Movies I like

Incomplete

Grenade

New Divide

My Favouite Song

Heaven on Earth
Pakistan is one of the biggest blessings of Allah for any Pakistani. Whatever we have today it’s all because of Pakistan, otherwise, we would have nothing. Please be sincere to Pakistan.
Pakistan Zindabad!




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BRAIN DAMAGING HABITS

>>1.No Breakfast.  People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.
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>>2.Overeating.  It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.
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>>3.Smoking  It causes multiple brain shrink ageand may lead toAlzheimer disease.
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>>4.High Sugar consumption.  Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.
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>>5.Air Pollution.  The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our 20 body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.
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>>6.Sleep Deprivation.  Sleep allows our brain to rest... Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death ofbrain cells...
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>>7.Head covered while sleeping.  Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects.
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>>8.Working your brain during illness.  Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.
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>>9.Lacking in stimulating thoughts.  Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.
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>>10.Talking Rarely.  Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain.
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>> The main causes of liver damage.
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>>1.Sleeping too late and waking up too late are main cause. 2.Not urinating in the morning. 3.Too much eating. 4.Skipping breakfast.
>>5.Consuming too much medication. 6.Consuming too much preservatives, additives, food colouring, andartificial sweetener.
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>>7.Consuming unhealthycooking oil.  As much as possible reduce cooking oil when frying, which includes even the best cooking oils like olive oil. Do not consume fried foods when you are tired, except if the body is very fit.
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>>8.Consuming raw (overly done) foods also add to the burden of liver.  Veggies should be eaten raw or cooked 3-5 parts. Fried veggies should be finished in one sitting, do not store.
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>>We should prevent this without necessarily spending more. We just have to adopt a good daily lifestyle and eating habits. Maintaininggood eating habitsand time condition are very important for our bodies to absorb and get rid of unnecessary chemicals according to 'schedule.'
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>>The top five cancer-causing foods
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>> 1.Hot Dogs. Because they are high in nitrates, the Cancer Prevention Coalition advises that children eat no more than 12 hot dogs a month. If you can't live without hot dogs, buy those made withoutsodium nitrate.
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>> 2.Processed meats and Bacon Also high in the same sodium nitrates found in hot dogs, bacon, and other processed meats raise the risk of heart disease. The saturated fat in bacon also contributes to cancer.
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>> 3.Doughnuts Doughnuts are cancer-causing double trouble. First, they are made with white flour, sugar, and hydrogenated oils, then fried at high temperatures. Doughnuts may be the worst food you can possibly eat to raise your risk of cancer.
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>> 4.French fries
>>Like doughnuts, French fries are made with hydrogenated oilsand then fried at high temperatures. They also contain cancer- causing acryl amides which occur during the frying process. They should be called cancer fries, not French fries.
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>>5.Chips, crackers, and cookies All are usually made with white flour and sugar. Even the ones whose labels claim to be free of trans-fats generally contain small amounts of trans-fats.
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>> PASS THIS TO ALL WHOM YOU LOVE & CARE FOR

Favourite Book

This is one of my Favourite Books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964 and in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin in 1967. The book was adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005. The book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was written by Roald Dahl in 1972. Dahl had also planned to write a third book in the series but never finished it.^[1]

The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays. Cadbury would often send test packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. At that time (around the 1920s), Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers and they each often tried to steal trade secrets by sendingspies, posing as employees, into the other's factory. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that inspired Dahl to write the story.^[2]

Plot

The story centers around an average boy named Charlie Bucket, who lives in extreme poverty with his extended family, and his adventures inside the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka. Fifteen years prior to the beginning of the story, Willy Wonka opened the largest chocolate factory in the world, but spies stole his recipes, so he eventually closed the factory to the public. Although, it wasn't closed forever and one day he decided to allow five children to visit the factory. Each child will win a lifetime supply of chocolate after the factory tour. The children have to find one of the five golden tickets hidden inside the wrapping paper of random Wonka bars. Augustus Gloop (a boy who eats constantly), Veruca Salt (a girl who is spoiled), Violet Beauregarde (a girl who chews gum all day),Mike Teavee (a boy who loves to watch television), and Charlie Bucket win tickets and visit the factory.

