When Filch wasn't guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like "breathing loudly" and "looking happy.

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

It’s cruel that I got to spend so much time with James and Lily, and you so little. But know this; the ones that love us never really leave us. And you can always find them in here

Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes.

My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.

And it’s Johnson, Johnson with the Quaffle, what a player that girl is, I’ve been saying it for years but she still won’t go out with me —” “JORDAN!” yelled Professor McGonagall. “Just a fun fact, Professor, adds a bit of interest —

He put his foot on one pedal, scooted a few yards and swung his other leg over the saddle. He soared left into the vertiginously sloping hillside road and sped, without touching his brakes ... The hedgerows and sky blurred; he imagined himself in a velodrome as the wind whipped his hair clean...