Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Cursed Child are a prequel and a sequel to Harry Potter, respectively. Yet an important magical creature may connect the two stories.
Note: This article contains mild, intentionally vague spoilers for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Specifically, we reveal which magical creature has symbolic value in the story, but we don’t reveal the character it is connected to. Proceed with caution.
In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, protagonist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) gets on the American Magical Congress’ bad side when a number of his more-or-less dangerous magical creatures get loose in the city.
A few months back, Entertainment Weekly revealed a short list of familiar creatures “expected” to appear in the movie — one was the Niffler, which Eddie Redmayne confirmed had a special bond with Newt, and another was the Bowtruckle, which was confirmed in the latest featurette. Also mentioned were the Merpeople, the Lethifold, the Crup, and the Ashwinder.
Related: Fantastic Beasts to be re-released with new foreword by J.K. Rowling
One of the final creatures on EW’s list was lifted straight from Newt Scamander’s Fantastic Beasts textbook, and didn’t strike us as particularly noteworthy… until we saw a preview performance of the Harry Potter stageplay Cursed Child in London earlier this month.
The magical creature in question is the Augurey, a sinister bird also known as the ‘Irish Phoenix,’ whose cry is said to foretell death.
In the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook by Newt Scamander, the Augurey is described as thus:
“The Augurey is a native of Britain and Ireland, though sometimes found elsewhere in northern Europe. A thin and mournful-looking bird, somewhat like a small and underfed vulture in appearance, the Augurey is greenish black. It is intensely shy, nests in bramble and thorn, eats large insects and fairies, flies only in heavy rain, and otherwise remains hidden in its tear-shaped nest.
The Augurey has a distinctive low and throbbing cry, which was once believed to foretell death. Wizards avoided Augurey nests for fear of hearing that heart-rending sound, and more than one wizard is believed to have suffered a heart attack on passing a thicket and hearing an unseen Augurey wail. Patient research eventually revealed, however, that the Augurey merely sings at the approach of rain. The Augurey has since enjoyed a vogue as a home weather forecaster, though many find its almost continual moaning during the winter months difficult to bear. Augurey feathers are useless as quills because they repel ink.”
Despite its sinister backstory, the Augurey is given a M.O.M. classification of XX, meaning “Harmless / may be domesticated” (although it is a predatory bird, counting fairies among its prey). This suggests Newt might use it in the fight against the more dangerous creatures he’s forced to contend with.
An artist’s rendering of the Augurey by Verreaux on Deviantart
In the Fantastic Beasts textbook, the Augurey is also listed as one of the creatures that showed up to a summit for magical beings in the fourteenth century, after the then-Minister for Magic had declared the separation of magical ‘beings’ and ‘beasts’ based on whether or not they walked on two legs.
The Augurey, being a two-legged creature, was one of many unwelcome guests at the summit, after which contemporary wizards and witches narrowed the definition first to “those who could speak the human tongue,” and later to those who possessed “sufficient intelligence.”
Now, why is this relevant to Cursed Child? Because the Augurey is in fact used as both an alias and an, erm, style icon by one of the central protagonists.
The character in question is a newcomer to the Harry Potter universe, a sinister presence for whom it makes total sense to take the name of a bird whose cry is rumored to foretell death.
The character also has a lot in common with the Harry Potter series’ main villain, Lord Voldemort, in terms of both agenda and origin. It therefore has further significance that they’d envelop themselves in the guise of what is essentially the anti-phoenix.
Where Dumbledore had his Order of the Phoenix, Cursed Child presents a world in which ‘the Augurey’ is a force of ultimate darkness.
But most telling of its significance to Harry Potter canon at large is the fact that the Augurey is displayed prominently on all Cursed Child promotional materials.
Despite the image’s strong resemblance to a snitch, based on what happens in the play, it’s safe to say that the black wings holding up the child in the nest are definitely the wings of an Augurey — and by extension, the nest itself is probably that of an Augurey as well (especially because of its thorny appearance).
Will the Augurey have a similar significance in Fantastic Beasts? By the way it’s described, we’d have thought this bird is in fact the one that emerged from Newt’s Pokeball in the first trailer, but Pottermore has classified that one as a Swooping Evil (one of the brand new creatures introduced for the movie).
A video posted by Fantastic Beasts Film (@fantasticbeastsmovie) on
The Fantastic Beasts featurette released earlier today revealed that something will happen over the course of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that will have “implications for the whole Wizarding World.”
Would it be too out-there to assume that Newt Scamander in fact discovers the Augurey over the course of his travels, thus starting the wave that will ripple through history all the way to Cursed Child?
While those who have seen the play might wonder why this character needs further relevance to the larger Harry Potter canon at all, we can’t deny that — however they may be received — they’re a cemented part of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World now.
Since Rowling herself wrote the script for Fantastic Beasts (and has been heavily involved with Cursed Child, too), she may very well have been planning to justify the character’s presence by tying their story into Fantastic Beasts, circumventing Harry Potter’s own story to tie the Wizarding World’s past and future together through this brand new character.
Either way, we’ll look forward to seeing if the Augurey shows up in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in November — and how the creature’s presence may serve as foreshadowing to what happens in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.