The Dresden Files/Awesome

There are a lot of Crowning Moments in The Dresden Files, with depicting what most fans consider the Crowning Moment of all Crowning Moments. Unfortunately the artist forgot the one-man polka band. (see the Dead Beat entry below) Otherwise, this is what we've come up with so far.

Storm Front
"Dresden: "Little pig, little pig, let me in....""
 * Harry makes an entrance at the mob-owned Varsity by blowing the door off its hinges, melting the jukebox, and exploding every lightbulb in the place.


 * Made even more impressive since Dresden blew the door out towards him so as not to rain splinters on innocent bystanders.
 * That quote sums up Dresden pretty well. The dude is a big bad wolf.
 * Harry and Murphy are handcuffed and trapped in an elevator. is trying to rip through the roof of the elevator. Harry knows that shooting fire at it would heat up the car too much to survive. So instead Harry pulls air up from the bottom of the shaft causing them to rise 11 stories and crush the  against the ceiling.
 * And then the elevator falls all the way back down to the ground floor, where some very surprised paramedics are waiting.
 * We can't forget the fact that Harry  While naked.
 * Harry going out to find Victor Sells and stop him from using a thunderstorm to murder him, but while he's in Mac's pub he's stopped by Morgan, who claims that he has proof that Harry has been committing the murders. Harry makes to go sit down and talk...then he grabs one of the heavy wooden chairs and beats Morgan into unconsciousness with it. Keep in mind that Morgan is a Lawful Stupid Inspector Javert Knight Templar BFS-carrying wizard parole officer that could have Harry killed at any time.

Fool Moon
""He's the guy who knows. If he comes to and says anything, you listen to him.""
 * Murphy shoots a loup-garou [read: giant psychotic werewolf] with silver bullets she made from her deceased aunt's earrings.
 * Right after, Carmichael, who has been the complete skeptic who has never believed Harry to be anything other than a con man, tells another officer about Harry:

""Damn.""
 * Shortly after the above, Harry manages to drive the loup-garou off with a phenomenally powerful telekinetic blast that hurls it through three buildings. As one of the witnesses so eloquently puts it:


 * Arguably made even funnier by the fact that the guy was basically a token black guy; the kind who stands around and says that things are 'whack'.
 * Crime lord John Marcone, when trussed up and hanging over a pit as bait for said loup-garou, uses a knife his captors didn't find, and instead of cutting all the ropes and freeing himself, cuts one rope so that Harry and Murphy can climb out of the pit and away from the werewolf--though this leaves him in considerable danger. And he banters with Harry while he does it. Oh and does it in the dark.
 * He's also hanging upside down while he does this. He doesn't just cut the rope, either- he throws the knife, despite all of the mentioned circumstances, and manages to hit the rope accurately and hard enough for it to work. Harry remarks on this achievement of Marcone's in his narratives a few times in later books, because it was damn impressive.
 * Speaking of Marcone, Harry's conversation with him in his awesome definitely qualifies.
 * Harry, after, realizes that the Black Magic of the artifact is seducing him into doing and becoming something that appalls him, and rips it off and flings it away. Given the overwhelming and addictive appeal of Black Magic in this series, given the fact that it was stated earlier that it was practically impossible for someone who'd tasted the power of such an artifact to turn their back on it, and given that Harry--weak, wounded, unarmed and stripped of magic--was ready to die as a human rather than live as a monster...this was a Crowning Moment of Awesome from every possible angle.
 * Harry pitches himself out of a moving vehicle, downs a hella-powerful pick-me-up potion, stands up, and then explodes a pursuing pickup truck's tires, sending it careening off the road.
 * While humming Carmen as an incantation.
 * And a while later he disperds a lycanthrope's (read Berseker) bloodlust with the magical equivalent of a slap.

Grave Peril
"Michael: "I still can't believe that you came to the Vampires' Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire."
 * Also a Crowning Moment of Funny:

Harry: "Not just a vampire, a cheesy vampire. Do you think they got the point?""

"Harry: "I don't bluff if I can help it. I'm not too good at it."
 * Harry, outnumbered by the vampires, manages to win by putting enough magic into the area to.
 * Harry lets the villain, but uses the villain's weakening of the border between worlds to and has someone (who could quite possibly kill him).
 * But to get there Harry and company have to cross into the Nevernever where his fairy godmother waits to bind him into lifelong servitude. But Harry has a plan. As soon as she appears, Thomas and Michael throw two boxes of nails around Harry. As Lea shrieks about them defiling the soil, Harry uses his contingency plan. Made even better by the fact that other than the nail distraction, Harry was completely honest about the whole thing.

Bonus, the same mushroom poisoning kept the vampires from draining him dry later. They got badly poisoned."

"N: "I shall rip out thy heart!"
 * Nightmare is threatening to eat Harry's heart. Harry then corrects his grammar.

H: "It's THINE heart.""

""Dost thou not realise, fool? This is thy death come upon thee."
 * Michael turning up at the graveyard where the Nightmare had taken Charity:

A boot planted itself heavily on the marble beside me. Then another. Amoracchius cast a glowing white light upon my shoulder, and Michael said, "I think not.""