The factory is full of strange and fantastical rooms, including a chocolate-mixing room that looks like a huge garden, where everything is made of candy and there is a chocolate lake in the middle, a research and development room with dozens of complex machines designing new forms of candy, a nut-sorting room with an army of trained squirrels that sort the good nuts from the bad, and a TV studio-like room with a giant "Wonkavision" camera, which can teleport giant bars of chocolate into people's homes through their television. The factory is staffed by small, pygmy-like men called Oompa-Loompas. A pink Viking sugar boat and a special glass elevator (with walls covered in buttons) take the tour group from room to room; the elevator can go "up and down, sideways, slantways, and any other ways you can think of."

"Accidents" happen while on the guided tour. Augustus falls in the chocolate lake and gets accidentally sucked up and taken away to the room where they make the most delicious kind of strawberry-flavoured chocolate-coated fudge. Violet, ignoring Wonka's advice, tries some of his three-course-dinner gum in the R&D department and swells up like a blueberry upon reaching the blueberry pie dessert. Veruca tries to grab one of the trained squirrels that Wonka uses to crack nuts in The Nut Room and is thrown into the garbage chute in the direction of the incinerator (her parents are pushed in soon after). Mike tries to use the Wonkavision machine- a machine that sends chocolate bars via television and allows someone to literally take the bar from the screen- and ends up shrunken to about 6 inches high. Charlie, being the only child left and the one Wonka likes the most, wins the prize: he will one day take over the factory from Wonka, Wonka wanting to pass his factory on to someone else but wanting to choose a child so that he won't have to deal with an adult trying to do things his way rather than learn from Wonka's experience. Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe board the Great Glass Elevator, which bursts through the roof. As they float in the air, they witness the other four children returning home. The pipe has made Augustus thin as a straw, Violet is drained of her blueberry juice but her face is tinged purple, Veruca and her parents are covered with garbage, and Mike is overstretched and is now overtall and extremely skinny. Though the children got punished in accordance to their vices, Wonka does honor the terms of each Golden Ticket holder: a lifetime supply of Wonka candies, as each child and their parents are driving away in a truck full of Wonka chocolate. Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe then travel in the elevator to Charlie's house to fetch the rest of his family.

Lost chapter

In 2005, a very short chapter entitled "Spotty Powder", which had been removed during the editing of the book as it seemed too gruesome for younger readers, was published. The chapter featured the elimination of Miranda Piker, a "teacher's pet" with a headmaster father, allegedly one of several other children who Dahl originally created for the book but had to cut out due to size constraints.

In the chapter, Wonka introduces the group to a new sweet that will make children temporarily appear sick so they can miss school that day, which enrages Miranda and her father. They vow to stop the candy from being sold, and storm into the secret room where it is made. Two screams are heard and Wonka agrees with the distraught Mrs. Piker that they were surely ground into Spotty Powder, and were indeed needed all along for the recipe, as they had to "use one or two schoolmasters occasionally or it wouldn’t work." He then reassures Mrs. Piker that he was joking. Mrs. Piker is escorted to the boiler room by the Oompa-Loompas, who sing a short song about how delicious Miranda's classmates will find her.^[3]

Reception

Although the book has always been popular and considered a children's classic by many literary critics, a number of prominent individuals have spoken critically of the novel over the years. Children' novelist and literary historian, John Rowe Townsend, has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accused it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as black pygmies,^[4] although Dahl did revise this later. Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the candy that forms its subject matter, commenting that it is "delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare".^[5] Ursula K. Le Guin voiced her support for this assessment in a letter to Cameron.^[6] Defenders of the book have pointed out it was unusual for its time in being quite dark for a children's book, with the "antagonists" not being adults or monsters (as is the case even for most of Dahl's books) but the naughty children, who receive sadistic revenges in the end. A fan of the book since childhood, film director Tim Burton states; "I responded to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it respected the fact that children can be adults".^[7][8]

Adaptations

The book was first made into a feature film as a musical titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, directed by Mel Stuart, produced byDavid L. Wolper and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, character actor Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. Released worldwide on 30 June 1971 and distributed by Paramount Pictures (Warner Bros. is the current owner), the film had an estimated budget of $2.9 million. The film grossed only $4 million and, while it passed its budget, was still considered a box-office disappointment. However, as was noted in an article entitled; "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: From Inauspicious Debut to Timeless classic", exponential home video and DVD sales, as well as repeated television airings, the film has since developed into a cult classic.^[9]Concurrently with the 1971 film, a line of candies was introduced by the Quaker Oats Company in North America, Europe, and Oceania that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing. Presently sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealandand Canada, the candies are produced in the United States, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Brazil, byNestlé.^[10]

In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developers Soft Option Ltd and publisher Hill MacGibbon.

