It's a kind of magic

If Hogwarts is all hogwash to you, this handy A to Z will have you bluffing with the best of them - young and old - about the Mirror of Erised, Hagrid, the Dursleys, the game of Quidditch and just how it came about that JK Rowling's Harry has sent the world potty Ais for AOL Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Brothers, producers of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It is also for Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, where many of the outdoor scenes of Quidditch matches (see Q) were filmed. A is also, sadly for Anne, JK Rowling's mother who died of Multiple Sclerosis when she was 35. Author Rowling acknowledges that loss and missing parents loom large in her Potter books. At one point, orphan Harry looks into the Mirror of Erised (see E) and witnesses his parents for the first time. Asked what she herself would see if she looked into such a mirror, Rowling replied that she expected to see her mother, would tell her that she has a granddaughter, and that her own daughter Jo decided to write some books. "And guess what happened?"

Bis for bestseller, naturally, as the four Potter books (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) have between them sold in excess of 100million copies worldwide, been translated into 47 languages and sold in 200 countries. B is also for broomstick (Harry's own is a special Nimbus Two Thousand), an essential tool for the lethal game of Quidditch; for Bloomsbury, the British publishers of the Harry Potter series; for the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, where many of the film's interior shots took place; and for beans (Every Flavour Beans), Harry's first taste of magical sweets and whose flavours include curry, grass, baked bean, sardine, toast, brussel sprout and vomit.

Cis for Coca-cola who paid (pounds) 103million for the marketing rights to Harry Potter although Rowling prevented them from being able to put Harry Potter's face actually on their bottles and cans. It is also for Coltrane (Robbie), who plays Hagrid in the film (see H) and Columbus (Chris), the film's director. A veteran director of children's films (including Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire), Columbus beat off competition including Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters ) and Terry Gilliam to nab the post vacated by Steven Spielberg, much to the consternation of many of Harry Potter's website fans. Regarded as a safe option who could not do justice to the books darker elements, Columbus has a lot to prove. But at least he wanted to keep the book essentially English, unlike Spielberg who wanted to Americanise the whole thing, putting Harry in an American school and having him played by Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense).

Dis for the Dursleys (below), Vernon and Petunia, Harry's wicked aunt and uncle who bring him up after he is dumped on their doorstep as a baby, and their own horrible son, Dudley, who is completely spoiled rotten and who regularly bullies Harry. It is also for Dumbledore (Professor Albus), the headmaster of Hogwarts School (see H). He is the greatest of all the wizards, "famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the 12 uses of dragon's blood and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel". He is more than 100 years old and enjoys ten-pin bowling and chamber music. He is also Harry's greatest protector, a tall, thin, silver-haired man in a purple cloak who nevertheless saw fit to deliver the baby Potter to the doorstep of the hapless, cruel Dursleys on the death of Harry's parents. D is also for the Dark Arts, the very opposite of Harry's magical powers, and for Diagon Alley where Harry goes shopping for his magical books and school uniform.

Eis for the Mirror of Erised (desire backwards). If you gaze into this mirror, you will be able to see what you desire most in the world. On Christmas night, Harry sneaks into a strange room at Hogwarts under his Invisibility Cloak (see I) and finds the mirror. When he looks into it, he rather poignantly sees his family for the first time, his father James and mother Lily who were killed by the evil Voldemort (see V) on Halloween, 1981. "The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness." E is also for Edinburgh, where Rowling made her home after leaving Portugal and her husband, and where she wrote the first Harry Potter book.

Fis for Fluffy, the monstrous three-headed dog which guards the secret on the third floor corridor on the right-hand side of Hogwarts School. It is also for Fang, Hagrid's huge dog (which he describes as cowardly) and Filch (Argus), the school caretaker. Harry and his friends must dodge Filch or he will report them for misdemeanors and lose them valuable house points, or worse, give them away to Professor Snape (see S). Filch is an expert on Hogwarts' secret passageways and owns a cat called Mrs Norris (see N), a "scrawny, dust-coloured creature with bulging lamp-like eyes just like Filch's". She too sneaks about and gives the pupils away if she spots them. F is also for the Forbidden Forest, the area of dark woodland just outside Hogwarts School and which, as its name suggests, is out- of-bounds to pupils.

Gis for Gryffindor, Harry Potter's house at his school, Hogwarts (see H). There are four houses in all - Gryffindor for the brave at heart, Hufflepuffs for the just and loyal, Ravenclaw for those of wit and learning, and Slytherin for cunning folk. G is also for the Gringott's Bank which is guarded by goblins, and which held a secret package until the day Harry was taken to Hogwarts by Hagrid (see H), and for the Golden Snitch, the aim of the Quidditch game. It is small and gold, with silver wings which flies out of the players' reach.