Summer Knight

 * Toot-Toot and his brigade of pixies . "In the name of the Pizza Lord! CHARGE!"
 * Harry's battle-cry: "I don't believe in faeries!"
 * Murphy attacking a chloro-fiend with a chainsaw. That is all. Or it would be, if Harry hadn't scored another one in the same fight, by soaking a magic-resistant ogre in gasoline and lighting it on fire.
 * Fix, a relatively small, frightened man,  All because he hurt his friend.
 * Harry not only resisting the temptations of the Winter Lady (by pouring ice water on his crotch) but also verbally bitchslapping her by saying that she couldn't have murdered the Summer Knight because not only is she not powerful enough, but she's also an immature, impulse-driven child.
 * Although not shown, Simon Petrovich wiping out most, if not all, of the vampires that atttacked Archangel with his Death Curse.

Death Masks
""Fortunately for you, they [the Knights] are good men. Unfortunately for you, I am not.""
 * After Red Court Duke Ortega cheated in a duel against Dresden, Ebenezar McCoy  Then remember of the , Ebenezar is, according to Harry, the youngest and the weakest.
 * Well, the youngest and the least skilled. Weakest is another matter; he has incredible brute force, like a more experienced Harry. . Harry described him in Changes as like The Heavyweight Champion of the wizarding world when it comes to straight up magical fighting.
 * John Marcone, pulling a drowning Harry out of the river . And prior to that, Marcone takes on Nicodemus, and actually manages to drive him off with concentrated fire from an AK-47. Immediately afterward, when Harry explains that Nicodemus can't be killed and can probably run faster than the train they're fighting on, Marcone's only response to glance to Sanya and ask for more ammo.
 * The "drive him off with concentrated fire from an AK-47" bit should be expanded on, as it's especially impressive. From the back of one moving train car to the next, he hits a moving target with three bursts from an AK he's never shot before,
 * Harry holding up Anna Valmont with a plastic duck instead of a gun is a pretty great moment too.
 * How about Marcone, Harry and the gang riding in to save the day in Marcone's helicopter? "All we need now is some Wagner..." and Gard presses a button and Ride of The Valkyries starts playing. Definitely awesome.  That and the other helicopters Marcone provides must be from Monoc security, because the "Ride of The Valkyries" -button seems to be a standart feature in all of them.
 * Shiro's
 * Harry, confronted with Cassius and his attempt to loophole his way out of being slain by the Knights of the Cross by surrendering and sarcastically promising to repent, responds to the mockery by breaking his kneecaps with a baseball bat.


 * Then he drops a quarter on the ground and tells the guy the nearest payphone is across the parking lot through broken glass. What Harry knows, and Michael later points out, is that phone calls no longer cost twenty-five cents.
 * The Archive, slaughtering a half-dozen Red Court vampires using . Then she comments that it's past her bedtime.

Blood Rites
""For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils.""
 * Harry kills a Black Court vampire with a laser-guided frozen turkey dropped from an airplane passing overhead. Sure, it was someone else's curse that Harry redirected, but the end result had even the other characters going WTF.


 * This has the added benefit of being quite possibly the funniest thing to happen in the entire series.
 * Murphy refusing to break under the White King's mind control. Granted, that doesn't seem like much in this series, but not even Lara managed to do that before Harry told her that her dad was powerless.
 * Doubles up: Harry, who had no reason to believe Murphy hadn't started to break and was really, truly, out of it, only needed two words to be bet-his-life certain.


 * Awesome moment for Jim Butcher: Blood Rites has two of the best opening and closing lines in all of fiction. Opening: "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." Closing:
 * Harry and Murphy, with a little magical help, motorcycle-joust a car and send the car hurtling away on fire.
 * The climax, where Harry Even Lara, no slouch at political intrigue herself, is impressed. Harry might not resort to subtlety often, but when he does he is good at it.

Dead Beat
"Sue ate him. Snap. Gulp. No more ghoul."
 * Harry animates Sue the T-Rex, the one from the actual museum in Chicago, to serve as his steed as he rides into battle against an army of necromancers and zombies. Did I mention it was controlled by not only his magic, but his sidekick's one-man polka suit?
 * By the way, in the Dresdenverse, the older a corpse is, the stronger it is when animated as a zombie, but it's also commensurately harder to reanimate. Nonhuman zombies, preferred by Harry because they're not Forbidden Magic, are weaker, but more difficult to create and control. The walking corpses summoned by the Big Bad in Dead Beat range from less than a year to maybe a few hundred years old. Sue is roughly sixty-five million years dead, and was famous several years back for being one of extremely few complete skeletons ever found.
 * This moment was so awesome that it was referenced in a fanfic for another fandom entirely titled "Things Shinigami Are Not Allowed To Do." More specifically: "Chicago is now off-limits to all operatives. THIS MEANS YOU, Kenpachi. The zombie T. Rex. is dead. Again."
 * Bigger bonus? The Dresden Pen and Paper RPG includes rules for doing this yourself. The stats for Sue in particular as an opponent basically translate to "You lose."
 * Bonus: Harry summons the Lord of the Wild Hunt, a fae on par with the Fae Queens themselves, and binds him so that the competing armies of necromancers can't use him. Then, after the Big Ending Fight, the Lord spares Harry because even he thinks reanimating Sue was awesome.
 * Hell, summoning the Erlking is a moment of awesome on its own. Harry summons and tries to bind one of the most powerful Fair Folk in existence. This will give said Fair Folk a personal grudge against Harry, which means the Lord will probably kill him within a day or two even if bound long enough for Harry's purposes. (Remember back in Storm Front when Harry comments in the narration that he'd never try to summon and trap Santa Claus in a magic circle because "nobody has stones that big"? Various bits of Word of God indicate that summoning the Erlking is comparable to that.)
 * The Awesomeness that is Zombie-Sue is recognized in the book when he does it: Harry doesn't make a big deal about it, but Luccio, commander of the Wardens who should by all rights be appalled at the necromancy (even if it isn't technically illegal), can't quite get over her feeling of stunned disbelief. And Warden Ramirez immediately thinks it's the coolest thing ever.
 * Remember that ghoul? The unstoppable ninja flesh-eater who nearly killed Harry in the alleyway?

