All language subtitles for Harry Potter A History of Magic (2017).HDTV.English.orig.Addic7ed.com

"As there is little foolish
wand-waving here,

"many of you will hardly believe
this is magic.

"I don't expect you will really
understand the beauty of the softly

"simmering cauldron
with its shimmering fumes.

"The delicate power of liquids that
creep through human veins,

"bewitching the mind,
ensnaring the senses.

"I can teach you how to bottle fame,

"brew glory, even stop a death.

"If you aren't as big a bunch of
dunderheads

"as I usually have to teach."

In Harry Potter, JK Rowling created
one of modern fiction's

most alluring and magical worlds.

But it's a vision based on more
than mere make-believe.

A lot of the things that we read
in fiction in Harry Potter were

actually believed in and enacted
upon in history in the past.

What Jo has done is she's taken
known values,

she's taken familiar stories

and added them in her own
beautiful blend.

My mandrakes aren't quite
like that.

The search for magical knowledge has
obsessed humans since time began.

From the age-old quest
to conquer death...

..to master destiny...

..and overturn fate...

Look at this. Oh, my lord!

THEY CHUCKLE

I think it worked.

..human beings have dreamt up
magical ways of thinking.

I don't think everyone should
believe in magic

but I'm not sure I would trust
anyone who doesn't in some way
or another.

Accio.

This is the story
of the real-life magic

at the heart of Harry Potter.

This year marks a special
anniversary and some very

strange celebrations are under way.

We came all the way
from Brooklyn, New York.

This is my mum. This is my daughter.

And these are my granddaughters.

Obliviate.

I've come as Moaning Myrtle
cos she has a lot of personality

for a dead person. Yes.

I'm Professor Minerva McGonagall
and I can't do a proper accent

so I'm not really going to try.

Go on.

You're welcome to share
my cubicle, Harry.

Aw...

It's been 20 years since
an orphaned boy wizard made muggles

out of all of us.

There's something buried deep
within all of us, I think,

that would like to get the owl
and be told...

..you are not only
unique and special,

I'm going to take you
to where your people are.

I mean, that's such
a seductive idea, I think.

That's not just something that
children crave,

it's something that all of us crave.

I've kind of loved to be
in that world.

I'd just love to be in that world.

I wish I was a wizard!

But Rowling's wizarding world
is closer to our own than we think.

As Harry's great friend
Hermione Granger once said...

Don't legends always have
a basis in fact?

In The Magician's Nephew
by CS Lewis,

there is one of the most beautiful
fictional worlds

that I've ever read, which is
the world between the worlds,

which is a place where you're in a
forest and there are multiple pools

and every pool you jump into will
take you to a different world and

that to me has always been
a library.

I was one of those bookish children

who never left the library
if she could help it.

So, yeah, of course, to me, a
library is truly a place of magic.

At the British Library,

all kinds of magical preparations
are taking place.

And it's all to create
a new exhibition

which aims to reveal the link
between the real history of magic

and JK Rowling's writing.

And it's all there
from the very first book.

Most of the JK Rowling material has
never been exhibited before.

It's the first time
it's going on display.

So this is a typed synopsis of Harry
Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.

In the early '90s,

this was written to be sent to
agents and to publishers

to sell the story.

Yeah, she's having to sell
Harry Potter.

You wouldn't think it, would you?

The conceit is that we muggles,

we sort of glimpse this hidden world
because we know some of the

mythology but what we think we know
is often wrong.

The real magic, as it were, is not
quite as we believe it to be.

Using pre-existing myths or ideas
of fantastic creatures and so on

was a way of giving texture
to the world.

I think JK Rowling used magic

and the history of magic in
an exceedingly sophisticated way,

and possibly there are aspects of it
that your general reader

just might not even see.

"The ancient study of alchemy is
concerned with making

"the philosopher's stone,

"a legendary substance
with astonishing powers.

"The stone will transform any metal
into pure gold.

"It also produces
the elixir of life,

"which will make the drinker
immortal."

The pursuit of immortality was a
quest to which medieval alchemists

devoted their lives.

And one amongst them
became the stuff of legend.

"There have been many reports of the
philosopher's stone over the

"centuries, but the only stone
currently in existence belongs

"to Mr Nicolas Flamel, the noted
alchemist and opera lover.

"Mr Flamel, who celebrated his 665th
birthday last year,

"enjoys a quiet life in Devon
with his wife Perenelle, 658."

In the stories Nicolas Flamel,

he's the person who's actually
discovered the key to eternal life

and is alive and well.

I hate to spoil the story, but he is
based on a real-life figure

who lived in Paris
in the early 15th century

and obviously, sadly, he did die,

but we do actually have
his tombstone.

It's quite a magical object
in itself.

Nicolas Flamel may not have
achieved immortality,

but alchemists continued their
search for the elixir of life.

And some of their mysterious
instructions survive

on a magical scroll.

Let's take this one out the box.

So, this is the...amazing...
Oh, my God.