His for Hagrid, Harry's trusty ally, the keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts. He is the enormous, twice-the-size-of-normal- men motorbike rider who carries Harry to Professor Dumbledore on the fateful night of Harry's parents' death. He lives in the grounds of Hogwarts, having been expelled for some unexplained reason (probably because he's not that bright), and is very fond of dragons. He can be duped by almost anyone and it is amazing that he is entrusted with quite so many secrets and responsible jobs. H is also for Hogwarts itself, the School of Wizards and Witchery that Harry is brought to by Hagrid on his 11th birthday, for Hedwig, Harry's trusty owl at Hogwarts, which carries important messages for him to the outside world and for critic Holden (Anthony) who loathes the Potter books and described them as "marginally less testing than watching Neighbours".

I is for Invisibility Cloak, a "shining, silvery cloth", "like water woven into material". When the wearer puts it on, he or she disappears - pretty self-explanatory then. Harry uses the cloak to slip around the school unseen by Filch or Mrs Norris, and comes across the Mirror of Erised while wearing it.

Jis for Jessica, JK Rowling's eight-year-old daughter, whom she named after Jessica Mitford, the sister of Nancy Mitford, and a revolutionary communist. Rowling read her autobiography as a teenager and said that "basically it had every single possible component you could want as a 13-year-old left-winger".

Kis for King's Cross Station, where you catch the train to Hogwarts at Platform 93/4. It is also the station where JK Rowling's parents first met. It was the scene of saw the beginning of the huge publicity exercise surrounding Rowling's fourth Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as a huge steam train, decked in Potter regalia, headed off on tour around the country. K is also for Knowles (Stephen), the scriptwriter of the first Potter film, charged with transforming Rowling's book into a celluloid narrative without damaging the original in any way or attracting the ire of the author herself, who, so film stories go, was very much a presence on set and was consulted "with as much reverence as the Oracles at Delphi".

Lis for Lewis (CS), author of the greatly loved seven Narnia Stories, beginning with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, magical tales for children with which Rowling's stories have often been compared. Lewis, however, was also an academic famous for The Allegory of Love and his use of Christian symbolism anchored his Narnia books too - you'd be hard pressed to look for something quite so deeply intellectual in Rowling's series. Born in 1898, Lewis married Joy Davidman late in life who soon died from cancer. The story of their relationship was told in the film Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Davidman. L is also for the Leaky Cauldron, the famous wizard's pub found in Diagon Alley and where Harry first meets Professor Quirrel (see Q).

Mis for Muggles, merchandise, McGonagall (Professor), Malfoy (Draco) and Matell. Muggles are we, foolish mortals with no magical powers whatsoever. The Dursleys are Muggles, unlike Harry, his mother and his father. Sometimes a magical child can be half-Muggles like Seamus Finnegan, a fellow Gryffindor pupil who was brought up by his witchy grandmother. Professor Minerva McGonagall was also present at the handing over of baby Harry to the Dursleys and is Dumbledore's right-hand woman. She is strict and scary, and the teacher of Transformation (see T). Draco Malfoy is a spoiled rich boy in Slytherin Hall (see S) who despises Harry and his friends and constantly tries to bully them. It is while rescuing Neville (see N) when he is being picked on by Malfoy that Harry is discovered as a natural on the broomstick and is chosen to play for his house in the first Quidditch game of the season. M for merchandise - well, if you haven't noticed the puzzles, games, sweets, bath products, duvet covers and Quidditch card games in the shops already, you soon will. As for Mattel, they paid an undisclosed fortune for the master toy licence for Harry Potter products, so expect toy stores to be full of one thing and one thing only this Christmas.

Nis for Nicolsons in Edinburgh, the cafe where, so the legend goes, the impoverished single parent Rowling used to go to write her Harry Potter because she couldn't afford the heating bills at home. Shouldn't be too much of a problem now though. N is also for Neville, Harry's cowardly, bumbling but well-meaning friend and the butt of most of Malfoy's bullying, although he wins out in the end. It is also for Mrs Norris, Filch's scrawny cat, and for name-change - in the US, the film will be known by the name of the book there, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Ois for Ollivanders, the wand shop in Diagon Alley, where Harry purchases his first wand. An 11-inch mix of holly and phoenix feathers, it produces red and gold sparks and its feathers were also used to make the wand of his arch-enemy, Voldemart. "The wand chooses the wizard, remember," Mr Ollivander warns Harry, prophetically.

Pis for Potter (what else?), the now infamous wizard school-boy Harry ("Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright- green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead which was shaped like a bolt of lightning"). It is also for the huge phenomenon he has now become. And for potions (see S for Snape), Privet Drive, the dull suburban street where Harry grows up with his hideous guardians, the Dursleys, and for plagiarism, a charge levelled at Rowling earlier this year by an American author who claimed Harry as her own invention. The case was dropped before it came to court.

