Akademik

n.

A person who is a big fan of the Harry Potter series of books. Also: Potter-head.

It took three years, a lot of coaxing and putting him in a partial food coma to seal the deal, but I finally got my husband to convert.

"Read the first three books," I wheedled, "and you'll be a believer."

My husband loathes children's books, science fiction and "anything with gnomes and wizards and all that lame stuff." His idea of a pulse-quickening beach read is a thousand-page tome on U.S. foreign policy from 1918 to 1939. But one night a couple of months ago, after the fourth chicken taco, he began to give in.

Six books later, he's a bona fide Potterhead. Victory.

—Sabaa Saleem Tahir, "Proud to Be a Potterhead," The Washington Post, July 15, 2007

Fifty-six local Potterheads from age 8 to 68 gave us their predictions for what might happen in the final Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

—Bill Reed, "Feeling Harry-ed?," The Gazette, July 15, 2007

A very ordinary British boy grows up under the cruel care of his aunt and uncle. On the edge of his teenage years, he learns a magical secret: he belongs to a clan of wizards who invite him to a parallel world of dark forests, dragon's eggs, merlins and trolls.

So begins a string of books featuring Harry Potter, the hottest thing in publishing. The third book in the series just landed at bookstores this week, and Potterheads set up lawn chairs to wait for the doors to open. Not since 'Charlotte's Web" in the early 1950s has a children's tale ruled the roost so completely.

—"Harry Potter's Magic," The San Francisco Chronicle, September 11, 1999