Movies - Harry Potter

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Harry James Potter (born 31 July 1980) is a fictional character and the protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He is the only child of James and Lily Potter. His name is not short for Harold. Harry has inherited his mothers' bright green eyes and his fathers' round glasses and unusually untidy jet black hair. In his younger years, Harry is described as small and skinny for his age. He also has a long thin scar in the middle of his forehead shaped like a bolt of lightning. This is the only physical mark Harry bears to his horrific and traumatic past. The scar was left by the Killing Curse cast by Lord Voldemort on 31 October, 1981, which killed both Harry's parents and destroyed the house.

Harry attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and his best friends are Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Harry's wand is eleven inches long, made of holly and contains a single phoenix feather.

Harry Potter has been portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe in all the Harry Potter films to date.

Biography

Prior to the Harry Potter novels

Harry is famous in the wizarding world for his encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort, one of the most powerful wizards of all time and the primary antagonist villain in the series, when he was just a year old. Voldemort mysteriously lost his powers in the encounter and was severely crippled, although he survived.

James and Lily Potter were killed in this incident in 1981 while trying to protect baby Harry from Voldemort's attack. James died first while dueling with Voldemort in the entrance hall of their house. Lily's dying act - choosing to sacrifice herself to save her infant son - placed Harry under an ancient magic that protected him. Subsequently, Avada Kedavra, the killing curse that Voldemort used against Harry, backfired on Voldemort and Harry survived. This resulted in the loss of Voldemort's powers (but, significantly, not his death), as well as his exile and eventual decline from a position of power and fear in the wizarding world. The incident led to Harry being heralded as a celebrity - "the boy who lived" - as he is the only person to ever survive the Avada Kedavra curse and as he is considered the cause of Voldemort's downfall. Harry bears a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead - the sole remnant of the incident.

Despite the fact that Harry survived Voldemort's attempted murder, until the fifth book he has no idea as to why Voldemort lost his powers - in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry confirms this fact when Voldemort questions him:

:I don't know why you lost your powers that night, but I know why you couldn't kill me...

After the death of his parents, Harry was forced to live with the only family he had left - his mother's sister, Petunia Dursley, and her husband, Vernon, in the small town of Little Whinging in Surrey, England. The Dursleys live at number four, Privet Drive in a large, impeccably maintained four-bedroom house and seem to be moderately well off. However, during Harry's first ten years, they neglected Harry in favor of their own son Dudley and in an attempt to remove all traces of Harry's magical self to make him "normal," they kept him fully isolated from the wizarding world and its influence.

It is in many ways important that Harry is a half-blood - that is, the offspring of one Muggle-born parent, and one pure-blooded parent. Through his father James, Harry is a descendant of the pure-blood Potter line, but his mother, Lily Evans (later Lily Potter) is a Muggle-born witch: a witch born into a non-magical family. Harry is therefore a half-blood, and this is significant to the plot in different ways.

Family

Harry James Potter was born on the 31st of July, 1980, to James and Lily Potter. Not much is known about Harry's relations. His mother was born Lily Evans, in a Muggle family, and after his parents' death, he was sent to live with his mother's sister, Petunia Dursley, and her family. Harry's father, James Potter, was born into a pure-blood wizarding family, to somewhat elderly (by wizarding standards) parents. This could possibly mean that Harry is distantly related to other pure-blood families through his father, as Sirius Black once told him that all the old pure-blood families are related through intermarriage. (See the Black family tree)

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Movies - Harry Potter

Biography

Prior to the Harry Potter novels

Family

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