The wizarding world of Harry Potter is full
of magical creatures, all carefully researched
by J.K.
Rowling.
Well, some are more carefully researched than
others.
From oversized snakes to underwhelming plants,
here are the things Harry Potter got wrong
about its mythical beings.
One of the first major mythological creatures
that Harry, Ron, and Hermione encounter in
their adventures is Fluffy, the gigantic,
three-headed dog who guards the Sorcerer's
Stone.
In the end, Fluffy turns out to be pretty
lousy at the whole guard dog job because he,
or maybe they, immediately falls asleep whenever
there's music playing.
Take Fluffy for example.
Just play him a bit of music and he falls
asleep!"
To be fair, his poor job performance is not
exactly his fault.
He's not the one who decided to put a legendary
artifact behind a bunch of whimsical traps
that could literally be defeated by a trio
of slightly above-average children.
Anyway, while Fluffy isn't the same creature,
he's pretty clearly inspired by Cerberus the
gigantic.
three-headed dog who guards the entrance to
the underworld in Greek mythology.
On the whole, Cerberus is about as effective
at keeping people out of Hades as Fluffy is
at keeping people out of the third-floor corridor.
He is not, however, susceptible to the same
weakness
As students of mythology may already know,
subduing and capturing Cerberus without using
a sword was the last of the famous 12 Labors
of Hercules, and it didn't go down with a
gentle melody from a harp.
Instead, legend has it that Herc just beat
Cerberus with a rock and then put him in a
chokehold until the dog passed out, which
is especially impressive when you consider
that Cerberus had at least three necks.
We get a brief glimpse of a truly magical
creature in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone when Harry has to serve detention in
the Forbidden Forest and catches Voldemort
drinking the blood of a slain unicorn.
According to Firenze the centaur, killing
a unicorn leaves an indelible stain on one's
soul, but the trade-off is that drinking its
blood will keep you alive, even if you're
hovering on the verge of death.
"It is a terrible crime to slay a unicorn.
Drinking the blood of a unicorn will keep
you alive, even if you are an inch from death."
If you know anything about the history of
dubious and allegedly magical cures, it won't
surprise you to know that people in the past
actually did believe that unicorns were real
and possessed mystical healing properties.
What might come as a surprise, however, is
that this was a common belief as recently
as the 18th century, and that it wasn't the
blood that people were interested in.
It was, of course, the horns.
Powdered unicorn horn was sold by hucksters
and con men in the 17th and 18th centuries
as a cure-all for stuff like smallpox, one
of the deadliest diseases on Earth.
Obviously, it didn't work, and smallpox continued
to be a problem until it was officially declared
eradicated in 1980 thanks to vaccines, which
are a handy thing to have around since unicorns
don't technically exist.
As for the powder, it could've been virtually
anything, but the closest it ever came to
being authentic was when it was made from
the horns of narwhals.
Really, if you didn't know that narwhals were
real and unicorns weren't, that would've been
pretty darn convincing.
Even before Harry gets to Hogwarts in the
first book, he encounters goblins — the
gold-loving, vaguely sinister beings who run
Gringotts Bank.
Of course, these guys have since joined the
ranks of fantastical creatures who've drawn
heavy criticism for bearing a striking similarity
to anti-Semitic stereotypes, and folks, there's
a heck of a case to be made there.
At least the Ferengi from Star Trek and Watto
from Star Wars didn't literally run banks.
The thing is, they don't exactly match up
with the goblins from folklore, either.
Nowadays, thanks to their appearances in the
works of J.R.R.
Tolkien and their status as a go-to, low-level
monster in games like Dungeons & Dragons,
the word "goblin" is mostly associated with
diminutive, inherently evil creatures.
They're the guys who are slightly easier to
beat up than orcs but a little more challenging
than kobolds.
Originally, however, the word was more like
"fairy" or "pixie," a catch-all term for any
small magical being that could be friendly
or mischievous depending on the story being
told.
In fact, rather than the opportunistic bankers
we see in Harry Potter, one of the earliest
uses of the term refers to a purely benevolent
being.
The Gesta Romanorum, a collection of folktales
dating to the late 13th century, contains
the appropriately titled story of "The Benevolent
Goblin."
When parched travelers in a particular area
announced "I thirst," quoting Jesus on the
Cross, a friendly goblin would emerge, offering
the traveler a drink from a golden chalice.
Unfortunately, word got out, and an evil knight
showed up and stole the chalice, ruining it
for everyone.
But hey, considering that goblins wanting
their artifacts back winds up being a major
plot point by the end of the Harry Potter
series, maybe that's the origin story for
why goblins and wizards don't get along.
The basilisk is a legendary animal that dates
back to ancient Greece, but in Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets, one shows up as
the key figure in what is probably the most
well-crafted whodunnit everywhere the answer
is "a giant snake that none of us have ever
seen before."
Rowling's basilisk is almost exactly like
the mythological one, in that both of them
are snakes that have the power to turn their
victims to stone simply by looking at them.
There is one big difference, though, in a
very literal sense.
The basilisk in Chamber of Secrets is a huge,
60-foot monster whose gigantic venomous fangs
can be used in a pinch as a good-sized stabbin'
dagger.
Not so with the mythical one.
Pliny the Elder, the Human Wikipedia of Ancient
Rome, described the basilisk as being smaller,
only about a foot long, presumably because
a snake with super powers is already pretty
scary without being huge.
It could be even more off-model, though.