..Ripley scroll. There you are.

It's extraordinary. I think
it's made about the year 1600...

and it tells you how to make
the philosopher's stone.

Oh, look.

Isn't that incredible?
Oh, it's so gorgeous. Look at this.

And the colours are still so...

It's beautifully preserved.

Well, it's been rolled up
for all that time,

so that partly preserves it.

We very rarely unscroll
the whole thing.

I'm genuinely so honoured,
look at this.

This is the first time I've had
the chance to see these kind

of artefacts myself.

Obviously I've got
a lot of reference books,

some of them are very cheap,

from 25 years old,

30 years old, that I was using
as research materials.

So, selfishly, this was a chance to
see the real deal.

I had a really vivid dream
about Nicolas Flamel

during the writing
of Philosopher's Stone.

I dreamt that I was
in his alchemist studio

and this kind of symbolism
was all over his walls.

I didn't even ask questions,
I was just watching.

A typical writer, observing.

Didn't even ask.

And make them all but one,

lo here

is the philosopher's stone.

I've never seen...

anything quite like this before.

I would imagine few people have.

What fascinates me about alchemy is
you have this mixture of science,

actual science, right?

Because this was old chemistry,

so some of it is genuinely
scientific.

They were observing phenomena that
we recognise now as the basis

for chemistry. So it's just this
fascinating hybrid, isn't it?

Yeah, combination
of all these ideas.

And I'm really disappointed
you haven't tried to make one.

Because the joke's on us
if this works!

We'll make sure it does work. Yeah.

Many scientific discoveries were
actually made as a result of people

carrying out that alchemical
process.

There's a very famous painting,

it's by Joseph Wright of Derby,

and it shows a German chemist,
alchemist,

in the 17th century.

He's trying to create gold
and he's boiling a flask of urine!

He doesn't create gold, but he
discovers phosphorus in the process.

The relationship
between magic and science,

particularly in the early modern
period is extremely important.

What powers are there out there that
we perhaps can't see but which we

can harness and adapt
for our own use?

And to some extent
that is a form of magic.

Perhaps penicillin
is a form of magic.

It's just magic
that consistently works.

But even in our rational,
enlightened age of today,

perhaps there's still a place
for the old ways of thinking.

Magic is fascinating to me, clearly,

because I've spent a lot of time
writing about it,

but I think that it connects to very
important things about what it is to

be human and what human beings want
and what they believe.

"When he had been younger, Harry had
dreamed and dreamed of some unknown

"relation coming to take him
away, but it had never happened.

"The Dursleys where his only family.

"Yet sometimes he thought,
or maybe hoped,

"that strangers in the street
seemed to know him.

"Very strange strangers
they were, too."

Children believe in magic because
they're starting to make sense of

and control their world.

But I think
we all have that inside us.

The world is complex
and largely unknowable,

and although we've moved on to
science,

I think that we all, at heart,

retain a certain amount
of magical thinking.

Tarantellegra!

Locomotor Wibbly!

Evanesco!

Rictusempra!

WHOOSH

I've got to do a whoosh sound,

it's the only way it makes it
real to me.

To trace the real history of magic,

there can be few better places
than the British Library.

It has 150 million items

and the curators have been searching
amongst them for over a year.

We're about four floors down
underneath the British Library in

the strong rooms where we keep
most of our rare books.

There's miles and miles of books
down here,

so, yeah, it's a huge space.

You are going into sort of strange
realms within the collection that

are not perhaps so easily
understood, so easily catalogued.

They're sometimes sort of left aside
because they don't perhaps speak to

our researchers in the way that
they do people who practise magic.

As every Hogwarts student knows,

a good magical textbook can save
your life or solve your problems.

But in the 16th century,

members of the British cultural
establishment believed in them, too.

So, this is one of my favourite
manuscripts in the exhibition.

It's an actual book of spells and
is extremely beautiful to look at,

I think, and has a lot of
interesting content.

A real magical textbook,

and it belonged to the Elizabethan
poet Gabriel Harvey.

But this one is an experiment
or a spell on how to be invisible

and how it must be prepared.

There's lots of text written
about Gabriel Harvey,

but as far as I know,
I don't think he ever disappeared.

RECITES THE MANUSCRIPT

"By the mercy which you bear
upon mankind,

"make me to be invisible."

"He set off, drawing the
invisibility cloak tight around him

"as he walked.

"The library was pitch-black
and very eerie.

"Harry lit a lamp to see his way
along the rows of books."

Conveying the rich imaginary world
of JK Rowling is a huge challenge

for the curators.

To help them, they've enlisted Harry
Potter illustrator Jim Kay,

whose drawings and paintings will
bring to life the links between

literary fantasy
and historical fact.

So I first started illustrating
Harry Potter

back in 2013,

and back then I thought,

"Well, it'd take about six months
to do all of book one,"

and it actually took me
two and a half years working
seven days a week,

usually 12 hours at once, a day.

It was terrible pressure and you
don't want to mess up the world's

most successful children's book.

