Casting a spell: select incantations from Harry Potter

Being a wizard is more than fighting Lord Voldemort and learning to play Quidditch. Witches and wizards must learn hundreds of spells and wand motions to do anything from make the dishes wash themselves to erase a person's memory to unlock doors or trunks. Here's a list to help you learn the basics and a few more complicated spells that might pop up in the final film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2."

Reparo: This spell fixes things that have been broken. It's used quite often, but seems to only work on non-magical items. Hermione uses it often to fix Harry's glasses. It does not work on certain magical items, like Harry's broom or Ron's wand in later stories.

Alohomora: Open locked doors or chests with this incantation. It only works on doors with mechanical locks. The wizarding trio used it to unlock a door in the forbidden Third Floor Corridor at Hogwarts in "Sorcerer's Stone," but it could not open an enchanted door protecting the stone later in the book.

Ascendio: This spell lifts the caster into the air. In "Goblet of Fire," Harry uses it at the end of the second task, where the four champions must rescue a person dear to them. He rescues his own friend -- Ron -- and then frees Fleur's younger sister who was the only one left. He's attacked by the mer-people and uses the spell to escape to the surface.

Reducto: This curse breaks objects at which it's directed. Ginny Weasley impresses her peers when she reduces a fake Death Eater to ashes during Dumbledore's Army practice in the Room of Requirement in "Order of the Phoenix." She later uses it against a real Death Eater in the Department of Mysteries, causing thousands of prophecy orbs to shatter.

Aguamenti: Casting this spell shoots a stream of water from the tip of the user's wand. Harry uses it to produce fresh water for Dumbledore after the professor drinks poison in a cave by the shore in "Half-Blood Prince." He drank the poison so Harry could retrieve a locket they thought was a real Horcrux, but was only a fake.