A History of Magic- a Journey Through the Hogwarts Curriculum

by Pottermore Publishing

  He obtained the specimens in different ways: he lured a house wren with spiders and kept it alive as a pet. And often Audubon hunted birds with special soft shot so as not to damage their plumage. He’d then position the bird as he’d remembered seeing it in the wild and fasten it in place with wires. The aim was to create a realism that had never been seen before. Unlike other ornithological artists of the time, he not only posed the birds in a life-like way, but also in their natural habitat, with the food they ate and the trees they nested on.

  Audubon also dissected the birds, measuring their insides and describing the contents of their stomachs. He even ate the birds, and tried not to waste anything on the frontier where he was searching for them: one woodpecker purportedly tasted like ants.

  This passion and drive for authenticity was one thing, but it wouldn’t have mattered if Audubon wasn’t also a tremendously gifted self-taught artist – and a talented salesperson. Finding the birds, then making the most high-quality engravings possible, was incredibly expensive.

  He sold The Birds of America by subscription, with his subscribers receiving five images every two to six weeks, varying in size (from small to huge) and not necessarily being delivered according to species. That meant the parcels were always a surprise, and made for a brilliant scheme of getting the series out there.

  Though he was born in Haiti and raised in France, Audubon also gave himself the name ‘the American Woodsman’ and toured Europe playing up to the myth of the frontiersman. He danced and promoted himself as a kind of New World rock star in order to get the project off the ground, even going so far as to dress in buckskins (clothing made from the hide of a deer) for the benefit of English audiences and putting bear grease in his hair in France.

  His magnetic personality and vision, aligned with an almost transcendent sense of purpose, drove him to astonishing success. The combination of his subscription scheme and his promotional efforts meant that he garnered the equivalent of millions of dollars in today’s money.

  ‘Safe flight, then,’ said Harry and he carried her to one of the windows; with a moment’s pressure on his arm, Hedwig took off into the blindingly bright sky.

  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  Unlike those of most birds, owls’ eyes aren’t at the side of their heads, but facing front – just like people. If you look at an owl, it will look right back, which might explain the mysterious connection that some people (and wizards) have with owls.

  The owls that used to be on the roof of the old New York Herald building in Manhattan are four feet tall and weigh over 100 kilogrammes a piece. They were commissioned by James Gordon Bennett Jr, heir to the New York Herald newspaper fortune, of whom stories of extravagant behaviour were legion. He had a 301-foot yacht ready to sail at his whim – it not only had a permanent crew of 100, but also its own padded stall for a cow, so Bennett could always have fresh cream. It’s often said that he rode his carriage about the streets of New York at break-neck speeds in the middle of the night completely naked. He flew an aeroplane through an empty barn. Most famously, newspapers were scandalised when there were reports of him ending his engagement to a socialite by turning up drunk at a party and urinating in the fireplace. Some said it was in the grand piano.

  In 1867, this loose cannon took over the running of the New York Herald from his father. He proved to be a savvy owner. The paper had a huge circulation, gained through his philosophy that the function of a newspaper ‘is not to instruct but to startle’. Accordingly, he was the architect of several publicity stunts, such as splashing the front page with an entirely made-up story of wild animals escaping Central Park Zoo. Horrified New Yorkers read of ‘a Shocking Sabbath Carnival of Death’.

  And alongside his predilection to shock, James Gordon Bennett Jr was also obsessed with owls. He had depictions of them on his cufflinks, in his office, aboard his yacht – and on the front of his newspaper.

  When he decided to move the newspaper’s headquarters further north in the city, he told the architects he wanted a classic Italian-style building, which is what they delivered – but Bennett wasn’t happy with the owl count…

  The roof was supposed to be decorated with neo-classical statues of various gods, but, at Bennett’s instruction, these were cut out of the architectural renderings and replaced by owls. There ended up being twenty-six owls dotted along the building’s roofline alongside a statue of Minerva at the front of the building, above the bell of the clock. Minerva, as the goddess of wisdom, was often symbolised by the image of an owl. When the clock struck, the eyes of the owls either side of Minerva flashed green.

  Bennett’s obsession reached its apex in 1906 when he asked his architect to design a 200-foot-high sarcophagus in the shape of an owl. He said that, when he died, he wanted to be lowered into the giant mausoleum through the head of the bird. Bennett envisaged tourists entering the massive owl, and then climbing a circular staircase that would pass by his coffin, suspended in the centre by chains. And at the top, visitors would enjoy some rather magnificent views.

  However, the colossal stone owl was never built. If it had been, it would have been higher above sea level than the Statue of Liberty. But if you go to Herald Square in New York, there is a large monument to James Gordon Bennett Jr, erected in 1921. It includes the same sculpture of Minerva that stood at the top of the New York Herald Building. And late at night, if you crane your neck to look above the goddess, near the very top of the monument, there are a pair of Bennett’s owls, with their eyes still glowing green.