The British Library team are
selecting examples of Jim's work

to feature in the show.

Who is this? McGonagall.

It's actually based loosely
on my partner,

who I aged for this painting,
I must stress.

Jim's most intriguing illustrations
are these curious-looking specimens.

Mandrake roots and their seedlings.

Harmless enough, you might think,

but these roots must be handled
with care.

"Harry snapped the earmuffs
over his ears.

"They shut out sound completely.

"Professor Sprout put a pink, fluffy
pair over her own ears,

"rolled up the sleeves of her robes,

"grasped one of the tufty plants
firmly and pulled hard.

"Harry let out a gasp of surprise
that no-one could hear.

"Instead of roots,

"a small muddy and extremely ugly
baby popped out of the earth.

"The leaves were growing right
out of his head!

"He had pale-green mottled skin

"and was clearly bawling
at the top of his lungs.

"Professor Sprout took a large
plant pot from under the table and

"plunged the mandrake into it,
burying him in dark, damp compost,

"until only the tufted leaves were
visible.

"Professor Sprout dusted
off her hands,

"gave them all the thumbs-up
and removed her own earmuffs.

" 'As our mandrakes are only
seedlings, their cries won't kill

" 'yet,' she said calmly,

"as though she'd just done nothing
more exciting than water a begonia.

" 'However, they will knock you out
for several hours.' "

In herbal folklore, the
bloodcurdling scream of the mandrake

was thought to kill
or send its listener mad.

The British Library have uncovered
an unusual illustration of the myth.

A very unusual illustration indeed.

My mandrakes aren't quite like that.

I'm seeing a little naked man...

..with leaves and...

With leaves coming out of his head

with dismembered hands on them,
and a dog is dragging him

out of the earth.

Oh, this is so interesting.

This is no ordinary man.

He's a mandrake root.

Mandragora. Yeah, it's beautiful.

Harvesting a mandrake might be
fraught with risk,

but this manuscript
from 16th-century Italy

has an unusual method
to keep a person safe.

"Tie the mandrake to a dog,
stuff your ears with earth,

"then blow a horn.

"As the startled dog runs away,

"it'll pull up the mandrake without
its scream causing you harm."

Broadly speaking, I adopted the myth
with some tweaks.

Very similar, no dogs involved
in mine, though.

Humans did actually pull them up
and mandrake root was an essential

component in a restorative potion
that was needed

at Hogwarts that year.

There are real mandrakes
and the root is human-shaped,

so I think that's where the myth
came from, isn't it?

As often happens, people

extrapolated from the real object.

The mandrake is no longer
commonplace.

Yet the elaborate folklore that
surrounds it all came down

to this rather small, grubby root.

There's definitely something
in these roots that...

Yeah, anthropomorphic.

It's almost like
a sort of pot belly.

So you could have
a more distended stomach

leading to legs...

which I quite like.

There's always been a fascination
around mandrake roots

by the fact that they have a very
powerful chemical compound

in which has effects on people
when you eat it

that can be hallucinogenic.

They can change your heart rate,
they can make your eyes dilate,

they give you a dry mouth.

There's all sorts of terrible things
but it's the hallucinogenic

properties that have mystified
people for a long time.

So the combination of this
anthropomorphic, human-looking root

along with this really powerful
psychoactive compound inside,

I mean, it's just inevitable that
people would put one and the other

together and create this wonderful
mythology around the plant.

Hallucinogenic. That figures, right?

Yeah. That definitely figures.

I tried to steer clear of
hallucinogenic drugs in Hogwarts.

I just felt that was wisest.

Well, there was enough going on,
honestly, they didn't need drugs

to make life exciting!

The mandrake didn't just provide
drug-fuelled highs.

These severed hands symbolise
its use as an anaesthetic

in amputations.

Medieval herbals like these
reveal the wonder and mystery

inspired by plants.

This is a time when most people
couldn't get access to any form of

medicine. A small cut could kill
you, you know?

It's no wonder that people put
so much stock in the potential
life-saving

properties of the plants around
them, really.

Plants are a key ingredient
in JK Rowling's wizarding world,

where they're used to make potions,
and supplies can be found in the

apothecary of a certain
Mr Mulpepper.

His name might sound a little bit
like another exhibit in the show,

the Complete Herbal
by one Nicholas Culpeper.

So Culpeper really was
a herbal hero.

He was the guy who revolutionised
medicine in Britain.

He took the power from the
physicians and gave it back

to the common people.

Nicholas Culpeper grew up
in the Sussex countryside here

in Isfield.

So, this footpath here would've
been the exact footpath that the

young Culpeper would have walked
down from his grandfather's church

over to the village, and it's here
he would've learned all about

the flowers and the plants
of the English countryside.

This lovely plant here is
willowherb.

Now, Culpeper says the plant
is really good for a sore mouth

if you gargle with it. He also
says it's good for secret parts.

Er, not entirely sure
what he's referring to there!

