July 14, 2011 3:00 pm

Highlights of Hogwarts: Harry Potter’s Best Spells, Coolest Creatures, Saddest Deaths, and More

By Alexandra Martell

Photo: Warner Bros.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final installment of the Harry Potter series, arrives in theaters tomorrow with Sturm und Drang, life-and-death stakes, and enough action sequences to leave Hogwarts looking like it barely survived the Blitz. Amid all the big explosions and dramatic climaxes, it’s easy to lose sight of the smaller moments, the lesser magical creatures, and the low-stakes spells that kept the Harry Potter universe robust and compelling over seven books and eight movies. So, on the occasion of the end, we put He Who Shall Not Be Named to the side in order to acknowledge some of the smaller stuff: the best transformations, the most awkward talks, the missing grandparents, and more. Please, add your own favorites in the comments.

We considered calling this category "coolest wizard," because Bellatrix may be batshit and malignant, but damn she's fun. In a cast full of brilliant British actors, Helena Bonham Carter hams it up even better than the rest of them by playing Bellatrix exactly as she's written in the books: gleefully deranged. We’d argue she gives Voldemort a run for his money when it comes to evil, as his kills are calculated and hers often seem like they're just for giggles.

Because we're not considering real-life transformations — if we were, Neville Longbottom's would be the clear winner. Who saw this coming? — our pick occurs in Goblet of Fire during the Tri-Wizard tournament, when Harry downs gillyweed and turns into a human fish. Growing gills appears a bit painful, but looks a lot cooler and less clunky than scuba gear.

Hard as it is to believe, even Hermione makes mistakes sometimes, a fact we first learned in Chamber of Secrets when she accidentally put a cat hair into her Polyjuice Potion. Her partial transformation actually looked cool: Whenever J.K. Rowling decides to come out of retirement, she should consider developing a species of half-cat creatures.

InThe Deathly Hallows Part 1, various members of the Order of the Phoenix drink Polyjuice potion to look like Harry and escape detection from the Death Eaters. Thus, the Weasley twins shrink down to Harry’s tiny height, Daniel Radcliffe ends up in a lacy bra, and seven versions of Harry make freaked-out faces at one another. Delightful.

All interpretations of the Harry Potter timeline put Harry’s parents in their early 20s when they died. That would make their parents, and Harry's grandparents, somewhere in the 40s to 60s range. Maybe all four of the grandparents were killed by the Dark Wizards, but you'd think the books might have mentioned that, if only to explain why Harry got stuck with his borderline-abusive Aunt Petunia instead.

In the novels, Tonks has a big impact on Harry: She makes him want to be an auror (a Dark Wizard catcher) when he graduates Hogwarts, she helps him out of many a jam, and she gives birth to his godson. Plus, with her pink, spiky hair and ability to change appearance at whim, she's just cool: the punkest member of the Order of the Phoenix. But in the movies she's just someone who picks Harry up from the Dursleys twice. Needless to say, her fate in the final film is far less moving than it is in the books.

First seen in the third movie, the long bridge separating the castle from Hagrid’s hut and the woods doesn’t exist in the book — but we wish it did. It added real beauty to the scenery of Hogwarts, helped explain why so many of Harry’s forest-adjacent antics go unseen by anyone at the castle, and is going to burn and crumble spectacularly in the final film.

A lot of people close to Harry have died throughout the series, and — not-really-spoiler-alert — lots more die in the final movie. But while Sirius and Dumbledore were both father figures to Harry, no character’s death was quite as touching as the sacrifice of this brave, persnickety little elf: Maybe it's because Harry couldn't cradle Dumbledore or Sirius quite like he could Dobby's tiny corpse.

An almost undetectable way of comfortably eavesdropping on other people? Someone figure out how to make these IRL.

Playing pranks, asking girls to a dance, opening a business — the Weasley twins do everything with style. So it’s only natural that they’d dress with flair, too, especially once they started earning their own money. No one else rocks dress robes quite like these two, an especially hard thing to do when trying to match them with ginger.

We would not wish these dress robes on our worst enemy. Well, maybe Voldemort.

We’re not condoning the use of violent, body-slashing spells against other people, but this spell, which Harry cast on Draco without really knowing what it would do, was interesting to watch in a Freddie Krueger type of way. It also served the bigger purpose of showing Harry that even good wizards must face the consequences of using bad spells, so at least there was a life lesson to go along with the gore.

Ron has gotten a lot of terrible hand-me-downs over the years, like too-small pajamas and a rat that was actually the evil wizard who sold out Harry’s parents to Voldemort. But his first wand was a pretty decent secondhand item, up until it broke in the second book and Ron found himself at the end of his own slug-puking curse.

How do you explain to your best friend why so many boys like his sister, when you are secretly in love with her yourself? Harry, faced with this dilemma, settled on telling Ron that Ginny had “nice skin.” Because apparently Harry was momentarily taking advice from the basketcase in Silence of the Lambs?

Introduced as a ghost who cried at the smallest mention of death in the second movie/book, Moaning Myrtle had become quite a creeper by the time Harry encountered her again in the fourth. A grown ghost snuggling up to a naked 14-year-old in the bathtub is about as kinky as Harry Potter ever gets.

Most first kisses are awkward. This is a fact of life. Harry and Cho’s first kiss, being scripted, could have been awkward in a charming way. Instead, their arms just hung at their sides like limp, broken wands while they leaned forward nervously. No wonder Cho cried. (Maybe it's Harry: His final kiss with Ginny isn't much better.)

The third installment in the series introduced us to a lot of magical animals, including the mythological hippogriff. Unlike many of the other creatures in Harry’s world, the regal hippogriff demands respect. If you give it to them, they'll give you an awesome flight. If you don't, they'll give you a nasty pecking.

While, yes, the death of a Voldermort or a Bellatrix may be more cathartic — they've been more evil, for longer than the Professor — the skin-disintegrating death of Quirrell in the very first book/movie was cooler-looking. Messier than plain-old Avada Kedavra and a lot more dramatic.

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Highlights of Hogwarts: Harry Potter’s Best Spells, Coolest Creatures, Saddest Deaths, and More

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