Another film version, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and directed by Tim Burton, was released on 15 July 2005; this version starredJohnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket. The Brad Grey production was a hit, grossing about $470 million worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 million. It was distributed by Warner Bros. The 1971 and 2005 films are consistent with the written work to varying degrees. The Burton film, in particular, greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal back-story. Both films, likewise, heavily expanded the personalities of the four "bad" children and their parents from the limited descriptions in the book. A video game based on Burton's adaptation was released on July 11, 2005.

This book has adapted frequently for the stage, most often as plays or musicals for children, and a radio production for BBC Radio 4 in the early 1980s. These are often titled Willy Wonka or Willy Wonka Jr. They almost always feature musical numbers by all the main characters (Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Violet, etc.). Many of the songs are revised versions from the 1971 film. A new professional musical is currently under development and is expected to premiere in 2011 in London.^[11]

The Estate of Roald Dahl also sanctioned an operatic adaptation of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory called The Golden Ticket. The Golden Ticket was written by American composer Peter Ash and British librettist Donald Sturrock. The Golden Ticket has completely original music and was commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Lawrence Edelson - Producing Artistic Director, and Felicity Dahl. The opera received its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on June 13, 2010, in a co-production with American Lyric Theater and Wexford Festival Opera.^[12]

On 1 April 2006, the British theme park, Alton Towers, opened a family boat ride attraction themed around the story.^[13] The ride features a boat section, where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests enter one of two glass elevators, where they join Willy Wonka as they travel the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof.

http://youtu.be/eVTXPUF4Oz4

These Are My Favourite Harry Potter Books

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard. It describes how Harry discovers he is a wizard, makes close friends and a few enemies at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and with the help of his friends thwarts an attempted comeback by the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents when Harry was one year old.

The book was published on 30 June 1997 by Bloomsbury in London, while in 1998 Scholastic Corporation published an edition for the United States market under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The novel won most of the UK book awards that were judged by children, and other awards in the USA. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling fiction in August 1999, and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has been translated into several other languages and has been made into a feature-length film of the same name.

Most reviews were very favourable, commenting on Rowling's imagination, humour, simple, direct style and clever plot construction, although a few complained that the final chapters looked rushed. The writing has been compared to that of Jane Austen, one of Rowling's favourite authors, of Roald Dahl, whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter, and of the Ancient Greek story-teller Homer. While some commentators thought the book looked backwards to Victorian and Edwardian boarding school stories, others thought it placed the genre firmly in the modern world by featuring contemporary ethical and social issues.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, along with the rest of the Harry Potter series, has been attacked by several religious groups and banned in some countries because of accusations that the novels promote witchcraft. However, some Christian commentators have written that the book exemplifies important Christian viewpoints, including the power of self-sacrifice and the ways in which people's decisions shape their personalities. Educators regard Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and its sequels as an important aid in improving literacy because of the books' popularity. The series has also been used as a source of object lessons in educational techniques,sociological analysis and marketing.

Plot

Before the start of the novel, Voldemort, the most powerful Dark wizard in history, killed Harry's parents but mysteriously vanished after trying to kill Harry. While the wizarding world was celebrating Voldemort's downfall, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid placed the one year-old orphan in the care of his Muggle (non-wizard) uncle, aunt, and cousin: Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley Dursley.

For ten years, they and their son Dudley neglected and bullied Harry. Shortly before Harry's eleventh birthday, a series of letters addressed to Harry arrive, but Vernon destroys them before Harry can read them. To get away from the letters, Vernon takes the family to a lonely island. As they are settling in, Hagrid bursts through the door to tell Harry what the Dursleys have kept him from finding out: Harry is a wizard and has been accepted at Hogwarts.

Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, a magically-concealed shopping precinct in London, where Harry is bewildered to discover how famous he is among wizards as "the boy who lived." He also finds that he is quite wealthy, since a bequest from his parents has remained on deposit at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. Guided by Hagrid, he buys the books and equipment he needs for Hogwarts. At the wand shop, he finds that the only wand that works well for him is the twin of Voldemort's. Both wands contain feathers from the same phoenix.^[1]

A month later Harry leaves the Dursleys' home to catch the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross railway station. There he meets theWeasley family, who show him how to pass through the magical wall to Platform 9¾, where the train is waiting. While on the train Harry makes friends with Ron Weasley, who tells him that someone tried to rob a vault at Gringotts. Another new pupil, Draco Malfoy, accompanied by his sidekicks Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, offers to advise Harry, but Harry dislikes Draco's arrogance and prejudice.

