Pictures & Biographies

If you don't know who Harry Potter is, than you have been living under a Harry Potter deprived rock for all these years...

But just incase some of you don't know who the characters are, or need a refresher, here they are...

Harry Potter played by Daniel Radcliffe-Harry rose to prominence on the night of October 31st, at the age of 15 months, when Lord Voldemort tried to kill him. His parents both died in the attack, with his mother specifically begging Voldemort to kill her instead of her son. Voldemort (never one for a fair deal), killed her and then tried to kill Harry anyway. Sadly for the Dark Lord, he has rather a dodgy memory and forgot that the sacrifice of a life in this way is a very powerful counter-curse. Hence his attempt to kill Harry simply rebounded on him. Interestingly enough it didn't kill him either (due to his progress on his life's work of achieving immortality), making them the only two people ever to have survived the Avada Kedavra curse.

Voldemort wanted to kill Harry because of a prophecy which stated that a child answering Harry's description would be the one who had the power to kill him, and he wanted to get in first. This makes it a shame for him that he made such a mess of it, but it didn't end there.

Not only did Harry survive, but many of Voldemort's powers passed into him, such as the ability to speak Parseltongue. This, along with Harry's exceptional wizarding heritage, has made Harry a young wizard of great ability in many areas, especially that of Defence Against the Dark Arts. He's not up to much at History of Magic or Potions though.

Probably as a result of his experiences (including repeated brushes with Voldemort), Harry has changed more than most of his peers during his time at Hogwarts. Whilst his friends have just steadily matured (perhaps with the odd glitch), Harry has turned from a wide-eyed idealistic 11-year-old into an angst-ridden raging adolescent. And what with Voldemort's latest trick having been to kill his godfather it's unlikely that he's going to calm down any in the near future.

Hermione Granger played my Emma Watson-Hermione is the cleverest girl in her year at Hogwarts. This fact, given that she’s Muggle-born, is of great annoyance to pure-blood enthusiasts such as Draco Malfoy, but after 5 years of it even he is coming to realise there’s not much he can do about it Hermione matured very quickly throughout her first year: she started off as an intensely irritating know-all, even going as far as standing up in lessons to indicate what answers she knew when putting her hand up didn’t seem to be enough.

Naturally enough, this made her somewhere equal in popularity amongst the students to Filch the caretaker. Following the Halloween incident where a troll broke into the castle and was taken on by Hermione with Harry and Ron, however, she gained her first friends and calmed down a little bit. Still keen to prove how much she knew, she at least curbed her instincts for telling off anybody who broke a school rule before even the teachers had a chance, and also turned her talents to helping her less able colleagues.

The result of this as the school years passed is a mature, friendly, helpful and sensible girl, although one with a barely-suppressed bossy streak and an occasional zeal for inappropriate missions to help those who don’t want helping (anybody care for a SPEW badge?). She even attracted the attentions of Viktor Krum despite him being several years older than her.

Ron Weasly played by Rupert Grint-Ron (along with Hermione Granger) is Harry's best friend at Hogwarts. They met at King's Cross station as Harry was about to make his first trip to the school. Harry didn't know how to get on to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and Ron and his mother helped him out. They sat together on the train and became friends from that point on. This process was no doubt helped by Harry's rejection of Draco Malfoy in favour of Ron during the journey.
Ron's an avid Quidditch fan (supporting the Chudley Cannons) but has less skill at the game himself than he'd like. Despite this, he finally managed to get into the Gryffindor team as their keeper in his fifth year. A nervous player, he faired poorly to begin with before pulling a good performance out of the bag in his third match to help his team to the Quidditch Cup.

Ron is tall, thin and angular, a very loyal (if occasionally hot-tempered) friend, and probably a half-decent wizard if only he wasn't hampered by having everything second-hand, including his wand. He's also fiercely protective of his younger sister Ginny.

Draco Malfoy played by Tom Felton (Middle in picture)-Malfoy is very aristocratic and snobbish. He is proud to be a pureblood and a Malfoy. He is quite confident of himself (which seems to be a family trait). He holds his head high, and is fast to put others down. Especially if they are not of pureblooded descent, like himself.

Draco is in the same year as Harry, however he is in Slytherin House. He is Harry's rival from the very first book, and the son of one of Voldemort's most avid supporters.

At first Draco tries to befriend Harry, when they first meet. However, when Draco acts supercilious in front of Harry, Harry rejects the offered friendship. After this, Draco never again attempts to befriend Harry.

Draco taunts Harry, and his to best friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. He insults them with such names as Scar head, Mud-blood, and Weasley, respectively. He especially enjoys calling Hermione a mud blood, since he so prides himself in being a pureblood.

Although he is confident, he definitely doesn't hold any Gryffindor courage. For example, in the first book, when he and Harry are serving detention in the dark forest, he runs as fast as his legs will carry him from the person drinking the unicorn blood.

Throughout the books, Malfoy seems to become even more like the anti thesis of Harry. He also becomes the Slytherin seeker. Unlike Harry though, he became a seeker because Lucius bought his way on the team. He became a seeker in his second year, Draco did.

Draco's taunts become more malevolent as the series continues, even egging on Harry against Sirius in book 3. Draco also gets very angry when Harry gets Lucius thrown into Azkaban.