Rowling has smushed together magic and science at Hogwarts to come up with something altogether revolutionary. Harry Potter was born to be the savior of his people, the only survivor of a child massacre. He gains knowledge (that is, science) through his education at Hogwarts, but his science is expressed as magic (and, lest we forget, Asimov [or Clarke, see below] once observed that any science, sufficiently developed, is indistinguishable from magic) and through his education he fulfills his destiny. Fundamentalists are always in an uproar against Harry Potter, and now I can finally see why -- he needles them from both directions. He's a wizard, which is heretical, but he's also a scientist, which is even more heretical. He spends his narrative gathering education about magic, education and magic being two things no fundamentalist can stand. No wonder they want to destroy him.
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Sherrie