Items

Title: Aldrovandi's Basilisk
Description: All hail the king of the snakes! Basilisks—from the Greek basiliskos, for "little king," are depicted in many early modern natural histories and were said to be the kings of the serpents (Dark Arts students will recognize them for their diadem-shaped crests). J.K. Rowling preserves many details of the accounts from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about this terrifying snake, including his birth from a chicken's egg hatched under a toad, and a gaze that could kill. Susceptible to wizard control by some Parselmouths, only Tom Riddle proved snake-charmer enough to ever challenge one.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Aldrovandi's Dragons
Description: Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) kept an impressive cabinet of curiosities that purportedly included a dragon specimen. When he died, he left his collection to the city of Bologna. The collection was later maintained by Bartolomeo Ambrosini, who published the naturalist's volume on serpents and dragons after Aldrovandi's death. Aldrovandi deliberately produced large-format books with spacious woodcuts, allowing him to render his subjects in the appropriate size according to their appearances in real life or in this case, stature. On the top is one of Aldrovandi's Ethiopian dragons, and below, a dragon modeled after Ambroise Paré's dragon, expanded for effect. We're sure Charlie Weasley would love to meet these fire-breathing fellows.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Aldrovandi's Mer-Couple
Description: The classical tradition that attested to the realness of mermaids continued well into the seventeenth century, with sources like Ulisse Aldrovandi's Monstrorum historia documenting sightings of the creatures. Pliny also reported documentary evidence of Sirens, the beguiling mermaids who lured sailors with song to their deaths along the Nile (note the couple is called the Monstra Niliaca Parei). J.K. Rowling's colony of mer-people at the Black Lake use their voices to deliver a vital clue during the TriWizard Tournament.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Aldrovandi's Snakes
Description: If the Sorting Hat sent you to Slytherin in first year, no doubt you'll be charmed by these two fabulously scaly serpents, who seem almost to wriggle right off the pages of Ulisse Aldrovandi's 1640 volume on snakes and dragons. Fear not if you're not a fan of Slytherin's mascot: the common Aesculepian snake (left) and the black Aesculepian snake (right) aren't venomous. Aldrovandi reopens the debate about snake generation in this book, puzzling over the suggestion that snakes come from the eggs of a rooster. Is there a Parselmouth in the house? We'll just have to ask.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: American Witchcraft
Description: Aspiring Ministry of Magic officers enrolled in History of Magic may find this 1942 pamphlet indispensible in expanding their knowledge of American studies. On Halloween, the pamphlet tells us, "None of the devilment of this season is at all necessary, so one has the right to feel that 'witches' do live and cause all kinds of trouble: they rarely are caught." American witches and wizards, time to get out those invisibility cloaks!
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Bentley's Black Hellebore
Description: "Deck the hall with boughs of black hellebore" hardly has a festive ring, but Robert Bentley's Medicinal Plants assures us that this plant that blooms in the bleak midwinter is commonly known as the Christmas Rose. Bentley reports that black hellebore has a slightly bitter taste and causes a tingling sensation on the tongue. In moderate doses, the plant was used to treat mania, melancholia, and epilepsy. It was also used as a medicine for domestic animals. In large amounts, though, it is poisonous. At Hogwarts, the plant's calming properties are utilized in Professor Snape's Potions class to make the Draught of Peace, but best to keep in mind Bentley's description and skip it at the Yule Ball.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Bezoar
Description: It's round, reddish, and a little bigger than a baseball, but think again if the only Hogwarts association you have is a Quaffle, the ball used in the wizarding world's beloved sport Quidditch. Die-hard Harry Potter fans may recognize this object as a bezoar—which means "protection from poison" in Persian, and refers to the stony mass in a ruminant animal’s stomach. Bezoars were used throughout Europe for medicinal purposes for centuries and were thought to have magical properties. In the wizarding world, bezoars were a key ingredient in the Antidote to Common Poisons. Our bezoar, pictured here, dates to 1862 and comes from the stomach of a cow.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Bodin on Witch Hunting
