Kitabı oxu: «An A–Z of Harry Potter»
An A-Z of HARRY POTTER
Everything You Always Wanted to Know
About The Boy Wizard and His Creator
Aubrey Malone
Table of Contents
Chapter A
Chapter B
Chapter C
Chapter D
Chapter E
Chapter F
Chapter G
Chapter H
Chapter I
Chapter J
Chapter K
Chapter L
Chapter M
Chapter N
Chapter O
Chapter P
Chapter Q
Chapter R
Chapter S
Chapter T
Chapter U
Chapter V
Chapter W
Chapter XYZ
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
This book is not part of the Harry Potter series. It has not been endorsed or authorised by Warner Bros or J K Rowling. It does not claim nor imply any rights to her characters or creations.
A
Abandonment
Many people imagine that J K Rowling was an overnight success because of her sudden explosion onto the literary scene. In some ways she was. Unlike most fledgling authors, she didn’t wallpaper her room with rejection slips. But she did abandon two novels before hitting the jackpot with Harry Potter. What’s the betting they won’t turn up on some publisher’s desk in the years to come? If so, she may well submit them under a pseudonym. Not using a pseudonym, she might feel, would give her an unfair advantage over the opposition.
Acronyms
Hermione coins one of these: ‘SPEW’, standing for ‘Society, for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare’. Ron does likewise with ‘SPUG’, which stands for ‘Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins’. A less graphic one is ‘OWL’, shorthand for ‘Ordinary Wizarding Level’, and there’s also ‘NEWTS’ for ‘Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests’.
Advance sales
In July 2000, the internet site Amazon had clocked up advance sales of The Goblet of Fire to the tune of 290 000 copies. Two years later the VHS and DVD versions of The Philosopher’s Stone were at the top of both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites as best-sellers three months before copies were actually available.
Age
Rowling turned 42 on 31 July 2007. She shares her birthday with—guess who—one Harry Potter.
Age line
This is the golden line Dumbledore drew around the Goblet of Fire to keep people under 17 years of age away from it. Fred and George Weasley took an Ageing Potion to try to circumvent it but they were still thrown back.
Alohamora
The spell Hermione uses to open the door in The Philosopher’s Stone so she and her friends can escape without being caught out of bounds by Argus Filch.
Alternative career
Rowling was a teacher before she became a full-time writer. On her last day in the classroom she informed her class she was leaving the job. One bright spark piped up, ‘Are you going to become a stripper, Miss?’ Instead of telling him off she thanked him for the compliment.
Amnesty International
Rowling worked in this human rights organisation for a time, but left when she found that she was doing too much paperwork and not enough campaigning for causes. She worked secretly at her writing during lunch-breaks, which made her something of an oddity in the eyes of her colleagues. Was she having an affair, they wondered? In a sense she was—with her muse.
Anapneo
This term is Greek for ‘breathe’ and is said to the victim of a spell to reduce the ill effects of a blocked airway.
Animagus
This is a wizard (‘magus’ is Latin for wizard) who can transform him or herself into an animal. Minerva McGonagall turns herself into a cat at the beginning of the first book. Sirius Black becomes a dog—Harry mistakes him for a Grim—in The Prisoner of Azkaban, Peter Pettigrew transforms himself into a rat (with one of his toes missing because he himself is missing a finger), and even Harry’s father, James Potter, became a stag at one point of his life, which led to his nickname of ‘Prongs’.
Animagi reflect one’s personality. Witness Rita Skeeter becoming a beetle. (Journalists are sometimes called deathwatch beetles because of their voyeuristic nature.) If Rowling could turn herself into an animal, she says she’d become an otter. (One might have expected her to say a rabbit, her favourite pet.) Hermione becomes one, reflecting this wish—Hermione being Rowling’s alter ego in many ways.
Aparecium
This substance performs the unique feat of making invisible writing readable. Hermione used it to try to read Tom Riddle’s diary in Chamber of Secrets but it didn’t work for her.
Apparate
Basically this means to appear. Its opposite, hardly surprisingly is ‘disapparate’.
Arachnophobia
A condition that Rowling—like Ron—suffers from. It means a fear of spiders.
Aragog
Giant spider-like creature with the gift of speech. It dies in The Half-Blood Prince.
Arantes, Jorge
Portuguese television journalist who married Rowling in 1992 when she’d gone to that country to teach. The marriage, however, lasted only little more than a year. In a violent outburst one night, he threw her out of their home after she told him she didn’t love him any more. She stood on the street lost and forlorn, her whole world having crumbled…and her daughter Jessica unreachable inside with her fiery spouse. The police were called, a row ensued and Arantes finally parted from the little girl.
Rowling took Jessica back to Edinburgh, but Arantes followed her there. A period of intense friction followed. She finally obtained a restraining order against him and they formally divorced soon afterwards. He later wrote a kiss-and-tell article about her. Or perhaps that should be a write-and-tell one, because in it he claimed he had played a significant part in ‘midwifing’ Harry Potter. Rowling discounts this claim as arrant nonsense.
