Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter

Though Harry Potter’s England is a tangible and familiar one in many outward respects, superimposed on it and suffused imperceptibly throughout it is a shadow world of wizards and witches, of curious creatures and fantastic beasts. Many aspects of this hidden world of wizardry, of course, prove upon closer inspection to be parallels or parodies of features characterizing our own society. Bureaucratic politicians, unscrupulous tabloid journalists, inter-racial tension (cast as inter-species tension), and institutional injustice provide an endless stream of moral challenges for a young man already struggling with friendships, schoolwork, and hormones. Among numerous other real-world social and moral issues reinterpreted in fantasy terms, J. K. Rowling devotes significant attention to animals and animal sentience, the nature of monstrosity, and the relationship between humans (or “wizards”) and the natural world. The responsibilities of stewardship over the realm of “magical creatures” is a continuous anxiety in the Harry Potter series, and one that maps interestingly-in capturing many of the same successes and hypocrisies alike-onto the actual human relationship with animals at the turn of the third millennium.