Always have a vivid imagination, for you never know when you might need it.

there is plenty to be learned even from a bad teacher: what not to do, how not to be

Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked.

Ron, we're supposed to show the first years where to go!" "Oh yeah," said Ron, who had obviously forgotten. "Hey -- hey you lot! Midgets!

Stone dead," said Howard, as though there were degrees of deadness, and the kind that Barry Fairbrother had contracted was particularly sordid.

Yeah, but coming from Dudley that's like "I love you.

Some of the furor that surrounded a Harry Potter publication was fun.