry's inheritance from his dead parents, not to mention the various Anonymous Benefactors he's had.
• Unicorns Are Sacred: Killing a unicorn is seen as a particularly heinous thing to do; Firenze refers to it as a "monstrous thing". The only person known to have done it in the series is Voldemort/Quirrell, further emphasising this. Drinking unicorn blood can prolong one's life, but the drinker will be cursed from the moment the blood touches their lips for having slain "something so pure and defenceless".
• Unnecessary Roughness: Quidditch has this built into the rules. It has two iron balls which are magically enchanted to bash people senseless.
• Unreliable Narrator: Being told from Harry's POV, his prejudice often colours the narrative to a certain extent.
• Unstoppable Mailman: The owls will find you to deliver a letter, no matter where you are. Even if you don't want the letters. And they know if you've destroyed them without reading them (as the Dursleys are very displeased to find out).
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • Several, most notably the term Mudblood, a racial slur against Muggle-born wizards.
  • Blood Traitor = a pure-blood wizard who supports Muggles.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People:
  • All of the allowed pets at Hogwarts are animals associated with magic, which fall into this (aside from cats, which are just as popular with Muggles^note Although at least some students' cats are magical cat-like creatures called kneasles). In particular Neville's toad Trevor marks him out as a Butt-Monkey, (since he was given it as a gift even though they "went out of fashion years ago", according to Hagrid) and Ron's rat, Scabbers (who's a hand-me-down, like everything else of Ron's, but turns out to be more than he seems in the third book).
  • There's also features Hagrid, the brave but not that bright half-giant Fluffy Tamer. Over the course of the series, he kept many dangerous magical creatures as pets, including a Giant Spider, a three-headed Hell Hound, a baby dragon and a bizarre and deadly Hybrid Monster called Blast-Ended Skrewt. Oddly, though, his most consistent pet is a perfectly ordinary boarhound.
• Unwitting Pawn: The entire wizarding population other than Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort. Snape, at least, may be a knowing pawn, but even then, there are things he is kept in the dark about.
• Urban Fantasy: It's easy to forget, but this series takes place 1990s Britain and features a magical community interacting with muggles to at least some degree.
• The Usual Adversaries: Slytherin House.
• Utility Magic: Wizards have roughly the same standards of living as Muggles did in the '50s (radio but no TV or Internet) except they use magic for everything beyond medieval technology.

V

• Vast Bureaucracy: We never get exact numbers, but something like one in ten witches and wizards work for the Ministry of Magic in some capacity. That's actually a low estimate; among people whose profession is actually specified in the story it's more like one in two.
• Vengeful Ghost: Ghosts can come back for a variety of reasons. Moaning Myrtle Warren doesn't say why she came back, but she did go about haunting Alpha Bitch Olive Hornby, who was bullying her before she died.
• Video Phone: The Floo network is the wizarding equivalent of this; if you stick your head into a fireplace on the network, your head will pop up in someone else's network and you can talk.
• Villainous Legacy: Voldemort's ancestor Salazar Slytherin, one of the original four founders of Hogwarts in the Middle Ages, is primarily responsible for his House's present-day obsession with magical purebloods and its tendency to produce Evil Sorcerers. More directly, the giant Basilisk underneath Hogwarts that is revived by Voldemort centuries later used to be Slytherin's personal pet.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are not nice people and devoted servants of Voldemort, but will go to any lengths to protect their son. Over the course of the books, this drives a wedge between them and the Dark Lord, and in the climax of the seventh book Narcissa betrays Voldemort and helps protect Harry by falsely claiming he's dead after Harry brings her the news that her son is still alive.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Lucius Malfoy and Dolores Umbridge. To a lesser extent, Gilderoy Lockhart, who has good publicity because he took credit for the accomplishments of others.
• Voice of the Legion: Professor Trelawney gets this whenever she is actually does predict the future, the only two times known being when she read the prophecy foretelling the coming of the one to defeat Voldemort (only seen and referenced in flashbacks) and again in Prisoner of Azkaban when she predicts the rebirth of Lord Voldemort.

