A History of Magic- a Journey Through the Hogwarts Curriculum

by Pottermore Publishing

  The subject is exceptional for its development of scientific understanding through quasi-magical exploration, often binding astrology and astronomy tightly together into one practice. The tools men and women have created to read them over the centuries – in the form of astrolabes and orreries – were beautiful products of human craftsmanship.

  The books produced in service to astronomy are worthy of all our study, whether for their deployment of bespoke rotating paper craft or their beautiful illustrations fit for any national gallery. Leonardo da Vinci’s handwritten astronomical notebook is a treasure trove of observation and creative thinking, and his mirror-writing as strange and alluring as Tom Riddle’s diary. And, as we’ve seen, the names of the stars and planets themselves are present throughout the wizarding world, from teacher Aurora Sinistra to Harry’s Animagus godfather himself, Sirius Black.

  CONTENTS

  CARE OF MAGICAL CREATURES

  Part 1: Visions of the Unicorn

  Part 2: Owls, Cats and Toads

  Part 3: You Won’t Believe Your Eyes

  Part 4: Creatures of the Deep

  Part 5: Ghosts, Trolls, Giants and Dragons

  Part 6: Fantastic Beasts – Real and Imagined

  CARE OF MAGICAL CREATURES

  We live in a time when we can watch, spellbound, astonishing video footage of animals from all over the world at any time: from the depths of the ocean to mountain peaks; from the heat of the desert to the cold of the Arctic; from the midst of the rainforest to an isolated island.

  However, for millennia, people could only read strange tales or hear intriguing stories of creatures they were unlikely to ever see. Even the images they saw were often painted by artists who had never laid eyes on what they were depicting.

  As the world was explored, tales of amazing new animals spread, and information – backed up by emerging scientific reasoning – was shared more widely. Books were filled with wondrous creatures and ‘cabinets of curiosity’ were created – collections of strange wonders from all over the world, mixing the real and the imagined: dragons and elephants, unicorns and narwhals.

  At Hogwarts, Harry and his friends were given Care of Magical Creatures lessons, which introduced them to all manner of fantastic beasts: from unpredictable Hippogriffs that demanded a fair degree of caution and respect, to – frankly – repellent and downright dangerous Blast-Ended Skrewts.

  People have always been fascinated with exotic animal life and strange, powerful, clever creatures with abilities that ignite the imagination, but today it’s relatively easy to distinguish truth from myth. Not that long ago, however, it wasn’t, and people were much more willing to believe in the existence of things of which they hadn’t seen any actual evidence.

  PART 1: VISIONS OF THE UNICORN

  The unicorn is a beautiful beast found throughout the forests of northern Europe. It is a pure white, horned horse when fully grown, though the foals are initially golden and turn silver before achieving maturity.

  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

  Unicorns have been written about in natural history books and medical texts for thousands of years as though they might have been found out in the wild. Today, we have cute, cuddly toy unicorns that sneeze rainbows. The characteristics of unicorns have varied greatly down the years: there have been fierce unicorns, luck-bringing unicorns, unicorns as symbols of purity and unicorns whose body parts have magical medical properties.

  They’ve lived in people’s imaginations through stories and myths, so much so that you might just be able to believe that these wondrous beasts roamed free in some far-off exotic land. But, if these gentle, elusive woodland creatures did exist, sadly there would probably be someone who’d want to hunt them.

  The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenceless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.

  Firenze – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  In the Harry Potter series killing a unicorn is an awful thing to do, and historical traditions also underlined it as a very serious crime that resulted in sullying your soul. In the real world there are documented instances of apparent unicorn hunting. One of them appears in Ambroise Paré’s Discourse on the unicorn, published in 1582. Paré was chief surgeon to the French crown, an innovator and early adopter of evidence-based research. The book (despite its fantastical unicorns) was actually a text questioning the falsehoods in ancient medicine. His writing had been prompted by a patient asking a sceptical Paré to prescribe unicorn horn for some complaint – the image in his book showed the killing and skinning of a ‘pirassoipi’, or two-horned unicorn.

  It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  ‘It’s not easy ter catch a unicorn, they’re powerful magic creatures. I never knew one ter be hurt before.’

  Hagrid – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  Unicorns also appeared in On the Properties of Animals, published in Paris in the 16th century. The book was a ‘bestiary’, a compendium of animals, written in Greek by a Cypriot scribe, and produced for a European audience. Bestiaries often combined animals that were real with animals that we now know to be mythical. Along with drawings and descriptions of creatures like the heron, the pelican, a wolf, a porcupine and a cuttlefish, this bestiary had a centaur with a pair of over-extended arms serving as its front legs!

  The text accompanying the illustrations was a poem about the natural world composed by the Byzantine poet Manuel Philes, who lived at the turn of the 14th century. It was then copied out for the bestiary by a Cypriot called Angelos Vergekios two hundred years later, and illustrations were supplied by his daughter.