"Harry: "I've got a fallen angel tripping all over herself to give me more power. Queen Mab has asked me to take the mantle of Winter Knight twice now. I've read Kemmler's book. I know how the Darkhallow works. And I know how to turn necromancy against the Black Court. So once again, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Murphy and I even think you had a hand in it, fuck right and wrong. If you touch her, I'm declaring war on you. Personally. I'm picking up every weapon I can get. And I'm using them to kill you. Horribly. Do you understand me?""
 * Harry telling Mavra, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever tries to get to him through Murphy again, he will take her down with extreme prejudice is worth a mention, too.

"Butters skittered away from the knife, eyes wide with terror.
 * Fridge Brilliance makes this more awesome. Mavra has not come back since.
 * Oh, and speaking of the sidekick's one-man polka suit... Waldo Butters is a 5-foot-nothing, 98-pound weakling nebbishy coroner. He is not a trained cop like Murphy, he doesn't have a connection to the higher powers like the Knights, he doesn't even have the ability to turn into a wolf like the Alphas. But, after a very crappy day involving zombies, necromancers, and psychopaths who either want what he knows or want him dead, he finds the fortitude to save Harry from a knife wielding psycho in a fist fight. He didn't do a hell of a lot of fighting, but he always put himself between the guy with the knife and his friend.
 * And never forget: POLKA WILL NEVER DIE!
 * Also don't forget that said getting between the guy with the knife and his friend involved attacking the psycho with his teeth.

But he skittered directly between and me.

And held his ground."

""I guess you don't get to be Merlin of the White Council by collecting bottle caps.""
 * A small thing, but Butters also manages to keep his cool enough that, during the final battle, he actually manages to use the knowledge Harry has taught him to create a warding circle to protect himself from the undead, while lethal and deadly specters are closing in on him from all sides.
 * Morgan,  when he proves himself willing to go through said reanimated T-Rex to  . He's probably able, too; see below.
 * Thomas, riding with the Wild Hunt.
 * And Bob, after
 * The Senior council was being chased through the Nevernever by Red Court vamps, demons, and at least one Eldritch Abomination. The Merlin held off the entire freaking Red Court with an impromptu ward.


 * Luccio shows Harry why she's the captain of the Wardens by destroying thirty undead in under five seconds,the rest of the Wardens handle the rest and not one child is harmed in the process.

Proven Guilty
"Dresden: Kicks in the door "AND I'M ALL OUT OF GUM!""
 * "How about a little fire, Scarecrow?"
 * Dresden entering the movie theater with yet movie another reference:

"Thomas: "Howdy.""
 * Charity Carpenter at Arctis Tor. "You will never touch my daughter again!", indeed.
 * A Moment of Awesome is also awarded to Daniel Carpenter, for attacking the phages  with nothing more than a fire poker and sheer balls. That it was ultimately futile does not diminish this in the slightest, particularly in light of the psychic beating he took on behalf of his family.
 * Harry vs. the Merlin.
 * There's also Ramirez
 * Harry vs. Dirty Cop Greene over Molly. Greene has Molly in interrogation, and Harry gets her out using some extraordinarily swift thinking, knowledge of the legal system, a nosy reporter, and about two metric tons of awesome. The poor cop never had a chance.
 * At the horror movie convention, Harry takes on
 * Morgan got within YARDS of personally offing the King of the Red Court. Say what you will about his personality, the man is Badass.
 * He didn't get that close by chance, either. While we don't get to see the fight, it was mentioned he had to cut his way through three Red Court Dukes, the sight of which was presumably what convinced the King to get his undead ass out of there. It says something about Morgan's level of badassery that not one character in the books doubts for a moment that he COULD have taken the King had he just gotten a little closer.
 * This is even further enhanced by Changes, where we learn that.
 * Thomas's Big Damn Heroes moment.

"Maeve:“Tell me, mortal. When was the last time flesh, new and strange to your hand, lay quivering beneath you, hmm? When was the last time you could taste and feel some little lovely’s cries?”
 * Harry serving Maeve, the Queen To Be of the Winter Court.

Harry: "Technically? When I killed Aurora.""


 * Michael spends most of the entire book mysteriously absent and out of contact. He returns at the end for a Big Damn Heroes moment, during which it is revealed he was off on a Big Damn Heroes mission for Injun Joe and McCoy, who are both members of the Senior Council. McCoy says that if he hadn't shown up, no one would have survived.

White Night
""If that wasn't a straight line, my name isn't Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.""
 * Elaine, produces a lightning bolt so powerful it takes out the entire front of the building she's in.
 * John Marcone showing up  with his private bodyguard AND a small army to help Harry fight various White Court vampires, regenerative ghouls and at least one person possessed by an Outsider.
 * And then we find out in Changes that the private army was made up of Einherjar.
 * Harry's entrance into the
 * A bit of explanation: one of the Big Bads who (thinks he) arranged the plot of the whole books is talking to saying how they can  with impunity. After all, who was there to stop them?

