The Wagga Wagga Werewolf

The Wagga Wagga Werewolf was a specific werewolf that became famous in the Wizarding World through the fraudulent claims of Gilderoy Lockhart. Lockhart asserted that he had personally defeated this creature, an exploit he detailed in his best-selling book, Wanderings with Werewolves. This supposed victory was one of several fabrications Lockhart used to build his celebrity status. In reality, Lockhart stole the story from the witch who actually subdued the beast, using a Memory Charm to erase her memory of the event.

The defeat of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf was one of Gilderoy Lockhart's most frequently cited “achievements.” During his brief tenure as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1992, he included the feat in a quiz given to his second-year students. One question asked students to name his greatest achievement, with the defeat of this werewolf being a possible answer. Later, while recovering in the Hospital Wing after Professor Severus Snape vanished the bones in Harry Potter's arm, Lockhart reminisced about the encounter. He told Harry, “The Wagga Wagga Werewolf was a real fiend, but I taught him a lesson he'll never forget…” before being interrupted. It was later revealed that Lockhart was a complete fraud. His method involved finding witches and wizards who had performed genuinely heroic deeds, interviewing them to learn every detail, and then erasing their memories with the Obliviate charm. He would then publish their stories as his own. Therefore, the true story of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf's defeat belongs to an unknown hero whose accomplishment was stolen.

• Wagga Wagga: This is the name of a real city in New South Wales, Australia. The name suggests that the encounter with the werewolf took place on the Australian continent. In the language of the local Wiradjuri Aboriginal people, “Wagga” is thought to mean “crow,” with the duplication indicating the plural; thus, “Wagga Wagga” means “the place of many crows.”
• Werewolf: The term originates from Old English, combining wer (meaning “man”) and wulf (meaning “wolf”), literally “man-wolf.”

According to an article written by J.K. Rowling for Pottermore, the individual who actually defeated the Wagga Wagga Werewolf was a one-eyed, hairy hag. After Lockhart extracted all the details of her heroic encounter, he not only erased her memory of the event but also publicly discredited her. In his book, he claimed that the hag had tried to take credit for his “victory,” forcing him to “curse her” so that she would forget the incident entirely (Pottermore).