Skip to main content

harry potter - What Protects Hogwarts from the Forbidden Forest Creatures?


We know there is a wide range of dangerous creatures in the Forbidden Forest, from small to large. The Forbidden Forest is also not far from Hogwarts and we've seen proof, in The Chamber of Secrets, that the spiders from the forest were in Hogwarts and were fleeing Hogwarts for the Forest after the opening of the Chamber of Secrets.


With all the bad nasty creepy crawly things in the Forbidden Forest, and it being so close to a school, what prevents these darklings from leaving the Forest and creeping into (or invading) Hogwarts? There's no mention of anything magical that Harry and friends feel when they enter or exit the forest. And how are the spiders able to get past this protection?



Answer



I can’t recall this being specifically dressed in canon, but we can make some reasonable guess.


First, as Umbridge says in OotP, the beings in the Forest live there under agreement with the Ministry. I think this agreement is probably motivated by fear of Muggles: Hogwarts and the Forest probably provide the best place in the UK for magical creatures to live without being found by Muggles. (Large creatures like dragons being an exception). If they wanted to run free, it’s questionable how long they’d survive in Muggle Britain without being picked off.


Being close to Hogwarts and Hogsmeade also puts them near to lots of help, if they need it. While the centaurs might take pride in eschewing human help, other species would probably benefit from people like Hagrid living nearby. One prominent example of this would be Hagrid trying to stop the unicorn killings in the first book.


We might also think that the species in the Forest are at least monitored by the Ministry and School by the fact that there’s nothing so dangerous that it would seriously challenge a Hogwarts staff member. (Here I’m thinking Dementors, dragons, Chimeras, and so on). Obviously you wouldn’t want anything like that in proximity to a school. Possibly anything that dangerous has either been wiped out in Britain, or is kept at a suitably far distance.


Finally, their containment is probably motivated by fear of the Ministry. We don’t see any instances of something that lives in the Forest using magic, so if Dumbledore or the Ministry were turn their wands on the Forest, they could probably annihilate a large part of the population. Whether they’d do that is an ethical grey area, but the mere threat of attack, or just cutting off help and protection, would probably be enough to keep them in line.



Hope some of that makes sense, and goes some way to answering your question.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more