W

• Wainscot Society: The "wizarding world" is largely self-contained and self-reliant, and hence is almost too detached from the mainstream world to qualify as a wainscot, but contact between the two worlds does continue.
• War Arc: The final two books. Following Voldemort's return being revealed to the public at the end of Order of the Phoenix, the Death Eaters move into the open and declare war on the rest of the wizarding world. At the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, Scrimgeour informs the Muggle Prime Minister that they are in a state of open warfare, and the climax of Deathly Hallows is the Battle of Hogwarts, which serves as the Final Battle between Harry and Voldemort.
• The War Just Before: The saga begins with the fall of Lord Voldemort, the most notorious dark wizard of the day, effectively putting an end to a reign of terror for the wizarding world. By the time Harry goes to Hogwarts, the magical community has largely relaxed, but there are still lingering suspicions and unease as not all of Voldemort's followers have been accounted for.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge is described as, at best, an average wizard and, at worst, magically incompetent. By virtue of his charge, the entire Auror force and the Unspeakables answer directly to him. While not every Auror is Tonks, Kingsley, or Scrigmeour-level of talented, the career is one of the most course-heavy in Hogwarts and requires further training at an Academy. On the other hand, the Unspeakables are the ones tasked to unravel and deal with the mysteries of magic, so they must be very proficient at it.
• Wham Episode: Each book gets its fair share, but Book 6 especially. However, invokedIt Was His Sled.
• Whatevermancy:
  • Arithmancy, which actually exists and is an alternate term for numerology.
  • Played straight in the Spanish translation. Occlumency is translated as "Oclumancia", which would implicate some kind of... hidden divination? It should have been Oclumencia instead (the -mens, -mency suffix implying "mind" is correctly used in English and should have been carried on in the translation as -mencia).
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Other than his lightning-shaped scar, one of Harry's most notable and most frequently commented on trait is his green eyes, which he inherited from Lily.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Plenty of Dumbledore's decisions have a helping of this, chronologically starting with his refusal to confront Grindelwald during the pillaging of Europe and ending with the metric ton of secrets kept from Harry, often for no good reason. (Due to esoteric rules of magic, not telling Harry in advance that he would have to die and that he might get better is one of the few justified cases.) He gets called out on this by Snape, by Harry in book five, and post-mortem by Aberforth and Rita Skeeter.
  • The Prime Minister in Half-Blood Prince calls out Scrimgeour and Fudge that they neglected to warn the Muggles that Dark Wizards are traipsing around the British countryside committing random acts of terrorism and murder. This is despite the Ministry planting Kingsley and various Aurors in his staff to bodyguard him, which means they could have warned him.
  • Professor McGonagall calls out Harry in Deathly Hallows when he uses the Cruciatus curse on one of the Death Eaters occupying the school in response to the Death Eater spitting on her. Though, admittedly, she calls his actions "noble" (she'd just rather he not commit a crime worthy of Azkaban for her sake) and it's hard to say that the Death Eater in question didn't deserve it considering that they had been torturing students throughout the year.
  • After over four books of being touted as a brave and selfless hero, James Potter is shown to have ambushed and sexually assaulted Snape in public, showing that he only saved him in the first place to spare Sirius and Remus the legal nightmare.
• When It All Began: Voldemort's first downfall.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Harry only survives through books 4 on because the revived Voldemort demands a grandiose and wand-induced death. When Voldemort actually does this in Book 7, it doesn't stick. Voldemort actually tries this near the end of Book 5 when he shows up unexpectedly after Harry had thwarted the Death Eaters' plan. Luckily for Harry, Dumbledore intervenes just in time.
  • Harry stops Lupin and Sirius when they are about to kill Wormtail; this leads directly to Voldemort's return.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: There's a creature called the Hinkypunk that floats around bogs and marshes and glows. While In-Universe, it's not really a Will O The Wisp, but possibly the 'real' explanation for the muggle phenomenon.
• Wise Serpent:
  • A green snake is the Animal Motif of Slytherin House; some of the traits associated with and valued by Slytherins are cunning and resourcefulness.
  • At the North American school of magic Ilvermorny, the Horned Serpent house represents the mind of the witch or wizard and favors scholars. No coincidence that the house was founded by a descendant of Salazar Slytherin (albeit one who wanted to be in Ravenclaw as a child).
• Wizard Classic: Several characters, Dumbledore being by far the most archetypical.
• Wizarding School: Hogwarts is the Trope Codifier, but other schools are confirmed to exist within the Potterverse canon, with Beauxbatons and Durmstrang being introduced in Goblet of Fire and others mentioned in the supplementary material.