Now, stinging nettles, they can
hurt, of course, they can be very

stingy, but they're also very good
for your health.

They can cure dog bites, snakebites,
gangrene, nosebleeds,

all sorts of things. There's a whole
page of it in Culpeper.

You've got some yarrow here,
which is similar to sneezewort,

which is used in Harry Potter.

Heals wounds, inflammation, ulcers.

But it's also very good
for toothache.

Oh, good for piles, as well.

Remedies like these weren't known to
everyone, just an elite few.

Those with a licence
from the College of Physicians,

whose fees were extortionate.

Back in the 1600s, the physicians
were in charge of all the medicine.

They had all the knowledge,
all written in Latin in a big book.

It was out of bounds
to all the common people.

What Culpeper did was he took that
book, he translated it into English.

He told people they can get
their own medicine and where to go
and find it.

The physicians, of course,
were outraged by this.

Their secrets were out.

However, it was too late.

For the first time, the people,

instead of relying on these
physicians and paying lots of money,

could actually go out
into the hedgerows,

into the fields
and find their own cures.

And that's what they did.

The book was published
almost 400 years ago and

it's still in print today.

In the 1600s, you could buy it
on a street corner.

You can buy it online today.

It's the book that's been in print
for the longest apart
from the Bible.

Culpeper's book has special
significance for JK Rowling.

Oh, yes.

I know this book.

This is Culpeper's Complete Herbal

and I own two copies of this.

Am I allowed to touch this?

I will be tremendously careful,
I'm so scared.

Oh, wow, look.

It's not even the properties
of the plants,

it's just the way that they wrote
about the plants

and observed them and tied them to
planetary movements and so on.

There's such a poetry to it.

"Oh, yes, it is fat,
unctuous and temperate.

"Generated of that which is moist,
aerius and moderately hot."

I love it.

"Midnight came and went while Harry
was reading and rereading a passage

"about the uses of scurvy-grass,

"lovage and sneezewort,
and not taking in a word of it.

"These plants are most efficacious
in the inflaming of the brain and

"are therefore much used in
confusing and befuddlement drafts,

"where the wizard is desirous
of producing hot-headiness

"and recklessness."

Even when I didn't really use
what they were saying,

I found it inspirational.

I found the way they talked about
these plants inspirational.

This is a gorgeous book.
Look at this.

And sometimes I would use old names
to make my own names, you know?

You just look at the way that
they put the words together.

sea colewort - love it.

Nicholas Culpeper was also accused
of witchcraft about ten years before

he published his book.

In 1642, he was accused of being
a practising witch.

Now, this is possibly because of
antagonisms that he was creating

with the College of Physicians,

but it's also because I think people
that are mixing up herbs,

creating potions,
there's always going to be
those questions about them.

"Non-magic people,
more commonly known as muggles,

"were particularly afraid of magic
in medieval times,

"but not very good
at recognising it.

"On the rare occasion they did catch
a real witch or wizard,

"burning had no effect whatsoever.

"The witch or wizard would perform
a basic flame freezing charm

"and then pretend to
shriek with pain

"while enjoying
a gentle tickling sensation.

"Indeed, Wendelin the Weird
enjoyed being burnt so much

"that she allowed herself to be
caught no fewer than

"47 times in various disguises."

Witches and wizards
in the Potterverse,
they are morally neutral.

You are as good or as bad
as you decide to be.

There's nothing inherently wrong
about performing magic,

it's simply an ability
that some people have.

Yet in history, most references to
witches are resoundingly negative.

And the link between witches
and powerful dark magic

was forged by a book.

So this is the earliest illustrated
printed treatise on witchcraft.

It's called De Lamiis Et
Phythonicis Mulieribus,

which roughly translate as
"of witches and soothsayers".

This is the first time that you get
a printed visual representation

of witches.

And it was published in 1489,

written by a man
called Ulrich Molitor.

In the book, Molitor claims that
witches were not as powerful as

people thought, but his illustrator
clearly didn't read his text.

Because the drawings tell
a different story.

So here you have two women,
they're old,

they're haggard
and they're evil-looking.

They're dangerous
and they're powerful.

It shows them as able to create
dangerous weather magic,

hailstorms, using cauldrons.

This is the earliest printed image
of witches using a cauldron.

The book was published
in 49 different editions

and was still in print
a century later.

The whole text is written in Latin,

which wouldn't really be that
accessible to your average person

even if they could read.

But the images are something that
everyone can read and

that is where the power of this book
comes in,

and it cemented the iconography of
how we understand witches to look.

At the edge of the Atlantic
on the North Cornwall coast,

Boscastle is one of the most magical
places in the land.

It even has its own
museum of witchcraft.

So this broomstick belonged
to Olga Hunt of Manaton.

She used to,
on the night of the full moon,

scamper and leap about

on this broomstick on the rocks
of Haytor, on Dartmoor.

Olga Hunt's broomstick is one
of the artefacts that will feature
in the show.

The British Library has been
scouring the museum for other
objects that might fit.

There are 3,000 to choose from.

This cauldron has a very unusual
story attached to it

because it exploded,

much like the one in the stories
of Harry Potter.

Ooh, this is interesting!

The tarred head.

I most definitely believe in magic.

Do I have to justify that?

The museum owns one of the largest
collections of witchcraft artefacts

in the world.

So this is a dried cat.

They're often found in old buildings
and they were used as a protection

charm to ward off infestation.

You'd think that a live cat would do
a better job of it, but here we are.

There's a number of folk charms
here.

And this is rather nasty toad curse.

Witchcraft is essentially
the folk magic that was practised

by ordinary people.

The kind of things that
the good witches did tended to be

day-to-day solutions.

Somebody comes to you,
they've got a problem, you

say a charm, you get a herb and
you solve that person's problem.

There's a particularly lovely
love charm that will be featured

in the exhibition. Oh, it's moved!

Sorry. Where's it...?

The charm was in there. Has some...?

Where is it? Ah!

This love charm and the items going
on loan to the British Library all

have counterparts in Harry Potter.

But these were used by real witches
in the muggle world.

It's inscribed on an oyster shell,

oysters were - any shell, really -
seen as symbols of fertility.

And then there are two conjoined
hearts and the symbol for the female

and the male top and bottom.

So one or other of them would have
commissioned the charm

from a cunning man
or a cunning woman.

Magic, in some ways,
it's a spiritual belief system

because it does depend
on this idea that

there is a connection between all
life and that all life is sacred and

that magic is a way of drawing on
this creative energy

that is in the natural world
all around us.

And here we've got
a selection of wands.

One of which is going to feature
in the exhibition.

Now, wands are subtle tools.

They're used to direct energy,

but they're also used
for creating a magical space.

We have an example here
of a very dark use...

..of the practice,
which is a blasting rod.

And blasting rods are basically used
to blast people and to direct

negative energy at them
for a curse of some form.

Oh, it could kill somebody
very easily, I should imagine,

so... Used by the right person
in the right way.

So it's kept behind glass normally.

Every Hogwarts pupil needs
their very own magic wand.

But no two wands are the same.

" 'You talk about wands like
they've got feelings,' said Harry.

" 'Like they can think
for themselves.'

" 'The wand chooses the wizard,'
said Ollivander.

" 'That much has always been clear
to those of us who have studied
wandlore.' "

Wands are an essential part
of casting a spell

and everyone has
their favourite.

Expelliarmus!

Did that work?

If we could only use them
in the muggle world,

they'd come in very handy.

I would cast a spell
to make TJ in my class like me.

Oh, not on telly!

BOTH: Obliviate!

But for the spell to work,

you need exactly the right flick
or twist of the wrist.

ALL: Piertotum locomotor!

I couldn't find anything on wands,
so I just made it all up.

That was all me and I had so much
fun and actually I do remember

exactly where I was. I literally was
sitting under a tree out in the open

on a very warm summer's day
when I wrote that chapter,

the wand shop in the
Philosopher's Stone.

And I just sat there and made up
all these properties

and the cause and, yeah,
I really enjoyed that.

So, yeah, no, I'm afraid I don't
know anything about...

I don't know what anyone else has
said about wands.

I made the whole thing up!

But there are folk out there
who have been making wands
for centuries.

Dusty Miller, father and son,
come from a long line of wandmakers.

I'm Dusty XII.

XIII, sorry. My father was XII.
Hello, Grandad!

My son is the XIII. XIV!

I like that, I got promoted then.
Did you see that?

We work for the tree spirits,

so they tell us when to go
and collect a piece of wood,

where to collect it,

which tree to collect it from.

It's all very complicated

and often means getting up
in the middle of the night

to be in the forest at daybreak.

Why they always want daybreak,
I don't know.

Why it can't be lunchtime...

another matter entirely.
Trees don't have lunch!

No, that's true, they don't.

The wood they collect
is made into wands,

which they believe channel
the sacred power of the trees.

Because we have this partnership
with the tree spirits,

when they tell us to make certain
tools, to create certain items for

people to make changes
in their lives...

and be able to... Maybe do healing
on other people, or themselves,

then we're quite happy to do that
and that's what we've spent
our entire lifetimes doing.

How many have you made
in your lifetime, you think,

you worked out the other day?
Around 7,000-something...?

7,500.

But I like making them, so he still
makes the odd one or two, you know?

To us, it's the old-fashioned magic.

It's part of the magical wonder
of the world.

Unfortunately, magic as we know it
doesn't happen instantaneously.

The universe usually takes
a little while to catch up

and make the changes.

In Rowling's wizarding world,

the effects of a spell can happen
in an instant.

Expecto Patronum!

You just have to say the words
the right way.

Take the doubling spell.

Geminio.

Geminio.

Geminio!

The spells often have their roots
in classical languages and Rowling's

degree in French and Classics
turned out to be useful.

Sometimes I just invented it.

