"We will return, if you please, to history, to solid, believble, verifiable fact!"
     -- Professor Binns

The Harry Potter Lexicon is an attempt to catalog in a user-friendly way all the information J.K.Rowling has given us about the world she has created, the universe of Harry Potter. For that purpose, a distinction is made between information which comes from the author herself and that which comes from other sources, whether officially licensed or not. Information which comes directly from Rowling is referred to as "the canon." The use of the term "canon" to represent all the body of work by a particular author, excluding that which is added or derived by others, is not unique to the Harry Potter books. Afficianados of the Sherlock Holmes stories refer to the Arthur Conan Doyle's complete stories and novels as "the canon." Holmes fans have been writing fan fiction and deconstructing the tiniest of canon details for decades. The same is true of fans fo Tolkein's Middle Earth saga. Potter fans are in good company indeed. 

It would  never occur to a Tolkein fan to include the animated Lord of the Rings film in their studies of that author's work. No Holmes fan would argue a point about Dr. Watson's skill as an M.D. based on lines from one of the plays or films that have featured the famous detective and his assistant. In the same way, the Lexicon makes a distiction between material which appears in the writings or words of the author and that which is derived from her work, such as the films or the video games. In order to make that distinction clear, it is important to state which sources are considered to be part of the canon and which are not. That's what this page does.

The information in the Harry Potter Lexicon comes from the following sources. The abbreviations following the sources are used throughout the Lexicon in endnotes. Information which has come directly from JKR in either written or spoken form is considered canon. All other sources, including the film version from Warner Bros., are NOT considered official or canon, although some information from them is included in the Lexicon. If there is a conflict between sources, the books are considered to be the final authority, followed by interviews with Rowling. 

• the Harry Potter novels by J.K.Rowling, United States editions:
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (SS)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (CS)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PA)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (GF)
• and the audio versions performed by Jim Dale
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (FB)
• Quidditch Through The Ages (QA)
• interviews with J.K.Rowling:
• on Scholastic.com, February 3, 2000 (Sch1)
• on Scholastic.com, October 16, 2000  (Sch2) 
• on Barnes & Noble.com October 2000 (BN)
• on AOL October 2000 (AOL)
• on Comic Relief website 3/12/01 (CR)
• on Blue Peter TV show 3/12/01 (BP)
• on Southwest News 7/8/00 (SN)
• on BBC Newsround 27 April 2001 (Nr)
• on BBC Newsround 2 November 2001, aboard the Hogwarts Exress (HE)
• with Raincoast Books March 2001 (RC)
• Q&A at the National Press Club, October 20, 1999 (NPC)
• "J.K.Rowling--Harry Potter and Me," 28 December, 2001, BBC1 (HPM)
• on BBC Newsround 19 September 2002 (NR2)
• on CBC Radio's This Morning, October 23, 2000 (CBC)
• other sources of information from Rowling
• the video games from Electronic Arts - the information for the games, for example the Famous Wizard cards, was created by JKR for EA. There are a few contradictory details, however. (SS/g, CS/g); individual cards, which appear in more than one game, are listed thus: (fw#) where # is the number of the card.

• References are included from the book The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter by David Colbert. Any such references are indicated with a  icon. Page numbers given are from the Berkley trade paperback edition, June 2002.
• A few references are given from the Harry Potter Trading Card Game from Wizards of the Coast. These references are not considered to be official or canon, but are included as a matter of interest; such references are clearly noted as being from the TCG
• Information from the filmed version of a book is refered to by adding /f to the abbreviation. Therefore the filmed version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is noted as CS/f. Such information is not considered to be canon or official unless it is clear that it originated from JKR herself. Some of the details are mentioned in the Lexicon in the interest of completeness, however.
• Much of the speculative material, in the form of essays and some notes, is from fans who frequent the Harry Potter for Grown Ups group on Yahoo. The fan art is by a variety of talented artists, all of whom are listed on the pages on which their work appears. They are also listed on the About the Artists page.
• The maps, which are actually fan art as well, are drawn mostly by me. A few have been contributed by others, and these are carefully credited like any other fan art. Each map is carefully researched and whenever possible, references from the canon are included below the map.