• Wizards Live Longer: Witches and wizards have longer lifespans than Muggles.
• Wizards' War: The Wizarding World went through several major conflicts within the 20th Century.
  • The conflict that is often referred to as the Global Wizard War began with Grindelwald's rise to power in the 1920's, and lasted until the mid 1940s', coinciding with the Second World War.
  • The First Wizarding War of 1970-1981 started with Lord Voldemort's and the Death Eaters' rise to power and their attempt to take over the Wizarding World and subjugate the Muggle World. The conflict ended with Valdemort's defeat and his soul being split into the seven Horcruxes, the capture and disbandment of the Death Eaters, and the disappearance of Harry Potter, "the Boy Who Lived".
  • The prelude to the Second Wizarding War began in the early 1990s, when Harry Potter began attending Hogwart's School of Wizarding and Magic, and there was an attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone. The Second Wizarding War began, officially according to Ministry of Magic, in 1996 when Voldemort returned and the Death Eaters, secretly, made gains within the Ministry of Magic with the ultimate goal of accomplishing Voldemort's vision of Wizard supremacy. The Second Wizarding War ended in 1998, at the culination of the Battle of Hogwarts when the Death Eaters were ultimately defeated and Voldemort was killed in a duel with Harry Potter.
• Wizard Workshop: Some rooms in Hogwarts fit this trope, especially Dumbledore's office, which is full of mysterious magical instruments, relics such as the sword of Gryffindor, a vast number of books, and Fawkes the phoenix on his perch. Snape's dungeon is also full of cauldrons and animals in jars.
• Words Do Not Make The Magic: You have to be a wizard and usually possess a wand to do magic. Even then, it takes skill, correct gestures, and intent (especially for the Unforgivable Curses) to cast the spells. (It
• Working-Class Werewolves: A justified example; wizards and witches who are werewolves often have trouble finding work due to the social stigma against them. Case in point, Remus Lupin often wears very shabby robes, looks constantly ill, lives in a half-derelict cottage and only got the job as Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher because of Dumbledore's generosity. As if that weren't bad enough, there's a recently developed potion (Wolfsbane Potion) that allows werewolves to safely manage their condition, making them less dangerous to other people and themselves, but it's so expensive few of them can even afford it.
• World of Snark: Almost everyone shows the inclination at some point or another.
  • Amongst the Gryffindors: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, Fred and George Weasley, Seamus Finnegan, Dean Thomas, and Romilda Vane all go for it.
  • The other student snarkers include Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Zacharias Smith, Pavarti (when pushed) and Padma Patil (particularly at the Yule Ball), and on occasion even Luna Lovegood. Moaning Myrtle and Diary!Riddle also have a few choice lines, proving this is not limited to living students.
  • The adults have no shortage either: Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Alastor Moody, Lucius Malfoy, Sirius Black, Bellatrix Lestrange, Molly Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks... In flashback, Lily Evans, James Potter, and Remus Lupin all prove themselves, too. Even Minister Fudge gets a few chances to indulge his inner snarker. The portrait of Phineas Nigellus, too.
  • Finally, even Percy Weasley the perfect Prefect gets a few moments of snark, notably "I hope [Ron's] not in another girls' bathroom" in Chamber of Secrets and "Consider this my notice of resignation" in Deathly Hallows. No wonder so many interactions between our heroes end up degenerating into Snark-to-Snark Combat...
• Writers Cannot Do Math:
  • Hogwarts' student population is much smaller than the narrative suggests. If we assume the number of students in Harry's year is representative of the typical Hogwarts class size and that the Sorting Hat scene goes through the entire incoming class, there are roughly 40 students per year; multiplied by seven years, that's about 280 students in total. However, a scene in the third book implies there's around 800 students, as three-fourths of the school are supporting Gryffindor while there are 200 Slytherin students at a Quidditch match. However, we never see any of this larger number of students. We only see five boys in Gryffindor in Harry's year, which is more consistent with a smaller student body^note assuming the same number of boys as girls, that's 10 students per house, times four houses is 40 students per year. The classes have around 20 students in them, which if the smaller number were true would mean the Houses are sharing classes — which is exactly what we see. Additionally, there's only one teacher per subject with fourteen subjects; if there were really 800 students, either only a third of the school day is spent in class, or the teachers are all using Time Turners to teach three classes at once.
  • The structure of Wizarding Britain as a whole suggests there's far more witches and wizards living there than the author's claim of three thousand magic-users. That really isn't that many people; for reference, a town with 3,000 inhabitants wouldn't even be big enough to have its own police station. Wizarding Britain, on the other hand, has enough wizards for a massive government bureaucracy with a ton of departments, an extensive law enforcement body with special forces and intelligence sections, and an entire league full of professional Quidditch teams. And that's before you take into account the 800-odd Hogwarts students, implying that a quarter of the magical population is in school.
