And what about that dragon kept in chains in Gringotts Bank – where, in the 8th film, Hermione is horrified to learn that the dragon has learnt to expect pain whenever they hear a certain sound? Poor dragons, but of course, animals being treated this way in the muggle world is not at all rare.Īnd what about all the animals expected to spend their lives in service to wizards? Owls are constant post-workers – poor Errol is treated pretty badly by the Weasleys and forced to work even when he clearly wants to retire. This arguably parallels dairy – an animal’s maternal instincts being exploited and abused for human benefit.
(This, after the poor Mum has been shipped to a different country, tethered with leather straps, chucked into a cage.) Pretty unethical – and, barbaric, given that Viktor Krum uses a conjunctivitis charm to blind Mama Dragon so that she ends up stomping on her own eggs and killing her babies. On the topic of the Triwizard Tournament – how about those dragons, eh? The teenage-wannabe-heroes are told to steal a golden egg from a nesting Mother dragon – which has been placed among her other eggs so that she believes the fake egg is her real child. Hagrid is great – but he does appear to be a bit of a speciesist, no? But – he wears dead animal skin, kills slugs, eats huge red hunks of cow, breeds blast-ended skrewts and then uses them in the Triwizard Tournament (to be killed!). Additionally, the concept of wild animals being villainised, when perhaps their homes and lives should just be respected think, for instance, of the term ‘shark-infested-waters’… a.k.a, the sharks’ home? Indeed, Hagrid is the epitome of cognitive dissonance itself he champions the underdog, wants to mother a baby dragon, names a three-headed dog ‘Fluffy’ he believes the creatures that others find scary are worthy of love. This feels eerily similar to wild animals being killed for injuring humans – when the humans were in the animal’s space. When Malfoy characteristically ignores Hagrid’s advice to show respect to this animal, Buckbeak defends himself and injures Malfoy – resulting in a death sentence for Buckbeak. In the third book, we see Hagrid don his teachers’ hat and introduce a group of hormone-heavy wizards to Buckbeak, the hippogriff. The best place to start might be the classroom – or forest - of Care of Magical Creatures. This wizarding kingdom introduced us to an array of weird and wonderful creatures – hippogriffs, blast-ended skrewts, thestrals, to name a few - but how are these animals treated in this world? Would any of the characters have been vegan? Or, despite much of the magic, are the animals in Harry Potter subjected to lives of subservience to wizards – much like their muggle friends? For a quarter of a century, Harry Potter has bewitched the muggle world and dominated the book charts – not to mention the cult following of the eight-movie-film-franchise. Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone recently celebrated its 25th birthday. From the freeing of Buckbeak to subservient owls, Nina Copleston asks how Potter’s treatment of nonhumans reflects on all of us.
Harry Potter and animal justice has for a long time been one of those niche but fascinating discussions, with author JK Rowling teasing nonhuman rights issues at various moments throughout the series.
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