""!" I called,my voice ringing with wrath in the echoing cavern. "! I am Harry Dresden, Warden of the White Council of Wizards. Under the Unseelie Accords, I accuse you of murder in a time of peace, and challenge you, here and now, before these witnesses, to trial by combat." I slammed my staff down again in another shock of thunder, and Hellfire flooded in the runes of the staff. "To the death.""
 * Harry then slams his staff on the floor, cracking a marble flagstone, making a sound like thunder, and creating a carpet of rolling fire. Harry strides down the aisle behind this fire, Ramirez at his side, and calls out the villains of the piece for their deeds, ending the display by challenging the two culprits to a duel to the death. Bad. Ass.

"Utter silence fell on the Deeps."

"Damn, there ain't nothing like a good entrance."

""I... She... doesn't deserve you.""
 * Harry, when confronted by a dozen ghouls attacking him on a boat, shows what he's learned since the last book.
 * Note the uncharacteristic glee with which the narration explains how doomed they are: New Mexico made him angry.
 * Harry and Ramirez tag-team destroying (as in literally shattering every bone in his body) that sonuvabitch Also, "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Bowling for Vampires," which even got the vampires laughing.
 * Murphy putting an armlock on Hendricks. That is all.
 * After using the  Lara Raith to get them out of a blast zone, Harry begins listing off a series of increasingly costly demands as reparations for the damage inflicted by her house. At the end of it, he adds one final demand: "Some Listerine. I've got a funny taste in my mouth." Her reaction is priceless.
 * Shadow Lasciel's . Best of all, it leads in with a simple statement:

"Harry: "Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!""
 * Harry going head-to-head against . Not necessarily what he does but how he reacts to it when he realizes he's up against  :


 * Lara and Thomas utterly stopping a horde of nigh-unkillable super-ghouls in their tracks.It's so awesome Harry uses it as an example of why Lara shouldn't be underestimated in Turn Coat

Small Favor
""Lava quod est sordium! In nomine Dei, sana quod est saucium!""
 * Murphy facing down Tiny the Gruff in Mac's bar. Which Mac himself agrees is pretty awesome, as he then gives her one of the best beers he's ever made in recognition of the fact that she just saw off several tons of supernatural hitman.
 * And at the end of the book, Murphy
 * Michael Dual Wielding a broadsword and a katana against an ancient demonic entity . And let's not forget his fight scene against the vampires in Grave Peril.
 * "I don't call him the Fist of God as a pet name, folks."
 * Not to mention he


 * The Archive fighting 8 Denarians at once, after disintegrating one of them. Oh, and she's a twelve-year-old girl. Little Miss Badass indeed.
 * And, because of an enemy spell, she was cut off from all magic except for that in the immediate area. Yes, she had almost nothing to work with, yet she used what was lying around to kick ass.
 * To put that into further perspective,
 * Gard, an honest-to-god Valkyrie with a capital V, flying a Huey helicopter into battle while blasting Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries from externally-mounted speakers. Even her boss is impressed.
 * And along with that, Hendricks riding shotgun minigun.
 * After being tortured by fallen angels and their psychotic hosts for an entire week, John Marcone flat-out refuses to leave his island prison first. Instead, he points to his fellow prisoner, The Archive--a twelve-year-old girl--and silently indicates that he wants her to be freed first.
 * Eldest Brother Gruff has personally killed three Senior Council Members (he wears their stoles as trophies). For reference, the weakest council member currently around is Ebenezar, wielder of the Colony Drop, see Death Masks. Harry defeats him by Hilarious, too.
 * Its also worth pointing out that Eldest Brother Gruff obliterates the Fallen Magog, as Harry puts it "like an uppity pixie."
 * Not only that, but he uses an absolutely painless attack that causes beautiful flowers to grow in the wounds, which can give the impression that Eldest killed Magog using love and peace.
 * It was a particular testament to Harry's awesome when the Eldest Brother Gruff informs Harry that among the Fae, stories of his exploits are their equivalent of the Billy Goats Gruff story.
 * The younger Gruffs also have their moments, particularly the second set of brothers, who reveal they are much more Genre Savvy than most other faeries when they
 * Low-key in comparison, but Kincaid killed two fallen angels with the same bullet.
 * "Lasciel's shadow doesn't live here anymore.".
 * This Crowning Moment of Awesome should really be awarded not to Harry, because all he did was think on his feet, but retroactively to Lash, because it wouldn't have worked if she wasn't not there.
 * Another addition, according to Word Of Jim, Nicodemus is now terrified of Harry. Let me repeat that. Nicodemus, the two thousand year old man who has been fighting Holy Knights and the various supernatural entities in the world for literally thousands of years, is now terrified of a wizard less than forty years old.
 * After the Denarian Tessa, Harry quickly realizes that if he uses fire magic,  , and that without his blasting rod, he would probably be unable to generate the power and precision needed to get past the defenses Tessa posses. His response? "I officially did not care," and he unleashes his fury and his will against Tessa. "Burn!" Which results in a bar of blue-white fire so dense it was nearly a solid object slamming into the Denarian, burning a hole through her, a fire far more powerful and destructive than any Harry had ever used before, with or without a blasting rod. Don't mess with Harry's friends.
 * Made even more awesome by Ghost Story when Harry says that that using a spell in English could brain damage or even kill him. He's just that pissed off.
 * An incredibly subtle one comes toward the end, when Luccio is telling Harry that the Merlin wants him to stay away from the Archive. She points out that Listens-To-Winds and Ebanezar McCoy were among those who warned the Merlin that Harry would never agree to that. Also among the group of people who knew Harry would never stop being friends with the Archive? Morgan. Keep in mind the relationship between Harry and Morgan thus far has been of the sword-swinging variety, and you'll understand just how significant that is.
 * And we can't leave out that  Lots of Chekhovs Guns are fairly obvious, but very, very few are set up specifically by the failure to mention them.

