Harry Potter Facts

1, WHEN Arthur Weasley takes Harry and his pals to the Ministry of Magic they must first dial a secret code into a telephone keypad. He enters the number 62442. The letters underneath those numbers on a standard mobile phone spell out the word "magic".

2, IF a muggle spotted Hogwarts, they would just see an old ruin with a sign "Keep out, dangerous building".

3, NATALIE McDonald, who appears on page 159 of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, was a real person.

She was a nine-year-old girl from Toronto, Canada, who was dying of leukaemia. She wrote to JK Rowling asking what was going to happen in the next Harry Potter book as she would not live long enough to read it.

The kindly author emailed back, but Natalie had died a day earlier. In tribute, she became a first-year student at Hogwarts named by the Sorting Hat in Gryffindor - the house for the brave at heart - in the fourth book. When Rowling was later in Canada for a promotional tour she visited the McDonald family.

4, LORD Voldemort is definitely NOT Harry's dad. Rowling has a retort for anyone who develops this theory: "You lot have been watching much too much Star Wars."

5, HERMIONE'S Patronus is an otter because JK Rowling likes otters and sees herself in Hermione.

6, ROWLING named the driver and conductor of the Knight Bus after her grandfathers, Ernie and Stanley.

7, WIZARDS find garden gnomes a pest because they eat the roots of plants, and, like moles, make little piles of earth.

8, QUIDDITCH started in the 11th century at a place called Queerditch Marsh, which is not marked 

on muggle maps because wizards have made the place unplottable. Originally it was quite a crude game played on broomsticks with just the quaffle.

9, TWIN jokers Fred and George, the owners of Diagon Alley's new Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, celebrate their birthday on the stupidest day of the year, April Fool's Day.

10, SIRIUS Black is named after the brightest star in the night's sky, also known as the Dog Star. This is very apt since when Sirius used his skills as an animagus he turns into a big black dog.

11, LILY Evans was the name of Harry's mum, before she married James Potter. She's no relative of minor character Mark Evans.

12, PEEVES was never a living person. He is not a ghost but an indestructible spirit of chaos, who can unscrew chandeliers, throw walking sticks and generally cause mayhem.

13, DEMENTORS don't breed but grow, like fungus, where there's decay.

14, DUMBLEDORE is an old English word for a bumble-bee. JK Rowling says she believes this suits the Hogwarts head because "one of his passions is music and I imagined him walking around humming to himself."

15, THE most Ordinary Wizarding Levels a witch or wizard can receive is 12.

16, USUALLY, wizard children are educated at home before attending Hogwarts at 11, because they cannot be trusted to keep their magical abilities hidden from muggle schoolmates. For example, the Weasleys were taught at The Burrow by Mrs Weasley.

17, THERE are about 3,000 wizards in Britain.

18, THE four houses at Hogwarts correspond to the four elements. Gryffindor is fire, Ravenclaw is air, Hufflepuff is earth and Slytherin is water.

19, MEMBERS of the Order of the Phoenix communicate using their patronuses. They are the only wizards who know how to use their spirit guardians in this way and were taught to do so by Dumbledore, who invented this method of communication. The patronus is an efficient messenger because it is effective against the dark arts, not hindered by physical barriers, and each is unique - so there's never any doubt as to who sent it. Dumbledore's patronus was a phoenix.

20, PROFESSOR Flitwick is so short because he has goblin ancestry, probably through his great-great-great-grandfather.

21, DEAN Thomas always thought he was a muggle after being raised by his mother and his stepfather when his father walked out on the family when Dean was very young.

What he doesn't know is that his wizard father never told his wife what he was because he wanted to protect her. He was killed by Death Eaters when he refused to join them.

22, IN the world of wizard wonga there are 29 bronze knuts to a silver sickle and 17 sickles to a gold galleon. In muggle money a galleon is worth about £5. But exchange rates can vary.

23, HARRY could not see the thestrals until his fifth year because it was only then he really appreciates what deaths mean. He was in his cot, so he never saw his parents die - just flashes of green light. He didn't see Professor Quirrell die. Only when he witnessed Cedric Diggory's death, and it had sunk in over the summer, could he see the thestrals.

