I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.

Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.

We did it, we bashed them wee Potter's the one, and Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!

The Chamber Of Secrets had been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

Witness for the defense, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

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.

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.