Pets at Hogwarts

I want to discuss the Hogwartian pets. When I first read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I was going to a boarding school. Although my brother and I were very good with animals, and given orphaned birds, bush babies, snakes, squirrels, kittens and all manner of other things to look after, these were invariably taken home and not allowed back to school.

Pets at Hogwarts

The use of an animal as a 'familiar' is well-known in most aspects of magic - everyone knows that witches have black cats, right? I think it was a stroke of genius for JKR to include pets at Hogwarts, and logistics of this aside (what if two dorm-mates had cats that hated each other), I've always been enchanted by the thought that even if you were going to be away from home for a term at a time, at least you had a much loved family member with you.

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It also raises some other questions for me (what do you do if your pet dies while you're at Hogwarts? Sad, but a fact of life) that I won't go in to right now, as we are, after all, only on Philosopher's Stone.

Nevertheless, there are questions. Here's the extract from the book:

"Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad."

Bear those in mind for later on in the story.

I've always wondered why more students didn't have pets. We know Harry had Hedwig, Ron had Scabbers, Neville had Trevor, and later on in the story, Hermione is acquired by Crookshanks. Percy has Hermes and much later, Ginny gets Arnold the Pygmy Puff. Were there more that JKR just didn't talk about, did pets get in the way of school life, or is it just something that was never relevant enough to the story to talk about?

I do want to discuss Hedwig and Scabbers in a little more detail.

Hedwig

The most loved Snowy Owl in the world, JKR has a lot to answer for when it comes to Hedwig. I can't think of anyone who doesn't thank her for bringing this beautiful creature into our lives though. Out of curiosity, I wanted to know more about Hedwig and her kind...

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One of the most interesting things I found out about snowy owls is that they generally hunt during the day. Their favoured food is also lemmings, which should give you an idea of where they are found: Northern America from Canada upwards. These (the lemmings) are also eaten whole. Gross! Their lifespan in the wild is around 9 years, but in captivity can be up to four times longer than this.

Although it is stated that Harry finds Hedwig's name in A History of Magic, we do not know who the historical Hedwig was, what they did, or anything of that sort. I am saddened by this...but not too much.

Anyway, back to the issue of pets at Hogwarts. There must have been very few small critters in the area around the school! I mean, there were a lot of owls in the Owlery, and they all had to eat. We know the owls sometimes ate food off the students plates (at one point I remember Hedwig eating some of Neville's cornflakes, I can't remember which book or anything, but still), so clearly owls belonging to wizards have above-average digestive capabilities.

As all good researchers do, I wondered about breeding. Hedwig is female, and with many different owls in a small space, did they ever breed? We never find out about any of this, and I think it would be so interesting to know if there were ever any descendants of famous pets out there. I know that this would be totally not part of the story if there ever were, but there are long periods where we don't find out about what the pets are getting up to - could they possible be raising small versions of themselves?

The Owlery at Hogwarts - Source

I can think of more than one person who would have liked a baby Hedwig..!

Scabbers

Now we come on to the troublesome pet of the story. Scabbers. We know that this rat is extremely important later on in the story, but it has always bugged me that the letter to Harry is so explicit about what pets are allowed at Hogwarts, and then here comes Ron with a great bloody rodent. Scabbers is not exactly under the radar - he ruins Ron's sheets within seconds of arriving in the boys dormitory - yet nothing is ever said about him being a disallowed pet.

Scabbers and Ron (copyright Warner Bros)

Saying that, why would rats not be on the list of pets allowed? Sure, rats are considered vermin and perhaps there were worries about hygiene and/or food safety, but with rats being incredibly clean animals, as well as magically talented (think forward to the tail-skipping rats in Prisoner of Azkaban), I am not sure about this.

I could spend hours talking about how I'm not sure about this, and wondering at JKR's reasons for doing this all in the way that she did. I won't though; just something to consider as we proceed.

That's it for today - we've just started lessons at Hogwarts, and I'm off to find out more about turning matchsticks into needles, bezoars and Emeric the Evil.

Much love,

Corrie xx