Turn Coat
""I punched it in the nose. Now we're friends.""
 * Morgan got into a fight with a Native American skinwalker -- think "highly intelligent shapeshifting demigod of sadism"--back in the 50's. Skinwalkers are hard to kill, so the fight started up in New Mexico and ended in Nevada. In the nuclear weapon testing grounds. Where Morgan left the skinwalker behind to enjoy a front row seat to a mushroom cloud. That's right--he nuked an Eldritch Abomination.
 * He did it while stepping into the Nevernever, too. One can only imagine it happening with Morgan slowly and calmly turning around, stepping into the gateway, and closing it right as the nuke went off.
 * Cool guys don't look at explosions...
 * They just turn and walk away...
 * Thomas and Justine putting one of Thomas' uppity succubus cousins in her place. Thomas broke a solid metal chair over her head and literally pinned her to a table. Then Touched-By-True-Love-Justine kissed her. Ouch.
 * This is especially funny seeing how the White Court are seldom that physical. But Thomas just didn't want to play with words, or plots. He just smacked a metal chair over her head.
 * Harry calling up, beating it in a contest of wills, and making it his friend. Of sorts.

""Lady Raith,"? Ebenezar said, calmly. "Touch that boy again and the only things left for your kin to bury will be your five-hundred-dollar shoes.""
 * This is followed up closer to the end of the book by an offhand comment from Rashid, the Gatekeeper, regarding . Said comment? That Rashid wouldn't because "It holds a grudge." The Gatekeeper apparently came out on top when.
 * Harry
 * Ebenezar's Badass Boast after Lara socks Harry, unaware the two are working together.


 * Toot-toot during the fight on the island takes on the skinwalker with a boxcutter and actually gets in a few hits, distracting it long enough for Harry to continue kicking its ass.
 * While shouting "Avaunt, villain!" In fact, he was saving Harry's life, and probably Molly's too. No wonder Toot's even taller when we see him next.
 * As Joe said:" Little guy like that, taking on something so far out his weight class. That was a sight to see."
 * Listens-To-Wind And sending it scurrying for its life. And that was after

"Rashid, prevent it from moving forward and disintegrating me, if you please."
 * Even better in hindsight. Shagnasty tore through the White King's personal domain with no effort. Listens-To-Winds kicked his ass.
 * And Harry's  Hurrah for subcontracting!
 * Time to edit the top of that page for Billy and Georgia
 * Mouse's amazing ability to keep incredibly awkward situations under control. Specifically, Harry comes home on three different occasions to find Mouse, entirely on his own. In the third instance Mouse goes so far as to
 * Very impressive for a non speaking creature. He usually did this by sitting on someone.
 * The Merlin, often viewed by Harry as nothing more than politician, is able to contain and, with the help of the Senior Council, banish a deadly mistfiend that literally kills with a touch.
 * And before that, he was able to telepathically forumulate a battle plan amidst the chaos of the attack. While it was pitch-black. While he was fighting a powerful supernatural entity. In under three seconds.
 * Not to mention how insanely calm the wording for the battle plan was.

"One bloody and spectacular mess, coming up."
 * To make things better he even thought a mental chalk board outline of the battle plan to people so they could more easily see what to do. And he realized that anyone that called forth light in the black would immediately be a target. Many humans in the Dresdenverse die by making that mistake. They light themselves up(as supernatural creatures are seldom bothered by the lack of light) and become targets. And then dead.
 * The interrogation of Binder.
 * A Tear Jerker-inducing Crowning Moment of Awesome for Morgan:  For someone like Morgan, that is incredibly powerful.
 * Molly using her gift for veils to invisibly draw a huge magic circle around Binder and his mooks and wipe them all out in an instant when she activates it.
 * For Morgan, right near the end. He's on the cusp of being executed just to appease the White Council's political image. Then Harry unmasks the traitor, who promptly flees. Morgan, despite the injury that makes it life-threatening to even stand, sprints to catch up, and puts two bullets in the traitor's head just in time to save Harry's life. Naturally, he'd tore open his injury, and was bleeding out. With his dying breath, he tells Harry to let the White Council paint him (Morgan) as a traitor - both to keep the White Council looking strong for outsiders, and to . In one fell swoop, Morgan turned the Downer Ending of an undeserved, politically-motivated execution... into going out fighting, taking out a traitor, and ensuring his death continues to serve the White Council even politically . In short, the absolute best death a Knight Templar could ever, ever dream of.
 * A subtle one, more of a callback than anything, but when Harry, Ancient Mai orders the Wardens to arrest him, and all five of them proceed with caution. Harry then goes over some of his previous victories, and realizes that while he knows he's just a plucky smartass with a lot of luck, who the five wardens would have no trouble taking down, the others don't see it that way. They see him as a badass wizard who rides zombie dinosaurs into battle and kicks the crap out of Eldritch Abominations on a semi-annual basis. In other words, they regard him the same way we do. Harry Dresden is his own 'verse's Memetic Badass.
 * Harry fighting the skinwalker. "Bring it, you dickless freak!" Best. Challenge. Ever.
 * Consider the circumstances of the duel. Harry had barely slept for two days, had been recently injured -- multiple concussions, no less -- had lost his staff and blasting rod and exhausted a good deal of his power in previous battles. He had to run up a mountain to catch up with the damn thing. Yet he hit the skinwalker with three precise, ferocious spells and each one hurt it, even if he himself collapsed afterwards. Imagine what might happen if Harry ever meets the skinwalker when he's at full strength, with the preparation and experience he has now. To quote Harry and invert the situation:

