Follow Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, the discovery of the magical world, and the early rules of friendship, secrecy, houses, and danger. You will build a first character map and track the clues that make the mystery work.

Track how the second book deepens Hogwarts history, prejudice against Muggle-borns, house identity, and the hidden past of Voldemort. The practical focus is spotting foreshadowing and separating rumor, evidence, and revelation.

Work through the third book’s tighter mystery, time travel, dementors, betrayal, and the Marauders’ backstory. You will practice building a timeline that keeps memory, testimony, and real events straight.

Follow the shift from school adventure to wider political danger through the Triwizard Tournament, international wizarding culture, and Voldemort’s return. This chapter shows how the series raises the stakes while still using sports, tests, and teenage life as story engines.

Study the Ministry’s denial, Dolores Umbridge’s control of Hogwarts, the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry’s anger and isolation. You will trace how power works through rules, newspapers, courts, schools, and fear.

Read the sixth book as both a school-year story and a preparation for war. This chapter follows Voldemort’s origin, Horcruxes, Draco’s mission, Snape’s role, and the way memory becomes evidence.

Follow the final book’s quest structure, the collapse of institutions, the Deathly Hallows, sacrifice, and the Battle of Hogwarts. You will connect long-running clues from the whole series into a final timeline of causes and consequences.

Build a clear guide to major characters, alliances, family ties, loyalties, and changes across the seven books. The focus is on how characters reveal themselves through choices, not just labels like hero, villain, or sidekick.

Look closely at spells, potions, magical creatures, objects, portraits, ghosts, house-elves, and limits on magic. This chapter helps you tell the difference between magic as worldbuilding, magic as plot device, and magic as symbol.

Study Hogwarts as a school, home, social system, and battleground. You will compare houses, classes, teachers, exams, discipline, hidden spaces, and student resistance across the series.

Trace the Ministry of Magic, Azkaban, the Daily Prophet, Gringotts, Wizengamot, and the laws that shape wizarding life. This chapter shows how bureaucracy, media, money, and punishment become central to the conflict.

Read blood status, house-elf labor, werewolf stigma, goblin relations, giants, centaurs, and squibs as social conflicts inside the story world. The goal is careful interpretation: what the books criticize, what they leave unresolved, and where readers disagree.

Track clues, prophecies, memories, unreliable witnesses, red herrings, and delayed reveals across the books. You will practice rereading like a serious fan, using notes, timelines, and pattern tracking without flattening the story into trivia.

See what changes when the books become films: casting, music, visual design, pacing, missing subplots, added scenes, and character emphasis. This chapter gives you a practical way to compare an adaptation without treating every difference as a mistake.

Cover the official companion texts, short writings, Wizarding World material, and the way online updates have expanded or complicated canon. You will sort useful context from material that conflicts with or stretches the original books.

Study the stage play as a continuation, a performance piece, and a controversial addition to canon. This chapter covers its time-travel plot, theater design, character choices, and why fans debate its place in the story.

Follow the prequel film series through Newt Scamander, magical creatures, Grindelwald, Dumbledore, and the politics of the 1920s wizarding world. The chapter also covers why the films changed the franchise’s scope and raised canon questions.

Look at major games, especially Hogwarts Legacy, as interactive versions of the wizarding world. This chapter covers player-created characters, open-world Hogwarts, game-only story choices, and how games sit beside book and film canon.

Cover fan fiction, fan art, podcasts, conventions, sorting quizzes, theory videos, archives, and reread communities. You will practice joining fan spaces with good etiquette around spoilers, credit, tagging, disagreement, and canon claims.

Handle the major public debates around the series with care: representation, race, gender, antisemitic readings of goblins, slavery themes, policing, and J. K. Rowling’s public statements about trans people. This chapter gives language for separating textual analysis, author context, reader harm, and personal choices about engagement.

Bring the whole course together by making a polished fan artifact: a character study, timeline, adaptation comparison, theory essay, reading guide, or annotated map. The project asks you to support claims with canon evidence and respond fairly to alternate readings.