In one of the Potter books Rowling makes a wry reference to her wedding date, 16 October, by also making this the date Professor Sibyll Trelawney tells Lavender Brown a dreadful event will befall her. Hell hath no fury. It’s also significant that Rowling wore black on her wedding day. Had she a Potter-like premonition that things would go wrong?
Arithmancy
Hermione’s favourite subject, this is the process of predicting the future through numbers. It’s also called numerology. It comes from two Greek words: ‘arithmo’ meaning number and ‘mancy’ meaning prophecy.
Arresto Momentum
This is the spell Dumbledore used to prevent Harry from falling to his death on the Quidditch pitch in The Prisoner of Azkaban.
Ascendio
Harry used this spell to rise up over the lake water in Goblet of Fire.
Aubrey, Bertram
A Hogwarts student from the 1970s. Harry’s father once received detention for causing his head to double in size.
Auction
The first time Rowling heard her agent Christopher Little speaking to her about an auction she thought—furniture. Only later did it dawn on her that he was referring to a megabucks bidding war for her book. The rollercoaster ride had begun…
Austen, Jane
Rowling surprisingly lists this author as one of her main inspirations. She liked Pride and Prejudice as a teenager but her favourite Austen novel is Emma, which she claims to have read a whopping 20 times. From Austen’s Mansfield Park she got the name of Argus Filch’s cat, Mrs Norris.
Autobiography
Rowling hasn’t written this yet, but has spoken often about her life. The character who most resembles her in her books, she says, is Hermione. She admits she seemed to be something of a swot at school. (She read Vanity Fair at the tender age of 14!) Like Hermione, Rowling says she was insecure behind the perceived swot image. (However, she hasn’t been known to cast spells with the same success as Ms Granger).
‘I was neither as bright nor as annoying as Hermione,’ she said in an interview once, adding that if she was she would have deserved ‘drowning at birth’. She was, of course, only joking here. As the series goes on, Hermione becomes much less irksome when she realises there are more important things in life than reading and being first at exams—like friendship, for instance. (Rowling says she doesn’t believe in magic either, except for the magic of love.)
Avada Kedavra
This is the curse that Voldemort used to kill Harry’s parents (and almost Harry). It’s Aramaic for ‘abracadabra’, which literally means ‘Let the thing be destroyed’. (In its original usage it was a plea for a cure rather than a curse, the ‘thing’ being an illness.) Harry is the only person ever to have survived it, both at his birth and during a duelling bout with Voldemort wherein they both have similar wands, which detracts from their potential.
Azkaban
The prison from which Sirius Black escapes after turning himself into a dog. It sounds somewhat similar to Alcatraz, which was also high security and located on an island.
B
Babbling Beverage
Potion that causes the victim to talk nonsense. Snape threatens Harry with it in The Order of the Phoenix.
Bagshot, Bathilda
Author of A History of Magic, she was a family friend of the Dumbledores. She’s killed by Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows.
Baked beans
Rowling was so poor in her early writing career that one day when she tried to buy a tin of baked beans she found she was two pence short. To hide her embarrassment she pretended she’d left a ten pound note in her other coat. The beans, meanwhile, remained at the counter. Many nights she went to bed hungry before fame struck.
Balderdash
Password used to gain entry to the Gryffindor common room. Another one is Flibbertigibbet.
Balmoral Hotel
The venue at which Rowling completed The Deathly Hallows on 11 January 2007.
Banishing Charm
The opposite of the Summoning Charm.
Bans
In some countries Harry Potter books have been banned, thereby giving them even more publicity. Joking apart, the people who accuse them of encouraging children to practise witchcraft, or appearing to condone such an activity, are dramatically over-reacting to their subject matter. As Lisa Cherrett remarks in her book The Triumph of Goodness (published by the Bible Reading Fellowship), ‘This immediately puts a barrier between Christian youngsters and their peers, and begins to breed in them the ghetto mentality of fear and suspicion.’
Banshee
A female spirit, derived from the Gaelic ‘bean’ (woman) and ‘sí’ (fairy), that wails and shrieks when death is imminent. No wonder Rowling’s Irish character Seamus Finnigan (is there a nod to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake here?) is terrified by the prospect of them.
Interestingly enough, during Rowling’s bohemian years, when she was drifting aimlessly between jobs and immersing herself in the dubious delights of punk rock, she formed an attachment to the music of a group called Síouxie and the Banshees, now long forgotten. This phase of her life was necessary for her to rid herself of her rebellious streak, paving the way for a time she would be entertained by the Queen—and end up out-earning her!
Bashu
Chinese publishing house that brought out three apocryphal Harry Potter novels, making quite a profit out of all of them before Christopher Little, Rowling’s agent, put it out of business. The books were called Harry Potter and the Leopard Walk up to Dragon, Harry Potter and the Golden Turtle and Harry Potter and the Crystal Vase.
Basilisk
The terrifying serpent in Chamber of Secrets that can turn people to stone. The only thing that can control a Basilisk is a Parselmouth. One of them killed Moaning Myrtle.
