• By MuggleNet Editorial Staff
  • 24 Aug, 2026
✦ The Hogwarts Library

Hogwarts Classes, Textbooks, and Schedules: A Student’s Guide to Academics

Your robes are packed, your books are bought, and somewhere in the castle a professor is already preparing the homework you forgot you would have to do. Before term begins, here is what every new Hogwarts student should know about classes, electives, textbooks, and what an ordinary week of magical education might actually look like.

First things first: Hogwarts students begin with a shared group of core subjects. As the years progress, your timetable expands, electives appear, examinations become increasingly important, and, assuming you survive the homework, you gain more control over the subjects you continue studying.

How Hogwarts Classes Work by Year

Your academic life changes considerably between your first trip across the lake and your final year in the castle. Here is the broad version of what to expect.

Years 1–2

Learn the Basics

First- and second-year students follow a largely fixed curriculum covering the essential branches of magical education. Flying is also required during the first year.

Years 3–5

Choose Electives

Beginning in third year, students add elective subjects to their timetables while continuing their core courses. Fifth year culminates in the Ordinary Wizarding Level examinations, better known as O.W.L.s.

Years 6–7

Specialize

After O.W.L.s, students generally continue only the subjects for which they have achieved the grades required by their professors, allowing their final years to focus more closely on future careers and N.E.W.T.-level study.

Core Hogwarts Classes

These subjects form the foundation of a Hogwarts education. Open each class for a quick look at what awaits you inside the classroom.

Astronomy Core

Astronomy at Hogwarts is much like its Muggle counterpart, with considerably better views from the Astronomy Tower. Students learn the names and positions of stars, observe the movement of planets, and complete detailed star charts.

Charms Core

Charms teaches students how to give objects new or altered properties through spellwork. Lessons range from levitating objects to Summoning Charms and form one of the most practical foundations of everyday magic.

Defense Against the Dark Arts Core

Defense Against the Dark Arts prepares witches and wizards to recognize and protect themselves from dangerous creatures, curses, Dark magic, and other magical threats. Defensive spellwork becomes increasingly advanced as students progress through Hogwarts.

The subject has also experienced one of the more notorious staff turnover rates in the castle, meaning the curriculum can vary depending on who happens to be standing at the front of the classroom that year.

Flying First Year

Flying lessons are required for first-year students. Beginners learn to summon their broomsticks, mount properly, take off, steer, and, ideally, return to the ground without requiring a visit to the hospital wing.

Herbology Core

Herbology is essentially magical botany. Students learn how to identify, grow, care for, harvest, and use plants and fungi with magical properties. Gloves are strongly recommended, particularly when the plant in question can bite back.

History of Magic Core

History of Magic examines major events in the history of the magical community. Known topics include goblin rebellions, giant wars, and the International Warlock Conventions of 1289 and 1709.

The subject is famously taught by Professor Cuthbert Binns, which makes it the only Hogwarts class in which the professor being dead is considered entirely routine.

Potions Core

Potions teaches the precise brewing of magical draughts using combinations of magical and mundane ingredients. Preparation, timing, temperature, and exact measurements matter, improvisation is generally discouraged unless you enjoy scraping melted cauldrons off dungeon floors.

Transfiguration Core

Transfiguration deals with magically changing the form or appearance of objects and living things. It is regarded as one of Hogwarts’ more complicated and potentially dangerous disciplines and requires considerable precision.

Third-Year Electives and Advanced Courses

Once you reach third year, Hogwarts finally allows you some say over your timetable. Students choose at least two electives, although particularly ambitious witches and wizards may attempt more.

A warning from academic history: Hermione Granger attempted all five principal electives during the 1993–1994 school year and required a Time-Turner to make the schedule work. Consider this before enthusiastically ticking every box on your course-selection form.
Ancient Runes Elective

Ancient Runes studies historical forms of magical writing. Coursework includes interpreting and translating runic inscriptions into modern English.

Arithmancy Elective

Arithmancy examines the magical properties and significance of numbers. It is generally considered one of Hogwarts’ more academically demanding electives.

Care of Magical Creatures Elective

Care of Magical Creatures is the wizarding equivalent of zoology or animal science. Students study the behavior, care, handling, and characteristics of magical creatures, some friendlier than others.

