All language subtitles for Harry Potter - A History of Magic (2017) (1080p AMZN WEB-DL x265 t3nzin)_track3_[eng]

"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!

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
'cause 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 were
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!

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.

"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 blood-curdling 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's...

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!

Obliviate!

But for the spell to work,

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

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!

Okay. 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.
I love that.
-And there you are.

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

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

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.'"