Bell, Katie
One of the three Chasers on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
Bibliomania
Rowling is so fond of reading she says that if she finds herself in a bathroom with no books, she reads the labels on the toiletries.
Bildungsroman
A novel dealing with the spiritual, moral, psychological and social development of its main character, from the above German term that translates directly as ‘novel of education’. The Harry Potter saga certainly fits this particular bill.
Binns, Professor
This is Harry’s History of Magic professor. We can see what Harry and/or Rowling think of his ability by dint of his surname, though when Hermione asks him about the Chamber of Secrets in the book of that name, all the class are agog. Unfortunately, in the American version of the book, ‘dustbin’ is changed to ‘trash can’ so this pun is lost. Binns, it should be added, is a ghost, having forgotten to bring his body to class with him one day. (As you would.) He enters the classroom through the blackboard.
Birthdays
Harry was born on the same date as Rowling: 31 July. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the films, was also born in July though not 31 July as Connie Ann Kirk mistakenly states in her biography of Rowling.
Black, Regulus
Younger brother of Sirius.
Black, Sirius
The literal meaning of his name is ‘Black Dog’. He’s Harry’s godfather and the former best friend of Harry’s father, but we initially fear him after he escapes from Azkaban because we hear he’s a serial killer. Only later does it emerge that he’s been framed by Peter Pettigrew and is actually on Harry’s side. (Unfortunately, he dies before managing to clear his name.) He’s also his secret benefactor, providing him with his trusty Firebolt broomstick. Black dies protecting Harry from Voldemort, which is a pity as he was a popular character with readers, and one of Harry’s few true allies.
Blood
Wizards can be pure-bloods or half-bloods. Draco Malfoy is a pure-blood (this in fact being his password to get into the Slytherin common room) whereas Tom Riddle and Harry himself are half-bloods. Those born of Muggle parents are ‘filthy little Mudbloods’, as Malfoy delights in reminding them. When Hermione reaches higher academic standards than he does, he puts it down to teacher favouritism. Rowling has ostensibly written a wizard story but the class struggle is ubiquitous. The fact that she makes the aristocratic pure-blood the villain nails her democratic colours to the mast very early on. Her background in the classics has enabled her to capture the collegiate atmosphere to a ‘t’, but she’s also known poverty and has an empathy with the poor, like Ron and his siblings. Her books undermine elitism from the inside.
Bloody Baron
The house ghost of Slytherin.
Bloomsbury
Rowling’s publishers, who offered her an advance of £2000 for her first book in 1996. It was a huge amount to her at that time as her marriage had just broken down and she was living on lean rations, but of course it would be mere pocket money to her now.
Bludgers
The balls used in Quidditch that try to knock players off their broomsticks.
Blyton, Enid
People sometimes denigrate Rowling by saying her books are little more than Enid Blyton on broomsticks. She says herself that she was never really a fan of that author, though she’s read the Famous Five books, and certain elements of the solidarity of Harry, Ron and Hermione are similar as they go about their fact-finding missions and suddenly end up in life-threatening situations before all comes out well in the end.
The difference, of course, is that there’s a Peter Pan element with the Famous Five. They remain the same age throughout all the books, unlike Rowling’s characters, who go through hormonal changes in adolescence, like ‘real’ children. Rowling originally intended to bring out one book a year but interruptions of one sort or another gave rise to delays; this has affected the timescale of the films as well, which means that her characters have aged more quickly on the screen than in the books.
Boarding schools
Rowling seems to celebrate these in her books, but says she’s not exactly a fan of them. (She never went to one, and nor did Enid Blyton, another author who liked writing about them.) Rowling’s critics say this element of her work makes it a thinly disguised lament for ye olde England, but that hasn’t stopped readers lapping it up, even (especially?) if it has a certain anachronistic element.
Even though Harry is a wizard, he has to worry about things like homework, exams, practical jokes, teasing, detention, boring classes (Professor Binns take a bow!), one-upmanship, punctuality, peer group pressure, not wandering out of bounds, succeeding at games, etc. Rowling weaves these details seamlessly into all the chapters dealing with spells, potions, trolls, owl posts, centaurs, boggarts, sphinxes, Basilisks, werewolves, secret passageways, passwords, flying broomsticks, death curses, giant spiders, speaking snakes and so on.
Hogwarts is a co-ed, multicultural school of learning with Head Girls, Head Boys and prefects. It doesn’t have flogging, like, say, the institutions of the Tom Brown’s School Days era of literature—point deduction is the preferred mode of censure—nor does it have ‘fagging’, i.e. the practice of new pupils becoming older ones’ gofers, though the house elves seem to some extent to serve this function. Like Tom Brown, however, Harry is bullied, he’s good at sports, he breaks rules when he feels he has to, he has a wise headmaster—Brown’s was Dr Arnold while his is Professor Dumbledore—and he eventually becomes a hero to his class.
What Rowling has done is to serve up old wine in new wineskins, as well as throwing in some occult villainy for good (or bad) measure, and we relish the unique mix.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
