Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 90515

This is another repost removing the "draconis" error. Forgive me if
you've read the original already.

<snip>
Kagome:
Draco: name of a star in a constellation (yes, it's true, even though
I don't remember the constellation)
 
Carol:
It's both a star and the constellation that incorporates the star.
Here's a nice site showing what it looks like:
 
http://www.crystalinks.com/draco.html
 
Interestingly, Rastaban, which is very close to the name of one of the
Lestrange brothers (Rabastan), is also a star in the constellation Draco.
 
There are quite a few sites on the Net explaining the mythology behind
the constellation, if anyone want to try to link it with HP. Here are
two of them:
 
http://www.emufarm.org/~cmbell/myth/draco.html
 
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/constellations/draco.html
 
The second URL does link dragon and serpent imagery, but I still think
the two are distinct in the HP series, if not necessarily in all myths
and mythologies. 
 
Incidentally, Tolkien's dragons include "a great cold drake" (cf.
draco) and "Scatha the Worm (= Snake), so he does make the association
between snakes or serpents and dragons, but I have yet to see it in
HP. Even if Wormtail is somehow associated with snakes instead of
segmented earthworms (cf. Wormtongue = Snake Tongue in LOTR), I don't
see a connection between Wormtail and dragons. In GoF JKR describes
the Horntail (IIRC) as "more lizardlike than the others," but none of
the dragons is referred to as snakelike.
 
Carol, who still can't find the motto in her American editions