Description: This little black book with the steeply pointed clasps advertises its contents as "magic" on the spine, but crack it open and you'll find the most influential manual for witch hunting published in France in the sixteenth century. First published in 1580 (this edition is from 1593), Jean Bodin's Demonomanie argues that any measure necessary should be applied in order to catch practitioners of sorcery, including allowing children to testify against their parents.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Centaur Almanac
Description: For many nineteenth-century Americans, almanacs produced by patent medicine manufacturers were a trusted source of information, distributed annually by the local pharmacy. By the nineteenth century, many manufacturers produced almanacs with arresting designs featuring plants and animals in eye-catching colors. Pharmaceutical almanacs combined calendars, weather predictions, and horoscopes with advertisements and testimonials for products. This almanac, produced by Centaur Liniments, promoted a medication that promised to remedy a long list of ailments. Good leisure reading for that centaur colony near Hogwarts—within these pages they'd find predictions of the planets' brightest days, which could ease viewing through the thick cover of the Forbidden Forest's trees.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Chubby's Magic Book
Description: Too bad the infant Dudley Dursley didn't get his Aunt Lily's magical abilities....this spellbinding babe is a dead ringer for Harry Potter's first cousin, minus his trademark scowl. Chubby's Magic Book, an advertising pamphlet for Fletcher's Castoria, administered to counteract indigestion, was one of many pamphlets produced by patent medicine manufacturers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also contains images printed in invisible ink. As Hermione might say, "Aparecium!"
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Culpeper's Star Thistle
Description: Over forty editions of the English apothecary Nicholas Culpeper's popular English Physician have been published since 1653, rendering it one of the most popular herbals ever in print. The Academy Library has many editions of this richly-detailed catalog of medicinal plants, including this expanded, hand-colored edition from 1818. Culpeper tells us that star thistle (upper left) grows wild in the fields around London in many places, and that the seeds and roots are efficacious as diuretics (at Hogwarts the plant is mentioned as a common Potions ingredient). Mulpepper's Apothecary in Diagon Alley provided many a wizard with potion ingredients; the shop's name is a nod to one of the most popular keepers of pharmaceutical knowledge in British history.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Curtis' White Lily
Description: Founded in 1783, Curtis's Botanical Magazine is the longest-running botanical periodical with color illustrations of plants (Muggles can subscribe, as it's still in print). William Curtis describes the White Lily, lilium candidum, as "among the very oldest inhabitants of the flower-garden" and praises the flower for its stateliness, beauty, and exceptional powers. These qualities wouldn't have been lost on J.K. Rowling, who gave Harry's mother the same name. Elsewhere in her books, lilies are beloved by slugs, ghosts, and by the heads of Gryffindor and Slytherin: Minerva McGonegall and Severus Snape.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Distillation Apparatus
Description: Serviceable copper cauldrons may be found for first years at Potage's in Diagon Alley, but for more advanced potions, students can consult the pages of Philipp Ulstadt's work on distillation for an apparatus upgrade. Ulstadt, a Swiss physician and professor whose very popular Coelum Philosophorum contained concise technical instructions for the processes of distillation, illustrated his manual with hand-colored woodcuts. Among Ulstadt's recipes are many for distillates of herbs and plants with wine, directions for making aqua vitae, and recipes for potable gold. Read closely, and you may find a formula for the molten gold Felix Felicis is near...we wish you lots of Liquid Luck.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Fludd's Synopsis of the Divinatory Arts
Description: The English astrologer and mystic Robert Fludd was known for his writings about metaphysical knowledge and astrology, which he illustrated with startlingly-beautiful engravings. This image from the second volume of his masterwork, the Utriusque Cosmi (1619-1621), shows a wheel, with the Ape of Nature at the center, and man at the top. The wheel is divided into seven sections, all representing different kinds of divination, including prophecy, the art of memory, and palmistry. Young magicians studying up on this last divinatory science, take note: don't mix up the lines on your instructor's hand, or you may just predict she died the previous Tuesday, as Harry did.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Gessner's Owl
