Free Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

FOREWORD
    I WAS DEEPLY HONOURED when Newt Scamander asked me to write the foreword for this very special edition of
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
. Newt’s masterpiece has been an approved textbook at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ever since its publication and must take a substantial amount of credit for our students’ consistently high results in Care of Magical Creatures examinations – yet it is not a book to be confined to the classroom. No wizarding household is complete without a copy of
Fantastic Beasts
, well thumbed by the generations who have riffled its pages in search of the best way to rid the lawn of Horklumps, interpret the mournful cries of the Augurey or cure their pet Puffskein of drinking out of the toilet.
    This edition, however, has a loftier purpose than the instruction of the wizarding community. For the first time in the history of the noble publishing house of Obscurus, one of its titles is to be made available to Muggles.
    The work of Comic Relief U. K. in fighting some of the worst forms of human suffering is well known in the Muggle world, so it is to my fellow wizards that I now address myself. Know, then, that we are not alone in recognising the curative power of laughter, that Muggles are familiar with it too, and that they have harnessed this gift in a most imaginative way, using it to raise funds with which to help save and better lives – a brand of magic to which we all aspire. Comic Relief has raised over one billion dollars since 1985 (that’s also 800 million pounds or 158 million 1,035 Galleons, 8 Sickles and 2 Knuts).
    It is now the wizarding world’s privilege to help Comic Relief U. K. in their endeavour. You hold in your hands a duplicate of Harry Potter’s own copy of
Fantastic Beasts
, complete with his and his friends’ informative notes in the margins. Although Harry seemed a trifle reluctant to allow this book to be reprinted in its present form, our friends at Comic Relief U. K. feel that his small additions will add to the entertaining tone of the book. Mr Newt Scamander, long since resigned to the relentless graffitiing of his masterpiece, has agreed.
    This edition of
Fantastic Beasts
will be sold at Flourish and Blotts as well as in Muggle bookshops. Wizards wishing to make additional donations should do so through Gringotts Wizarding Bank (ask for Griphook).
    All that remains is for me to warn anyone who has read this far without purchasing this book that it carries a Thief’s Curse. I would like to take this opportunity to reassure Muggle purchasers that the amusing creatures described hereafter are fictional and cannot hurt you. To wizards, I say merely:
Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
.

INTRODUCTION
    A BOUT T HIS B OOK
    F antastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
represents the fruit of many years’ travel and research. I look back across the years to
the seven-year-old wizard who spent hours in his bedroom dismembering Horklumps and I envy him the journeys to come: from darkest jungle to brightest desert, from mountain peak to marshy bog, that
grubby Horklump-encrusted boy would track, as he grew up, the beasts described in the following pages. I have visited lairs, burrows, and nests across five continents, observed the curious habits
of magical beasts in a hundred countries, witnessed their powers, gained their trust and, on occasion, beaten them off with my travelling kettle.
    The first edition of
Fantastic Beasts
was commissioned back in 1918 by Mr. Augustus Worme of Obscurus Books, who was kind enough to ask me whether I would consider writing an
authoritative compendium of magical creatures for his publishing house. I was then but a lowly Ministry of Magic employee and leapt at the chance both to augment my pitiful salary of two Sickles a
week and to spend my holidays travelling the globe in search of new magical species. The rest is publishing history:
Fantastic Beasts
is now in its fifty-second edition.
    This introduction