Before the term's first dinner in the school's Great Hall, the new pupils are allocated to houses by the magical Sorting Hat. When it is Harry's turn to be sorted, the Hat wonders whether he should be in Slytherin, but when Harry objects, the Hat sends him to join the Weasleys inGryffindor. While Harry is eating, Professor Snape catches his eye and Harry feels a sudden stab of pain in the scar Voldemort left on his forehead.

After a horrible first Potions lesson with Snape, Harry and Ron visit Hagrid, who lives in a rustic house on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There they learn that the attempted robbery at Gringotts happened the day Harry withdrew money. Harry remembers that Hagrid had removed a small package from the vault that was broken into and searched.

During the new pupils' first broom-flying lesson, Neville Longbottom breaks his wrist, and Draco takes advantage to throw the forgetful Neville's fragile Remembrall high in the air. Harry gives chase on his broomstick, catching the Remembrall inches from the ground. Professor McGonagall dashes out and appoints him as the new Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team.^[2]

When Draco tricks Ron and Harry, accompanied by Neville and the bossy Hermione Granger, into a midnight excursion, they accidentally enter a forbidden corridor and find a huge three-headed dog. The group hastily retreats, and Hermione notices that the dog is standing over a trap-door. Harry concludes that the monster is guarding the package Hagrid retrieved from Gringotts.

After Ron criticises Hermione's ostentatious proficiency in Charms, she hides in tears in the girls' toilet. Professor Quirrell reports that a trollhas entered the dungeons. While everyone else returns to their dormitories, Harry and Ron rush to warn Hermione. The troll corners Hermione in the toilet but when Harry sticks his wand up one of its nostrils, Ron uses the levitation spell to knock out the troll with its own club. Afterwards, several professors arrive and Hermione takes the blame for the battle and becomes a firm friend of the two boys.

The evening before Harry's first Quidditch match, he sees Snape receiving medical attention from Filch for a bite on his leg by the three-headed dog. During the game, Harry's broomstick goes out of control, endangering his life, and Hermione notices that Snape is staring at Harry and muttering. She dashes over to the Professors' stand, knocking over Professor Quirrell in her haste, and sets fire to Snape's robe. Harry regains control of his broomstick and catches the Golden Snitch, winning the game for Gryffindor. Hagrid refuses to believe that Snape was responsible for Harry's danger, but lets slip that he bought the three-headed dog, and that the monster is guarding a secret that belongs to Professor Dumbledore and someone called Nicolas Flamel.

Harry and the Weasleys stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, and one of Harry's presents, from an anonymous donor, is an Invisibility Cloakowned by his father. Harry uses the Cloak to search the library's Restricted Section for information about the mysterious Flamel, has to evade Snape and Filch after an enchanted book shrieks an alarm, and slips into a room containing the Mirror of Erised, which shows his parents and several of their ancestors. Harry becomes addicted to the Mirror's visions and is rescued by Professor Dumbledore, who explains that it shows what the viewer most desperately longs for.

When the rest of the pupils return for the next term, Draco plays a prank on Neville, and Harry consoles Neville with a sweet. The collectible card wrapped with the sweet identifies Flamel as an alchemist. Hermione soon finds that he is a 665-year-old man who possesses the only known Philosopher's stone, from which can be extracted an elixir of life. A few days later Harry notices Snape sneaking towards the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. There he half-hears a furtive conversation about the Philosopher's Stone, in which Snape asks Professor Quirrell if he has found a way past the three-headed dog and menacingly tells Quirrell to decide whose side he is on. Harry concludes that Snape is trying to steal the Stone and Quirrell has prepared a series of defences for it, which was an almost fatal mistake.

