CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 34, "The Department of Mysteries"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 120348


Question:

> > 1) Thestrals obviously understand human language since they were
able to understand Harry's instructions.  Why is that?  Can most
magical animal/beasts/beings understand the human language?
> 
Lisa the Lurker responded:
> A1).  Might I suggest some magical creatures can understand Wizard
humans based on their magic.

Carol adds:
A good point (not "poing"--I always mistype this particular word).
There's no single human language, not even the pseudo-Latin of the
spells. Evidently Thestrals are like the more intelligent enchanted
objects (e.g., wands or Firebolts in) that they understand the
*desires* of Wizards regardless of the language the Wizard speaks. The
same appears to apply to cats, at least those that are half-Kneazel
like Crookshanks (and Mrs. Norris and Mr. Tibbs?) and owls, at least
the magical variety. (If there are magical rats and common street
rats, then presumably owls also come in magical and nonmagical
varieties. An Animagus, OTOH, would understand animal language, as
Peter Pettigrew did in his search for Voldemort, but probably not the
languages of other Wizards. I don't think that PP understood Albanian
any more than Ron or Hagrid understands French.)

Carol, who hopes that the MoM keeps written records of the contents of
the Prophecies because otherwise the smashed prophecy globes are a sad
and irreparable loss