Terminus was a Harry Potter conference that took place August 7-11, 2008, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference featured more than 180 hours of educational programming presented by scholars, teachers, business and industry professionals, librarians, readers, and others with an interest in the Harry Potter novels, films, and phenomenon. Following the conference, presenters were invited to contribute papers for this compendium, which includes perspectives on Harry Potter as part of the curriculum, an analysis of the wizarding world's legal system, criticism of gender roles in the series, sets of questions from roundtable discussions, and many additional essays. Terminus was produced by Narrate Conferences, Inc., and was not endorsed, sanctioned or any other way supported, directly or indirectly, by Warner Bros. Entertainment, the Harry Potter book publishers, or J. K. Rowling and her representatives.