ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the different ways that dreams energize and inform the Harry Potter series. It shows how Harry Potter is anchored in the dream-centered Gothic tradition. The chapter discusses the way that dreams function in the Harry Potter novels and raise questions about the differing abilities of male and female characters to enter these dream-states. It suggests that the traffic between dreams and reality throughout the Harry Potter series has both inspired and has been inspired by a generic restlessness that characterizes Gothic representation itself. Harry Potter's initial response to Hogwarts differs from other characters' reactions; he is quite literally entering a fantasy world. The popularity of the Harry Potter franchise derives from and stimulates the stories' amazing adaptability between media, their metamorphoses into cinematic, televisual, visual and digital textualities. Rowling's emphasis on the terrible importance of dreams is played out most powerfully in the last books of the Harry Potter series.