The three friends discover that Hagrid is raising a baby dragon, which is against wizard law, and arrange to smuggle it out of the country around midnight. Draco arrives, hoping to raise the alarm and get them into trouble, and goes to tell Professor McGonagall. Although Ron is bitten by the dragon and is sent to the infirmary, Harry and Hermione spirit the dragon safely away. However, they are caught, and Harry loses the Invisibility Cloak. As part of their punishment, Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Neville (who, trying to stop Harry and Hermione after hearing what Draco had been saying, had been caught by McGonagall as well) are compelled to help Hagrid to rescue a badly-injured unicornin the Forbidden Forest. They split into two parties, and Harry and Draco find the unicorn dead, surrounded by its blood. A hooded figure crawls to the corpse and drinks the blood, while Draco screams and flees. The hooded figure moves towards Harry, who is knocked out by an agonising pain spreading from his scar. When Harry regains consciousness, the hooded figure has gone and a centaur, Firenze, offers to give him a ride back to the school. The centaur tells Harry that drinking a unicorn's blood will save the life of a mortally injured person, but leaves them only barely alive. Firenze suggests Voldemort drank the unicorn's blood to gain enough strength to make the elixir of life from the Philosopher's Stone, and regain full health by drinking that. On his return, Harry finds that someone has slipped the Invisibility Cloak under his sheets.

A few weeks later, while relaxing after the end-of-session examinations, Harry suddenly wonders how something as illegal as a dragon's egg came into Hagrid's possession. The gamekeeper says he was given it by a hooded stranger who bought him several drinks and asked him how to get past the three-headed dog, which Hagrid admits is easy – music sends it to sleep. Realising that one of the Philosopher's Stone's defences is no longer secure, Harry goes to inform Professor Dumbledore, only to find that the headmaster has just left for an important meeting. Harry concludes that Snape faked the message that called Dumbledore away and will try to steal the Stone that night.

Covered by the Invisibility Cloak, Harry and his two friends go to the three-headed dog's chamber, where Harry sends the beast to sleep by playing a flute given to him by Hagrid for Christmas. After lifting the trap-door, they encounter a series of obstacles, each of which requires special skills possessed by one of the three, and one of which requires Ron to sacrifice himself in a game of wizard's chess. In the final room Harry, now alone, finds Quirrell rather than Snape. Quirrell admits that he let in the troll that tried to kill Hermione on Halloween, and that he tried to kill Harry during the first Quidditch match but was knocked over by Hermione. Snape had been trying to protect Harry and suspected Quirrell. Quirrell serves Voldemort and, after failing to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts, allowed his master to possess him in order to improve their chances of success. However the only other object in the room is the Mirror of Erised, and Quirrell can see no sign of the Stone. At Voldemort's bidding, Quirrell forces Harry to stand in front of the Mirror. Harry feels the Stone drop into his pocket and tries to stall. Quirrell removes his turban, revealing the face of Voldemort on the back of his head. Voldemort/Quirrell tries to grab the Stone from Harry, but simply touching Harry causes Quirrell's flesh to burn. After further struggles Harry passes out.

He awakes in the school hospital, where Professor Dumbledore tells him that he survived because his mother sacrificed her life to protect him, and Voldemort could not understand the power of such love. Voldemort left Quirrell to die, and is likely to return by some other means. Dumbledore had foreseen that the Mirror would show Voldemort/Quirrell only themselves making the elixir of life, as they wanted to use the Philosopher's Stone; Harry was able to see the Stone in the Mirror because he wanted to find it but not to use it. The Stone has now been destroyed.

Harry returns to the Dursleys for the summer holiday, but does not tell them that under-age wizards are forbidden to use magic outside Hogwarts.

Main characters

Harry Potter is an orphan whom Rowling imagined as a "scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard."^[3] She developed the series' story and characters to explain how Harry came to be in this situation and how his life unfolded from there.^[4] Apart from the first chapter, the events of this book take place just before and in the year following Harry's eleventh birthday. Voldemort's attack left a lightning bolt-shaped scar on Harry's forehead,^[4] which produces stabbing pains when Voldemort or a close associate of the dark wizard feels any strong emotion. Harry has prodigious natural talent for Quidditch and the ability to persuade friends by passionate speeches.

Petunia Dursley, the sister of Harry's mother Lily, is a thin woman with a long neck that she uses for spying on the neighbours. She regards her magical sister as a freak and tries to pretend that she never existed. Her husband Vernon is a heavily-built man whose irascible bluster covers a narrow mind and a fear of anything unusual. Their son Dudley is an overweight, spoiled bully.

Despite being the school's jokers, identical twins Fred and George Weasley get good marks in examinations and are excellent Quidditch players. Their younger brother Ron is Harry's age and Rowling describes him as the ultimate best friend, "always there when you need him."^[5] Ron lacks confidence in his prospects of matching his three oldest brothers' achievements or the popularity of Fred and George, but his skill and bravery in a magical chess game where lives are at stake help Harry past one of the obstacles on the path to the Philosopher's Stone.