It usually depended on the gravity
of what I was inventing.

I often tended to give a richer
provenance to things that were very

significant,
like the Cruciatus Curse

or Avada Kedavra,
whereas the more...

The fun things, Wingardium Leviosa
is exactly what it sounds like

and it's flippant and it's fun.

Wingardium Leviosa!

It's only in fourth year that Harry
encounters the most sinister spells

in the wizarding world.

The three unforgivable curses.

What are the unforgivable curses
and what do they do?

Imperio!

There's Imperio,
which is the controlling curse.

Crucio!

Crucio is a torture curse.

It makes whoever you're casting it
at go into great pain.

So...pretty bad.

And the final curse,
the most dreadful of them all -

the killing spell.

"Avada Kedavra!

"A blast of green light blazed
through Harry's eyelids

"and he heard something heavy
fall to the ground beside him.

"The pain in his scar reached
such a pitch that he retched

"and then it diminished.

"Terrified of what he was about to
see, he opened his stinging eyes.

"Cedric was lying spread-eagled
on the ground beside him.

"He was dead."

It sounds so powerful, doesn't it,
Avada Kedavra?

It's got a real force to it.

It's Aramaic, I think.

Well, that is genuinely
the derivation of abracadabra,

not many people know that.
That's where abracadabra came from.

And literally translated it means,
"May the thing be destroyed."

Abracadabra is today often
thought of as a charm

which stage magicians use when they
are pulling a rabbit out of a hat,

but actually it was first used
in Roman times as a protection

against catching
the disease malaria.

The manuscript tells you you should
write out the word "abracadabra"

repeatedly on a small piece
of parchment

and each time you write it out,

you're supposed to omit
one of the letters

until you formed a small,
triangular piece of text.

And when you've done that,

you tie it round your neck

and while you have it in place,

that actually acts as a protection
against catching malaria.

Belief is also really important
to magic.

If you believe in it,
then it will happen.

I once read a great line that said,

"Those who don't believe in magic
will never find it."

And that's absolutely true.

If you do believe in it, if you do
believe that this wand has power,

if you do believe that
this talisman will protect you,

then that does give you
some form of comfort.

And I think all humans
relate to that idea.

I think it's a universal
within human experience.

" 'Double divination
this afternoon,'

"Harry groaned, looking down.

"Divination was his least favourite
subject, apart from potions.

"Professor Trelawney kept
predicting Harry's death,

"which he found extremely annoying."

A nice item relating to divination.

"On wonders past and present
and to come."

About the prophecies
of Old Mother Shipton,

who was a famous witch that made
prophecies from Knaresborough.

A nice interesting image of a witch,
which I think is...

Yes, in no way a cliche,
with her enormous nose

and her chin that almost
meets the tip of it!

That's great.

I have a lot of fun with divination
in the Potter books

because I make it quite clear

that you get lucky
once every million times.

Free will is the abiding principle
of the Potter books, not prophecy.

" 'Saturn was surely in a position
of power in the heavens

" 'at the moment of your birth.

" 'Your dark hair,
your mean stature.

" 'Tragic losses so young in life.

" 'I think I'm right in saying,
my dear,

" 'that you were born in midwinter.'

" 'No,' said Harry.

" 'I was born in July.' "

These items are being sent to
the British Library to be installed

in a section dedicated
to divination.

Tea. Teacups.

Used for fortune-telling.

You'd use leaf tea, not a teabag.
Won't work.

Typical magic mirror.
You've got several, haven't you?

Yes. How long have you been
collecting them?

I've got three. Three?

Three, but they don't come up
very often.

I think Graham's got four.

The popular view
of fortune-telling today

is that it's about
foretelling the future,

and that definitely wasn't the
original purpose of divination.

It was much more -
in fact, largely -

about helping people
to make decisions.

So it's sort of contacting the
subconscious, in a way, isn't it?

Yeah. And then appealing to
another force

in order to gain that knowledge.

Magic is...

I think it's simultaneously
about empowerment,

but it's also an acknowledgement

that we are in a scary
and unknowable world

because we know
that these ritual practices

that go back to what we now
would call primitive peoples,

and yet we still do a version of it
today, you know,

many of us still have
our own little rituals

that we don't even acknowledge
as rituals,

but it's a way of trying to control
what we secretly know

is uncontrollable, which is life.

This impulse to control the future
by communicating with the dead

is one that spans millennia
and crosses continents.

Reflecting the diversity of magic

is a task that's keeping
the curators busy.

I think most of my friends would
probably say I'm a Ravenclaw.

Bit of a nerd.

As soon as I heard that the Harry
Potter exhibition was happening,

I was immediately excited.

These are some of
our favourite items.

They're the oldest items
in the British Library.

Once thought to be dragon bones,

they date back 3,000 years
to the lost Shang dynasty.

They are the most ancient examples
of Chinese writing.

So we are going to exhibit
a total of four pieces

of a collection of 484 oracle bones

which entered the library in 1911.

