Thinking about the Statute of Secrecy from Harry Potter. Ignoring the mildly dubious ethics and practicality of making the entire world forget about magic, how did they decide what needed to be forgotten? Like Care of Magical Creatures is about Magical Creatures, but how does one define a magical creature from a regular one?
Take, for example, the hippogriff. In a world where hippogriffs roam freely alongside other animals, why would people specifically decide "yes, that one only we get to know about," although it's habits don't differ from other creatures. Yes, you need to bow to it to earn it's respect, but have you tried stroking a cat before earning it's trust? And it's half lion-half bird, but people aren't agreeing platypi are magical because they are part duck-part bever-part who-even-knows?.
Or dragons. Yes, giant, winged, fire-breathing lizards, but the giant lizard part at least we had in the form of dinosaurs, and we know the ancestors of dinos are birds, so really, if you grew up in a world where dragons were just a thing that happened, then yes okay dragons, but also there's a lizard that has a giant frill and runs on two legs for speed.
And don't even get me started on flobber-mostboringcreatureever-worms when muggles get echidna: egg-laying anteaters with hedgehog spikes.
So now I'm imagining the magical peoples of the world gathering with a massive bowl of every animal and plant ever, picking out pieces of paper hunger games style:
("Everyone, we now have the... err... Horklump!"
*muted cheering*
"psst, what's a horklump?"
"Err, a mushroom I think"
"so why is it magical?"
"Maybe it's just an animal pretending to be a mushroom")
Either that, or the magical community in Australia just really fucked up.
