A History of Magic- a Journey Through the Hogwarts Curriculum
Page 15
In 1942, Princess Alexandra, second Duchess of Fife and granddaughter of King Edward VII, presented a ‘mermaid’ to the British Museum that had been ‘caught’ around Japan some 200 years earlier. It was quite an alarming-looking creature, with its sharp-toothed silent scream, but was actually the torso of a monkey grafted onto the tail of a fish.
Statues of mermaids were surprisingly common and part of a growing trend in Europe in the 18th century, mostly hailing from Japan where there was a vogue for them. These types of mermaid became world-famous and some say they were central to the fame of ‘the Greatest Showman on Earth’, P.T. Barnum.
Barnum displayed the ‘Fiji Mermaid’ around the United States in the 19th century – though it supposedly got burnt to ashes by a fire in the 1880s. Barnum’s mermaid came on show around the time the duck-billed platypus was first revealed to the American public. The egg-laying mammal – with a beak like a duck and poisonous spurs on its legs – was so weird that people thought it must have been stitched together, but, since it was proved real, it seemed plausible that the mermaid might have been another newly discovered species too.
Another example of a mermaid, kept at the Horniman Museum in South London, has even been given the scientific classification of Pseudosiren paradoxoides – ‘absurd pretend merman’. The Horniman took DNA samples, X-rays and even a CT scan. It actually has a real fish tail, but the head was built up by winding bundles of fibre around a stick of wood, which was then coated with clay, and had fish jaws embedded in it with an outer skin of pigmented papier mâché layered on top. Its arms are wire and papier mâché too and were tipped with bird claws to create the idea of fingers.
There’s an interesting disconnect between these rather horrifying specimens (which owe much to the tradition of ningyo – Japanese supernatural creatures displayed in Shinto shrines) and the origins of the mermaid myth, coming from sailors who had seen exotic sea creatures like manatees and porpoises, which were transfigured in their minds into female mermaids.
PART 5: GHOSTS, TROLLS, GIANTS AND DRAGONS
Not until 1811 were definitions found that most of the magical community found acceptable. Grogan Stump, the newly appointed Minister for Magic, decreed that a ‘being’ was ‘any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws’.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
As well as having magical creatures and fantastic beasts in the wizarding world, there are also entities that are harder to define. Ghosts are part of the ‘Spirit Division’ and can, of course, be found all over Hogwarts.
An exception was made for the ghosts, who asserted that it was insensitive to class them as ‘beings’ when they were so clearly ‘has-beens’. Stump therefore created the three divisions of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures that exist today: the Beast Division, the Being Division and the Spirit Division.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
As part of her research for the books, J.K. Rowling drew a sketch of Hogwarts ghost Nearly Headless Nick and showed how being ‘nearly headless’ works, depicting him with his head on normally and then demonstrating what it looks like with his head – nearly – off.
‘Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly headless?’
Sir Nicholas looked extremely miffed, as if their little chat wasn’t going at all the way he wanted.
‘Like this,’ he said irritably. He seized his left ear and pulled. His whole head swung off his neck and fell on to his shoulder as if it was on a hinge. Someone had obviously tried to behead him, but not done it properly.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The early version of the character has a collar rather than a ruff, and he’s dressed in different historical attire.
‘That does look good,’ said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak.
‘Can’t you –?’
‘I haven’t eaten for nearly five hundred years,’ said the ghost. ‘I don’t need to, of course, but one does miss it. I don’t think I’ve introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower.’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The second most notable ghost at Hogwarts is, of course, Peeves the Poltergeist, who J.K. Rowling credits as the most notorious and troublesome poltergeist in British history. He has menaced the corridors of Hogwarts for over a thousand years. J.K. Rowling’s 1991 illustration of Peeves resembles a malevolent court jester with his hat and bell, and his shoes with their curled toes. US audiobook narrator Jim Dale would later base his interpretation of Peeves on the British comedian Terry Scott, who was famous for pretending to be a little boy on the radio, even dressing in a school hat in front of the microphone.
Drawing of Nearly Headless Nick by J.K. Rowling (1991)
Drawing of Peeves by J.K. Rowling (1991)
There was a pop and a little man with wicked dark eyes and a wide mouth appeared, floating cross-legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks.
‘Oooooooh!’ he said, with an evil cackle. ‘Ickle firsties! What fun!’
