Harry Potter

• 19 Sep 16:09
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Harry James Potter is the title character and the primary protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The main story of the books covers seven years in the life of the orphan who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard. He attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn magic under the guidance of the kind headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Harry also discovers that he is already famous throughout the wizarding world, and that his fate is tied with that of Lord Voldemort, the universally feared Dark wizard who killed Harry's mother and father.

According to Rowling, the idea for both the Harry Potter books and its eponymous protagonist came while waiting for a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. She stated that her idea for "this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me". While she fleshed out the ideas for her book, she also decided to make Harry an orphan who attended a boarding school called Hogwarts. She explained in a 1999 interview with The Guardian: "Harry had to be an orphan  — so that he's a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them ... Hogwarts...

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