Divination Elective

Divination explores methods of attempting to predict the future. Lessons may involve crystal balls, tea leaves, dreams, visions, palmistry, and other forms of magical fortune-telling.

Muggle Studies Elective

Muggle Studies examines the history, culture, technology, and everyday lives of non-magical people. For students raised entirely within the wizarding world, the course offers an introduction to a society that operates without magic.

During the 1997–1998 school year, Muggle Studies was made compulsory under Death Eater control of Hogwarts and transformed into propaganda under Alecto Carrow.

Alchemy Advanced

Alchemy may be offered to sixth-year students when there is sufficient demand. The discipline involves the magical study and manipulation of substances and the traditional elements of air, earth, fire, and water, including attempts to transform one substance into another.

Apparition Age 17

Eligible older students can take a 12-week Apparition course teaching them how to disappear from one place and reappear in another. The course costs 12 Galleons and is open to students who are 17 or who will turn 17 by the end of August.

Passing the course does not itself replace the official Apparition test, so don’t start planning unauthorized weekend trips just yet.

What Happens After Fifth Year?

Fifth-year students sit their Ordinary Wizarding Level examinations, or O.W.L.s. The results help determine which subjects they can continue studying at N.E.W.T. level during sixth and seventh years. Professors may set their own minimum grades for admission to advanced classes, so a passing grade does not always guarantee you a seat.

What Will Be on Your Hogwarts Reading List?

Before each school year, Hogwarts students receive a list of required books along with the rest of their school supplies. Professors select texts according to their plans for the coming term, which means the list can change considerably from one year to the next.

Most students purchase their books at Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, where the shelves are stocked ahead of the annual back-to-school rush.

Defense Against the Dark Arts is particularly unpredictable. When Gilderoy Lockhart became professor in 1992, for example, he assigned his own published works to his students. The following year brought an entirely different problem when Rubeus Hagrid required The Monster Book of Monsters, copies of which had the unfortunate habit of attacking one another.

Some books, however, remain staples of a Hogwarts education. Miranda Goshawk’s Standard Book of Spells series includes volumes corresponding to the various grade levels, while Bathilda Bagshot’s A History of Magic is used throughout students’ years at the school.

The Standard Book of Spells Miranda Goshawk’s essential spellwork series, with different volumes for advancing students.
A History of Magic Bathilda Bagshot’s foundational history text and a long-running fixture on Hogwarts reading lists.
The Monster Book of Monsters A third-year Care of Magical Creatures text best approached only after learning how to stroke its spine.
Professor-Specific Reading Expect additional titles to change depending on the professor, subject, and school year.

What Does a Hogwarts Class Schedule Look Like?

Hogwarts never provides readers with a complete bell-by-bell timetable, but the books give us enough clues to reconstruct portions of Harry Potter’s schedule. The example below shows what his fourth-year week in 1994–1995 may have looked like based on the classes specifically documented in the story.

Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Morning Herbology with Hufflepuff History of Magic Undocumented Transfiguration History of Magic
Break Break Break Break Break Break
Late Morning Care of Magical Creatures with Slytherin Undocumented Charms Undocumented Charms
Midday Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
Afternoon I Divination Potions Undocumented Defense Against the Dark Arts Potions with Slytherin
Afternoon II Divination Undocumented Undocumented Defense Against the Dark Arts Potions with Slytherin
Evening Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner

* Undocumented periods: The gray-patterned cells represent portions of Harry’s fourth-year timetable that are not clearly established in the books.

Astronomy is also not specifically placed within Harry’s fourth-year daytime schedule. Since Astronomy lessons are held at night, the class may have taken place after dinner on one of the otherwise undocumented evenings.

** Shared classes: Students from two Houses sometimes take a subject together, although many lessons appear to contain students from only one House.

Before You Head to Class…

Hogwarts may offer moving staircases, enchanted ceilings, ghosts in the corridors, and the occasional lesson involving something with teeth, but it is still a school. Expect essays, examinations, practical work, assigned reading, and plenty of homework waiting back in your common room.

About MuggleNet: MuggleNet has covered the Wizarding World since 1999, offering news, guides, editorials and fan resources for readers around the world.

Feature image: Warner Brothers Discovery