Babbitty Rabbitty

Babbitty Rabbitty is the heroic witch protagonist of the wizarding fairytale, “Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump,” one of the stories featured in The Tales of Beedle the Bard. A kindly washerwoman for a foolish Muggle king, Babbitty was also a skilled Animagus who could transform into a rabbit. The tale recounts how she cleverly outwitted both the king and a fraudulent charlatan, ultimately securing protection for all magic-users in the kingdom and teaching a valuable moral lesson about the limits of magic.

According to the tale, Babbitty worked as a washerwoman for a foolish Muggle king who decided he should be the only person in the land with the power of magic. He announced his search for an instructor in magic and was soon approached by a cunning charlatan with no magical ability. The charlatan extorted riches from the king with fake lessons involving twigs and meaningless incantations. Babbitty, observing their antics, cackled with laughter, which enraged the king. When the king declared he would perform magic in front of his court, the charlatan blackmailed Babbitty, threatening to expose her as a witch to the king's Brigade of Witch-Hunters if she did not help him. During the public demonstration, Babbitty hid in a bush and performed all the spells for the charlatan, such as vanishing a horse and making the king's hat fly. For the finale, a heckler challenged the king to bring his dead hound back to life. Knowing this was impossible, Babbitty did nothing. The charlatan, thinking fast, claimed the trick was impossible but that they could instead cut a person in half and restore them. He chose Babbitty for the demonstration. Seeing her chance, Babbitty vanished behind the bush, leaving a rabbit in her place and casting a Charm on the saw so it would not cut her. When the king “sawed her in two,” the crowd saw the dismembered rabbit and panicked. From her hiding place, Babbitty made the charlatan's voice cry out that this was the consequence of “fake magic” and that the king must never harm a wizard or witch again. She demanded a statue of herself be erected on the stump to remind him of his folly. The charlatan was exposed and Babbitty, to escape the king's hunting hounds, transformed permanently into a large, white rabbit and lived out her days at the base of the stump, which would cackle whenever any witch or wizard was threatened.

The story describes Babbitty as a “kindly old witch.” Her personality is shown to be clever, resourceful, and courageous. She uses her wits to turn a life-threatening situation to her advantage, not only saving herself but securing the safety of her fellow magic-users. Her “cackling” laughter at the king's foolishness suggests she had a sharp sense of humor and a low tolerance for arrogance.

• Animagus: Babbitty was a skilled Animagus, able to turn into a “fat, old, white rabbit” at will. This was her most defining ability and central to the story's climax. In his notes on the tale, Albus Dumbledore theorized that the story may have been a way of passing down knowledge about the complex process of becoming an Animagus.
• Non-Verbal Magic: She performed a series of impressive spells from a hiding place, indicating a high level of skill in Non-verbal magic.
• Advanced Charms and Transfiguration: Babbitty successfully performed powerful Vanishing Spells on a horse and used various Charms to levitate objects and protect herself, demonstrating considerable magical talent.

• Wand: Although a wand is never mentioned in the narrative of the tale, Albus Dumbledore's commentary in The Tales of Beedle the Bard points out that the complex magic Babbitty performed would have been impossible without one. He concludes she must have had her wand concealed with her in the bush.

• The Muggle King: The foolish and arrogant king was Babbitty's primary antagonist. His ignorant desire for magic and cruelty toward its practitioners set the story's conflict in motion. Babbitty ultimately outsmarted him, forcing him to respect and protect wizards and witches.
• The Charlatan: A greedy, non-magical swindler who attempted to exploit the king and blackmail Babbitty. He served as the secondary antagonist and was ultimately exposed as a fraud thanks to Babbitty's clever plan.

• Babbitty: The name is likely a diminutive form, similar to “Babs” or “Barbara.” It has a whimsical, storybook quality fitting for a fairytale protagonist.
• Rabbitty: This surname is a direct and obvious reference to her Animagus form, the rabbit. The name itself foreshadows the story's resolution and her ultimate fate.

“Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump” is one of five wizarding fairytales from The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book bequeathed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling later published a real-world version of the book. In his extensive notes on the story, Albus Dumbledore analyzes its deeper meanings. He suggests that the story's moral—that magic cannot bring back the dead—is a fundamental law of magic in the Harry Potter universe, a theme also central to “The Tale of the Three Brothers” and the quest for the Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore also posits that the story cleverly encodes information about the Animagus transformation, noting that the inability of the charlatan to do magic with a simple twig underscores the necessity of a proper wand.