Did you know-- then? asked Harry. Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time? No.
Someone creeping into his yard in the dead of night? More likely there's a very shell-shocked cat wandering somewhere, covered in potato peelings.
Some readers and commentators really want to scrape your insides out to make sense of your work. Others say, there's the work, it speaks for itself. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle.
They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer.
You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that.
Yeah,' said Ron. 'Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?' 'I still haven't ruled it out,' came Hermione's muffled voice from beneath her blankets, but Harry saw Ron smiling slightly as he pulled his maroon pajamas out of his rucksack.
I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you? Are you, you great ugly brute?
When the Dark Lord takes over, is he going to care how many O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s anyone's got? Of course he isn't... It'll be all about the kind of service he received, the level of devotion he was shown.
Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these, said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers. I'm not putting them on, said old Archie in indignation. I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks.
I'm not putting them on, said old Archie in indignation. I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks.
The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!
He never seemed to grasp the immense mutability of human nature, nor to appreciate that behind every nondescript face lay a wild and unique hinterland like his own.
Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs.
But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?
'It only put me in Gryffindor,' said Harry in a defeated voice, 'because I asked not to go in Slytherin...' 'Exactly' said Dumbledore, beaming once more. 'Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.'
She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her.
By all means continue destroying my possessions. I daresay I have too many.
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.
Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time.
It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, it had been a quite personal question.
It's cruel that I got to spend so much time with James and Lily, and you so little. But know this; the ones that love us never really leave us. And you can always find them in here.
Potter is mocked by a faculty member for the idea that there is evil in the world from which even children need to learn to defend themselves by the actual practice of doing so rather than familiarity with theory.
I will be sharing additional information I've been hoarding for years about the world of Harry Potter.
Why don't you confer with Mr. Finnigan? As I recall, he has a particular proclivity for pyrotechnics.
Everyone wanted my emotions to be very simple. They wanted me to say, I was poor and I was unhappy, and now I've got money and I'm really happy.
Warrington's aim's so pathetic I'd be more worried if he was aiming for the person next to me.
Vot is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?
Sport is a very important subject at school, that's why I gave Quidditch such an important place at Hogwarts. I was very bad in sports, so I gave Harry a talent I would really loved to have. Who wouldn't want to fly?
Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless -- discuss.
If Harry Potter taught us anything, it's that no one should have to live in the closet.
It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever.
He might have crawled up into the airing cupboard and died, but I mustn't get my hopes up.
He put his foot on one pedal, scooted a few yards and swung his other leg over the saddle. He soared left into the vertiginously sloping hillside road and sped, without touching his brakes ... The hedgerows and sky blurred; he imagined himself in a velodrome as the wind whipped his hair clean.
My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.
Snape is vindictive, he's cruel. He's not a big man. But he loves. I like him, but I'd also like to slap him hard.
Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here.
I say there are spots that don't come off.... Spots that never come off, d'you know what I mean?
I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms?
I'm a what? gasped Harry. A wizard, o' course, said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, an' a thumpin' good'un I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. You'll stay with me? Until the very end, said James.
She kept asking herself whether, if he had looked cleaner, she might have been more concerned; whether, on some subliminal level, she had confused his obvious signs of neglect with street-smartness, toughness and resilience.
I'm happy to talk in general themes, but when we get down to specifics about my family, for me that's always been off-limits.
Everything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours.
And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.
Sometimes you have to stop trying to force it, walk away and let your subconscious show you the way. Fill up on life for a while.
That's the perennial appeal of magic -- that we ourselves have power and we can shape our world. I sometimes think its very analogous to having a lot of money that people think -- 'cause that's kind of like a super power.
Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life.
Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment.
The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes -- and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.
Parvati positively beamed. Harry could tell that she was feeling guilty for having laughed at Hermione in Transfiguration. He looked around and saw that Hermione was beaming back, if possible even more brightly. Girls were very strange sometimes.
I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls.
My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities...like the ability to behave myself.
Well you seemed too busy to call him a prat and I thought someone should.
I must admit, Peter, I have difficulty in understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat.
Well, usually when a person shakes their head, said McGonagall coldly, they mean 'no.' So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans.
Yeah, she shows signs of life if you do this, said Ron, and with his tongue he made soft clip-flopping noises. Umbridge sat bolt upright, looking wildly around.
The Ministry places a rather higher value on my life than yours, I'm afraid.
No witch has ever claimed to own the Elder Wand. Make of that what you will.
Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember...I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things -- terrible, yes, but great.
I want to fall in love with something in the way I fell in love with the idea of Harry before I write anything else.
If she could have died...if she could have disappeared forever...but the solid surface of things refused to dissolve around her, and her body, her hateful hermaphrodite's body, continued in its stubborn, lumpen way, to live.
Always have a vivid imagination, for you never know when you might need it.
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