  The unicorn depicted in this manuscript was not cute in any way, shape or form: it was a wild beast with a dangerous bite, the tail of a boar and the mouth of a lion. Its horn projected backwards, making it a rather useless weapon to stab anybody, unless you crept up from behind. But unicorns were also said to be extremely fast, and the method of their capture extremely complicated – if a hunter wanted to catch a unicorn, they would apparently need the assistance of a female virgin; the unicorn would be enticed to lay its head down in the virgin’s lap and fall asleep, and the hunter could then sneak up on it unawares.

  More doubts around the unicorn’s existence were setting in by 1694. In his Histoire générale des drogues (‘The Compleat History of Druggs’), Pierre Pomet mentions the unicorn. Pomet was a Parisian pharmacist and chief apothecary to the Sun King himself, Louise XIV of France, and his position in the French court gave him access to enviable resources, including networks reaching around the world. These contacts provided him with valuable and unusual specimens, as well as some wonderful tales about fabulous beasts from distant shores.

  His book was a practical medical manual that described an array of 17th-century medicinal ingredients and, perhaps due to the amazing descriptions and stories, it went down very well with non-medical professionals too. Who wouldn’t want to read about miniature dragons that wound themselves around the legs of elephants, thrust their heads up their nostrils, put out their eyes, stung them and sucked out their blood?

  But, in his chapter on the unicorn, Pomet would not confirm the animal’s existence, conceding that ‘we know not the real truth of the matter’. He acknowledged that what was commonly sold as unicorn horn ‘is the horn of a certain fish called narwhal’, a horn which was ‘well used, on account of the great properties attributed to it, principally against poisons’.

  There haven’t been reports of unicorn sightings for a very long time, but narwhal horns certainly do exist: one particularly fine specimen can be found in the Explorer’s C
lub in New York City. One of its earliest members was Teddy Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, himself a great explorer and known for his African safaris and adventurous spirit.

  The clubhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is stuffed full of trophies brought back from expeditions, and the narwhal tusk lives in the company of huge elephant tusks, a taxidermic polar bear and other extraordinary things. The clubhouse, a turn-of-the-century mansion with dark panelled rooms, even has something of Hogwarts about it.

  A narwhal tusk is a miraculous thing. Twisted like barley cane and up to three metres long, it’s actually not a horn, but a tooth – and a strange one: a left canine that bursts out through the skin, leaving the rest of a narwhal’s mouth completely toothless.

  Separated from the narwhal, it’s easy to see how people thought this pointed, twisted marine ivory was from a magical beast. It was almost a deliberate piece of wishful thinking, stemming from when Viking raiders brought narwhal tusks to the markets of Europe for sale. The tusks were connected in people’s minds with the stories of a magical horn that went back to ancient times, and so the legend grew.

  The Vikings, and later hawkers of ‘unicorn horn’, could make a lot of money selling this magic horn, which was supposedly an antidote to all poisons. It’s said that the Vikings sold narwhal tusks for more than their weight in gold. The unicorn horn/narwhal tusk that was sold to Queen Elizabeth I of England in the latter half of the 16th century was supposed to have cost 10,000 florins, which would have bought you a decent-sized castle in that period. This behaviour fuelled a lucrative trade in narwhal tusks for hundreds of years, and it wasn’t until the era of exploration of the 18th century that it dawned on most Europeans what they had actually been trading in. Fortunately, narwhals are rarely hunted these days and their ‘unicorn horns’ stay where they belong.

  PART 2: OWLS, CATS AND TOADS

  Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  These are the three animals a student is allowed to bring to Hogwarts, but how did they earn such a magical reputation?

  At long last, the train stopped at Hogsmeade station, and there was a great scramble to get out; owls hooted, cats miaowed, and Neville’s pet toad croaked loudly from under his hat.

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  Conrad Gessner’s Historiae animalium was published in Zurich between 1551 and 1558 and is seen as the book that kick-started modern zoology. Like many works of the time it uses information from old sources, such as Greek and Roman thinkers and medieval bestiaries, so inevitably it included the odd unicorn or basilisk. It was a monumental work of 4,500 pages (much more than the seven Harry Potter books combined!), but one where Gessner tried to separate fact from fiction and accurately describe every animal in the world, including the cat.

  They made their way back up the crowded street to the Magical Menagerie. As they reached it, Hermione came out, but she wasn’t carrying an owl. Her arms were clamped tightly around the enormous ginger cat.

  ‘You bought that monster?’ said Ron, his mouth hanging open.

  ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ said Hermione, glowing.

