Beast, Beings, and Everything in Between was born out a combination of curiosity, boredom in the wilderness, and frustration with a previously substandard textbook used in most Care of Magic Creature classes in the United States. When my father first brought us to American when I was four years old, I can vaguely recall him saying how in order to succeed in America, all one really needed was a dream and two Sickles to rub together. I had these things, but still, I always saw myself as the little daughter of Basque immigrants who, despite what her gushing former teacher may say, held little interest towards formal writing and schoolwork; things one would traditionally think of as paving stones toward success. Instead, preferring to climb trees after Clabberts and spend, sometime days, following the school’s house elves to see if they ever, ever did sleep was my idea of a practical approach to the study of magical creatures. Quills, parchment, and tomes of textbooks had little appeal to me. So what my father said all those years ago must be true. For, you see, I hold no other explanation for how this little child I always saw myself as was ever able to become a serious voice in American academia.
No doubt if it weren’t for the intervention of several very influential people, that wild little girl would still be me today (although she is still known to make her presence heard from time to time). For many years after my graduation from the Salem Witches Institute, I was content to wander the Western Hemisphere, observing the native creatures from north to south. My days (months, actually) spent in Peru, around a campfire, while my fellow researchers and I tittered back and forth between Spanish and English while keeping guard over the Vipertooths remain some of my happiest memories. Sometimes, during late nights when I would remain in my office grading compositions, I would find myself longing for the cool mountain air and the rush of being confronted with one wild beast or another, and I wonder to myself about what my life would have been like had I never resigned myself to my quiet teaching career.
Nevertheless, I cannot stand to watch a grown man beg (it is my one flaw). It is that flaw which brought me to where I am, and where I will be content to spend the rest of my days. So, I reluctantly took up my post at the place where I once counted the days until I could get away from. Most of my old teachers were still there, working along side me, and watching them all struggle to address me as ‘Professor Unai’ was more than enough to keep me coming back to teach my classes every day.
And as much as my former headmaster enjoys singing my praises, writing this book was not originally my idea. One day, while coaching the school’s riding team, I was approached by one, Mr. Timber, from Jasper Feather Publishing. He had heard about how well all my graduating students were doing in their careers involving magical creatures and was wondering if I had ever considered writing a textbook to be used in American magic schools. And just as I did with my teaching job, I faltered when the opportunity was offered to me. But the more I considered it, the more the idea began to grow on me. I often found myself adding notations to my own class text and teaching off of my own experience rather than the books my students came to class with. My last seven years that our original class text was in use, I’m fairly certain it became a very dust-covered paperweight.
My experience as a teacher certainly had a lot to do with how this book was written. I can only hope that my students are able to get some value out of it; as much as those around me have been saying they will.
Before I can truly delve into the subject of my so-called expertise, I must pose the question for my reader, ‘What is a beast?’ Now, years of experience around young people tell me some simple one-sentence answer is more than likely circling through my readers’ heads, and if such a question could be answered in such simple terms, this textbook would be a lot lighter.
How do you tell?
It would be easy to lump beast, beings, and all nonhuman creatures into one large category. But unfortunately, what is real is rarely easy, and the classification of beasts and beings has certainly proved to be one of those things.
First, in order to understand this issue, we must first understand what separates a beast from a being. By definition, a ‘being’ is a creature in magical society that has the same legal rights that witches and wizards share and is included in lawmaking and other processes running government. To be a being is to be given a voice among humans and say in shaping the world around us. There have been many notable being creature who have gone on to contribute greatly to wizarding society. Some examples of such creatures include vampires, banshees, and more recently, werewolves.
Hence forth, a beast is a nonhuman creature that does not have the rights granted to wizards. Some creatures have a humanoid appearance, and yet do not have the status, either because they do not display the necessary intelligence or self control needed for such status, or by their own choice. Many people, wizards and beings alike, have protested these distinctions as being unfair, unenlightening, and downright bigoted, but little has been done in the way of changing them.
The road to which the modern distinction between beasts and beings has been a very long one indeed, so it is not entirely surprising that few members of wizarding government have been willing to open the debate once again. For as long as their have been magical creatures, witches and wizards have been trying to figure out a way to classify them; and almost all of these terms of classification of been met with some form of protest. Society has gone through dozens upon dozens of possible distinctions between beast and beings from number of legs, to the ability to speak, to the strength of magic and ability to use a wand. As you can see, this can easily become a rather large headache.
After far too many years of debate, in 1811, British Minister of Magic, Gorgan Stump stated that a “being” is “any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws”. As I have observed, very few creatures in the United States hold being status. Vampires hold it and, in 1993, being status was awarded to American werewolves, and this concludes the list of all registered beings found in the United States (as I said, very few). But almost no creatures native to the Americas hold being status. In the academic world, this is attributed to the fact that the Americas are simply younger than the rest of the world and creatures native to her soils have just not had as much time to establish their being status.
And still, in the world, we have creatures capable of having being status, yet fight not to have the status. Creatures such as merpeople, centaurs, and leprechauns are among these creatures. They all may have their reasons, yet I will not hazard to guess what those reasons are. I have only so much vacant capacity in my brain.
At one point, a possible consideration for naming beings was whether or not Muggles knew of their existence. On this topic, arguments were heard from both sides, one claiming that because Muggles would often find themselves able to communicate with these creatures, and the other claiming because these creatures did come in contact with humans, they could not be trusted with being granted being status. As such, the arguments were both null anyway, as at the time it was argued, Ministries of Magic all over the world were taking great steps to make sure Muggles never did see these creatures again.
Of course, this still raises yet another question. There are many large and dangerous creatures in the world. How could they possibly be hidden from Muggles?