WHERE AND WHEN MIGHT HARRY FIND DRAGONS?

The smooth scarlet scales of the Chinese Fireball. The yellow eyes and bronze horn of the Hungarian Horntail. The black spine of the Norwegian Ridgeback. And the copper-colored scales of the Peruvian Vipertooth. Dragons played an imaginative part in the Harry Potter Universe.

Even the motto of Hogwarts School was draco dormiens numquam titillandus, or, never tickle a sleeping dragon. The Hogwarts gamekeeper, Rubeus Hagrid, truly adored dragons. For a short time, Hagrid cared for a Norwegian Ridgeback named Norbert. When Norbert turned out to be female, (s)he was swiftly renamed Norberta.

In the wizarding world, various valuable resources were drawn from dragons. The challenge came with actually getting at those resources, as it needed over a dozen wizards just to stun a dragon. For fear of being seen by muggles, who believed them to be mere myth, dragons were kept on special reserves about the globe, far from human habitation. Dragons could not be domesticated, despite individuals trying to do so. Wizard zoologists who specialized in dragons were known as dragonologists.

As folklorists will confirm, dragons in fantasy often possess traits and characteristics of many other creatures. Those from India might have the head of an elephant. Those from the Middle East might have the traits of a lion, or bird of prey, or the numerous heads of serpents. And the body color of dragons, ranging from green, red, or black to the rarer yellow, blue or white, echoes the habitat of the culture in which the dragon is imagined. But, if Harry was looking for a dragon, where and when might he find one?

A History of Dragons

Dragons are maybe the most enduring creatures of fantasy. They adorn the flags of Wales, Bhutan, and Malta. They were also featured on the Chinese flag during the days of the Qing dynasty. They’re known in many global cultures, today populating film, Tolkien-esque fiction, and video games. But their history is a long and ancient one.

Little is known of the time when and where the stories of dragons first emerged. But by the time of the ancient Greeks and Sumerians, tales were already being told of huge and draconian flying serpents. Time was when history viewed the dragon with a modicum of balance. Like other fantastic beasts, they were often genial and protecting, but, like many wild animals, they could at times prove dodgy and dangerous. Tales of kindly dragons seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke with the global spread of Christianity, when dragons took on a decidedly devilish air and their sinister ways came to stand for Satan.

By medieval times, most folk got their ideas about dragons from the Bible. Indeed, most pious people believed in the literal existence of dragons. Witness the evidence of the draconian leviathan from the Book of Job, chapter 41:

“I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs, its strength and its graceful form. Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth? Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.”

Dragons became one of the few creatures of fantasy that were cast as potent and powerful, and a worthy and awesome enemy to be slain. The Christian church created myths of righteous adventurers and sincere saints, on quests to seek and vanquish dragons, a fitting symbol for Satan. Dragons became synonymous with the breath of fire.

Medieval artists, such as Dutch genius Hieronymus Bosch, depicted fire-breathing dragons over the mouth of hell. Look closely at the right panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, painted in the early 1500s, and you might spot the odd dragon, flying high above the pits of hellfire. The Gates of Hell were often depicted as the mouth of a monster, the smoke and flames of Hades belching out. For the devout who believed in the literal reality of hell, the existence of Satanic dragons wasn’t such a stretch.

After all, this was a time when people believed in witches and werewolves, angels and demons, and heretics and persecution. In 1458, a pig was actually hanged for murder in Burgundy. The French judge Henri Boguet said in 1602 that an apple was possessed by demons. And a few years later, Italian Jesuits attempted to calculate the physical dimensions of hell. Strange times, indeed.

Here Be Dragons

Is there evidence of a link between dragons and real creatures? Possibly. The belief in dragons wasn’t simply conjured out of thin air. There was hard evidence in the form of giant bones, which were on occasion unearthed in various parts of the globe. For millennia, few people knew what to make of them. Over time, dragons became the guess of choice for those with no knowledge of dinosaurs.

The word dragon derives from the ancient Greek draconta, which means “to watch.” Here is the origin of the notion that dragons guard mountains of gold—or Gringotts. No one seemed to wonder why a mythical creature as powerful as a dragon might need coins to pay for anything. Perhaps it was merely the reward received by those brave adventurers who managed to vanquish the mighty beast.

Today, few would believe that so huge and fantastic a fire-breathing creature as a dragon may lurk in some lost land, awaiting discovery while inhabiting some uncharted skies still unseen. But, just a few centuries back, it was believed that dragons were finally discovered. Sailors returning from Indonesia told tales of the Komodo dragon. Destructive, deadly, and reaching ten feet in length, might the Komodo dragon be a flightless cousin of more exotic beasts elsewhere? The myth was helped by the belief that the bite of the Komodo dragon was deadly. Its very breath was toxic. The myth stood until 2013, when a team of scholars from the University of Queensland discovered that the Komodo mouth was no fuller of toxic bacteria than those of other carnivores. The dragon is clearly a chameleon of the imagination.

Scholarly research into a natural history of dragons suggests that a huge cornucopia of creatures influenced the modern idea of a dragon. Traits and characteristics of huge snakes and hydras, gargoyles and dragon-gods, as well as more obscure beasts, such as basilisks, wyverns and cockatrices, worked their way into what we now think a dragon might have looked like. Though most folk might easily imagine a dragon, their notions and descriptions of dragons vary dramatically. Some might picture winged dragons; others plant them squarely on terra firma. Some dragons are given voice, or breathe fire; others make them mute and smokeless. Some might be measured in mere meters; others span a measure in miles. And some dragons are pictured in a submarine world, while others are found only in caves on the highest hills. So, if Harry were looking for fabulous creatures, draconian in sheer size and variety, his best bet would be to travel back to the days of the dinosaur, when they became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates, over 200 million years ago.