Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

• Type: Magizoology textbook
• Owners: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and virtually all students attending Hogwarts. Albus Dumbledore also owned a personal copy (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them charity book).
• Maker: Newt Scamander (Author), Obscurus Books (Publisher) (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them charity book)

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them* is the definitive textbook on the subject of Magizoology. When Harry Potter purchased his copy for his first year at Hogwarts, it was described as having a green cover. By the 1991-1992 school year, the book was in its fifty-second edition (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them charity book).

The real-world version of the book, published for charity, is presented as a facsimile of Harry Potter's own copy. This version is covered in doodles and handwritten commentary from Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. The notes include jokes, corrections, accounts of their own encounters with certain beasts, and evidence of games of hangman played in the margins.

The book is a comprehensive encyclopedia of magical creatures. Its primary function is educational, providing witches and wizards with information on identifying various beasts, understanding their behaviours, and knowing their habitats. A key feature of the book is its use of the Ministry of Magic Classification system, which rates creatures on a scale of one to five “X”s, from 'boring' (X) to 'known wizard killer / impossible to domesticate' (XXXXX). This system gives readers a quick reference for the perceived dangerousness of each beast. It is a required textbook for the Care of Magical Creatures course at Hogwarts. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione Granger relies on the book's information to identify the horn in Xenophilius Lovegood's house as that of an Erumpent, warning that the book states the horn contains a fluid that causes anything injected with it to explode.

Authored by the world's most famous Magizoologist, Newt Scamander, *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them* was first published in 1927 (Pottermore). It quickly became a bestseller and the standard for the field of Magizoology, and was approved for use at Hogwarts shortly after publication. It has been a staple on the Hogwarts booklist for decades. The book's extensive research was compiled by Scamander over years of travel across five continents. A special edition, purported to be a copy of Harry Potter's own textbook, was made available to Muggle readers in 2001 to raise funds for the charity Comic Relief (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them charity book).

The book is first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as part of Harry's required first-year equipment list, serving as a foundational piece of world-building that introduces the formal study of magical creatures in the wizarding world. While it remains mostly in the background throughout the series, its content proves critically important during the Second Wizarding War. Hermione's knowledge from the book allows her to correctly identify the deadly Erumpent horn at the Lovegood residence, a realization that helps the trio escape a dangerous trap. This instance highlights the book's practical value beyond the classroom.

• J.K. Rowling wrote a real-world version of *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*, published in 2001 to benefit the UK charity Comic Relief. She wrote the book under the pseudonym of Newt Scamander.
• The book's title and author became the inspiration for the *Fantastic Beasts* film series, which acts as a prequel to the Harry Potter stories and follows the adventures of Newt Scamander.
• In 2017, a revised edition of the textbook was published with a new foreword by Scamander, six previously undiscovered creatures, and illustrations by Tomislav Tomic. This edition removed the handwritten notes from Harry, Ron, and Hermione that were a feature of the 2001 version.