The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (42 page)

A partial explanation for the jinx—or the appearance of a jinx—is that cover subjects are often selected because they are at the top of their game. Since streaks and peaks don’t go on indefinitely, chances are anyone’s performance level will soon decline. When
Sports Illustrated
’s editors ran a story on the jinx controversy, they did some arithmetic and came to the conclusion that there was no jinx. Of the 2,456 cover subjects who had appeared at that time, only 37 percent experienced a misfortune or decline in performance, while the remaining 63 percent maintained their performance level or improved. Some athletes, however, seemed decidedly more jinxed than others, especially golfers—70 percent of whom ran into trouble. The prize for the most jinxed golfer surely must go to Andy North. After appearing on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
for winning the U.S. Open, North failed to win another major tournament for the next seven years! When he finally did capture a second title at the same event, the magazine
again
gave him the cover treatment. This time, the jinx was permanent. He never won another PGA tournament for the rest of his career.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the unlucky nymph Inyx and her feathered namesake seem to have been largely forgotten, and the word “jynx” had fallen out of use. However, it suddenly reappeared in the modern form around 1910, when American sportswriters began using the word “jinx” to describe something that brought bad luck to a baseball player or team. Some word sleuths speculate that this “jinx” derives from a comic song of the 1860s called “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines.” The lyrics recount the misadventures of Captain Jinks, a military misfit who gets sick during training, flees from the enemy, can’t keep his hat on, and gets booted out of the army. While he’s not entirely blameless (his woes are his own fault and his attitude couldn’t be worse), it’s not difficult to see how the captain’s name could become synonymous with troubles and bad luck. Other writers of the period also gave the name Jinks to characters that were magnets for misfortune. To further support this theory, some of the earliest appearances of the word in sports reporting spell it “jinks.”

So which is it? Was it “jinks” or “jynx” that became “jinx”? Actually, we thought we’d solved the mystery and were about to write down the answer when our pencil broke, our computer crashed, and the dog ate our notes. Now we can’t remember. Just our luck.

lthough most Hogwarts classes appear to be geared toward the needs of European witches and wizards, the wise Professor Lupin knows that preparedness against the demons and monsters of faraway lands can never be a waste of time. In this spirit, we imagine, he offers his third-year Defense Against the Dark Arts students a lesson on the kappa, an amphibious water spirit of Japanese folklore that drags its human and animal victims into the water and drowns and mutilates them.

Kappas dwell in rivers, lakes, and ponds, but are never reluctant to wade ashore in search of prey. Stories have traditionally portrayed them as highly malicious, eager to suck the guts out of their victims and drink their blood. They are said to be especially fond of human liver. Yet they are also portrayed as both intelligent and honorable. Mankind is said to have learned the art of setting broken bones from a kappa who traded his knowledge in return for his arm, which had been torn off during one of his marauding adventures. Kappa limbs, when reattached, are as good as new in a few days.

Fully grown, a kappa is about the size of a ten-year-old child. Its skin is scaly and yellow-green; it has the face of a monkey and the back of a tortoise; and its hands and feet are webbed, for ease of swimming. Perhaps its most distinctive physical feature is the saucerlike depression on the top of its head, which must always contain water if the kappa is to maintain its supernatural powers and superior strength on land. The best method of subduing a kappa, therefore, is by bowing to it repeatedly. Being an unusually courteous creature, the kappa will feel compelled to bow back. After several bows, all the liquid will spill from the kappa’s head and it will be forced to return to its watery home.

(
photo credit 46.1
)

Another strategy for placating an ill—disposed kappa is to feed it cucumbers, widely known to be its favorite food. Carving the names of family members into cucumbers and throwing them into the water is said to protect those people from harm by kappas, who in accepting the cucumbers are honor-bound not to harm their namesakes. This legendary association between kappas and cucumbers has become such an entrenched part of Japanese culture that sushi stuffed with cucumber is today called
kappa maki
.

uring his early years at Hogwarts, Harry often has the creepy feeling that Professor Snape can read his mind. In his fifth year, he finally learns that he was right. Snape is skilled at Legilimency—the magical art of gaining access to the thoughts, emotions, and memories of others.

The word
Legilimency
—derived from the Latin
legere
(to read) and
mens
(mind)—does not exist outside the world of Harry Potter, but the concept certainly does. Whether it’s called “thought transference,” “mind reading,” “telepathy,” or some other name, the idea that some people can perceive thoughts or images directly from the minds of others has been around since ancient times. But there is little agreement about how this phenomenon works, or whether it really exists at all.

Many of the earliest beliefs about thought transmission centered around dreams. Like Harry’s first experiences with mind-to-mind contact (in which he sees Voldemort’s thoughts and actions while sleeping), people in the ancient world reported dreaming of things that had happened to someone they knew who was far away. They might, for example, suddenly become aware of the death or injury of a relative. This apparent transfer of thoughts was unintentional, but fascinating, and theories abounded about how it worked.

Around 400 B.C., the Greek philosopher Democritus became the first of many thinkers to try to explain telepathic dreams scientifically. He theorized that everything, including the human soul, is made of tiny particles. These particles emit images of a person’s mental activities that can be picked up by a dreamer through his or her pores. Images emitted by a person in a highly emotional state were said to be especially vivid and most likely to reach the dreamer in an intact and accurate form. Similarly, Legilimency seems to work best under certain conditions. When instructing Harry in Occlumency—the art of sealing the mind against outsiders, from the Latin
occulto
(to hide or cover) and
mens
(mind)—Snape explains that Legilimency is most effective when the practitioner is physically close to his target, when there is eye contact between the parties, and especially when the target is most relaxed or emotionally vulnerable.