NORFOLK, Va. - When the students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry fly off on broomsticks, most Harry Potter fans think "magic." Charlene Haviland thinks "aerodynamics."

And when Professor Albus Dumbledore snaps his fingers to turn on the lights, the middle school teacher gets excited - at the prospect of explaining how a remote control works.

Haviland will get her chance this fall, when she teaches an after-school remedial program for eighth-graders that will combine reading with the study of science in the Harry Potter books. She'll use one book per quarter, so the students won't get to the latest - the sixth in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," which is due out July 16.

The program at the inner-city school is being funded by an $82,000 American Honda Foundation grant awarded to Haviland and George Plitnik, a physics professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland.

Haviland sought the grant, which includes enough money for lab equipment, after she was unable to find a model for a middle-school class of this type. She asked for Plitnik's help because he was familiar with the topic.

He has taught the science in the Harry Potter books for two years, first as a small honors class and last school year as a course that attracted 90 students in both the fall and spring semesters.

"There's a lot of science that looks like magic," said Plitnik, who has been known to show up for class in a wizard's costume.

That very magic propelled Haviland, 35, onto her career path. As a part-time student at Southern Oregon University, she signed up for a class with a chemistry professor whom she found inspiring.

"He was always bumping into things and kind of absent-minded, but just extremely intelligent," Haviland said. "And he always brought in demonstrations. He wouldn't tell us how it worked, but for extra credit we could try to figure out what it was."

She started trying to solve the mysteries.

"I wasn't a stellar chemistry student, but I just got hooked," she said. "When you mix these two liquids together, why do they turn blue?"

She, in turn, wanted to inspire others in the same way. As an undergraduate, she put on magic shows aimed at children, demonstrating - and explaining - chemical reactions.

She could make two clear liquids turn black. In some experiments, she could predict when the substances would change color; in others, the changes were unpredictable.

"I wanted kids to see that chemistry wasn't something that was scary, that it was really cool," she said. "When they go on to high school and have the option to take chemistry, maybe they'll go ahead and take it."

With the after-school science program, Haviland has an additional challenge: improving her students' reading and writing scores on state standardized tests. She chose the Harry Potter books because they have made page-turners of children who don't normally like to read.

"Find some books that they like to read," she said. "And say 'Do you think this could actually happen in the real world? Well, here it is.'"