Magical familiar
From Harry Potter Wiki
- "Familiar: an intimate associate; a companion; a spirit often embodied in an animal and held to attend and serve or guard a person."
- —Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
A magical familiar is an animal associate with an intimate and bonded relationship with a human. More than just a "pet," a familiar cannot be "owned," rather, they are a consciousness in their own right and deserving of great respect. A witch or wizard would never really refer to a familiar as "my owl" or "my cat" as a mere posession. On the contrary, a familiar has its own name, personality, and independant desires and thoughts.
A familiar acts as an intermediary for the wizard. A familiar, as a wizard's partner, will perform tasks such as the carriage of messages, aid in spellwork, companionship, and guard and protect the wizard from any danger. Unlike pets, familiars will go wherever the wizard goes, even if it means going into the arms of death. An owl familiar will fly around the world if the wizard requests it. Familiars will gladly offer themselves as tools for spellwork, such as allowing themselves to be experimented on in Transfiguration or offering hair for potion work. Some animals such as ravens or parrots can be taught to speak. It is possible that in countries where such animals are familiars, wizards ask the animals to relay spoken messages as well.
At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a student is allowed to bring a cat, owl or toad as a familiar. Though Ron Weasley was allowed to bring a pet rat, it turned out Scabbers was not a familiar at all, but a criminal Animagus named Peter Pettigrew in disguise.
A Patronus is similar to a familiar in that it can take the shape of an animal, protect the wizard, and is based on something meaningful and bonded to the wizard's personality.
[edit] Muggle Beliefs
The word "familiar" is short for "familiar spirit," where an object or animal contains or possessed by a spirit companion that helps a magician or witch. The 16th Century hermetic philosopher, Paracelsus, had a familiar object in the form of a sword hilt, which he indicated was named Azoth. His contemporary, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, was said to have been accompanied in his later life by a large black dog, which was said to have been his connection to the spirit world. Muggles readily associate witches with animals such as cats, toads, and ravens. This is due to many historical reasons. In ancient times, many religious groups worshipped cats. During Medieval period, outsiders accused many cat worshippers of venerating the Devil in the form of a cat.
The 13th century is the first evidence of Muggle knowledge of Animagi in England and western Europe. Prior to that, people with the ability to change from human form to that of an animal can be found as early as The Odyssey, with the story of the soothsayer, Proteus. These people were called shapeshifters, and tales of such people can be found in many cultures. As witch trials began in Europe, people believed that witches had the ability to turn into a hare or a cat in order to meet one another for "black masses" to the Devil. Later this developed into the belief that witches enlisted the aid of imps or demons that took the form of toads. Names given to these creatures were mawkin, malkin, grimalkin ("grey cat") and catkin. Catkin is also the term for the tufty parts of pussy willows, thus inspiring the term "pussy cat."
The Plague, also the Black Death, which killed droves of people during the 1300s, was blamed on witchcraft. Pope Innocent VIII declared in 1484 that a witch be burned along with her cat. Inquistor Nicholas Remy, in the 1500s, declared all cats to be demons. In this time, priests conducted festival masses where cats were burned in hundreds. Some cat breeds were driven to near-extinction. Over 200,000 accused witches were executed alongside them.
In one document from 1490, a man insisted he found his wife making ready to fly on a broomstick, so he tied her up. He stated she then turned into a bat and flew up the chimney. This could either be a legitimate Animagus, or the man could be lying to account for a woman's disappearance. The Inquisition of Navarre documented an event in which a woman who stood before the Inquisition changed herself into an owl and flew away right before their eyes.