He swooped suddenly at them. They all ducked.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Trolls bear a humanoid appearance, walk upright, may be taught a few simple words and yet are less intelligent than the dullest unicorn and possess no magical powers in their own right except for their prodigious and unnatural strength.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Aside from bringing the precious narwhal horn from northern Europe, the Vikings also brought with them their own stories and legends. One of the most enduring creatures from those tales was the troll – hot-tempered and a bit dim.
It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite grey, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Trolls have long played an important part in folklore and fairy-tale traditions, so when we encounter one in Harry Potter, it might feel quite familiar. Trolls are lodged in our cultural subconscious and reside there just as they live under bridges in stories. They can be outwitted, but they are threatening and dangerous at the same time, often because of their lack of intelligence.
Howling with pain, the troll twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for dear life; any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him a terrible blow with the club.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The original scene in which Harry and Ron confront the terrifying troll in the girls’ bathroom was significantly changed in the drafting, which was generally shortened to help it move at a faster pace. One thing J.K. Rowling simplified was the means by which the troll was trapped in the bathroom: by simply turning a key, rather than the elaborate method of using a chain to secure a bolt in the wall. The early draft also contains a deleted scene in which Harry, Ron and Hermione are being taught about trolls. The scene got cut, but the information about there being different varieties of trolls that live in different environments then got reused in the Hogwarts library book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
There are three types of troll: mountain, forest and river. The mountain troll is the largest and most vicious. It is bald, with a pale-grey skin. The forest troll has a pale-green skin and some specimens have hair, which is green or brown, thin and straggly. The river troll has short horns and may be hairy. It has a purplish skin and is often found lurking beneath bridges. Trolls eat raw flesh and are not fussy in their prey, which ranges from wild animals to humans.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Trolls have been represented through the years sometimes as vicious man-eating creatures, and at other times as more amiable, though deeply stupi
d, lumps of meat. How they were portrayed depended on the different prejudices and fears invested in them as fictional beings.
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: he took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll’s neck from behind. The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wand had still been in his hand when he’d jumped – it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
‘So you have been to look for giants?’ said Harry, grinning as he sat down at the table.
Hagrid set tea in front of each of them, sat down, picked up his steak again and slapped it back over his face.
‘Yeah, all righ’,’ he grunted, ‘I have.’
‘And you found them?’ said Hermione in a hushed voice.
‘Well, they’re not that difficult ter find, ter be honest,’ said Hagrid. ‘Pretty big, see.’
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
There are giants and then there are giants. In 1638, Jesuit monk Athanasius Kircher was on a trip to Italy to study volcanoes and caves when he found himself in the middle of one of the region’s biggest earthquakes. He became obsessed about what might have caused the earthquake under the ground and subsequently wrote a book called Mundus subterraneus (‘The Underground World’) about the whole subject. It covered a massive range of subjects when it was eventually published in 1665: geography, geology, archaeology, palaeontology, ocean currents and farming.
Many of Kircher’s ideas seem fantastical to us now, but he was one of the great minds of his age – some compare his breadth of knowledge and interests to Leonardo da Vinci. His theory in Mundus subterraneus was that ‘the whole earth is not solid but everywhere gaping and hollowed with empty rooms and spaces and hidden burrows’. He got a little fantastical after that – his caverns contained wonders, including dragons, and he told a story about a vast human skeleton found sitting in a cave on Mount Erice in Sicily.
‘You went poking around dark caves looking for giants?’ said Ron, with awed respect in his voice.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
One illustration in his book supposedly reconstructed this ‘Gygantis sceleton’. The huge giant he pictures holds a massive tree trunk as if it’s merely a stick, as he towers over other famous giants, including one purportedly from Switzerland, all of which Kircher says have been found. On Kircher’s scale, it has humans at a third of the height of the biblical giant Goliath.
His depiction of the Swiss giant swamps Goliath, who, in turn, is tiny compared to the giant from the North-West African country of Mauritania. But they all pale in comparison to the Sicilian giant, who at 300 feet is as tall as Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty. The discovery in Mount Erice was purported to have taken place in the 14th century; somehow the seated skeleton had retained the integrity to stay together in that position.
Although Kircher’s book included magical elements like giants, dragons and a map with the location of the submerged island of Atlantis, it was a serious attempt by a brilliant mind to understand the world. Kircher wanted to see whether volcanoes were linked together under the earth – he even climbed into Mount Vesuvius, which had erupted seven years earlier. He was nothing if not intrepid!
