"ara" from "aranea" L. spider + "gog" from "Gog" a legendary giant

Armadillo
The bile of this creature is used for making potions, including Wit-Sharpening Potion.
This reference to the armadillo being part of the Wit-Sharpening Potion may be in homage to a particularly funny advertisement which ran on British television. In the advert, a devastatingly dim country fellow is offered a Dime candy bar, which is "smooth on the outside, crunchy on the inside." He says that he prefers to eat armadillos, which are "smooth on the inside, crunchy on the outside!" The presenter says "You're a bit thick, aren't you?" and the country bumpkin nods happily. Thanks to Wayne Childs for noting this connection.

Ashwinder
A thin grey serpent with glowing red eyes which comes out of magical fires and lives long enough to lay fiery hot eggs in some dark and secluded spot. These eggs, while valued as potion ingredients, are very dangerous. If they are not found and frozen in time, they will set buildings on fire.
"Ash" comes from the color of the serpent and also as a reference to it's connection to fire. "Winder" recalls the sideways movement of some kinds of snakes, such as the rattler. They are sometimes called "sidewinders."

Augurey(Irish Phoenix)
Thin and mournful-looking bird somewhat resembling a vulture, greenish-black in color, native to Britain and Ireland. Normally remaining hidden in its nest in brambles and thorns, flying only in heavy rain, the feathers of the Augurey repel ink. Its distinctive cry was once thought to be a death omen, but it is now known that the Augurey's cry foretells rain. The Augurey eats insects and fairies.
"augury" - Eng. generally, the art of divination, but specifically, the art of the augur (one who interprets omens based on the behaviour of birds)

Banshee
A Dark creature with the appearance of a woman with floor-length black hair and a skeletal, green-tinged face. Its screams will kill. Seamus Finnigan is particularly afraid of banshees. The Bandon Banshee was supposedly defeated by Gilderoy Lockhart but was actually defeated by a witch with a harelip

Barny the Fruitbat
Barny is the mascot of the Ballycastle Bats Quidditch team. He also appears in Butterbeer commercials ("Barny says: I'm just batty about Butterbeer!")

Basilisk(the King of Serpents)
A wizard-bred Dark creature of enormous power, this extremely poisonous giant serpent (up to 50 feet in length) is brilliant green in color with long thin saber-like fangs and bulbous yellow eyes (see more below). A basilisk can live for at least 900 years given an adequate food supply, and as it can eat most vertebrates (including humans), this is not difficult to achieve. The male can be distinguished from the female by the scarlet plume on its head, but basilisks are usually magically rather than normally bred.

Basilisk-breeding has been outlawed since medieval times and in the present day falls under the Ban on Experimental Breeding, but this law has rarely been broken even by Dark wizards, since only a Parselmouth can control a basilisk.

"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it."

The phoenix seems immune to the basilisk's deadly gaze. The basilisk which lived in the Chamber of Secrets could be controlled only by the true Heir of Slytherin rather than just any Parselmouth . When unleashed by the Heir using Parseltongue, the basilisk searched the castle for its prey, Muggle-born students, which it could identify by smelling their blood ("I smell blood..." the creature cried as it wandered the pipes). When its eyes were pecked out by Fawkes, it attacked Harry using its keen sense of smell. Harry killed the basilisk by thrusting a sword through the roof of its mouth. Harry's arm was pierced by one of the basilisk's fangs, the poison of which nearly killed him.
Apart from its specific magical powers and long lifespan, many of the characteristics of the basilisk follow naturally from its being a serpent . Like more mundane serpents, the basilisk sheds its skin at intervals, and its varied diet is typical of the larger snakes, which tend to pursue larger and larger prey according to their own size and capabilities. It's quite possible that had Harry been more experienced in Defense Against the Dark Arts, he might have lost his battle against the basilisk in attempting to use Stunning Spells; although not explicitly stated, the basilisk's skin probably has the same armor characteristics as dragon skin, leaving its eyes and the inside of its mouth as its only vulnerable points.

"...the basilisk was portrayed as a serpent with a crown or a white spot on its head. Cobras, which have such marks, may be the origin of the basilisk legend..."

"Basilisk" Eng. in the legendary sense means this creature, but also comes from L. "basilicus" royal, so the nickname "King of Serpents" is particularly apt. The detail about males being crested appears to come from the real-life basilisk, which is a kind of iguana.

Beetle

Scarab beetles (potion ingredient, ground into a powder)
beetle eyes for sale in Diagon Alley

Bicorn
Horn of this creature is used as a potion ingredient. The name "bicorn" suggests a creature with two horns. The Bicorn is a mythical demonic creature which eats human flesh.
more information

Billywig
A magical insect, native to Australia. It is about a half-inch long and vivid blue in color. A Billywig's sting causes giddiness and levitation. For this reason, the Billywig's sting is highly sought after by Australian wizards. Dried Billywig stingers are useful as a potion ingredient.

