The lexicon
Glossary
Pocket definitions for readers who want the word without a chapter pasted underneath it.
Institutions
- Auror
- A ministry officer who investigates dark magic. Closer to a specialist detective than to a school prefect.
Language
- Muggle
- The ordinary British word in the novels for a person who has no magic.
- Squib
- A person born to magical parents who does not develop magic. Not a synonym for muggle.
- Muggle-born
- A witch or wizard with non-magical parents. The neutral term. The stories also show a slur used against them.
- Pure-blood
- A claim of entirely magical ancestry. In the stories it is both a family boast and a political weapon.
- Half-blood
- Mixed magical and non-magical ancestry. Many central characters fit this description, including people who police the term.
Magic
- Dementor
- A creature that feeds on happiness and is used, disturbingly, as a prison guard.
- Patronus
- A protective charm shaped from a happy memory, often taking an animal form.
- Horcrux
- An object tethering a life outside a body. A plot device built on murder. This glossary stops at the definition.
- Animagus
- A witch or wizard who can take a specific animal shape. Rare, registered in theory, and not the same as a werewolf.
- Portkey
- An ordinary object enchanted to transport whoever touches it at the right moment.
- Apparition
- Magical travel by disappearing and reappearing. The stories treat it as a skill with a splinching risk, not a casual hop.
- Pensieve
- A basin for viewing memories pulled from a mind. Useful, and easy to mistake for the whole truth of a person.
- Unforgivable Curses
- Three criminal curses in the stories, associated with control, pain, and killing. Named here as a legal category, not demonstrated.
Money
- Galleon
- The largest everyday coin in the wizarding currency shown in the books. Sickles and knuts are the smaller pieces.
- Butterbeer
- A sweet drink sold in the wizarding village near the school. Cozy on purpose.
School
- Howler
- A letter that shouts its message aloud, then destroys itself. Parental volume, enchanted.
- Prefect
- A student given limited authority over other students. A badge, a bathroom, and a great deal of personality.
Sport
- Seeker
- The Quidditch player who tries to catch the snitch.
- Snitch
- The small golden ball in Quidditch. Catching it scores heavily and usually ends the match.