Qis for Quirrell (Professor), the stammering, nervous young teacher in charge of "Defences against the Dark Arts" at Hogwarts. Q is also for Quidditch, a fast and dangerous game played up in the air with broomsticks, four balls and the Golden Snitch, described thus: seven players on each side, three of them are Chasers who go after a red ball called a Quaffle on their broomsticks. They try to get the Quaffle through a hoop in order to score a goal, which gives the team ten points. Each team also has one Keeper, who tries to stop the other team scoring, and two Beaters who try to protect their teams from the flying Bludgers, black balls which try to knock team players out. There is one Seeker in each team (Harry's own position), who must try to catch the Golden Snitch, worth 150 points. A game of Quidditch only stops when the Golden Snitch is caught.

Ris for Rowling, of course (the initials J and K stand for Joanne and Kathleen), the ex-teacher turned multi-millionaire authoress. Born in Bristol, Rowling came to Edinburgh after her short-lived marriage to Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes fell apart. The rest, as they say, is history. R is also for Radcliffe (Daniel), the young star chosen to play Harry after a huge search apparently rivalling the Gone with the Wind publicity search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara. Radcliffe had starred in a BBC adaptation of David Copperfield but his parents were not anxious for his schooling to be interrupted by more filming, so he didn't audition for the part of Harry. It was only when film producer David Heyman and Stephen Kloves were attending a performance of Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets in London, which Daniel was also attending with his father, that the two parties met up. They instantly recognised the Harry they wanted and managed to persuade Daniel's parents to let him make the film. As they say, you couldn't make it up.

Sis for Snape (Professor), who hated Harry's father James when they were both at Hogwarts together, despite the fact that James apparently saved the young Snape's life. But Harry is in the dark about this for most of the first book - he spends most of his time suspecting the professor in charge of potions of varying degrees of cruelty towards Quirrel and of being in league with the great enemy, Voldemart. S is also for Slytherin House, where Voldemart was housed as a young pupil and where the less attractive characters such as Draco Malfoy stay. Its association with the Dark Arts make it the most unappealing of houses and it is Gryffindor's great rival at Quidditch.

Tis for Tolkein (JRR), yet another writer of magical tales with whom Rowling has been compared. Born in South Africa, he taught at Oxford University from 1925. An expert in Anglo-Saxon literature and fluent in medieval languages, he first wrote The Hobbit about Bilbo Baggins, the amiable gnome, who is called upon to destroy a menacing dragon. Baggins is helped by a great wizard, Gandalf, and they re- appear in the great trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which seeks to create a history and mythology for Middle Earth. Like CS Lewis, Tolkein's work was underpinned by his academic interests. The forthcoming film of his trilogy may give Harry Potter a run for its money at the box-office. T is also for transfiguration, the chemical process taught by Professor McGonagall, by which objects can be made to change shape. Hermione quickly becomes an expert pupil in transfiguration, which helps save them all towards the end of the book.

Uis for the under-stair cupboard (right), the miserable space in which Harry is forced to live by his wicked relatives in Privet Drive. It is full of spiders and has no light inside it. Harry is only allowed out of the cupboard where he has slept for the first 11 years of his life, after a deluge of letters arrives, demanding that he be let out to use the extra upstairs bedroom, much to spoiled Dudley's dismay.

Vis for Voldemort, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Like Lucifer before him, Voldemort was once a shining star at Hogwarts before pride overtook him and he attempted to overthrow the powers of good with his expert knowledge of the Dark Arts. A fierce battle ensued between his own legions of wizards who defected to his side (Malfoy's parents were among his number although they later claimed they were bewitched and didn't know what they were doing). Voldemort killed Harry's father and mother and was about to kill the baby Harry too, but found he was somehow unable to. The most he was able to do was smite baby Harry across the forehead, leaving him with his lightning bolt mark. Then as Voldemort fled, Dumbledore ordered Hagrid to collect Harry and deliver him to the Durselys' house for safe keeping. But Harry is well aware that Voldemort will always want him dead, and even though he meets up with his great enemy in the first book and challenges him, Voldemart remains undefeated, still roaming the world, waiting for a chance to kill him.

Wis for the Weasley brothers (Bill, Charlie, the twins Fred and George, Percy, a prefect at Hogwarts and Ron, Harry's best friend), wizard and wand, and for Whitbread, which offers an annual literary prize. Rowling won the Children's Literary Award for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last year, and went on to be nominated for the Whitbread Book of the Year award.

X is for that magic ingredient, the X factor, which has turned a seemingly innocuous set of children's books about a boy wizard into a global phenomenon grossing millions of pounds. Children's literature has been full of fantasy elements since the year dot, but inexplicably, this is the one that has really taken off.

Yis for You-Know-Who, the name that everybody but Harry uses for Voldemort, too scared to say his name out loud. Harry has no time for this at all, at one time shouting Voldemort's name as loudly as he can.

Zis for Zeitgeist, a feeling for the spirit of the times that Rowling clearly has, with her New Age spin on ancient tales of wizardry and wands. The forces of light pitched against darkness may be the mainstay for many tales of old, but its use here has guaranteed Harry Potter will be almost as famous as King Arthur, Merlin, the Sword in the Stone and any other ancient magical warrior for years to comeu

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