Dont Forget!

Well, thats it for now mates. I hope you are now well educated in the field of Harry Potter, which we all should be. Don't forget, the 6th movie will be in theaters November 21st, so come on and all to the midnight showing! You will have a blast with fellow "Harry Potterians" and enjoy the most romance-filled book in the series. It's the best of both worlds. See ya for now. But before I leave you, I would like to say a few words: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you.

Quidditch!

Quidditch is the only wizarding sport in the wizarding world, its like soccer played in the sky, only with a few minor additions. Quidditch is easy enough to understand, there are 7 players: three chasers, two beaters, one keeper and a seeker. There are three types of balls: the quaffle, the bludger and the golden snitch.
The chasers jobs are to take the quaffle (roughly the size of a soccer ball) and put it in one of the three hoops at the end of the pitch to score. Each goal is worth 10 points.
The beaters job it to prevent the bludger's from hitting any of their players. Since bludgers have a mind of their own, they move around and try to knock off any player that gets in it's way. The beaters have a short bat that they use to hit the bludgers at the opposing team, trying to knock the quaffle out of their hands or if they just scored a goal and want to get back at them.
The keeper's job is to protect the 3 hoops and prevent the opposing team from scoring.
The final position is the seeker. The seeker is usually someone who is light small and fast. Their job is to find the golden snitch before the other teams seeker. This ball is roughly the size of a golf ball, golden and has wings to fly, and is very difficult to see. It's a very fast ball and once a seeker catches the ball, the team get's an extra 150 points and the games over. The game cannot be completed until the snitch is caught. The longest Quidditch game on record was 7 days. The players had to switch out every 4 hours just to get some sleep.

Crookshanks: An ordinary cat... Or it he?

We first meet Crookshanks in the third installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the magical pet shop, the Magical Menageri. Crookshanks is a most fascinating creature. He appears to be a large ginger cat with a squashed flat face and bottle-brush tail. He belongs to Hermione. Crookshanks is part Kneazle, which accounts for his unusual intelligence and his ability to identify suspicious characters, most notablyPeter Pettigrew when disguised as Scabbers, Ron's pet rat. But he also recognizes and disapproves of cheating, judging by the way he stared at Ron and Harry when they were making up answers on their Divination homework. But he can also be a normal cat, one to chase gnomes in the yard, or simply play with a ball of string. Because of the cat's attitude toward his pet rat, Ron disliked Crookshanks intensely when Hermione ought him. However, once the cat's true nature and intentions became clear (and when Scabbers' did as well), Ron accepted Crookshanks and even held up Pigwidgeon (Pig for short), his new owl, up to the cat for approval. JK Rowling says this about how she thought of Crookshanks:

" When I was working in London in the late 1980s I used to eat my lunch in a nearby square on sunny days and a large, fluffy ginger cat that looked as though it had run face-first into a wall used to prowl around the sunbathers there; I assume it lived in a nearby house. I didn't ever get close enough to give myself an asthma attack, but I became distantly fond of this cat, which prowled among the humans around it looking disdainful and refusing to be stroked. When I decided to give Hermione an unusually intelligent cat I gave him the appearance of this haughty animal, with the slightly unfair addition of bandy legs."

JK Rowling Spell-Bound Harvard

On June 5th, JK Rowling arrived at Harvard University in Massachusetts's where she delivered the commencement speech for the class of 2008. According to The Harvard Crimson, the school's student newspaper, Rowling is only the fifth woman to speak at Harvard's commencement since 1950. In addition to speaking, she received an honorary degree from the university. During her speech, JK Rowling focused primarily on two themes, which are reflected in the title of her address: "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination."

"The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life," she said. "They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of real trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters."

Rowling's speech lasted 21 minutes, and the standing ovation afterward went on for almost two. Did her speech make the audience "spell-bound?" I'd like to think so.
To read the entire speech click here.

PotterCast

I'd like to share with you all my favorite Harry Potter information site is the-leaky-cauldron.org. It's a fan based website run by people from all over the world from Londond, England to Cincinnati, Ohio. The one aspect I really enjoy about this website is that it started the weekly PotterCast (and you can listen to it on iTunes, too). They talk about happening's in the book, recent news concerning the films and up coming events that JK herself is involved in. And it's just fun to listen to,the hosts discuss theories, news, wizarding sports and most importantly the world of Harry Potter.

The Deathly Hallows

As promised, these are the Deathly Hallows: The Resurrection Stone, The Cloak of Invisibility and The Elder Wand. The Deathly Hallows were first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a novel that Dumbledore wills to Hermione called The Tales of Beetle the Bard. The story, The Three Peverell Brothers, is inside of it containing information on the three Deathly Hallows. In the wizarding world, the tale is told by many parents as a bedtime story, a myth, however... it's real. According to The Tale of the Three Brothers the Peverell found Death. Death gave them one choice of anything they wanted; the first brother a wand that could not be defeated, the second a way to bring back someone from the dead, and the third a cloak that made the wearer invisible (to escape Death himself). The symbol to the right is a combination of all three hallows into one. The Triangle symbolizes the cloak, the circle, the stone and the line, the Elder Wand.