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24, COLIN Creevey's camera runs not off batteries but off the magical atmosphere at Hogwarts. Then he develops the photos in a magic developing potion which allows the figures inside the picture to move.

25, A PUFFSKEIN'S favourite food is bogies. A puffskein is a big fluffy yellow ball of fur from which a long tentacle emerges when it's looking for food.

26, DUMBLEDORE'S brother Aberforth is the barman at the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade. He smells of goats.

27, THERE are 10 different species of dragons in the magical world of Harry.

28, HERMIONE'S cat, Crookshanks, is not just a normal cat - he's half-kneazle. A kneazle is a very intelligent cat-like creature which sniffs out suspicious characters very quickly and reacts very badly to them. When a kneazle takes a liking to a witch or wizard it makes an excellent pet.

29, THE Death Eaters were once called the Knights of Walpurgis.

30, HARRY'S middle name is James, Hermione's is Jane, Ginny's is Molly - after her mother - and poor old Ron's is Bilius.

31, THE core of Hermione's wand is dragon heartstring, so Harry, Ron and Hermione unite the three Ollivander wand cores.

32, WIZARDS need money because there are laws about what can and cannot be conjured out of thin air - and the item conjured will not last.

33, MAGIC cannot bring dead people back to life. So no matter how powerful a wizard Harry becomes, he will never bring his parents back to life.

34, DEMELZA Robins, the Gryffindor Chaser in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, is named after Daniel Radcliffe's favourite charity: the Demelza House Children's Hospice, which cares for terminally ill youngsters in Kent, East Sussex and South London.

35, JK Rowling, Harry Potter and actor Daniel Radcliffe all share the same birthday, July 31.

36, THE first names of the Hogwarts founders Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin are Godric, Helga, Rowena, and Salazar.

37, TO remove the tail that Hagrid gave Dudley in the hut on the rock, the Dursleys went to a private hospital where the staff were very discreet and said that a wart had got out of control.

38, THE animal that an animagus turns into is a reflection on their personality.

39, NEARLY-HEADLESS Nick was beheaded - well, almost - for messing up a bit of dentistry. He was trying to straighten Lady Grieve's teeth, but instead she sprouted a tusk. When his head was on the block the executioner swung his axe 45 times but still didn't completely remove it from Nick's neck.

40, AZKABAN is in a very cold sea to the north of the NorthGINNY'S full first name is not Virginia, but Ginevra.

41, A MAGICAL quill detects the birth of every magical child, and records it in a book. Then Professor McGonagall sends an owl to each child when he or she turns 11.

42, A WAR took place in the wizarding world at the same time as the Muggle Second World War. The evil wizard Grindelwald was finally defeated by Dumbledore in 1945, the same year as Hitler's downfall.

43, RON was amazed to hear that Tom Riddle received an award for special services to Hogwarts, saying jokingly: "Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would've done everyone a favour." He DID murder Myrtle, through the Basilisk.

44, THERE'S more than meets the eye to Aunt Petunia. But she's not a squib - offspring of a wizarding family who are not able to practise magic themselves.

45, HARRY is frequently told he "has his mother's eyes". Lily Potter's eyes were startling green and almond-shaped. Harry's inherited facial features will turn out to be vital to the plot.

46, WHEN Dumbledore heard Voldemort had used Harry's blood to come back to life there was a "gleam of triumph" in his eyes. It could mean the Dark Lord has already sealed his own fate.

47, IF JK Rowling writes an eighth Potter book it will be an encyclopaedia of the wizarding world to use up all the background on characters left out of the books.

48, WEST Ham United is the only football club mentioned in the books - in honour of one of JKR's oldest friends, Troy, who supports them. She also lends her name to one of the Irish Quidditch players along with other old mates Moran and Quigley.

49, GINNY'S first name is not Virginia, but Ginevra.

50, JK Rowling has one more book to write in the series. But she has already written the last chapter - and the final word is "scar."