Changes
"False gods! Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty!"
 * "Fuck subtle."
 * And it's part of a Lord of the Rings reference!
 * Harry Dresden sees a vampire: "A vampire, uh oh. Best be careful." The vampire sees Harry Dresden: "Oh shit oh shit its Harry Dresden we're all going to die oh shit oh shit oh shit".
 * Made more awesome in hindsight:
 * Butters' Properly Paranoid bulletproof vest.
 * Not so much a traditional Crowning Moment so much as an event so huge in-universe that it can't really be considered anything else - at the end of Changes.
 * Sure, the fact that he managed it was awesome, but the circumstances were less Crowning Moment of Awesome than another trope...
 * The final battle counts for

"And she raised Fidelacchius, let out a scream that had startled a great many large men working out at her dojo, and plunged into the warriors of the Red Court like a swimmer breasting a wave.
 * A note on this... isn't really the one saying that -- she comments later that something else was speaking through her. Considering the circumstances, that line above is probably a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner directly from a freaking Archangel.
 * Good God. Literally.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * Even better when you read back and notice the Foreshadowing: When Harry arrives to find his crew waiting to go, she's playing chess with someone. What move is she noted as making when Harry walks into the room?.

Sanya blinked.

Holy crap, I hadn't meant she should do that."


 * Mouse confronting the Leanansidhe, and
 * "How did he ever win you?" "He didn't. I won him."
 * Harry's duel with Arianna, culminating when he beats her using a combo of his own raw powers and the fact that Arianna has never been forced to fight with just magic (resulting in her trying the same trick twice, giving Harry the chance to nail her). After Harry overpowers her, Arianna just stares up and dumbly refers to him as cattle. Harry responds first by saying "Moo" then by saying "No one messes with my little girl" before blowing Arianna's head off.
 * The entire final confrontation is basically a hundred and more pages of "Holy shit!" moments piled on top of one another.  Everything. No exceptions.
 * What especially stands out is Harry grabbing the Red King's sword arm mid thrust, impaling, than setting his eyes on fire, before freezing his right forearm and breaking it off. DAMN
 * Harry pulls some insane new tricks in this one. Notable examples: Freezing a would-be hitman's gun. Tapping into an earth ley-line to crush hundreds of Mooks against the floor with gravity. Using tiny fireballs to "bomb" cars as a distraction. Draining the heat from a target and using that heat to power a fireball, then shattering the vamp-sicle. Lots and lots of White Magic-laced silver fire. Borrowing Luccio's tactics and slicing a monster in half with, basically, a magical laser cutter. Intentionally causing a cave-in over both him and his opponent, then opening a dimensional portal directly above himself. And then there's Molly and her "One Woman Rave," complete with Thomas break-dancing while decapitating bad guys with a sword and shooting them with a machine gun.
 * A couple of vampires have The old lady yells "Oh God in Heaven, help us!"... and he does.
 * This scene even contains something of an awesome moment for Mrs. Spunkelcrief (the aforementioned landlady). When Harry's taken out of action, she pulls the ladder upright and tries to climb it herself, and is only stopped when her bad leg collapses under her. It doesn't sound like much, but consider that she's probably in her mid-seventies, with a bum hip, and has trouble walking even with the aid of a cane under the best of circumstances. One gets the feeling that Mrs. S may have been a bit of a Determinator in her youth.
 * The woman also sleeps with a pistol and considers an army of ghouls pounding on her door as not worth waking up for.
 * Oh, come on. You don't live under the same roof as Harry Dresden for ten years without learning to sleep through a little thing like that.
 * I had something of a soft spot for showing Harry why it's a bad idea to fuck with physical gods.
 * Hell, unhesitatingly giving Harry exactly what he asked for, with no price tag attached, proving that some supernatural entities are neither evil nor dicks.
 * Not so surprising if you consider the code of honour of . Courage even in the face of certain defeat is a defining characteristic for Harry, and one certainly appreciates. One thinks he would love to have Harry in . To, Harry is definitely one of the good guys, so why not help him as much as he can?
 * Vadderung is rather insistent that Harry have some coffee and a doughnut. Since he likely realizes that Harry is on a suicide mission,
 * They.
 * "Moo."
 * Martin gets one which was, appropriately, almost impossible to notice. In fact,.
 * Harry managing to impress the Erlking again, this time through some Politeness Judo.
 * The best part is that the rest of the goblins present are angry at what they think is a misuse of, but the Erlking thinks it is clever, equating Harry to a wily fox.
 * When Harry meets with Mab, she gloats that he has no other options...but he interrupts her by listing his options, from least evil to most evil, all the way from accepting her offer up to activating the Darkhallow, consuming the raw lifeforce of the entire city and becoming a necromantic god.
 * Which he would actually do if it meant saving.
 * And not-so-subtly threatens Mab in the process, which takes a pretty large set in itself.
 * What, no love for Leanansidhe? She kept a relatively low profile but besides summoning the Grey Council she:
 * 1) infiltrates Red King's posse of Lords of Outer Night (using a very high level wail)
 * 2) takes on seven Lords of Outer Night at the same time, killing two with the first blow, and has massive fun doing it too (as usual)
 * 3) "aggressively negotiates" with Odin for a direct portal to Chicago for Harry and Maggie, since "she is given to understand the little ones are quite fragile"

