Iron

"Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. He had done it."

- Description of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Iron (chemical symbol: Fe) is a chemical element, and a transition metal. Pure iron is soft, but the material is significantly hardened and strengthened by impurities from the smelting process, such as carbon.

The exit of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, a wizarding train platform hidden from the eyes of Muggles at King's Cross Station, is made of a wrought-iron archway bearing the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. There was an iron chandelier at Classroom 3C, on which Pixies hung Neville Longbottom during a Defence Against the Dark Arts class gone wrong with Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in 1992. In the summer of 1993, the copies of The Monster Book of Monsters at Flourish and Blotts bookshop were kept in a large iron cage at the bookshop window. The Entrance Gates to Hogwarts Castle were "magnificent wrought-iron gates", flanked with stone columns topped with winged boars. The gates to Malfoy Manor were wrought-iron as well. The dragons used in the First Task of the 1994-1995 Triwizard Tournament were temporarily held in the Forbidden Forest, fastened securely to iron pegs. Heavy iron pots and pans hung from the dark ceiling of the basement kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place. There was also a iron flagon of Butterbeer, which Fred and George Weasley bewitched, accidentally letting it crash and spill its contents everywhere. The doors leading into the courtrooms on Level Ten of the Ministry of Magic Headquarters in London were heavy wooden ones with iron bolts and keyholes. When Dolores Umbridge, Headmistress of Hogwarts, confiscated Harry Potter's Firebolt and Fred and George Weasley's Cleansweep Fives, she stored them in her office, chained and padlocked to a stout iron peg in the wall. Molly Weasley owned a large iron pot, which she used to brew onion soup in the summer of 1996. The gates leading into the courtyard in front of the grim Wool's Orphanage in London in the 1930s were made of iron, as were the bedsteads in the orphans' rooms. The door leading from the top of the Astronomy Tower into the Castle below had an iron ring. The front door of Lovegood House was studded with iron nails, and the spiral staircase leading into the upper floors was wrought-iron.

Appearances

 * Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
 * Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
 * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
 * Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
 * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows