Today, The Weasleys and The Grandma have met some magical creatures that live in magic world. Some of them live in Hogwarts, other are its enemies. They are basilisks, giants, trolls and werewolves. The Grandma has offered them another Cambridge Key English Test A2 Example.
The Basilisk is a giant
serpent, also known as the King of Serpents. It is a magical beast that is bred
by Dark Wizards. Herpo the Foul was the first to breed a Basilisk; he
accomplished this by hatching a chicken egg beneath a toad which resulted in
the creature known as a Basilisk.
Basilisk breeding was banned in Medieval times. The practise can be hidden when the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures comes to check by simply removing the egg from the toad.
Basilisk breeding was banned in Medieval times. The practise can be hidden when the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures comes to check by simply removing the egg from the toad.
Looking a Basilisk
directly in the eye will immediately kill the victim, but indirect look will
merely render them Petrified. It is also the mortal enemy of spiders, who can
intuitively sense them and flee whenever they do.
The Basilisk has a classification as an XXXXX creature, meaning it is a known wizard-killer that cannot be domesticated due to its immense powers. Since the Basilisk is still a serpent, a Parselmouth may place a Basilisk under his or her control.
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This is accomplished by using Parseltongue to put the creature into a deep sleep that prevents it from ageing, similar to suspended animation. Their mortal weakness is the crowing of a rooster. Basilisks feed off vertebrate animals, it is unknown how much they eat at one time. The Serpent of Slytherin survived on rats. The male can be distinguished from the female by a single scarlet plume on its head.
A basilisk egg is the egg
of said creature. They are chicken eggs hatched beneath a toad, thus creating
the deadly King of Serpents.
When a live victim looks
directly into the Basilisk's eyes, it results in instant death. Although
looking at the eyes through camera lens or a ghost's transparent body would
dampen the lethal effects, looking through a pair of glasses does not offer the
same protection, because glasses still allow one's line of vision to connect
directly and clearly with the serpent's eyes.
More information: Wizarding World
Myrtle Warren was such an unfortunate person, as her wearing glasses did not save her from death when she looked directly at the Serpent of Slytherin's eyes.
More information: Wizarding World
Myrtle Warren was such an unfortunate person, as her wearing glasses did not save her from death when she looked directly at the Serpent of Slytherin's eyes.
If the victim is a ghost, then they can look directly into the serpent's eyes without suffering death, as the dead cannot die again; however, they would suffer petrification. Should a camera be reflected onto the serpent's eyes, the lens and film will be melted. A phoenix is immune to the basilisk's gaze, whether directly or not, as the bird is immortal.
If the basilisk's eyes are damaged, thus rendering it blind, it takes away the lethal ability as well.
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Myrtle Warren was not so fortunate and looked directly into the Basilisk's eyes, which resulted in her immediate death.
A way of surviving a Basilisk's gaze is by seeing it through another object. An example mentioned above was when Colin Creevey saw it through his camera, resulting in his petrification and his camera lens becoming melted. Justin Finch-Fletchley saw the Basilisk through the translucent ghost Nearly-Headless-Nick, and was petrified. The already deceased Sir Nicholas became petrified as well, although he did look at the beast's eyes directly.
Hermione Granger was petrified, while gathering information on the basilisk. She discovered it was the monster in the Chamber of Secrets and that the serpent travelled through the pipes in the school. Hermione was petrified after seeing the basilisks' eyes in a hand mirror.
Petrification seems quite powerful, as the the legendary Albus Dumbledore concluded that the only way to reverse the effect was through the use of the Mandrake Restorative Draught. Spiders are terrified of the Basilisk, described as their enemy and they flee before it. Spiders, such as the Acromantula Aragog, also refuse to even speak of it or mention its name. Rubeus Hagrid asked Aragog many times to name the monster, but Aragog refused to speak of it.
Basilisk venom is an extremely poisonous substance that only has one known antidote: phoenix tears. Basilisk venom is so powerful that it can kill a person within minutes, making the person drowsy and blurry-visioned before they die.
It has a very long lasting effect which still remains potent even up to five years or more after the snake has died. It can also damage inanimate objects so thoroughly that they are impossible to restore, and thus it is one of the few substances powerful enough to destroy a Horcrux.
When Harry Potter slew the Serpent of Slytherin with the Sword of Gryffindor, the sword became imbued with the basilisk's venom, giving it the ability to destroy a Horcrux. However, the venom is not poisonous simply by touching it. When Ron Weasley extracted a basilisk fang with his bare hands in the Chamber, he did not die.
The Ancient Greek basil(eus) means king, with the suffix -iskos being a diminutive, the whole having the sense of princeling or the like, purportedly for the crown-like white spot on its head.
More information: Screen Rant I & II
The light slid over a
gigantic snake skin,
of a vivid, poisonous green,
lying curled and empty across
the tunnel floor.
The creature that had shed it must have been
twenty feet long
at least.
J.K. Rowling
A giant is a very large
humanoid magical creature which can potentially grow to approximately twenty
five feet tall and appear to be a large human.
Some may appear as large and hairy humanoids, while others resemble humongous-sized people, and some may even have bestial features. Giants generally live in tribes, although as their numbers dwindle, the tribes have merged into larger groups. A Giant tribe is led by the strongest giant, known as the Gurg.
Even without significant magical abilities, Giants are immensely powerful creatures. Gifted with overwhelming raw strength proportionate to their prodigious size, they are difficult to detain by wizards since most spells tend to have little to no effect upon them and may very well be even stronger than dragons, as seen when six ministry wizards came to subdue the half-giant, Rubeus Hagrid. All of the stunning spells they sent at him only seemed to just bounce off.
This is particularly noteworthy, since Sirius Black claimed that nothing less of at least half a dozen wizards casting said enchantments at the same time can stun a full-grown dragon into submission. However, similar to dragons, they may have certain weaker spots on their bodies, such as their eyes, as Olympe Maxime managed to subdue some of Golgomath's subordinates with the Conjunctivitis Curse, which attacks the eyes.
It also seems apparent that, while giants may be resistant to many spells, their skin appears to be no more resistant to non-magical trauma than regular wizards, as evidenced by the fact that Grawp, a full-blooded giant -was subdued and injured by the centaurs' arrows, despite there being no indication that their bows and arrows have any magical properties. The arrows may have been the equivalent of thumb tacs, considering Grawp's size, but they still provoked blood and forced Grawp to step back.
Wizard kind, however,
seemed to be satisfied with the giants out of their community as a whole and
did not bother to monitor or exterminate them as long as they remained so.
Following the return of Lord Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore dispatched two half-giants,
the Hogwarts gamekeeper, Rubeus Hagrid, accompanied by the headmistress of
Beauxbatons, Olympe Maxime, to make an alliance with giants and deny their
forces to Lord Voldemort when Cornelius Fudge refused to make an official approach
on behalf of the Ministry of Magic.
The pair travelled to a tribe north-east of Minsk to try and gain the friendship of the tribe, however, they were not alone in their efforts. Two Death Eaters, including Walden Macnair, had also arrived to try and convince the giants to rejoin Lord Voldemort's forces.
Rubeus Hagrid and Maxime Olympe were doing well and were on good terms with the Gurg called Karkus. The Death Eaters, though, courted the favour of Golgomath and engineered an uprising. Golgomath killed Karkus, took his place as Gurg, and allied the Death Eaters. Rubeus Hagrid and Olympe Maxime were forced to retreat after being attacked by the giants.
During the Battle of Hogwarts, many giants fought on the side of Lord Voldemort against the defenders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They mainly battled Grawp, a small giant who had fled the colony two years earlier, and the hippogriffs and Thestrals. It is not known what happened to them after the battle.
The most likely theories are that the survivors returned to the northern colony, came to be accepted by wizard kind from Albus Dumbledore's attempt to offer them the hand of friendship, or were subsequently executed by Aurors and The Committee for Disposal of Dangerous Creatures for the part they played in the war.
If it is the latter, then the race of giants would be near extinct, with Grawp and two half-giants remaining, but given Kingsley Shacklebolt's loyalty to Albus Dumbledore, as well as the insistence of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and likely eventually others after the Battle of Hogwarts, it is far more likely that wizardkind eventually wanted and managed to make peace and friendship with the surviving giants and let them live in remote habitats.
However, considering their long life cycle and extremely small population size, it is not likely under any circumstances that the giant species would have remained extant for long after the end of the war, unless they were given more space on their own.
More information: Wizarding World I, II & III
They're not meant ter
live together, giants...
they can't help themselves,
they half kill each other
every few weeks.
Rubeus Hagrid
Grawp is a giant that was
known, despite standing a full sixteen feet tall, for his small stature and
short height. He was the son of Fridwulfa and an unnamed giant and, therefore,
the maternal half-brother of Rubeus Hagrid.