The Elder Wand
The Elder Wand, known throughout history as the "Deathstick" and the "Wand of Destiny", is an extremely powerful wand made of elder wood with a core of Thestral tail hair (an animal only visible by those who have seen death). Supposedly, it is the most powerful wand in existence, and when used by its true master, he or she cannot be defeated in a duel (however, in Deathly Hallows Dumbledore dueled with Grindelwald and conquered the wand, despite the fact it is supposed to be unbeatable, giving a good estimate of how magically powerful Dumbledore is). The wand choses the wizard as the Elder Wand will only work properly when in the hands of it's true master. The wand will only fully work for the new user if they directly Disarm, Stun or kill the previous user. Since Dumbledore was the wands' true master, after the defeat of Grindelwald, he was able to posses it. Draco later became the next owner of the wand due to the fact he successfully "disarmed" Dumbledore in the 6th book. Then in chapter 23: Malfoy Manor, Harry manages to disarm Draco and escape, that is when Harry became the true owner of the Elder Wand. When Voldemort tried to use the wand against Harry, it recognized it's master and didn't work properly for him. Harry then defeats Voldemort, he repaires his old Phoenix feather wand and buries the Elder Wand with Dumbledore once again.

The Resurrection Stone
The Resurrection Stone allows the holder to see and communicate with the dead. According to the fairy tale concerning the origin of the Deathly Hallows, using the Resurrection Stone drove its original owner, Cadmus Peverell, to commit suicide after seeing his deceased fiancée but being unable to truly be with her. By the time the stone was seen in Marvolo Gaunt's (Voldemort's grandfather) possession, it had been set into a ring. The ring bore the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, which Gaunt believed to be the Peverell coat of arms. Both Dumbledore and Grindelwald desired the stone, but for different reasons. While Dumbledore wanted it to communicate with his dead family, Grindelwald intended to use it to create an army of Inferi, undead. Voldemort turned the ring into a Horcrux, not knowing its magical nature.

The Cloak of Invisibility
According to the legend, the Cloak of Invisibility has the power to shield the wearer from being seen by Death. It is a true invisibility cloak in the sense of being able to completely shield the wearer from sight, and cannot be worn out by time or spells. Other typical invisibility cloaks described in the books, which are sometimes woven from the hair of a beast, can become opaque with age and are vulnerable to being penetrated by various spells. In Deathly Hallows, it is revealed that Harry's cloak is in fact the Cloak of Invisibility: one of the Deathly Hallows. It originally belonged to Ignotus Peverell. After his death, the cloak was passed down from father to son, through Peverell's descendants to James Potter, and eventually to Harry. At the end of Book 7, Dumbledore explains to Harry that the Cloak's true magic is that it can shield and protect others as well as its owner, as demonstrated by Harry and his friends on various adventures under the cloak throughout the series. At the conclusion of the seventh book in the series, Harry decides that the Invisibility Cloak will be the only Hallow that he will keep, and intends to pass it on to his descendants.

Horcrux's... What are they?

Some of you are not "in tune with your inner Harry Potter knowledge" yet, but I'm here to help. I have noticed that I've been using some terms that you might not be aware of like the Elder Wand, Horcrux's, Voldemort (character fyi), "Expelliarmus," ect. Well, I'm going to explain what a Horcrux is, how it's formed and what you do to destroy one in case you come across one. (... you can at least laugh a little...).

A Horcrux: What is it?
It is a magical object that is created to become immortal. Since Voldemort was afraid of Death, he wanted to find a way to become immortal, and this was the solution. Rowling described a Horcrux as a "receptacle in which a dark wizard has hidden a part of his soul for the purposes of attaining immortality." With part of a wizard's soul stored, the wizard becomes immortal so long as the Horcrux remains intact and unharmed. For this reason, Horcruxes are typically hidden in a safe location. Even if the wizard's body is destroyed, a portion of his soul will remain preserved within the Horcrux thus living for eternity. However, the destruction of the creator's body leaves the wizard or witch in a state of half-life, without corporeal form. Voldemort is the only wizard explicitly mentioned as having created a Horcrux (though others are known to have done so), and is the only wizard known to have created more than one, seven to be exact.

How is it formed?
A creation of a Horcrux requires one to commit a murder, which, as "the supreme act of evil, (...) rips the soul apart." A Horcrux can be made from any normal object, including living organisms (like Harry). Destroying a Horcrux will destroy the fragment of soul contained within it, ending its protection and returning the creator to a state of mortality. If a wizard/witch has created more than one Horcrux, he will remain immortal until all are destroyed. Once destroyed, the wizard or witch will die normally if mortally wounded.

How are they destroyed?
Horcruxes are extremely difficult to destroy. They cannot be destroyed by conventional means such as smashing, breaking, or burning. In order to be destroyed, a Horcrux must suffer damage so severe that repair through magical means would be impossible. The object that Ron, Harry and Hermione (and Dumbledore) used to kill the Horcruxes was the Sword of Gryffindor (which has Basilisk venom on the blade) and basilisks' fangs. The venom of a basilisk is fatal, one drop on your skin and you would die within 10 minutes or less, so this method was quite effective. Once irreparably damaged, the fragment of soul within a Horcrux is destroyed and the host made weaker, easier to destroy in the end.

Voldemort made 7 Horcrux's. Why do you ask? For one, he wanted to live forever and since 7 is the most powerful number, he split his soul into 7 objects and organisms. The Horcrux's were Tom Riddle's diary,Marvolo Gaunts ring (also the Resurrection Stone), Salazar Slytherin's locket, Helga Hufflepuff's cup, Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem, Voldemorts pet snake Nagini anf of course Harry Potter. Six out of the 7 were made on purpose. When Voldemort heard about the prophecy, "born as the 7th month dies, born to those who have thrice defied him... has power the Dark Lord does not" he gets nervous and journey's to destroy Harry and to make his last horcrux from him, but the plan backfired and he accidentally made Harry a Horcrux.

So, hopefully that helps just a little bit. My next entry will be about the Deathly Hallows, the items in which Voldemort was after, especially The Elder Wand.

(Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter... that only belongs to JK., and thanks to wikipedia for making my information finding easier... you try looking through 7 books, it's not easy.)