  • The Quidditch World Cup in Goblet of Fire is said to be the 422nd edition of the tournament. Quidditch Through the Ages says there are four years between each World Cup — but also that the first one was in 1473, which is impossible if the one in Goblet of Fire took place in 1994. You'd have to assume that nowadays it's every four years, but in the past it was held very sporadically. Which makes sense, considering magic is involved (for instance, the entire 1877 tournament had to be redone because nobody could remember it). Pottermore lampshaded the whole thing in its article on the Quidditch World Cup, claiming that "[a]s with so much else about the wizarding world's most important sporting competition, many query the accuracy of this statement."
  • How Ollivander makes any money selling wands for seven Galleons apiece is questionable, as per Rowling's exchange rate they cost around 35 British pounds but are supposed to last the owner a lifetime. Assuming Ollivander sells 200-odd wands every year, which is generous,^note  Assuming that half of them are replacements for lost or broken wands and the other 100 wands are for incoming Hogwarts students — even though the books imply Hogwarts incoming classes are less than half that number. This also assumes he has a monopoly in the wandmaking business, but the books are clear he doesn't he'd only make around 7000 pounds a year. If all he sells are wands, that's not nearly enough to stay in business. And this is before getting into the fact that he has captive demand — if "the wand chooses the wizard", he's got a brilliant opportunity to extort young witches and wizards because he's the only one with the product that will allow them to make the most of their magic.
  • The relative ages of Bill and Charlie compared to the other Weasley siblings is a mess. Both had left Hogwarts by the time Harry and Ron start there, with Rowling claiming Charlie's two years older than Percy, and Bill two years older than Charlie — except since Percy is in his fifth year in Philosopher's Stone, that means that Charlie should have been in his last year of Hogwarts or very recently graduated. This makes no sense when combined with the comment on Gryffindor's losing streak having lasted since Charlie last captained the team; assuming he played until graduation, that would have to be a couple of years at least. And it's more than that, because Prisoner of Azkaban says Gryffindor's last Cup win was seven years earlier, implying Charlie is at least seven years older than Percy and left the year before Percy started. (Rowling upped the gap between Percy and Charlie to three years, which solves the graduation problem but not the Quidditch problem.) No one disputes when Bill graduated, but it does create an odd line where Ginny mentions wanting to attend Hogwarts since Bill started, which would have been when she was a year old at the earliest.
  • The ages of various adults just don't line up.
    • Snape and Lucius Malfoy are said to have been in the same social group at Hogwarts, but this is contradicted in various ways; supplemental material suggests Lucius is ten years older than Snape and thus couldn't have coincided at Hogwarts, while a flashback in Deathly Hallows reveals Lucius was a prefect in Snape's first year and therefore at least five years older than him.
    • Snape is 32 years old in Chamber of Secrets, but he was a contemporary of Harry's parents at Hogwarts, implying that Harry's parents were quite young when they had him.
    • Bellatrix Lestrange is also said to have been in Snape's social group at Hogwarts, but her younger sister Andromeda's daughter Tonks is in her twenties throughout the series, implying that Andromeda had a Teen Pregnancy right after graduating from Hogwarts. Trying to fit this into the timeline implies Bellatrix was probably in her sixth or seventh year when Snape started, so unlikely to be in his social group either.
  • Attempts to provide exact dates for the series — specifically, having Harry enter Hogwarts in 1991 — lead to a few minor booboos. For instance, in Philosopher's Stone, Nicholas Flamel is stated to be 665 years old — but since he's a Historical Domain Character, and we know for sure that he was born in 1330, that would put the book's setting as 1995, just a few years off. And Order of the Phoenix has the students arriving on September 1 and starting class the next day, as usual — but that year, September 1 was a Friday, implying class on a Saturday. See what happens when you aim for specificity like that?
  • Slytherin Quidditch captain Marcus Flint is introduced in Philosopher's Stone as a sixth-year, but is still the captian two years later in Prisoner of Azkaban when he should have graduated the year before. When faced with this, Rowling replied, "Either I made a mistake or he was held back a year. I think I prefer Flint making the mistake." Later editions of Philosopher's Stone correct this by calling Flint a fifth-year instead of a sixth-year.
• Wrong Context Magic: Wizarding magic can be blocked by other wizarding magic, but house-elf magic can only be blocked if the elf's master forbids it. Hence, house-elves can Apparate in Hogwarts where wizards can't. Kreacher was able to Apparate from the cave where Voldemort hid his locket Horcrux, something even Dumbledore couldn't accomplish, simply because Regulus asked him to.

