The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (8 page)

In the wizarding world, cats are not exceedingly dangerous or even interesting. They are simply common pets. Two pet cats, however, are worth noting in the wizarding world:

Note that, although dogs and wizards are hardly ever mentioned together, dogs do exist in the wizarding world. From a slobbering pet boarhound to a three-headed dog to the Grim (a black dog that predicts death), dogs have their place in the wizarding world.

In both Western and Eastern tradition, the dragon is a gigantic, winged, fire-breathing, sharp-eyed, reptilian creature whose love of shiny objects leads it to plunder treasure, especially brilliant jewels and gold.

In German mythology, the dragon is known as the “firedrake,” and in classic dragon form, it breathes fire, hordes treasure, and kidnaps fair maidens.

In Ancient China, in particular, but also to some extent in other cultures, the dragon is revered, not feared. In Asian traditions, however, dragons generally do not fly, and they also have the power to change size, even becoming so small as to disappear altogether.

In the Bible, dragons—often interchangeable with snakes—are linked to the Devil, an enemy of God (as noted in Psalms, Job, Isaiah, and Revelations), and this belief prevailed throughout the Middle East. Perhaps the most well-known dragon is in Chapter 14 of Daniel (a chapter that doesn’t exist in many Bibles; when it does, it’s often subtitled “Bel and the Dragon”), which tells the story of a dragon who is worshipped as a God. Daniel kills this dragon and feeds it to lions.

The wizarding world abounds with dragons, which are key to the banking industry, as they are particularly useful in protecting valuables. Dragons cannot be Stunned by a single wizard, so they are difficult to get past. Dragon blood is also full of magical qualities, as are other parts of dragons, which are used in potions. Dragon eggs are sometimes sold (illegally; the practice was outlawed in 1709) to wizards who want to try to raise dragons; the fire-breathing baby dragons are soon, however, too much to manage.

Several dragon species have been identified throughout the wizarding world, including the following:

Four others—Antipodean Opaleye (with opal-like eyes), Peruvian Vipertooth (with exceedingly poisonous teeth), Romanian Longhorn (with, as you might expect, long horns), and Ukrainian Ironbelly (the largest and heaviest dragon in the world)—are known to exist in the wizarding world, but are not integral to any storylines.

Ghouls originate in Arabic folklore (called ghuls), where they are demonic shapeshifters who can always be identified by their cloven hooves. Ghouls even have cannibalistic tendencies. In more recent folktales, ghouls have retained both their abilities to change forms and their taste for humans as they change themselves into dogs or other animals, rob graves, and feast on dead bodies.

In the wizarding world, ghouls may live in wizard attics, but they’re not cannibals—they eat spiders and moths and tend to be thought of as family pets. Otherwise, we know little about them and how they may differ from the ghouls of lore.

In folkloric tradition, gnomes are old, often bearded creatures about the size of children but never youthful in their appearance. They are much like dwarves, and dwarves are, perhaps, the only mythical or folkloric creature not to have a place in the wizarding world—no dwarves are ever mentioned in Rowling’s novels. (Dwarves, of course, have a rich literary status, from Snow White’s seven dwarves to Tolkien’s band of 12 dwarf travelers in
The Hobbit
and Gimli in
The Lord of the Rings.
)

Instead, the wizarding world is plagued by a common household pest known as the garden gnome. Not to be confused with the ceramic lawn gnomes that were popular in the 1970s in North America, garden gnomes dig around in gardens, wreaking havoc, and must be plucked out by a wizard, swung around until dizzy, and then heaved into a neighbor’s yard. Garden gnomes, like house elves, score high on the list of Rowling’s most unique and original interpretations of mythological, folkloric, and literary traditions.

A Kappa is a water sprite from Japanese mythology, and like most sprites, it is a mischievous—even murderous—creature. Japanese Kappas in legends (and in some supposed “sightings”) are thought to look like monkeys, but with scales and webbed hands and feet that allow them to inhabit small bodies of water. Kappas also are thought to have a depression atop their heads, which fills with water. However, if the water spills, the Kappa loses its strength, thus Japanese children were told to always bow to everyone they met, in case they met a Kappa, who would return the gesture and spill the water from its head. Oh, the stories we tell to get children to behave!