Fluffy, Hagrid’s pet dog, is the guardian of the trapdoor that leads to an underground passage where the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden in the first book. Hagrid bought the enormous three-headed dog from “a Greek chappie I met in the pub” (Rowling, 2014, 206). This backstory is probably a nod to the Greek mythological origin of the creature. Better known as Cerberus, the three-headed dog’s job is to stand guard at the entrance of the underworld, stopping the living from entering and the dead from escaping Hades’ kingdom. In famous Greek myths, only few were able to get past the vicious dog, amongst them the musician Orpheus, who was searching for his dead wife Eurydice. Doing what he could best, Orpheus played his lyre, an ancient string instrument, and managed to soothe the dog to sneak past him to the underworld.
Similarly, the “Greek chappie” told Hagrid in Harry Potter that only music manages to tame Fluffy. By playing the flute, Harry, Hermione and Ron are able to send Fluffy off to sleep and get past him in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. After the events surrounding the Philosopher’s Stone, Hagrid brings Fluffy back to his home country, Greece (cf. Colbert, 2008, 99-100).
• Chimaera:
Sibling of both the Sphinx and the three-headed dog Cerberus, this beast origins in Greek legends and myths. A chimaera is a female
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The creature was invented by Ludovico Ariosto, an Italian court poet, in his epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516). He defined the creature as having an eagle’s head and beak, a lion’s front legs, richly feathered wings, with the rest of its body being that of a horse. In his poem, Ariosto wrote that the hippogriff is able to fly higher and faster than any other bird. Unlike the griffin, which is untameable, a hippogriff is able to be tamed by a wizard or a knight. Since Ariosto’s poem, the hippogriff has often been written about in stories and legends (cf. Beahm, 2005,