  PART 3: YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES

  Once you had got over the first shock of seeing something that was half horse, half bird, you started to appreciate the Hippogriffs’ gleaming coats, changing smoothly from feather to hair, each of them a different colour: stormy grey, bronze, a pinkish roan, gleaming chestnut and inky black.

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  The Hippogriff is a mythical creature with the front half of an eagle and the hind half of a horse. The first record we have of a Hippogriff being mentioned by name is in the book Orlando Furioso. The title in English translates as ‘Furious Roland’ and it is an epic poem from 1516 by the Italian writer Lodovico Ariosto. In it, the character of Roland meets sorcerers, a gigantic sea monster and even gets a trip to the moon.

  Ariosto took inspiration from the Roman author Virgil, who had used the union of a horse with a griffin as a metaphor for ill-fated love in his own writing. A griffin itself is a mythical beast with the body of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle – essentially something that is completely impossible in the real world. As such, Ariosto uses the knights mounted on Hippogriffs as a symbol of the impossibility of and contradictions between chivalry and passionate love, and how that love is complicated in the chivalric tradition.

  ‘Hippogriffs!’ Hagrid roared happily, waving a hand at them. ‘Beau’iful, aren’ they?’

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  In one of the drawings in the book, a knight called Ruggiero has tied his Hippogriff mount to a tree, which unbeknown to him is another knight transformed by an evil sorceress. In the meantime, her monstrous minions are approaching in the background. He’s got to get away and at the same time he’s travelling the countryside trying to rescue his long-lost love.

  Harry Potter, at first, simply thinks the Hippogriff is one of the weirdest creatures he has ever seen!

  Trotting towards them were a dozen of the most bizarre creatures Harry had ever seen. They had the bodies, hind legs and tails of horses, but the front legs, wings and heads of what seemed to be giant eagles, with cruel, steel-coloured beaks and large, brilliantly orange eyes. The talons on their front legs were half a foot long and deadly-looking.

  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  Buckbeak and co. might have been beyond belief for Harry, but they were more than matched by some of the images of larger-than-life creatures that were brought back by some intrepid explorers
in history…

  If you’re even slightly afraid of spiders, meeting an Acromantula, J.K. Rowling’s species of giant, talking, human-eating spider, would probably be the most terrifying thing imaginable – just ask Ron Weasley.

  And from the middle of the misty domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was grey in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.

  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  Thankfully, real-life spiders don’t get as huge as the Acromantula, but spiders known as Avicularia are large enough to feast on birds, as illustrated in Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, printed in Amsterdam in 1705. The hand-painted engravings depicted huge spiders eating birds, surrounded by webs and other creepy crawlies, though readers at the time wouldn’t believe they were real.

  Aragog seemed to be tired of talking. He was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly towards Harry and Ron.

  ‘We’ll just go, then,’ Harry called desperately to Aragog, hearing leaves rustling behind him.

  ‘Go?’ said Aragog slowly. ‘I think not…’

  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

  Maria Sibylla Merian was a pioneer. After she divorced her husband, she moved from Frankfurt to Amsterdam. She painted and studied local collections for eight years before the city of Amsterdam awarded her a grant to travel to Surinam to paint its flora and fauna. This was an almost unheard-of achievement at the time, since women weren’t even allowed to go to university, and such grants were usually awarded to men.

  Merian set off from Amsterdam to Surinam in 1699 and the expedition was probably the first scientific expedition led by a woman to observe natural phenomena in their native environment. Travelling to South America in the 1690s was extremely dangerous and required sailing across the Atlantic. Anyone attempting it had to risk serious diseases with no cure, and then there was the prospect of venturing into the jungle with just your paints. Surinam was a sugar colony at the time and the only people living there were men making money out of sugar and the people they had enslaved to help them do it.

  Maria Merian’s pioneering approach to research was matched by her attitude to book production. She returned from Surinam with a sketchbook full of images of insects, many of them new to Western science, which she sold as a commercial enterprise. It was successful, though the bird-eating spiders were deemed beyond belief and a largely male audience thought Merian a fantasist. It wasn’t until 1863 (150 years later) that it was agreed she was completely right. Like a lot of women who broke through barriers in history, particularly in science and business, Merian had to withstand persistent doubt and cynicism from the patriarchal society in which she lived.

  PART 4: CREATURES OF THE DEEP

  For thousands of years people have gazed into the oceans. Every now and then, something unusual emerges from the briny depths, and with them surface the stories: legends, fairy tales and sailors’ yarns of half-human creatures with the tail of a fish. Some of these stories are of love and loss, some of death and drowning. If you want to spend some time with the world’s most mysterious and captivating marine life, go and swim with mermaids.

  In an early draft of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry and Ron are introduced to mermaids much sooner than the Triwizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire. After they have commandeered the enchanted Ford Anglia, rather than smash into the Whomping Willow, they crash into the Hogwarts lake and encounter the mermaids that live there. The merpeople save the boys by flipping over the car and bringing it to the safety of the bank. But these mermaids aren’t the enchanting beauties of popular folklore. One is described as follows: ‘A cloud of blackest hair, thick and tangled like seaweed, floated all around her. Her lower body was a great scaly fishtail the colour of gun-metal; ropes of shells and pebbles hung about her neck; her skin was a pale, silvery grey and her eyes, flashing in the headlights, looked dark and threatening.’