Ghost Story
"Sir Stuart: Oh, my. I can see why you'd come to her for assistance.
 * One for Harry, Molly, and Lea at the same time: about half-way in, Molly is fighting a losing battle against Fomor servitors, then Ghost!Harry possesses her body to dish out some heavy pain, and just as he is being overwhelmed, too,
 * Harry leading a platoon of insane killer ghosts to storm the Omaha Beach protected by Bob's Nazi Evil Twin. That is effing all.
 * Here is a quote anyway, just to give a taste: "The enemy fought at first, and those who did died swiftly. As more and more hideous things dealt with the wolfwaffen, their morale faltered and they began to run. Those that did died horribly. And, toward the end, overwhelmed by terror, a handful of the enemy could only stand, staring in horror, and screaming high and piteously. Those last few died indescribably."
 * Molly fighting a flying zombie worm aboard Enterprise, complete with a crew of Molly lookalikes wearing uniform miniskirts. Also The Kirk!Molly fights The Spock!Molly over a Self Destruct Mechanism.
 * Don't forget about the highly recognizable fighting soundtrack playing as this occurs.
 * Dresden also compliments Molly on how weird her brain is.
 * During a meeting between Murphy and her various allies, their White Court contact learns that . She makes Murphy an offer so that the White Court won't "learn" about this: let her feed on Murphy. Murphy presents her counter-offer:  . Needless to say, the vampire agrees with the terms. The icing on the cake is Harry and Sir Stuart's commentary at the end:

Harry: Damn skippy."

"Mortimer: But it seems to me, you half-wit, that you probably shouldn’t have left a freaking to play with."
 * We've always known Bob was a powerful spiritual entity, and he did a damned good showing while  in Changes, but in Ghost Story, we see what he can do in a spirit-on-spirit struggle when a trio of ghostly predators are trying to eat Harry alive. They get massacred by Bob, who pounds them into ectoplasmic mush with about as much effort as Ferrovax dropping Harry or Eldest Gruff killing Magog.
 * Which also ups the awesome factor to eleven when Harry goes toe to toe with Bob's Evil Twin.
 * Bob's Evil twin who was composed primarily of the knowledge of death and destruction collected by the pre-bob spirit of intellect when he worked for one of the worst dark wizards in history and was arguably much stronger in the ass-kicking department than Bob by himself, which ups the awesome factor.
 * Mortimer Lindquist's Big Damn Heroes moment as he comes at  with all the
 * Complete with Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:

"Harry: . I will send your enemies down in defeat and make your power grow. But I do it my way. On my terms. When you give me the task, I’ll decide how it gets done — and you’ll stay out of the way and let me work. And that’s how it’s going to be."
 * Ghost Story will forever be remembered as "The Book Where Morty Got Dangerous".
 * The ending, where Harry tells  that his soul is his own.   can hurt him, but   will never own him, and he's taking care of the job his way. The delivery, coupled with the sheer obstinate defiance that is Harry Dresden's trademark, makes it the most epic telling-off since Harry sending Mavra scurrying away in Dead Beat.
 * Complete with Badass Boast about just what he'll be up to :

"Lea:"
 * When Lea can't tell Harry, she says this:

""That sound you just heard was your lateral collateral ligament and anterior cruciate ligamate tearing free of the joint. It's also possible that your patella or tibia was fractured. Get rid of the knife, or I start on your cranium.""
 * It's badass because
 * Daniel's knife fight with Aristedes. A normal human boy lacking the faith powers of his father and the magic of his sister goes toe to toe with a magically fast sorcerer
 * Also, Butters' anatomy lesson during the same fight:

"Uriel:"
 * "Be."
 * One for Captain Jack: he Also a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * And one for Uriel, with his.


 * The moment -- the exact, specific moment -- when young Harry stops being a scared, helpless teenager and starts being Harry Blackstone Copperfield Motherfucking Dresden:

"Harry: I am, however, reasonably good with fire."
 * There was even a building on fire and everything!
 * A Servitor is approaching a weakened Molly, whose illusions have all been disbelieved. Harry taps into her and casts a wall of fire in front of the servitor, who assumes that it's just another illusion and walks right into it. Harry reminds everyone that, for the most part, he sucks at subtle stuff like holomancy.

