Things Harry Potter Gets Wrong About Mythical Beings

One of the first major mythological creatures that Harry, Ron, and Hermione encounter in their adventures is Fluffy, the gigantic, three-headed dog who guards the Sorcerer's Stone. In the end, Fluffy turns out to be pretty lousy at the whole guard dog job because he (they?) immediately falls asleep whenever there's music playing, but to be fair, that's not exactly his fault. He's not the one who decided to put a legendary artifact behind a bunch of whimsical traps that could literally be defeated by a trio of slightly above-average children.

Anyway, while Fluffy isn't the same creature, he's pretty clearly inspired by Cerberus, the gigantic. three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld in Greek mythology. On the whole, Cerberus is about as effective at keeping people out of Hades as Fluffy is at keeping people out of the third-floor corridor. The myths are full of stories of people just bopping down to the afterlife. He isn't, however, susceptible to the same lullaby weakness. Or at least, that's not the tactic his opponent uses in the most prominent example of someone defeating him.

As students of mythology may already know, subduing and capturing Cerberus without using a sword was the last of the famous 12 Labors of Hercules, and it didn't go down with a gentle melody from a harp. Instead, according to Apollodorus of Athens — the possibly-not-real figure who compiled all these myths back in the first century CE — Herc just beat Cerberus with a rock and then put him in a chokehold until the dog passed out, which is especially impressive when you consider that he had at least three necks. The poet Pindar wrote that Cerberus actually had 100 heads, while Euripides wrote that Cerberus actually had three heads and three bodies. Euripides ... buddy ... that's just three dogs.

Even before Harry gets to Hogwarts in the first book, he encounters goblins — the gold-loving, vaguely sinister beings who run Gringotts Bank. Of course, these guys have since joined the ranks of fantastical creatures who've drawn heavy criticism for bearing a striking similarity to anti-Semitic stereotypes, and folks, there's a heck of a case to be made there. At least Star Trek's Ferengi and Star Wars' Watto didn't literally run banks.

The thing is, they don't exactly match up with the folkloric goblins, either. Nowadays, thanks their appearances in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and their status as a go-to, low-level monster in Dungeons & Dragons, the word "goblin" is mostly associated with diminutive, inherently evil monsters who are slightly easier to beat up than orcs but a little more challenging than kobolds. Originally, however, the word was more like "fairy" or "pixie," a catch-all term for any small magical being that could be friendly or mischievous depending on the story being told. In fact, rather than the opportunistic bankers we see in Harry Potter, one of the earliest uses of the term refers to a purely benevolent being.

The Gesta Romanorum, a collection of folktales dating to the late 13th century, contains the appropriately titled story of "The Benevolent Goblin." When parched travelers in a particular area announced "I thirst" — quoting Jesus on the Cross, since, like a lot of medieval literature, this one likes to mix Christianity and the supernatural — a friendly goblin would emerge, offering the traveler a drink from a golden chalice. Unfortunately, word got out, and an evil knight showed up and stole the chalice, ruining it for everyone. But hey, considering that goblins wanting their artifacts back winds up being a major plot point by the end of the Harry Potter series, maybe that's the origin story for why goblins and wizards don't get along.

While it features prominently in Harry's herbology class in Chamber of Secrets, the mandrake plant isn't a made-up magical bit of flora. It's 100 percent real, and while it's not a sentient being with a cry that can strike you dead where you stand, the fact that its roots usually have a vaguely humanoid shape that gives it a weird resemblance to a baby has cemented its prominent place in folklore.

Harry Potter, of course, leans pretty heavily on the more magical side of things, with a particular emphasis on the mandrake's medicinal properties. In the book, it's the main ingredient for curing petrification, but ironically enough, the real-life mandrake, if ingested, can often result in death due to asphyxiation. It has, however, been historically used as an anesthetic to knock people out for surgeries, and it's also the kind of very powerful hallucinogen that might make you wake up talking about seeing a giant snake even if you've never been to Hogwarts.

As for how it differs from folklore, well, Harry Potter gets the part about the deadly cry right, but there's also a tradition about how uprooting a mandrake will condemn the uprooter's immortal soul to Hell. Considering that Professor Sprout's very first assignment with mandrake is uprooting and re-potting it, she might actually beat Snape in the competition for the teacher who presents the most undeniable danger to the students.

As you might expect from the author and the setting, we rarely see magical creatures in the Harry Potter books that aren't drawn from European folklore. That might actually be a good thing, though, because Rowling tends to go a little further off-script with those. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has a perfect example that's worth mentioning, if only because it may or may not have been intentional.

The creature in question is the kappa, which is never actually seen and only spoken of briefly during a Defense Against the Dark Arts class. It's the subject of a homework assignment that Snape angrily criticizes while he's filling in for Remus Lupin, telling students that they got it all wrong, insisting that the kappa is commonly found in Mongolia. Kappa, however, are Japanese — like, distinctly and definitively a part of Japanese folklore — and it turns out that Mongolia and Japan are two different places. We looked at a map, it's wild. The thing is, this might have been Rowling's way of showing readers that Snape wasn't actually qualified for the coveted position of teaching DADA.

If you're curious about what they actually are, kappa are river spirits that resemble humanoid turtles — picture Leonardo and Michelangelo's uglier cousins — that prey on travelers. The trick is that they have bowl-shaped depressions on top of their heads that hold water, and if the water spills, they become powerless, making them one of the few monsters that can be defeated by politeness. If you bow to them, they'll bow back, the water spills, and you can get away without the kappa stealing your shirikodama, a nonexistent organ inside your anus. No, really. Snape never mentions the thing about stealing your butthole, either, but it's definitely in there.

If you're mostly familiar with elves as Santa's singing, toymaking helpers or Tolkien's beautiful, immortals, here's something that might blow your mind. From a folkloric standpoint, J.K. Rowling's elves might actually be the most accurate additions to the wizarding world.

Rowling's elves are direct descendants from Die Wichtelmänner, one of the famous fairy tales collected in the 1800s, which is probably better known to English-speaking audiences as The Elves and the Shoemaker. It's a familiar story, but in case you don't know it, it's about a poor shoemaker who's down to his last scrap of cash who's helped by a pair of elves who cheerfully craft a fine pair of shoes that save his business. They continue to work for him for a while until, flush with cash, the shoemaker and his wife buy the elves some fine sets of miniature clothing, leaving them out as a thank you present. The elves get the clothes, and they stop making shoes because they finally have something of their own.

So yeah, in the original story, the elves are just straight-up buck naked the entire time, which is often left out for the obvious reason that nobody wants to read a story to or make a fanciful cartoon for children about two elves who are just hangin' their broomstick and bludgers out while doing some leather-working. Needless to say, Rowling left that bit out too, dressing her unclothed elves in tea towels and pillowcases. The other big difference? In the original story, the elves are happy to be freed, and they're never depicted as being extremely stoked about remaining as what are essentially slaves.