Around 1931, the giantess Fridwulfa abandoned her human husband Mr Hagrid and their infant child Rubeus Hagrid, a half-giant, who was smaller in stature than she wanted. She consequently rejoined her own kind in the mountains, and there she found a new mate.
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Rubeus Hagrid, along with his newly-found friend Olympe Maxime, paid a visit to a tribe of giants, on the orders of headmaster Albus Dumbledore of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in an attempt to bring the giants over as allies of the Order of the Phoenix in the war against Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
After three days at the giant camp, Rubeus Hagrid discovered his half-brother Grawp. He later dragged Grawp back to Hogwarts with him due to the bullying he knew Grawp had received, and presumably to protect Grawp from Lord Voldemort's enslavement of the giants. Despite his previous abuse, Grawp continuously attempted to return to the camp, but Hagrid forced him through England against his will.
Rubeus Hagrid kept Grawp in the Forbidden Forest for months, teaching him manners and pieces of English as they went. The other inhabitants of the forest, namely the centaurs, noticed these attempts and tried to warn Rubeus Hagrid that his trial was futile.
At sixteen feet, Grawp was considered short for a giant. He had grey skin, brown-green eyes and hair.
More information: Wizarding World
Hagrid sat down next to
his half-brother and Grawp
patted Hagrid hard on the head,
so that his chair
legs sank into the ground.
J.K. Rowling
A troll is a magical
beast of prodigious strength and immense stupidity. In fact, they are so
synonymous with stupidity that they actually have a wizarding exam failing
grade named after them. Trolls are grouped in the taxonomical genus
Troglodytarum. Trolls possess rudimentary magic, but it is not known how they
apply it.
Troll language is supposedly nothing more than simple grunts that only Trolls seem to be able to interpret, though skilled magical multi-linguists such as Barty Crouch can understand them. Trolls understand only a limited number of Human words, and some smarter ones can be skilfully trained as security trolls.
Professor Quirrell had a gift for communicating with trolls, and then used it to set one loose in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in an effort to steal the Philosopher's Stone.
Mountain trolls have been known to tame and ride Graphorns, or at least try to ride them. Graphorns don't seem to be very keen on the idea.
Trolls originated in Scandinavia, but are now found all across Europe.
Trolls are not recognised as magical beings, but are instead classified as beasts by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures of the British Ministry of Magic, most likely due to their aggressive natures.
Pierre Bonaccord, the first Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, wanted to stop troll-hunting and give them rights, but his appointment to that office was contested by Liechtenstein, since they were having problems with a tribe of very dangerous mountain trolls at the time.
Artemius Lawson was an outspoken advocate for the strict restraint of trolls. He thought it was wrong to allow them to roam free, stating that they were creatures who weighed a ton, but had brains the size of a bogey. The Black family kept an umbrella stand made out of a troll's leg in their front hall.
Professor Quirinus Quirrell, to
create a diversion so he could go after the Philosopher's Stone, let a mountain
troll into the castle on Hallowe'en. It wandered around the corridors
until Harry Potter and Ron Weasley locked it in a girls' bathroom, only to
realise soon after that Hermione Granger was also in that particular bathroom.
With a combination of using the
Levitation Charm and sheer dumb luck, according to Minerva
McGonagall, Ron managed to knock it by levitating its club and dropping it on
its head, incapacitating it out and saving Hermione.
Trolls participate in wizarding society to some extent; some witches and wizards make a career out of training security trolls. These were evidently a different type of troll than the mountain variety, since they seemed considerably more intelligent and less smelly. Albus Dumbledore hired security trolls to guard the Fat Lady after Sirius Black attacked her.
They spent all their time pacing the corridor in front of the Fat Lady's portrait, giving dirty looks to everyone who happened by and comparing the sizes of their clubs. They left at the end of the year, when Sirius Black was deemed to have left the country.
The wizarding author and celebrity Gilderoy Lockhart wrote about his supposed adventures with Trolls in his book Travels with Trolls, which was a mandatory Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook for his classes in that subject when he was that year's Professor. As Gilderoy Lockhart was in reality a dishonest con artist who fraudulently took the credit of the achievements of far braver wizards and witches, by erasing their memories of their deeds with the Memory Charm, Lockhart in reality had no actual experience with these creatures.
During the Calamity, several Trolls started randomly appearing throughout the Wizarding world guarding various magical Confoundables, with volunteer members of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force having to incapacitate them with spells such as the the Ebublio Jinx and the Knockback Jinx, in order to overpower the Confoundables and return them to their rightful place.