They are animal bones and they were
used for divination practices

in Bronze Age China.

Until the bones were discovered,

historians had little evidence that
the Shang dynasty had ever existed.

But clues lay on the surface
of the bones,

and with them,
tiny, mysterious cracks.

They are clearly linked to a ritual

involved in order to divine
the future.

The ancestors who are living
in the heavens

were believed to know about
human beings' future.

The diviners were interpreting
the cracks

as the answer from the ancestors.

Bones were light, portable and could
be taken onto the battlefield.

The royal diviners prepared them
for the king,

to ask the ancestors
about the future.

To historians, reconstructing
the work of the diviners

is a fascinating window
into the world of the Shang.

Since the '60s, people have been
trying to produce cracks and I think

after 30 hours of work,
the two of us

produced the first crack,
which was quite an achievement.

And then we produced further cracks.

They were very tiny and we are not
yet fully in control of it.

This is a degree of sophistication
which we aim to achieve,

but we need much more practice.

Nothing.

Snapping a bone might sound easy,

but to make the delicate cracks
of an oracle bone,

you need care and precision.

Let's have a look.
Oh, we do have a crack!

Oh, my God!

Look at this!

Oh, my God! I think it worked!

It worked!

OK. Wow.

So, as you can see, the crack worked
even though we didn't hear it.

But you have the two parts
with the baseline here

and the other crack
going away from it.

The Shang king interpreted this tiny
crack as a message from the dead.

The fragments in the British Library
tell us

exactly what was on his mind.

These two bones, these are
all about the weather.

The bones are inscribed with
the king's question and answer.

This is a particularly important
bone because this is a bone

in which we see the reference
to a lunar eclipse

that we've precisely dated

to the night of the 27th of December
1192 BC.

The fact that a lunar eclipse is
mentioned is very interesting

because any kind of eclipse,
lunar or solar,

was considered to be a bad omen.

So they would regularly perform
these divinations

in order to establish whether
they should prepare themselves

for any sort of disaster.

The structure of this one
is very simplistic.

It simply says that the king read
the cracks and said, auspicious,

we should perform the de-sacrifice.

So the first character here is king.

The bones give valuable insight into
life in Shang dynasty China.

It's interesting because,
from the questions posed,

we can understand
what was very important

to the royal family at the time.

It was about battles.

It was about, is that marriage
auspicious or not auspicious?

What can I do with this toothache
that my royal sister has?

They talk about the human drive
to try to understand their own life.

They are quite extraordinary, no?

"There was a lot more to magic,
as Harry quickly found out,

"than waving your wand
and saying a few funny words."

The exhibition will be divided

into subjects corresponding
to the Hogwarts curriculum.

From divination to astronomy.

The most spectacular
and bizarre exhibits

belong to a section on
care of magical creatures.

So this is Edward Topsell's
History Of Four-footed Beasts.

He describes a number
of different beasts

that feature in Harry Potter,
including the Sphinx.

Yes...

Yeah. She's interesting.

Yeah. Very unusual. It's not how
we'd actually imagine a Sphinx

to look like from
classical mythology, is it?

No. They are bred
in India and Ethiopia.

Interesting.

When it comes to beasts,
the hippogriff or the dragon,

there are certain beasts
that absolutely must be in Potter

because they're so well known, you
would just expect to see them there.

And I've played with them
to an extent.

This one dates from probably
the early 13th century.

First of all the phoenix is
making its own funeral pyre

by picking twigs and leaves
and branches from the trees.

Oh, that's fantastic.
And there you are. I love that.

It's on fire and it's going
to rise from the ashes.

That's my favourite creature.
He's gorgeous, isn't he? Yeah.

Stunning. I also like this chap,

because that's like an Augerey,
which I invented.

There's no such thing,
but I call it the Irish phoenix.

These are so beautiful.

Incredibly human-looking owl.

In Harry Potter, JK Rowling
refers to over 100 species

of mythical creature,
drawn from across the globe.

In every society and every culture,

there is the practice of magic

or the understanding
of the supernatural.

Magic is a universal language.

In the Department
of African Studies,

one curator has made
an exciting discovery.

It's a text written in Ge'ez,
an ancient language of Ethiopia.

"If you wish to turn into a lion
or transform yourself into a lion,

"read the above prayer

"and write it on a silk cloth

"and tie it around your head.

"Or if you wish to be

"a serpent, write this
and tie it on your wrist."

This is a prayer for transformation
or to turn...

You know, to change into
something else.

So if I do try this prayer
and I do turn into a lion,

I don't have the counter prayer
to turn back into a human,

so for that reason
I wouldn't read it.

Yes, I wouldn't read it, no.

It's... It's readable and
it's straightforward, but, yeah...

This spell was found smuggled within
the pages of a mysterious book.

It's from Gondar in Ethiopia.

Understanding this manuscript
is trying to sort of understand

the history of magic
from an African perspective.

So the owner of this manuscript
would have been a debtera,

the equivalent of an alchemist.