Across Books

 * Bob, especially when you realize what he is capable of doing. Harry isn't kidding in Changes when he refers to Bob as one of the most powerful spirits he's ever met; in Changes, Bob manages to  That's right, Bob has enough willpower to match
 * Murphy gets at least one Crowning Moment of Awesome per book. Highlights: not flinching to shoot down a crazy FBI man who was charging at Harry when it looked like Harry was going to fire at her, taking a chain saw to an ogre's knee, being the gunslinger in a raid of a vampire nest, and beating off the control of the king of all incubi. And that's only covering up to book six...she gets at least four in Small Favor, especially when Fidelacchius gets involved.
 * Sanya's reaction to Murphy is, in addition to being accurate, hilarious. "Tiny." * insert description of Sanya's actions here* "But fierce!"
 * Mouse the Dog is Murphy in dog form. Twice, if you count the law maker too.
 * Everything Lara Raith has ever done. She may be a villain, but she has style. And she puts the sexy back in Evil Is Sexy. Lara has ultimate style. Most of the bad guys do. Except for the part where she disemboweled and then fucked to death her cousin after having been burnt to a crisp. That was just pure Squick-laden Nightmare Fuel.
 * Any time a Senior Council member demonstrates why they deserve to be on the Senior Council.
 * Meta Example: James Freakin Marsters is the voice of the audio books!
 * The mere existence of Little Chicago, when one considers the requirements necessary to create it. Harry has to actually physically go out, take samples from every tree, building, and road in Chicago, and then precisely place every one of those samples into the corresponding pewter model of that object or structure, then precisely lay them out exactly as they are in the city itself. Even the tiniest mistake could throw off the entire model. Then he has to keep the model precisely up to date; every time a tree gets cut down, a telephone pole gets replaced, a street gets repaved, or a building gets remodeled he has to get a new sample. Then you throw in the complex magical side of creating the device. The sheer logistics and organization and precision required to make something that huge and complex is mind-boggling. For Harry, making it is just a "pain in the ass." The fact that he was even able to put it together, let alone make it work, is incredible.
 * To make it even more impressive, Harry can't even go near an electronic device without it catching fire or something. In other words, he did all that without the benefit of GPS or Google Maps.
 * "My little brother has a voodoo doll of Chicago." --Thomas Raith, "Backup"
 * Anything Demonreach does. Anything.
 * Dragons in the series aren't just flying lizards. They're elemental forces of nature that will drive you insane with their true forms, and can eradicate a mere mortal with barely any effort. One of them brings Harry to his knees simply by casually saying his first name. Michael Carpenter? Met his wife when he killed one. Alone.
 * To put that in just a little more perspective: Jim Butcher posted on his website forum answering a question on whether Ferrovax (the Dragon) would be a match for the combined powers of the Eldest Brother Gruff and the Leanansidhe. Remember that one of those collects stoles from defeated Senior Council Wizards and the other is Mab's right hand. Ferrovax would wipe the floor with them even if they had every advantage they could bring to the table. He compared it Mike Tyson in his prime fighting a 13 year old blind girl.
 * Not that surprising when you consider the root word of his name is "Ferro" the latin name for iron.

Short Stories
""Wh-what?" said one of the girls, who had a nose-ring that I was pretty sure was a clip-on. "What are you doing?"
 * , at the end of The Warrior, going through all of Harry's lesser actions throughout the story and saying how each one makes the future that much brighter.
 * Also in The Warrior, when Michael who had been crippled for a year and needs a cane to run defeats the army trained priest who wields the not working, but still sharp Fidelacchius, with his old sword and a baseball bat. Throughout the entire fight he delivers a The Reason You Suck Speech calling the man out on his actions and lack of faith.
 * By the way, if anyone is wondering how Harry met Murphy? She leapt onto the back of a troll, and tried to choke it to death with her nightstick. Murphy rocks.
 * Even Hand. Put it this way: remember how awesome it was that Murphy stood up to "Tiny" the Gruff and stopped him dead with a legal ultimatum? Marcone does the same thing to someone ten times meaner and more powerful, and doesn't break a sweat.
 * Nevermind that, how about the fact the entire Mag incident turns out to be ? Which succeeded.
 * Marcone and Hendricks proving that a pair of AA-12 automatic shotguns with drum magazines > an entire army of Fomor monstrosities.
 * Justine has apparently gone from being a somewhat helpless Damsel in Distress to, considering that
 * In Day Off, Harry is going home from game night when he's approached by the Death Eater Wannabes for ruining their leader's bad feng shui curse. When they demand that he defend himself, ready for a magic duel (as much as they'll ever be), Harry pulls his trusty .44.

"I'm a-fixin' to defend myself," I drawled, Texas-style."


 * I think Mouse gets one for taking on two werewolves in Mister's defense
 * A lot of what Murphy does in "Aftermath," but two in particular: first, her severe beatdown of a slimebag apartment superintendent in front of all of his tenants, then her raid along with Billy and one of the other Alphas on a minor-talent human-trafficking ring. Run by Fomorians.
 * Not in any short story, but Jim has said that the Gatekeeper is the one who took down Abdul Alhazred, and that he is the most dangerous wizard on the entire council.
 * For those unfamiliar, that'd be the guy who wrote the original Tome of Eldritch Lore, the Necronomicon.
 * ...The Gatekeeper seized him and devoured him horribly ... in broad daylight in the central market of Damascus?
 * Nah, he took down whatever Eldritch Abomination you get turned into by being seized and devoured, horribly, in broad daylight in the central market of the city of Damascus.
 * Or just broke his control over the thing that then turned on him and ate him.
 * Hang on... something like that happened in Storm Front, didn't it? Hmm...
 * Backup is pretty much one long, low-key one for Thomas, as he essentially follows Harry around and covers his back, even going so far as to take a direct hit from Harry while disguised as an evil sorcerer just to keep his cover.