The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

You will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me.

The poor things keep calling in those – those pumbles, I think they're called – you know, the ones who mend pipes and things – " "Plumbers?" " – exactly, yes, but of course they're flummoxed.

Did you see me disarm Hermione, Harry?" "Only once" said Hermione stung. "I got you loads more then you got me—" "I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times—" "Well if you're counting the one where you tripped over your own feet and knocked the wand out of my hand—

I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.

Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life.

Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.