Harry Potter

Basic Facts

Age: From 11 in the first movie to a strapping lad of 17 in Harry Potter & The Deathly Hollows

House: Gryffindor

Quiddich Position: Seeker

Wand: Holly & Phoenix Feather

Scar: Lightning Bolt

The Boy Who Lived

Sorcerer's Stone

Even as a baby, Harry displays the defining characteristic of almost any movie hero: he's almost impossible to kill. One evening, while he's in his crib, the biggest bad in the Wizard World of Harry Potter, Voldemort, bursts in. After murdering both of Harry's parents, Voldemort turns to little H.P., and tries to kill him with a single spell. Something not only saves Harry, but turns the spell around on Voldemort and does something horrible to him which we're not told about. Rest assured, it's evil magic and it does something horrible. The spell has a side effect of giving Harry a pretty awesome lightning-bolt scar that will allow people to easily identify him as a not to be magic'ed with in the future. Either way, Harry's parents are still dead.

Dumbledore, the head of Hogwarts, takes young Harry, and gives him to the most annoying people in England, his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. He also has a pretty awful cousin. They treat him like an indentured servant for about 11 years, and that's where the first movie starts.

One day, about a million letters arrive at Harry's house all delivered by owl. Get used to owls, they're kind of a big deal in these movies. Anyway, all these letters invite Harry to come to a boarding school for wizards, the Hogwarts school for Witchcraft and Wizardry. For some reason, even though the Dursley's hate Harry, they don't want him to go and they flee from all the owls. Eventually a 1/2 giant named Hagrid arrives and takes Harry to school. Harry meets a bunch of li'l wizards, including his soon to be best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He also meets Serverus Snape, a wizard that basically has "I am evil... or AM I?" embroidered on the back of his robe in glowing green letters. The trio investigate a mysterious hidden room in Hogwarts and a conspiracy involving some of the teachers. They discover that the room houses an underground passage at the end of which is a magical relic than can bring Voldemort back to power. It is known as the Sorcerer's Stone, unless you are in England in which case it is the Philosopher's Stone.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron find that some teacher has already entered the passage. Assuming it is Snape, they decide that instead of getting a teacher who knows how to fire a wand they will go themselves. They nearly die by means of key, poison, and chess. They finally reach the room and find it is another teacher, Professor Quirrell, who is trying to steal the stone. He isn't going to be able to do it, though, since the stone is tied to a magic mirror that only gives you your heart's desire, and only if that is pure. Foolishly, Harry purely desires the Stone to "save" it and thus gives Quirrell a chance to take it. Harry manages to stop him by burning his face off. Voldemort's soul, which has manifested as another face on the back of Quirrell's head, runs away.

Also, at some point, Harry becomes amazingly awesome at Wizard Football, which is called Quiddich. Basically Harry is king of the school at the end of the movie and is friends with everyone except for Snape--he just hates Harry--and this one jerk albino kind.

The Chamber of Secrets

In the second movie, Harry and his friends are back at the whole mystery solving thing during their second year at Hogwarts. This time the movie takes a page out of In The Heat Of The Night and ratchets up the racial tensions. People who can't use magic are called "muggles", which is one of those "okay" ethnic slurs in the Harry Potter world, apparently, and something in Hogwarts is turning all the wizard kids with muggle parents to stone. For some reason, Harry gets blamed and has to clear his name. While all this is going on, Harry's future girlfriend Ginny Weasley enters Hogwarts, and finds a magic book. Then she goes missing, and it looks like the the villain is not going to be Voldemort, but it turns out it is. His pubescent ghost is living in the book and it was commanding a pretty awesome looking giant snake to kill all the muggle born kids, because on top of being generally evil, Voldemort is super racist. He's establishing himself as the Wizard Hitler to Harry's Wizard Jesus. Anyway, Harry kills the hell out of the snake (using a sword, not magic!) and then takes the snake's tooth and blows up the magic book. Everyone is feeling pretty good about themselves.

The Prisoner of Azkaban

In the third movie an all around bad-ass named Sirius Black breaks out of a wizard prison called Azkaban. This is a place where the gaurds are Nazgul, but they can't call them that, because of lawyers. No, they're called Dementors, and they're actually kind of scary. They eat happiness. Seriously, thats what they eat. Anyway, Sirius Black breaks out and goes looking for Harry Potter. Harry decides he's going to go looking for Black, because he finds out that Sirius helped Voldemort (there he is again!) kill Harry's parents. I know who I'm betting on in this fight. Anyway, when they finally meet Sirius reveals that he escaped Azkaban by turning into a dog, he's Harry's godfather, and Ron's pet rat actually helped kill Harry's parents. The pet rat is a dude, and that dude is working for Voldemort, so I am chalking this one up to him again. Then Sirius Black gets eaten by a Dementor, and a Gryphon gets killed, so Harry and Hermione travel back in time (magic!) and save them both. Yay! Happy ending.