  An editorial note on the manuscript wonders whether the merpeople scene actually works, since they are not encountered again in the second book. There’s a suggestion that the car could develop boosters and suddenly shoot out of the water, but ultimately J.K. Rowling decided to replace the scene entirely with the car crashing into the Whomping Willow.

  … would they pull him back down to the depths when the time was up? Did they perhaps eat humans? Harry’s legs were seizing up with the effort to keep swimming; his shoulders were aching horribly with the effort of dragging Ron and the girl…

  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  Tales of sirens luring sailors to their deaths have been around for thousands of years, and feature in stories as far back as Homer’s Odyssey. Sirens are sinister creatures and can be thought of as close cousins of the merpeople of the Harry Potter stories.

  The oldest recorded merpeople were known as sirens (Greece) and it is in warmer waters that we find the beautiful mermaids so frequently depicted in Muggle literature and painting. The selkies of Scotland and the merrows of Ireland are less beautiful, but they share that love of music which is common to all merpeople.

  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

  One illustration from a 13th-century French bestiary shows three men in a rowing boat as a siren drags one of them into the water by his hair. The other two men aren’t watching this; they are distracted by a centaur, or an onocentaur (as it’s referred to in the bestiary), that has appeared on the shore of the lake.

  This siren has a fish’s tail, which is a change from how sirens were thought of before – as a woman’s head with a bird’s body – though the text indicates that she still lured the sailors with her birdsong. After that, it gets worse, because after dragging her victims into the water she promptly eats them.

  A slightly later version of the mermaid–siren hybrid has been found in a ‘game book’ from 17th-century England. A game book was a sheet of vellum, or paper made from animal skin, folded to create a concertinaed game. Made as a bit of fun and to entertain, it was possibly given as a love token between a couple, or as a gift to a child. It could be pocketed quite easily and was taken around to entertain people.

  The game included mythical beasts such as dragons, manticores and griffins. On each part of the main sections there was a different type of animal and creature, and by folding the flaps over the top of the mermaid, for example, you would transform your creature into a being with different body parts. You could leave the top half of the mermaid and fold over her scaly tail and give her some legs to fully become a woman. Or you could fold over the top of the lady’s body and give her a man’s torso so that you got a man-maid.

  One creature in the game book was very like what we’ve come to think of as a traditional depiction of a mermaid, with her long blonde hair and bright red lips, carrying a mirror and comb and her tail finished with pink scales, ending in a bright blue fin. Although different from the merpeople you might find at Hogwarts, she wasn’t to be trusted and was surrounded with various verses describing the creature: ‘Mermaids lure sailors, who leaving off their ship were found, / On shore, by my enchantments drown’d.’

  At the beginning of the 18th century, a man called Samuel Fallours, an English-born ex-soldier, ended up on the Indonesian island of Ambon while working for the Dutch East India Company. He spent a long time on the beach, along with other artists. He painted the fish he saw in the hauls of the local fishermen, then sold his artwork to the rich. He found that the more brightly coloured the fish, the better the price.

  So as time went by, the paintings became more elaborate: a plain, drab false-stone fish was made resplendent in vivid reds, yellows and blues; the shell of a crab was decorated with the moon; fish skins had brightly coloured stars, and some had human faces. There were seahorses replete with itty-bitty saddles for riding. And he included some equally fanciful descriptions, such as one of the four-legged anglerf
ish, which followed him around like a dog, and of the lobster that lived in the trees.

  Then, in 1719, Louis Renard, a book-dealer, apothecary and spy based in Amsterdam (who sounds like he could very well have kept a shop in Diagon Alley), published the world’s first book on fishes from the waters of the East Indies. It was called Fishes, Crayfishes and Crabs, of Diverse Colours and Extraordinary Form, That Are Found Around the Islands of the Moluccas and on the Coasts of the Southern Lands and was illustrated in full colour with Fallours’ artwork.

  In the end, the book contained pictures of over 415 fish, 41 crustaceans, two stick insects… and one mermaid. Supposedly caught off the coast of the Indonesian island of Borné, and measuring 59 inches in length, she reputedly lived in a tank of water for four days and seven hours and occasionally cried like a mouse. According to Renard, she refused to eat, despite being offered small fish.

  When the book was published, the public questioned the accuracy of the eccentrically portrayed sea life, even with the affidavits attesting to the reality of the specimens Renard had included. And while people were rightly dubious, some scientists are now re-evaluating the scientific worth of the book. Minus the wild colouring, over 90 per cent of the fish can still be identified and, since Ambon’s harbour has become heavily polluted, the type of fish in the area may have changed, in which case this whimsical book will have become a valuable record. It might just be that the mermaids have simply moved on to cleaner waters!