Harry Potter - List of Books

Harry Potter's world is a secret one that exists parallel, and unknown to, our 'normal' society. It is a world of magic, full of wizards and witches, magic creatures and epic battles. This wizarding world relies on magic as its driving force, things like electricity and computers don't work there. The people of this magic society call non-magic people 'Muggles' and the Muggles call them 'non-existent' ;-). Apart of a few historic flashbacks and side stories, all events described in the books take place in nowadays Britain. Each book encompasses roughly one year in the life of its main protagonist – Harry Potter and all were written by J.K. Rowling.

This is the only Harry Potter book with different titles in the USA and the UK. Reason being is that the original American publisher was convinced that the word 'philosopher' in the original title would put American buyers off.

The story starts in 1991 with the introduction of the Dursley family, a white British family that lives in Little Whinging, Surrey (England). Vernon and Petunia, the parents have a son called Dudley that is at the start of the story a bit older than one year. The Dursley family disapproves of everything that is not 'normal' and their definition of what is normal is pretty narrow. So it is no wonder that they are not pleased at all as they find one morning the baby boy Harry Potter, Petunia Dursley's nephew, on their door step! Accompanying Harry is a letter that states that his parents, both wizards, have been killed by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort and that they are the only family Harry now has. Lily, Harry's mother was Petunia's sister and so the Dursley agree, gruntingly to take Harry in.

The second book starts again at the house of the Dursley family where Harry receives, at the end of his holidays, a visit from Dobby the house elf that warns him not to return to Hogwarts as 'terrible things are about to happen there'. Despite Dobby's best efforts to hinder Harry's return, Harry manages to do so by using the flying car of the Weasley family, the family of his best friend Ronald.

Soon it becomes clear that something sinister is going on at Hogwarts, people are getting attacked and mysterious messages appear at the Castle's walls. It is then revealed that the mythical 'Chamber of Secrets' has been opened again and the monster that lived in it has been freed. As Ginny, Ronald's little sister, is kidnapped the three friends decide to rescue her and succeed. At the end of the book it becomes clear that the reason all this happened was that a supporter of Lord Voldemort smuggled a magic diary into Ginny's books.

In the fourth book Harry is magically chosen to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, a magical competition between the three main magical schools in Europe. Harry has to solve riddles, fight dragons and mer people, but in the end he and his fellow Hogwarts champion, Cedric Diggory, succeed in obtaining the price. But the price has been magically altered by a follower of Lord Voldemort and transports them to a graveyard where Cedric is killed and Harry witnesses the return of Lord Voldemort to his body and power.

Harry was never a good student of 'potions' as he and the potions teacher, Prof. Snape hated each other from the beginning of the series. Now not only a new potions teacher is at Hogwarts, but Harry also finds a textbook with helpful annotations and becomes soon the best in class- at least in this subject. Also Prof. Dumbledore is starting to give him private lessons and reveals to him that the real reason why Lord Voldemort didn't die when the curse he cast towards Harry rebounded is that he had previously split his soul in several horcruxes and hit them in safe places. Dumbledore makes it clear that before Voldemort can be destroyed forever, these horcruxes have to be found and destroyed first.

Meanwhile several attempts to kill Prof. Dumbledore are made by Voldemort's followers and, in the end, he dies by the hand of Prof. Snape whom he trusted all these years completely.