The term "basilisk" is often conflated with
another mythical creature with petrifying
eyes and a similar origin: the cockatrice.
One of the few creatures to show up in both
My Little Pony and in the Bible, the cockatrice
has the body of a dragon with the head and
wings of a rooster.
The big snake is more thematically resonant
to Harry Potter, but c'mon, we all know it
would be awesome to see little Daniel Radcliffe
try to fight a big ol' chicken with dinosaur
legs.
While it features prominently in Harry's herbology
class in Chamber of Secrets, the mandrake
plant isn't a made-up magical bit of flora.
It's 100 percent real, and while it's not
a sentient being with a cry that can strike
you dead where you stand, the fact that its
roots usually have a vaguely humanoid shape
that gives it a weird resemblance to a baby
has cemented its prominent place in folklore.
Harry Potter, of course, leans pretty heavily
on the more magical side of things, with a
particular emphasis on the mandrake's medicinal
properties.
In the book and movie, it's the main ingredient
for curing petrification, but ironically enough,
the real-life mandrake, if ingested, can often
result in death due to asphyxiation by paralyzing
your lungs.
It has, however, been historically used as
an anesthetic to knock people out for surgeries,
and it's also the kind of very powerful hallucinogen
that might make you wake up talking about
seeing a giant snake even if you've never
been to Hogwarts.
"Amazing!
This is just like magic!"
As for how it differs from folklore, well,
Harry Potter gets the part about the deadly
cry right, but there's also a tradition about
how uprooting a mandrake will condemn the
uprooter's immortal soul to Hell.
Considering that Professor Sprout's very first
assignment with mandrake is uprooting and
re-potting it, she might actually beat Professor
Snape in the competition for the teacher who
presents the most undeniable danger to the
students.
If you were going to list the locations in
the Harry Potter series by how welcoming and
comforting they are, the top entry on your
list would likely be the Burrow, the Weasley
family's improbable, towering home.
It's full of whimsical, magical things like
the pesky gnomes out in the garden, the clock
that tells you where every member of the very
large family is at any given time, the friendly
ghoul rattling the pipes, and ... wait a second.
A ghoul?
“What are you talking about?”
"You know, funny little green ghouls going..."
“What, like in movies and cartoons?”
“Little green ghouls, buddy!”
“Don't write ghouls!"
“I’m not!”
Ghouls have their origins in Middle Eastern
folklore.
The name comes from an Arabic word which is
often translated as "demon" but literally
means "to seize," and were introduced to European
audiences with the translation of One Thousand
and One Nights into French in 1704.
Notably, that version doesn't include friendly
pipe-rattling, instead focusing on how ghouls
are terrifying creatures who dwell in desolate
places and cemeteries, where they feast on
corpses, drink blood, and occasionally lure
children to their doom.
Molly Weasley is generally depicted as a good
mother who only wants the best for her family,
but keeping a flesh-eating super-zombie around
is probably not a great way to raise children,
even if you have four or five spares.
Then again, this is the same family that let
a mass murderer live in their youngest son's
bedroom for a solid decade without knowing
it.
They're still better than the Dursleys, but
maybe not as much as we thought.
First introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban, the boggarts are easily one of
the coolest ideas to show up in the Potter
series.
They're all-purpose monsters from your childhood
nightmares, formless creatures that take the
shape of what you're most afraid of, hiding
under the bed or in the closet.
It's a great way of taking an idea so familiar
to its younger audience and making it a part
of the magical world.
When you get right down to it, "boggart" is
as good a name as any since its modern usage,
like "boogeyman," is a generic term for any
malevolent spirit causing trouble around the
house.
Historically, though, a boggart was a specific
creature from British mythology.
According to 1851's Dialect and Folk-lore
of Northamptonshire, one boggart was described
as, quote,
"a squat hairy man, strong as a six-year-old
horse, and with arms almost as long as tacklepoles."
That's a pretty definitive shape, but maybe
the person doing the describing was just really
afraid of Wario and Waluigi.
And really, who isn't?
If you're mostly familiar with elves as Santa's
singing, toymaking helpers or J.R.R.
Tolkien's beautiful immortals, here's something
that might blow your mind.
From a folkloric standpoint, J.K.
Rowling's elves might actually be her most
accurate additions to the wizarding world.
Rowling's elves are direct descendants from
one of the most famous fairy tales collected
by the Brothers Grimm in the 1800s, which
is probably best known to English-speaking
audiences as The Elves and the Shoemaker.
It's a familiar story, but in case you don't
know it, it's about a poor shoemaker who's
down to his last scrap of cash who's helped
by a pair of elves who cheerfully craft a
fine pair of shoes that save his business.
They continue to work for him for a while
until, flush with cash, the shoemaker and
his wife buy the elves some fine sets of miniature
clothing, leaving them out as a thank you
present.
The elves get the clothes, and they stop making
shoes because they finally have something
of their own.
"Master has presented Dobby with clothes...
Dobby is free!"
So yeah, in the original story, the elves
are just straight-up buck naked the entire
time.
That is often left out of the story, for the
obvious reason that nobody wants to read or
make a fanciful cartoon for children about
two elves who are just hangin' their broomstick
and bludgers out while doing some leather-working
and intensely punishing themselves.
Needless to say, Rowling left that bit out
too, dressing her unclothed elves in tea towels
and pillowcases.
The other big difference?
In the original story, the elves are happy
to be freed, and they're never depicted as
being extremely stoked about remaining as
what are essentially slaves like some of Rowing's
elves.
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