X

• The X of Y: Most of the book titles. The Philosopher's Stone and The Deathly Hallows too, in some translations.

Y

• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Evil: What Voldemort hates about Dumbledore.
• You Know the One:
  • There are some odd cases of Early Instalment Weirdness in which some things are referred to by a vague description before they receive a proper identification by which they are exclusively referred to thereafter. The Dementors are called "the Azkaban guards" in Chamber of Secrets and early in Prisoner of Azkaban. Aurors are called "Hit Wizards" prior to their first appearance in the next book.^note  unless Aurors and Hit Wizards are different types of combat wizards, such as police vs. SWAT teams. It's not made clear. Even more egregiously, the Death Eaters are called something along the lines of "Voldemort's followers" for the first three books until they are identified as "Death Eaters" in Goblet of Fire.
  • Justified with Voldemort, who is frequently referred to as "You-Know-Who," "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," or "the Dark Lord" because his enemies and allies alike fear to speak his name.
• You Remind Me of X: Everyone goes out of their way to tell Harry how much he reminds them of James^note  except for his eyes, which remind people of Lily. Later, rather ominously, the trend slides closer to comparing him to Voldemort.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The result of the Dementor's Kiss.
• Your Vampires Suck: A mild case of this. The one vampire encountered in the books seems none too frightening, though Goblet of Fire alludes to the Ministry seeing them as a sufficiently serious problem to be worth employing vampire hunters. J.K. Rowling does poke fun of a vampire who hypnotizes its victims with a boring Doorstopper of a book. It's also mentioned in Philosopher's Stone that Quirrell was supposed to have cracked after meeting real vampires (and a hag) when he decided to get hands-on experience with dark creatures instead of merely reading about them; seeing as his stuttering, scared-of-his-own-shadow persona was all an act and what actually happened was him encountering and being corrupted by Voldemort, this story isn't conclusive, but it does suggest at least some wizards believe vampires to be truly dangerous, or else no one would have accepted this as an explanation for Quirrell's behaviour.
• Your Worst Memory: The Dementors, who slowly drain all joy from humans and leave them with nothing but their worst memories. Harry, when attacked by the Dementors, hears the voices of his parents right before their murder at the hands of Voldemort.

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