Hermione Granger, the daughter of an all-Muggle family, is a bossy girl who has apparently memorised most of the textbooks before the start of term. Rowling described Hermione as a "very logical, upright and good" character^[6] with "a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure beneath her swottiness".^[6] Despite her nagging efforts to keep Harry and Ron out of trouble, she becomes a close friend of the two boys after they save her from a troll, and her magical and analytical skills play a vital part in finding the Philosopher's Stone.

Draco Malfoy is a slim, pale boy who speaks in a bored drawl. He is arrogant about his skill in Quidditch, and despises anyone who is not a pure blood wizard – and wizards who do not share his views. His parents had supported Voldemort, but changed sides after the dark wizard's disappearance. Draco avoids direct confrontations, and tries to get Harry and his friends into trouble.

Neville Longbottom is a plump, diffident boy, so forgetful that his grandmother gives him a Remembrall. Neville's magical abilities are weak and appeared just in time to save his life when he was eight. Despite his timidity, Neville will fight anyone after some encouragement or if he thinks it is right and important.

Professor Dumbledore, a tall, thin man who wears half-moon spectacles and has silver hair and a beard that tucks into his belt, is the headmaster of Hogwarts, and thought to be the only wizard Voldemort fears. Dumbledore, while renowned for his achievements in magic, finds it difficult to resist sweets and has a whimsical sense of humour. Although he shrugs off praise, he is aware of his own brilliance. Rowling described him as the "epitome of goodness".^[7]

Professor McGonagall, a tall, severe-looking woman with black hair tied in a tight bun, teaches Transfiguration, and sometimes transforms herself into a cat. She is in charge of Gryffindor House and, unlike Professor Snape, shows no favouritism towards pupils in her House, but seizes any opportunity to help Gryffindor by fair means. According to the author, "under that gruff exterior" is "a bit of an old softy".^[8]

Twitching, stammering Professor Quirrell teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts. Reputedly he was a brilliant scholar, but his nerve was shattered by an encounter with vampires. Quirrell wears a turban to conceal the fact that he is voluntarily possessed by Voldemort, whose face appears on the back of Quirrel's head.

Professor Snape, who has a hooked nose, sallow complexion and greasy black hair, teaches Potions, but is eager to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. Snape praises pupils in Slytherin, his own House, but seizes every opportunity to humiliate others, especially Harry. Several incidents, beginning with the shooting pain in Harry's scar near the end of the first dinner, lead Harry and his friends to think Snape is a follower of Voldemort.

Hagrid, a half-giant nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, with tangled black hair and beard, was expelled from Hogwarts and his wand was broken, butProfessor Dumbledore let him stay on as the school's gamekeeper, a job which enables him to lavish affection and pet names on even the most dangerous of magical creatures. Hagrid is fiercely loyal to Dumbledore and quickly becomes a close friend of Harry, Ron and later Hermione, but his carelessness makes him unreliable.

The school's caretaker, Filch, knows the school's secret passages better than anyone else except possibly the Weasley twins. His cat, Mrs. Norris, aids his hunts for misbehaving pupils. Other members of Hogwarts staff include: the dumpy Herbology teacher Professor Sprout;Professor Flitwick, the tiny and excitable Charms teacher, who is discreetly friendly towards Harry; the soporific History of Magic teacher,Professor Binns, a ghost who does not seem to have noticed his own death; and Madam Hooch, the Quidditch coach, who is strict but a considerate, methodical teacher. The poltergeist Peeves wanders around the buildings causing trouble for whomever he can.

Development

In 1990 Jo Rowling, as she preferred to be known,^[13] wanted to move with her boyfriend to a flat in Manchester and in her words, "One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head... A scrawny, little, black-haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me... I began to write Philosopher's Stone that very evening. Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product."^[9] Then Rowling's mother died and, to cope with her pain, Rowling transferred her own anguish to the orphan Harry.^[9] Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and in 1996 obtained a grant of £4,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to finish the book and plan the sequels.^[14] She sent the book to an agent and a publisher, and then the second agent she approached spent a year trying to sell the book to publishers, most of whom thought it was too long at about 90,000 words. Barry Cunningham, who was building a portfolio of distinctive fantasies by new authors for Bloomsbury Children's Books, recommended accepting the book,^[14] and the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chief executive said it was "so much better than anything else".