Birds
and bird-like creatures

Huge tropical birds deliver Sirius' letter to Harry
Augurey
Diricawl
Fwooper
Jobberknoll
Occamy
Owl
Phoenix
Golden Snidget
Biting Fairy
Another name for Doxy.

Blast-Ended Skrewt
Magical creatures bred by Hagrid in the fall of 1994 by crossing manticores with fire-crabs. Blast-Ended Skrewts are some of the most revolting creatures ever seen.
The name "Blast-Ended Skrewt" may be a reference to the term "blasting off" which is slang in some parts of Britain for breaking wind.

Blood-Sucking Bugbear
When roosters were being killed at Hogwarts (1992-1993), Hagrid suspected that the culprit might be a blood-sucking bugbear.

Boarhound - Fang
Hagrid's pet Fang is a black boarhound, "a large dog, specifically the great Dane, used in hunting wild boars". He, like Hagrid, looks a lot fiercer than he is. Fang accompanies Hagrid into the Forbidden Forest and also went with Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Draco when they served detention in the Forest. Hagrid told them that Fang is a coward, but this may have been more an oblique comment on Draco's behavior than the strict truth about Fang. When Harry and Ron followed the spiders into the Forest and encountered Aragog, Fang accompanied with them. When Hagrid resisted arrest late in Harry's fifth year, Fang was injured in attempting to protect Hagrid, but recovered.

Boggart
A shape shifter that prefers to live in dark, confined spaces, taking the form of the thing most feared by the person it encounters; nobody knows what a boggart looks like in its natural state (although Moody recognized one using his magical eye to spot it as it hid in a corner desk at number 12 Grimmauld Place. One wonders what it was that Moody actually saw...). A boggart appears to feed on the emotion of fear rather than simply deploying this ability as a defense mechanism, hence its classification as a Dark creature (PA7). Many Muggle children may have encountered boggarts as "the monster under the bed", though this is not stated explicitly in the text.

Lupin taught his third year Defense Against the Dark Arts class to fight this with the Riddikulus spell , and used a boggart as a substitute for a Dementor in tutoring Harry, an experience Harry felt the D.A. really needed in order to learn to cast the Patronus Charm under something resembling realistic conditions. A boggart was one of the obstacles in the Triwizard Tournament maze, and a boggart was found infesting a writing desk in the drawing room at Grimmauld Place.
"Often they are house spirits, and in those cases the only way to get rid of them is to move...The more frustrated the family becomes, the more fun the boggart has."

Boomslang
African snake, Dispholidus typus, with extremely nasty venom. The skin, which is mostly green in males and mostly brown in females, serves the snake well as camouflage, and is used for polyjuice potion. Snape keeps boomslang skin in his private stores.
"boomslang" is an English loan-word from Afrikaans, whence it was in turn formed from two Dutch words, "boom" Du. tree + "slang" Du. snake

Bowtruckle
A small (maximum height 8 inches) insect-eating tree-dweller with long sharp fingers (two on each hand), brown eyes, and a general appearance of a flat-faced little stickman made of bark and twigs, which serves well as camouflage in its native habitat.

Found in western England, southern Germany, and Scandinavia, a bowtruckle serves as tree-guardian for its home tree, which is usually a tree whose wood is of wand quality. The twiglike fingers of the bowtruckle appear to be primarily an adaptation like that of a woodpecker's beak, allowing it to more effectively dig out its preferred food of wood lice from its home tree, but they also serve as an effective weapon against the eyes of an opponent. Although ordinarily peaceful, a bowtruckle will attack a human if provoked (which includes perceived assaults upon the bowtruckle's tree as well as the bowtruckle itself). A witch or wizard seeking to take leaves or wood from a bowtruckle-inhabited tree should offer wood lice or fairy eggs to the bowtruckle to placate and distract it.
"bow" several English senses, but the obsolete Scottish dialect sense traces back to much older words meaning "dwelling", while some senses come from the same root as the English word "bough", meaning the limb of a tree +
"truckle" Eng. to take a subordinate position

Buckbeak
Buckbeak is a gray hippogriff who was accused of wounding Draco Malfoy and sentenced to be executed (PA). He was rescued by Harry and Hermione, and escaped with Sirius Black.

Bugbear
"bugbear" Eng. a type of magical creature (possibly resembling a bear) in legend that was supposed to eat naughty children; the term (through being used generally as a label for any imaginary being used to scare children) has come to mean any exaggerated fear based more on imaginary than real danger

Bundimun
Greenish fungus with eyes. An infestation of Bundimuns can destroy a house, as their secretions rot away the foundations. This same secretion, in diluted form, is used in some magical cleaning solutions.

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