The Owls of Harry Potter

This baby Saw-Whet Owl decided to go for a little flight in the house and landed—out of all the books in the library—on the Harry Potter series.

By far and away the most common question I’m asked about owls is how the owls in Harry Potter compare to the real thing—that is, how realistic are they. The answer, to basically no one’s shock, is not very.

Real owls will not carry letters, cannot find addresses, nor will they sit peacefully—untethered—in a room with hundreds of other owls of various species. Actually, considering how quick Hazel is to attack Jasper if he’s anywhere in her vicinity, there’s no guarantee real owls will sit peacefully with others of their own species. Any falconer would groan at the idea of keeping or transporting a bird of prey in a cage. In The Goblet of Fire, Hedwig sits on Harry’s knee after delivering a letter from Sirius Black, and as someone who has had a large owl sit on my knee, let me just say, “Ouch!” Also, I have no idea what an “owl treat” would be, but it sounds like something of dubious digestibility.

 Not all that long ago, a friend of mine asked me an interesting question after the obligatory “how realistic are Harry Potter owls” query. My friend asked, “Does it bother you?”

After a moment’s consideration, I realized the answer. “No. Not at all.”

This question and my answer have stuck in my mind ever since. After all, it’s natural to be vexed by fictional misrepresentations of things we love and to find pleasure in proper portrayals of the same. I remember my surprised delight when I was a young teenager reading Wheel of Time and discovering the scene where Queen Morgase hunts with a merlin—the small, dainty, traditional lady’s falcon. I likewise have read any number of books where owls build nests or all owls hoot and have rolled my eyes.

Anyone who has ever attended a writer’s conference can probably tell you horse lovers are always on the warpath about inaccurate horse portrayals in fantasy in particular. Weapon enthusiasts are frequently exasperated by archers holding longbows at full draw for minutes on end and various swords appearing in the wrong eras. Also, don’t get anyone started on torches lining castle walls!

So then, if the owls in Harry Potter are so inaccurate, why doesn’t it bother me?

It all comes down to worldbuilding.

In Harry Potter, you see, the owls are magical. Do the books ever explicitly say that? Not that I can recall, unless you count the fact the owls are sold at a shop for magical creatures. However, even without being told much of anything at all about the Harry Potter owls and their magical traits, it’s easy to come up with a few explanations that make complete and total sense within the world building.

Are the owls given a potion that grants them a great sense of direction? Raised and trained by wizards using special charms? Or maybe some magical creature expert bred regular owls with some sort of magical bird and the result is the magical owls the wizards have today.

Some fantasy stories use the “because magic” explanation to excuse any logical fallacy, but that isn’t the case here. While the reader may not know every possible spell or potion in the Harry Potter universe, the magic is remarkably fleshed-out and well-considered. That’s why all the above explanations make sense. If this were a case of the “because magic” excuse, there wouldn’t be any explanations for the owls’ eccentricities that coincide with the world building and magic in a logically consistent way.

The Harry Potter books hit a fascinating balance between giving the magic rules in order to make studying it at a wizarding school feel believable and also leaving enough to the reader’s imagination so the magic still feels—well—like magic.

It’s an admirable feat, one I never manage in my own stories. Though, I like writing different sorts of stories with different sorts of magic from Harry Potter, but I definitely like reading Harry Potter for the occasional nostalgic trip back to my childhood.

At the end of the day, I’ll always enjoy Harry Potter’s unrealistic letter-delivering, soft-taloned, cage-dwelling, loyal, and perpetually sweet-tempered owls.