Description: Tucked among the magical storehouses of Diagon Alley is a shop that is always dark in order to accommodate the preferences of its nocturnal inhabitants. This is Eeylops Owl Emporium—and the setting for Harry Potter's adoption of his pet, Hedwig, who remains one of his truest companions throughout his school years. The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner depicted many owls in his volume dedicated to birds, including this handsome grey owl with his abundance of downy feathers and keenly intelligent eyes. Owls of all types appear throughout the series, retaining the cultural associations they've had for centuries of both wisdom and omens.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Gessner's Unicorn
Description: The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner's 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, the Historia Animalium, makes even the prolific Gilderoy Lockhart look like a slouch. Part fantasy, part observation, Gessner's dense and exuberant animal kingdom included creatures real and imaginary, running the gamut from sea monsters and whales to diminutive tabby cats. Of the unicorn, Gessner writes that its horn marrow, cut with a little wine, could heal a man who'd eaten a poisoned cherry, and could cure a number of ailments. All the better to keep young wizards out of the Hogwarts hospital wing.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Hernández's Dragon Skeleton
Description: Spanish physician Francisco Hernández published the first natural history of Mexico in 1651, and in it reproduces this desiccated dragon, said to have belonged to Cardinal Barbarini. Barbarini's specimen impressed the members of the early Italian Society of the Lynx, and a live rendering can be found in Ulisse Aldrovandi. Daydreaming Defense Against the Dark Arts students will be the first to notice that a dragon skeleton hangs from the ceiling of their classroom. As Gilderoy Lockhart drones on, imagine you're off hunting in Romania with Charlie Weasley.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Ketham's Zodiac Man
Description: "What's your sign?" seems the obvious question for this embattled gent, who has a zodiac sign hanging from every conceivable limb. The figure can be found in the Fasciculus Medicinae, a popular late-fifteenth-century compendium of medical treatises from Greek and Arabic medical texts that was published in many editions (we have five). Ketham's "Zodiac Man" embodies the medieval and early Renaissance belief that parts of the body were governed by astrological signs. The planets gave order to the seemingly random courses of health and illness. Your Divination lessons may not connect the dots so specifically from sign to body part, but we've heard tales of Hogwarts professors warning of Mars for fear of burns and accidents, and Saturn, for a diminutive stature.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Kircher's Three-headed Dog full
Description: This engraving, found in Athanasius Kircher's two volume work on music, depicts Orpheus playing the hellhound Cerberus to sleep in order to gain passage to the Underworld. In classical sources, Cerberus was not usually so easily tamed: to the Greeks, he was a monstrous three-headed dog. A glance at Cerberus was said to petrify humans, and his bite was poisonous. Most Greek sources describe Cerberus as possessing three heads, as does Fluffy, the fearsome guard dog who blocks passage to the underground vault guarding the philosopher's stone. Spoiler alert: Harry and his friends take a cue from Orpheus's book and soothe Hogwarts' vicious pup by picking a drowsy tune.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Leo, Astronomicae Veteres
Description: Master printer and innovator Aldus Manutius produced some of the finest early books printed in Venice. His extraordinary collection, the Scriptores Astronomici Veteres, included four astronomical texts that date from the Hellenistic period through imperial Rome. This star-studded Leo is one of many constellations illustrating the Greek poet Aratus's Phaenomena, one of the few illustrated works produced by the Aldine Press (they're modeled on earlier woodcuts produced by another Venetian printer, Erhard Ratdolt for his star atlas in 1482). Leo has special resonance for Hogwarts students as the sign of both Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling herself: both were born on July 31, and the lion is the regal animal behind Harry's house. Hail, Gryffindor!
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

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