User:AleatoryPonderings/Potter plot summary

Harry Potter is a wizard who lives with the Dursleys, his aunt and uncle. The Dursleys are not wizards—they are Muggles, the wizards' term for non-wizards —but they know magic exists and are opposed to it. On Harry's eleventh birthday, Rubeus Hagrid brings him a letter inviting him to attend Hogwarts. The seven-book series chronicles Harry's seven years at Hogwarts and his adventures with friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

Earlier novels in the series have the same general plot. Harry begins the book with the Dursleys and escapes to begin his year at Hogwarts. There, he confronts a challenge related to Lord Voldemort, his nemesis—whose failed attempt to kill Harry as a baby gave him a lightning-shaped scar. Harry succeeds by the end of the book and heads back to the Dursleys' house. The series begins with Philosopher's Stone, in which Harry foils Voldemort's plan to acquire an elixir of life. It ends with Deathly Hallows, in which Voldemort is finally killed after Harry destroys his horcruxes: magical objects that preserve a person's life by storing a portion of their soul.

The Harry Potter novels portray two distinct worlds: the Muggle world and the wizards' world. Although they sometimes intermingle, these worlds are separate. Wizards use magic instead of technology and inhabit a world populated with legendary creatures and characterized by motifs drawn from British history. Muggles live in a world like the contemporary world. The literary scholar Suman Gupta adds a third world: the reader's world.