And this particular manuscript
would have been kept a secret.

By the 15th century,

this type of magic had been outlawed
by Ethiopia's Christian king.

So manuscripts like these
are exceptionally rare.

But despite its Ethiopian roots,

this branch of magic is very similar

to an important subject
taught at Hogwarts.

This book is
defence against the dark arts.

So the purpose of this talisman
is to protect the client

from real or imagined harm.

In Defence against the Dark Arts,

Harry's magical ability shines

when he masters wizarding's
most powerful protective charm.

" 'Expecto Patronum,' he yelled.

"And out of the end of his wand
burst not a shapeless cloud of mist

"but a blinding, dazzling,
silver animal.

"He screwed up his eyes
to see what it was.

"It looked like a horse.

"It was galloping
silently away from him

"across the black surface
of the lake."

As the last few objects arrive
from museums across Britain...

..they're being joined by works
that are rather more recent.

These date from the 1990s.

I chose them all because
they had particular meaning to me.

They're all pieces of writing

or doodles that
I could particularly remember.

And they come from very different
stages in the process.

So some of it's on my very old
manual typewriter.

Lots of hand-written stuff.

They just show what I was thinking.

This is a sketch of Hogwarts that
JK Rowling sent to her publishers,

Bloomsbury, and it maps out
all the key elements of Hogwarts

and she's given notes, as well.

My favourite bit about this one is

where she's drawn the squid
that lives in the lake.

Recent British Library exhibitions
include William Shakespeare,

John Milton and Jane Austen.

It's the first time a living writer

has been the focus
of a major show here.

It's a huge honour and at the same
time it feels quite surreal.

You know, to me, they're just
my working materials, so...

And then you see them
in a glass case and you think,

how on earth did that happen?

It's a very peculiar sensation,
yeah.

So this is one of mine.

So I don't feel quite so reverent
about this one.

Professor Sprout is the herbologist.

Very lovable character.

I would say she's the most maternal,
actually, or parental,

of the four Heads of House
at Hogwarts.

So I drew this picture
on December 30th, 1990.

And I can be very precise
about when I drew this picture

because I was staying
at a friend's house,

I'd been writing Potter
for six months

and I stayed up when everyone else
had gone to bed

because I was watching the movie
The Man Who Would Be King.

And the reason I can be
incredibly precise about

when I drew this is because...

at some point...

during the time I was watching that
movie and drawing this picture,

my mother died 250 miles away

and I got the phone call
the next day

to say that she had died.

So this obviously means
a great deal to me, this picture.

But there was something quite
extraordinary that I only realised

about 20 years later, so it seems
very appropriate to say it now

in the context of this exhibition.

The Man Who Would Be King,
for those who don't know,

is a story with Sean Connery
and Michael Caine in it

and it's from
an old Rudyard Kipling story.

And the Masonic symbol is
very important in that movie.

And it was literally 20 years later

that I looked at the sign
of the Deathly Hallows

and realised how similar they were.

The Deathly Hallows is comprised
of the Elder Wand,

the Cloak of Invisibility
and the Resurrection Stone.

And whoever possesses all three
is said to be Master of Death.

When I saw the movie again
and saw the Masonic symbol,

I sort of went cold all over
and I thought...

..is that why the Hallows symbol
is what it is?

And I've got a feeling that,
on some deep subconscious level,

they are connected.

So I feel as though I sort of
worked my way back over 20 years

to that night because the Potter
series is hugely about loss...

And I've said this before,
if my mother hadn't died,

I think the stories would be utterly
different and not what they are.

Um... So, yeah.

So, this picture is very meaningful
to me on a lot of different levels.

"Harry was so close
to the mirror now

"that his nose was nearly touching
that of his reflection.

" 'Mum?' he whispered.

" 'Dad?'

"They just looked at him...

"..smiling...

"..and slowly Harry looked
into the faces

"of the other people in the mirror

"and saw other pairs of green eyes
like his,

"other noses like his,

"even a little old man who looked as
though he had Harry's knobbly knees.

"Harry was looking at his family
for the first time in his life."

I meet people quite regularly
who tell me...

..what Potter meant to them

and I can only say that even they
have no idea what it meant to me.

So I wrote Potter during what I hope
will turn out to have been

the most turbulent period of my life

and I put a huge amount,
more than people will ever know,

of my own life and experiences
into those books

and it's not that
lots of people liked it,

it's the fact that it meant
that much to a few people even

is more than enough for a writer.
It's an amazing feeling.

"Hermione, however,
clapped her hand to her forehead.

" 'Harry, I think I've just
understood something.

" 'I've got to go to the library.'

"And she sprinted away
up the stairs.

" 'What does she understand?'
said Harry, distractedly,

"still looking around trying to tell
where the voice had come from.

" 'Loads more than I do,'
said Ron, shaking his head.

" 'But why's she got to go
to the library?'

" 'Because that's what Hermione
does,' said Ron, shrugging.

" 'When in doubt,
go to the library.' "