I pride myself on my ability to recall my former students, but Ms. Bindi Unai stands out in my mind in particular (and not just because in her fifth year, she released Professor Gelding’s Nogtails from their crates, stating that it was cruel to keep them locked up). Not only was Ms. Unai a highly intelligent young lady, but she also had a fearless curiosity towards learning. She was rarely frightened or disgusted by anything shown to the girls in their Care of Magical Creatures class. I can also recall the gloating trot that she would take her Aethonan, Rookie’s Cookie, on around the show ring every time she won herself and our school another trophy or blue ribbon.
It almost seemed a crime that she had no interest in using her abilities to help the government offices of Magical Creatures, or at least the government officials believe it was. But Ms. Unai has always been very much the independent-minded person ever since I first met her, so I could hardly say I was shocked when she chose instead to go out into the world to expand her own knowledge of the field she loved.
When Professor Gelding went off to Europe to help wrangle dragons, despite a fairly tall stack of applications for the job, Ms. Unai’s name still came to mind. And let me say, she was not an easy person to find. After going through the Appalachians, the Rockies, the Plains regions, Mexican deserts, and Hawaiian forests and oceans, I finally found her in Peru, studying, of all things, dragons. I hardly recognized her from the student who once raced through my halls. She was filthy, singes on her clothes and hair, and a layer of dirt covering her entire body. But there was also a gigantic smile on her face, and she seemed very well liked among her fellow researchers.
When I told her about the teaching job, I can recall her wrinkling her nose and the unsure look in her eyes at the thought of such a formal job title. I remember how it was a fight just to get her to show up to class in a clean uniform. She appeared to be sick at the thought of having to dress up in clean robes to teach a class. Personally, I think she only agree to stop me from embarrassing myself in front of her fellow researchers as I begged on the rocky soil.
It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to everyone (save for former Professor Gelding, whom I have yet to hear from since informing him that we no longer had a job for him at Salem). Professor Unai’s classes were filled to capacity every year she taught, her students always producing excellent grades on government exams. It wasn’t very long before Ministries in other countries began hearing about Professor Unai’s students and American students were shipped out to every corner of the globe to work in the field of Magical Creatures.
And this was before Professor Unai truly became ambitious in her field.
When Professor Unai informed me that she intended to write her own textbook for her class, I was quite impressed with her ambition, as well as honored when she asked me to write the foreword for it. This book has proved to be essential, not only for American students, but for all English-speaking wizards in the Western Hemisphere. And Professor Unai’s additional published works also prove integral parts in the study of magical creatures.
I am proud to call her a student, a colleague, and even a superior wizard to myself.
Englebert Winkler
Part II
As a writer on the subject the Dark Arts, I consider myself somewhat of an expert on magical creatures myself. And while this book was printed a great, great deal before my time, it still proves to be an integral part of American reference. So it did not shock me when Jasper Feather Publishing asked me to write a more current foreword for the book. Although I had never met the author, or even found the opportunity to read her works, I was quite honored to have the chance to meet with her. Bindi Unai, who not unlike myself, has been an essential part of academia when it comes to the study of magical creatures, so I was honored to be a part of the writing of this text.
I can recall the first time I met Bindi Unai. I can recall it was quite late in the summer because I had just returned from an excursion in Tibet to write to book on the Yeti, and I could not stop thinking about the vast temperature difference between California and the snow-covered Himalayans. I had brought several pages of my notes along with me, hoping that Bindi would have the chance to read them and offer me some of her insight.
When I contacted Bindi, she agreed to meet me for lunch at a favorite café of hers that she discovered after her retirement from the Salem Witches Institute. It was in a small bistro in San Francisco in June 1989, just after she retired from her teaching post at the Salem Witches Institute. She appeared disguised in Muggle clothing and seemed quite take aback by that fact that I had chosen not too.
My first impression of her was one of great shock. I suppose in my mind’s eyes, I had expected to meet the young, adventurous woman who had travel the globe to settle her wandering, restless curiosity; not the retired schoolteacher in reading glasses who appeared to have no troubles staying settled in one place for a long interview, occasionally tucking a loose strand of graying hair behind her ear. I had to admit, though, she was a remarkably graceful ager (although she did not seem to consider it a compliment). She seemed very tempted to pull her wand on me, and never quite took her hand out of the pocket she held it in.
Over creamy coffee and biscotti, in hushed voices, we discussed our careers in the realm of magical creatures and the Dark Arts. Bindi greatly lived up to her praises as an intelligent woman with many fascinating stories about her travels, though seemed quite offended by the parallels drawn between the two of us. Ever the humanitarian, she went on to argue that so many supposed “Dark” creatures and beings are not innately evil. That there are creatures that inflict pain merely for the sake of seeing a human being suffer (Dementors being the best example), but many creatures kill for the necessity of survival. That vampires need blood the same way humans need oxygen, Deer Women have no Deer Men to mate with, so they go after wizards and Muggle men, and Manticores cannot survive on tofu.
Oh, you just have to love seeing one so passionate towards their work. It is so, so rare in this day and age.
Then Bindi began regaling me with several stories of her younger years: studying dragons in Peru, watching Menehune on the more remote shores of Hawaii, and an unfruitful search for the Jersey Devil in New Jersey. When she began telling me the story about how at the age of nineteen, she integrated herself into a herd of Deer Women in Oklahoma, I couldn’t help being reminded of my encounters with Banshee’s. But before I could even begin to tell the story, Bindi informed me that was a very poor analogy, seeing that Banshees are only fabled to kill; while Deer Women are quite dangerous to humans. Apparently, they are quite merciless in their kills, trampling their victims to death after mating with them, not unlike the black widow spider.
Bindi even suggested that I accompany her on her next trip to Mexico to study the Chupacabre, saying it would make an excellent book to add to my collection. While the offer sounding like an exciting one, I feel my service towards Britain trump any explorations of my own. Besides, Bindi seemed more than capable of researching the creatures of the Western Hemisphere herself. I could tell she was disappointed when I told her this, but she did make a point of telling me she would be asking me to join her on her journeys until I finally agreed to accompany her one day. She never did get the chance to read over my Yeti notes, though; a great disappointment on my part.
I thoroughly enjoyed my coffee with Bindi, and I look forward to the next time the two of us cross paths. In fact, I may even call on her to write a foreword for one of my own upcoming works in the near future.
Gilderoy Lockhart
Third Class Order of Merlin, Honorary Member of the Dark Arts Defense League, and three time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most-Charming-Smile Award
Please note that in all future prints of Beasts, Beings, and Everything in Between, Gilderoy Lockhart’s foreword will not be present.