Abstract

“Come seek us where our voices sound.We cannot sing above the ground”. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 390.In the Victorian era monkey torsos were stitched onto large fish tails, addressing the public’s desire to behold a mermaid. These exhibits, apart from offering access to the grotesque, spoke to an innate need in man to mirror himself in nature. In this chapter, I take as my subject matter J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997–2007) and focus in particular upon her representation and reinvention of the figure of the mermaid.In Rowling’s fantasy landscape, these creatures are deployed to speak to a particular principle of unification, not only between human and animal but also between different human cultures. In a world itself fraught by tensions between good and evil, muggles and wizards and, most importantly, between humans and animals; it is within these boundary spaces that compromise and ultimately change can exist. This chapter will explore how both the Harry Potter series and its accompanying taxonomy of imaginative creatures, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, shape the mermaid to teach a lesson in ethics and otherness aimed at young readers but also tied to older histories.Such creatures are, of course, themselves inherently dualised; they are both of land and of sea, of human and of animal. Yet in Rowling’s fantasy landscape, these creatures are deployed to speak to a particular principle of unification, not only between human and animal but also between different human cultures. In a world itself fraught by tensions between good and evil, muggles and wizards and, most importantly, between humans and animals; it is within these boundary spaces that compromise and ultimately change can exist. Interaction with the mermaid necessitates a transgression into their realm or in the limited spaces between. Travelling to this boundary and beyond, outside the comfort of the known, challenges the self to understand and be understood. This paper will explore how both the Harry Potter series and its accompanying taxonomy of imaginative creatures, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, shape the mermaid to teach a lesson in ethics and otherness aimed at young readers but also tied to older histories.