Dumbledore, Animagi, and animals

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 90357

There's something I wondered about in connection with this debate 
about Dumbledore being an Animagus.

Ages ago, before OOP I was trying to think through the role of 
animals in POA, because they are quite prominent there.  Not only is 
there the whole Animagus and Lupin as werewolf thing, but also we 
have the way Crookshanks and Scabbers function as surrogates for 
Hermione and Ron's relationship.  And we start the Care of Magical 
Creatures lessons.

This led me to set up the following approximate correspondences 
between the characters and animals:

Harry - deer (Patronus)
Ron - Scabbers (later, Pigwidgeon, pets)
Hermione - Crookshanks (pet)
Sirius - dog (Padfoot, Animagus form)
Lupin - wolf (transformation)
Pettigrew - rat (Animagus form)
James - deer (Animagus form)
McGonagall - cat (Animagus form)
Dumbledore - Phoenix (pet?)
Voldemort - snake (pet, but also now the OOP manifestation)
Neville - toad (pet)
Snape - ?? some will want to insert 'bat'
Hagrid - special case, see below

What I started to hypothesise was that, more or less, either you get 
a pet or an Animagus form but not both.  Post-OOP we may be able to 
say that the Patronus is less part of this set-up and assign Harry - 
Hedwig; allowing owls brings Percy and Draco neatly in.  However, 
Lupin did assign some significance to Harry's Patronus form at the 
end of POA.  I don't think that pets and Animagus forms are mutually 
exclusive things in terms of magical capability.  I see it more as a 
question of the symbolism employed to illustrate aspects of the 
characters.  In effect, the literary space taken up by a potential 
Animagus form for Dumbledore is already occupied by Fawkes.

There are undoubted problems with all this: Sirius gets Buckbeak 
later; what is Hedwig's role (and Hermes and Draco's eagle owl)?  
But there are things I like, too.  To me, it's no accident that 
animal correspondences for Snape are fugitive or suppressed (think 
of those things in jars): it's part of his mystery.  That Fred and 
George associate so closely that there is no room for pets also says 
something.  Whether the lack of an animal association for Ginny can 
be connected to her generally late character development is more 
questionable.  In OOP, Luna's association with invisible animals is 
suggestive: as elusive as the Crumple-Horned Snorkak yet as real as 
the Thestral.  I also like that Harry's link to Voldemort includes 
Parseltongue.  I like that Ron changes from Scabbers to Pigwidgeon, 
foreshadowing his eventual self-acceptance as a more mercurial 
person than the laid-back image of a somnolent rat.

But I think Hagrid is very interesting in this regard.  Up to the 
end of GOF, as well as Fang, he gets a *different* animal in each 
book: Norbert; Aragog; Buckbeak; Blast-ended Skrewts.  There is a 
very deep mystery about Hagrid: right at the beginning of the series 
its moral anchor, Dumbledore, characterises him for us with the 
phrase 'I would trust Hagrid with my life', and from that moment on 
JKR flaunts his unreliability, instability, even incompetence.  I 
see his animal associations reflecting this: Fang is the fixed 
point, while all the others are his mutability.  And what are we to 
make of his OOP 'animal': Grawp?  I do have some thoughts about 
that, but it's a whole separate post.  There's also the question of 
Fluffy's role, which is clearly symbolic but perhaps not of Hagrid's 
*character* development as such.  And there's the question of the 
meaning of Hagrid's status as the 'Mr Animals' of the series.

So, in terms of the immediate debate about Dumbledore, I'm inclined 
to reject the hypothesis that he's an Animagus.

David