The Goblet of Fire

The fourth movie focuses on the wizard Olympics, and Harry is forced to compete. In this movie, Harry shows that, like most dorks with glasses who dress up with wizards, he's into Asian girls and tries to make out with this girl Cho Chang. She's not having it, because she is a trend setter, and in 2005 is all about Cedric Diggory played by Robert Pattison. They go through some pretty cool stuff, like stealing eggs from a dragon (you know, like the old saying), and saving their friends who the Wizard Olympic Committee decided it would be okay to endanger with water goblins for sport. Harry and Diggory go into a big magic hedge maze in the finals and find the titular Goblet. OH NO... turns out it was booby-trapped by, well, I want you to try and guess. Anyway, Voldemort (I bet you guessed) kills Diggory so he can be in an equally successful franchise somewhere else and then sacrifices his body to bring him back to life. Then Harry and Voldemort wizard-fight, and Harry basically draws? Which is still impressive, I mean, he's just a kid. It turns out is just because their wands came from the same phoenix, an excuse so dumb Rowling later retconned it to be that Harry can't die until he is seventeen, which is somehow less dumb(?). Anyway, Harry gets the hell out of there and tells everyone that Voldemort is back. No one believes him about the whole Voldemort thing, and the movie ends sad.

The Order of the Pheonix

In this movie, Voldemort is running around causing all kinds of trouble for Harry. No one believes that Voldemort is back, though, because everyone has a case of magical denial. And magical "Blame Harry Potter." But then Harry finds out all the cool grownups, Sirius Black, Dumbledore, cranky ol' Snape, do believe him and they have an awesome secret society about fighting dark wizards. It's kind of like the Justice League, but with more Gary Oldman. Anyway, Harry steals this idea and forms a group of students to fight off Voldemort in case the far more powerful and skilled adults can't do it. Good thinking, H.P.! It kind of works, though, because Cho Chang ends up kissing him even though he kind of got her old boyfriend killed. There's not much of a mystery, but there is a big fight in a big building full of magic, where Voldemort's girlfriend kills Sirius Black. Then Cho breaks up with him. Way to go, Harry. This one also ends sad for our hero.

To Harry's credit, he does vindicate Dumbledore, who had been fired for letting Harry start a militia to fight Voldemort who the government denies was still alive. The world-class bitch who briefly took Dumbledore's spot--Dolores Umbridge--gets beaten up and gang raped, but not before she scars Harry's hand so we don't feel bad about it(?).

The Half Blood Prince

In this one, Harry is less concerned with mysteries and evil than he is with cheating out of some book he found belonging to The Half Blood Prince. He's using it and getting total As, or whatever wizards get in school, on all his potions tests. He also spends a lot of time crushing on his best friend's little sister Ginny (not cool, bro). Eventually, though, Harry gets drawn into a quest to find all the pieces of Vodemort's soul which are in little baubles all over the world. He and Dumbledore go looking for one of them in a scary cave and there's a pretty cool water goblin fight. They find it and blow it up, but I guess Voldemort knew they would do that so there's a bunch more pieces that Harry and Dumbledore are going to have to find in the next two movies. In the mean time, though, that albino kid I mentioned earlier has been acting really weird, and it turns out that it's because he's going to kill Dumbledore. He doesn't, though! Ha! Snape does. Oops. Turns out Snape is evil, after all. Or is he? Either way, Harry goes after him and tries to fight Snape, and swears vengence, but Snape kind of kicks Harry's ass and tells him that he was cheating out of Snape's old book and that he does not approve. Harry lives, though, and after a funeral for Dumbledore, he drops out of Hogwarts to go find Snape and the rest of the pieces of the soul and blow them up once and for all. This one is also kind of sad, but in an Empire Strikes Back kind of way.

Deathly Hallows Part I

Harry, Hermione, and Ron kill a few more pieces of Voldemort's soul, called horcruxes. Harry fights the ablino kid and beats the little shit's ass. Also, Hedwig--the cute owl--gets death cursed in the beak. The whole point of this is to get rid of exposition for part 2, meaning it is like homework you have to do to enjoy the rest of the series. Except you don't have a magic book to cheat with! Or do you?

Deathly Hallows Part II

After killing a horcrux stored at Gringotts and camping out with Dumbledore's brother (who is on the wizard government's Registered Sex Offenders List for magical bestiality involving a goat), Harry and his two friends go to Hogwarts for a final battle with Voldemort and his (now enormous) army, called Death Eaters. Most of the school joins in on his side and all of the remaining Horcruxes are killed save one--Harry himself. Turns out, Voldemort zapped his own soul into Harry when he tried to kill him as a baby. Harry lets Voldemort kill him, but Dumbledore meets him in heaven, gives him a pep talk, says that he can live even though the evil part died, and sends him back to Earth.

Harry Potter 'action' poster

Apparently Dumbledore told Snape to kill him because he didn't want Draco to be corrupted and Draco would gain possession of an ultra-powerful wand Dumbledore had by killing him. Voldemort was going to kill the owner of the wand so he could get its power, but instead he kills Snape (who knows it will happen, but didn't tell anyone because he loved Harry's mom). But through a series of events orchestrated by Severus and Albus, the wand's power wasn't with Snape and thus wasn't transferred. As a result, Voldemort has a supernatural weapon malfunction and gets lasered to death by our favorite wizard.

Epilogue

Ron and Hermione marry. So do Harry and Ginny. They all have kids. The world is good again.