If the motorbike was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild – long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of dustbin lids and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Everyone’s favourite giant, or rather half-giant, is Hagrid: loyal friend, mother to Norbert the dragon, owner of a magical pink flowery umbrella and one of Harry’s father figures. He’s an elemental character, living in the margins, on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. And, beyond that, he’s also very hairy.
‘If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won’t stop him,’ growled Hagrid. ‘Stop Lily an’ James Potter’s son goin’ ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name’s been down ever since he was born. He’s off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won’t know himself. He’ll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an’ he’ll be under the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts ever had, Albus Dumbled–’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Everyone has their own idea of who Hagrid is, what he looks like and how he talks.
When Jim Dale recorded Hagrid for the US versions of the Harry Potter audiobooks, he pitched his voice low and rough, like a cross between Long John Silver and a big old uncle he had. The result was that he immediately lost his voice when he performed it in the studio. A long six-page anecdote Hagrid tells after being asked whether he’s had a nice holiday took Dale days to record.
‘Oh, well – I was at Hogwarts meself but I – er – got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wand in half an’ everything. But Dumbledore let me stay on as gamekeeper. Great man, Dumbledore.’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J.K. Rowling was late to the first day recording the UK audiobook of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but when she arrived she was especially keen that the narrator, Stephen Fry, got the voice of Hagrid right. Luckily they both heard the same voice in their heads. Fry honed in on the tender and gentle way that Hagrid spoke to Harry, especially the way he used Harry’s name so much when he addressed him. It was this tenderness from a character of such huge size and clumsiness that shaped Hagrid’s voice.
J.K. Rowling has also illustrated Hagrid herself – Hagrid with Harry at Gringotts bank – in a scene from Philosopher’s Stone, travelling in one of the goblin’s carts down into the vaults. As they hurtle at speed in the cart driven by the goblin Griphook, the oversized Hagrid is squeezed into the cart and covering his eyes with one of his giant hands. By contrast, Harry’s eyes are wide open, glimpsing fire and wondering at its source.
Drawing of Harry and Hagrid at Gringotts by J.K. Rowling
Harry’s eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late – they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Probably the most famous of all magical beasts, dragons are among the most difficult to hide. The female is generally larger and more aggressive than the male, though neither should be approached by any but highly skilled and trained wizards.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The fire-breathing dragon of Gringotts, hinted at in that scene from Philosopher’s Stone, is met properly in the final book when Harry, Hermione and Ron escape from Gringotts in Deathly Hallows. An early draft manuscript of the scene was full of arrows, crossings-out and sentences scrawled in the margins – it was a breathless piece and instead of writing dialogue at this stage, J.K. Rowling indicated where it should be added later by putting an ‘x’ there instead. It’s an example of her wanting to put the essence of the scene down on the page as quickly as possible in order to capture it, knowing that she would rework it later on.
Another section of the handwritten draft has Harry destroying the Hufflepuff Horcrux while the others are in the Lestrange vault. In the final version of the book, this is performed by Hermione – a change that makes sense and adds a certain symmetry, allowing Harry, Ron and Hermione to destroy a Horcrux each.
He stretched out an arm; Hermione hoisted herself up; Ron climbed on behind them, and a second later the dragon became aware that it was untethered.
With a roar it reared: Harry dug in his knees, clutc
hing as tightly as he could to the jagged scales as the wings opened, knocking the shrieking goblins aside like skittles, and it soared into the air.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
‘Well, I’ve bin doin’ some readin’,’ said Hagrid, pulling a large book from under his pillow. ‘Got this outta the library – Dragon-Breeding for Pleasure and Profit – it’s a bit outta date, o’ course, but it’s all in here.’
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Gringotts wasn’t the only place in the series to contain dragons. As you might remember, before the Triwizard Tournament Harry was desperately pulling down ‘every book he could find on dragons’ before he was due to meet one face to face in the first task. He could have probably done with Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Serpentum et draconum historiae (‘A History of Snakes and Dragons’), published in 1640, nearly sixty years after Aldrovandi’s death.
Ulisse Aldrovandi decided not to become a doctor so he could study his passion – what we’d call ‘natural history’ today. He was known as the Bolognese Aristotle and amassed an outstanding ‘cabinet of curiosities’, a collection of extraordinary specimens, oddities and natural wonders. It had thousands of items and was described in its time as ‘the eighth Wonder of the World’, and one of his most amazing exhibits was said to be a dragon. The book he wrote to catalogue his collection is a veritable array of dragons, snakes and beasts.