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  Gessner’s depiction was of a stripy cat with staring yellow eyes, sitting upright as its tail curls around its paws. Cats at the time had a bad reputation, and even Gessner describes them as being in possession of ‘ingenium calliditas’ or a ‘cunning character’. Edward Topsell, the first translator of Gessner’s work, noted that: ‘The familiars of witches do most ordinarily appear in the shape of cats, which is an argument that the beast is dangerous to soul and body.’ Elsewhere, Gessner asserted ‘that men have been known to lose their strength, perspire violently, and even faint at the sight of a cat’.

  Cats impart an air of mischief because, although they’re usually found in a domestic setting, their independent behaviour when they go out of the house can seem uninhibited. When you lock eyes with a cat in the street, you are probably both thinking, ‘What are you up to?’ It’s that individuality and sense of potentially getting up to no good that has historically made cats subject to such negative speculation about their character. Just ask Crookshanks about some of his unfair treatment from Ron!

  Something brushed his ankles. He looked down and saw the caretaker’s skeletal grey cat, Mrs Norris, slinking past him. She turned lamplike yellow eyes on him for a moment before disappearing behind a statue of Wilfred the Wistful.

  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  ‘And you should have seen their faces when I got in here – they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great-uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad.’

  Neville Longbottom – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  Back in the day, if you were going to do magic then you’d almost definitely need a toad. Some people nailed live toads to trees to cure warts. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder not only believed a toad could silence a noisy crowd, but that a bone in its right side could cool boiling water, while a bone in its left side could repel the attack of a dog. Along with cats, toads were often associated with witches, either as a familiar (supernatural entities that would assist witches) or as an ingredient in an enchanted brew. But, actually, toads are more likely to be dangerous than magical.

  When the German biologist Johann Baptist von Spix visited Brazil in the early 19th century, he compiled a book about its animals, including the cane or giant marine toad (Bufo agua), called Animalia nova, sive species novæ testudinum et ranarum, quas in itinere per Brasiliam annis 1817–20 (published in Munich in 1824). Spix explored regions of Brazil previously unknown to Europeans. He suffered from all sorts of diseases and almost died of thirst along the way, but he ultimately returned home with hundreds of specimens – enough to found a museum.

  His book showed the cane toad as having a large, green, slightly warty body and distinctive unwebbed hands and feet. It’s been around for millions of years and is highly toxic, the poison in its skin proving potentially fatal to attackers. The natural habitat of the cane toad is South and Central America, but it’s been introduced to new countries to eradicate pests, particularly those found on sugarcane.

  This project hasn’t always been a resounding success, though. About 3,000 cane toads were released into the sugarcane plantations of Australia in 1935. Unfortunately, the cane toads didn’t fancy eating the grey-backed cane beetles that were meant to be dinner – but they went for nearly everything else. As they have no predators Down Under, there are now several million toxic cane toads spreading all over the country and destroying native species.

  Then there’s the hazardous and potentially fatal practice that’s developed among humans of licking cane toads for their hallucinogenic properties. Definitely not something to try.

  Dangerous, hallucinogenic and with a magical reputation – if you’re a witch or a wizard, a toad is apparently the perfect pet. Although at Hogwarts, Neville’s pet toad Trevor seemed much more benign!

  Twenty minutes later, they left Eeylops Owl Emporium, which had been dark and full of rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. Harry now carried a large cage which held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing.

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

  Owls swoop through every Harry Potter story. In the wizarding world, wherever you are, whatever you send and whoever you send it to, you need to use an owl to make sure it is delivered.

  Two snowy owls, just like Hedwig, can be found in John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. It was published in sections between 1827 and 1838, bound together in multiple volumes, and depicted every bird native to North America. It has been described as the most beautiful illustrated bird book ever.

  The book was as big as Audubon’s ambition. He decided to paint every bird life-size, with the result that the pages of the book were ‘double elephant’ folio s
ize: about a metre tall. The biggest bird, a whooping crane, had to be illustrated bending down to eat a lizard so that it would fit. There are over 400 prints inside and a finished copy of the book is so heavy it requires several people to lift it up.

  Audubon’s two majestic snowy owls are shown on a tree in the moonlight. The larger female has dark spots on her white plumage, and the smaller male is a purer white with less variegated feathers. Even though Hedwig is female in the Harry Potter books, the movies used a male snowy owl to play the part since his completely white feathers looked great on camera and his lighter weight made it easier for the then-child actors to carry him.

  John James Audubon had huge success from the production and sale of his ambitious illustrated books, but his early life was much more turbulent. Born in Haiti, he moved to France as a child but then went from France to Pennsylvania to avoid the turmoil following the French Revolution. He was meant to run his father’s estate, but he flunked out of naval school due to chronic seasickness and instead fell in love with birds. He opened a string of general stores, built a great steam mill, rafted the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers and hunted for pay. But throughout, he always went back to sketching birds.

  In 1819, when he was in his mid-thirties, he declared that he was going to paint every bird in North America. Obtaining the specimens, painting the birds and publishing the book then took him most of his working life.