More information: Wizarding World
I went looking for the troll because
I —I thought I could deal with it on my own
—you know, because I've read all about Trolls.
I —I thought I could deal with it on my own
—you know, because I've read all about Trolls.
Hermione Granger
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope, is a human being who, upon the complete rising of the full moon, becomes an uncontrollable, fearsome and deadly werewolf.
This condition is caused by infection with lycanthropy, also known as werewolfry. Werewolves appear in the form of a wolf but, there are distinctions between them and regular wolves.
A mixture of powdered silver and dittany applied to a fresh bite will seal the wound and allow the victim to live on as a werewolf, although tragic tales are told of knowing victims begging for death rather than becoming werewolves. The Wolfsbane Potion, invented by Damocles, allows the werewolf to keep their human mind during transformation.
A werewolf cannot choose whether or not to transform and will no longer remember who they are and would kill even their best friend given the opportunity once transformed. Despite this, they are able to recall everything they have experienced throughout their transformation upon reverting to their human form.
Lycanthropy is a magical illness known to be spread by contact between saliva and blood; thus, when a transformed werewolf bites a human, the bitten will become a werewolf themselves. Most Muggles, however, will die from the extent of their injuries in the instance of a werewolf attack as noted by Professor Marlowe Forfang, though some do survive to become werewolves themselves.
If a werewolf is in human form and bites the victim, they will merely gain lupine tendencies such as a fondness for rare meat. Any bite or scratch obtained from a werewolf, whether in human or animal form, will leave permanent scars. However, the fresh wound can be sealed with a mixture of powdered silver and dittany.
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Teddy did not inherit his father's condition, however it is unknown if it definitively cannot be passed on in this manner or if Teddy did not inherit the condition from pure chance as other than Teddy, there was no documentation of a werewolf having a child in human form. In Teddy's case it was his father who was a werewolf, not his mother, therefore it is unknown if a pregnant female werewolf's transformations would affect the ability to carry the pregnancy to term.
If two werewolves mate at the full moon, in their animal forms, something very strange happens. The result of their mating, which has only ever occurred twice throughout history, has been a pack of wolf cubs -actual wolf cubs- who grow to become very beautiful wolves and can only be distinguished from true wolves by their near-human intelligence.
Thus, rumours of werewolves living in the Forbidden Forest in the grounds at Hogwarts Castle are actually about a pack of lupine werewolf offspring that was released into the woods with the kind permission of Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of the School, and has lived there ever since. Teachers have never tried to dispel these rumours because they felt that keeping students out of the forest was highly desirable.
More information: Wizarding World I, II & III
The monthly transformation of a werewolf is extremely painful if untreated and is usually preceded and succeeded by a few days of pallor and ill health. The werewolf may display irritation towards friends. While in his or her wolfish form, the werewolf loses entirely its human sense of right or wrong. However, it is incorrect to state, as some authorities have, notably Professor Emerett Picardy in his book Lupine Lawlessness: Why Lycanthropes Don’t Deserve to Live, that they suffer from a permanent loss of moral sense.
While human, the werewolf may be as good or kind as the next person. Alternatively, they may be dangerous even while human, as in the case of Fenrir Greyback, who attempts to bite and maim as a man and keeps his nails sharpened into claw-like points for the purpose. Though werewolves usually only infect their victims through biting, they sometimes take it too far and kill their victims.
Without any humans nearby to attack, or other animals to occupy it, the werewolf will attack itself out of frustration. This leaves many werewolves such as Remus Lupin with self-inflicted scars and premature ageing from the difficult transformations.
Werewolves can be easily distinguished from regular wolves by their shorter snout, more human-like eyes, the tufted tail, and their mindless hunting of humans whilst in wolf form. At all other times, they appear as normal humans, although they will age prematurely, and will gain a pallor as the moon approaches and then wanes.
The real difference between a wolf and a werewolf is in behaviour. Genuine wolves are not very aggressive, and the vast number of folk tales representing them as mindless predators are now believed by wizarding authorities to refer to werewolves, not true wolves. A wolf is unlikely to attack a human except under exceptional circumstances. The werewolf, however, targets humans almost exclusively and poses very little danger to any other creature.
You have only ever seen
me amongst the Order,
or under Dumbledore's protection at Hogwarts!
You don't
know how most of the wizarding world
sees creatures like me!
When they know of
my affliction,
they can barely talk to me!
Werewolf Remus Lupin
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