The Harry Potter Compendium
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"Miss Brown, please take this box of mice - don't be silly, girl, they won't hurt you - and hand one to each student -"
Professor McGonagall instructs Lavender Brown to hand out mice for transfiguration.[src]

A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the rodent family. It was used in Transfiguration class as part of the vanishing curriculum.[1]

On 31 July 1991, when Harry Potter met Rubeus Hagrid at the Hut-on-the-Rock, Hagrid mentioned that the pockets of his jacket might have dormice in them when he offered it to Harry as a blanket. Additionally, when Hagrid bent Vernon Dursley's gun and threw it in the corner of the room, Vernon made a noise that was said to be "like a mouse being trodden on."[2]

Mice were a favourite food of owls and Hedwig regularly brought back dead mice after her initial arrival at 4 Privet Drive.[3] Their skeletons were also noted to cover the floor of the Hogwarts, along with those of the vole, a similar creature.[4]

During the 1991 Christmas feast, Harry Potter opened a Christmas cracker containing several white mice. They quickly scurried off after the cracker was opened, and Harry speculated that they would probably be found and eaten by Mrs. Norris.[5] That same year, Professor Minerva McGonagall had her first year students transfigure mice into snuffboxes for their first year exam. Points were given based on the prettiness of the snuffbox, but deducted if it had whiskers.[6]

At around one o'clock on his birthday, 31 July, 1993, Harry Potter scanned the sky for signs of Hedwig, "perhaps soaring back to him with a dead mouse dangling from her beak, expecting praise." Instead, she arrived along with two other owls and bearing a birthday present from Hermione Granger.[7] Later, the morning of the first Gryffindor Quidditch match of the season, against Hufflepuff, Harry caught Crookshanks trying to sneak into the Gryffindor Boys' Dormitory and told him to go chase some mice and leave Scabbers alone.[8]

In 1994, Molly Weasley accidentally picked up a trick wand created by Fred and George Weasley and it turned into a rubber mouse.[9]

In 1995, Harry mistakenly wrote on an essay that Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, was covered in mice. Hermione Granger corrected the mistake, suggesting that Harry had accidentally misheard Professor Sinistra, as Europa is actually covered in ice.[10]

In August 1997, as Harry visited Sirius Black's bedroom in 12 Grimmauld Place, he heard the scurrying of disturbed mice. Later, when he, Ron and Hermione visited Kreacher's den, a dead mouse fell out of it and rolled across the floor.[11]

Illyius had a mouse Patronus.

Known mice[]

  • Hogwarts school mice

See also[]

  • Rat
  • Ice Mice
  • Sugar Mice
  • Honeydukes Mice Pops

Appearances[]

Notes and references[]

  1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 15 - (The Hogwarts High Inquisitor)
  2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 4 - (The Keeper of the Keys)
  3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 6 - (The Journey from Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters)
  4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 15 - (Beauxbatons and Durmstrang)
  5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 12 - (The Mirror of Erised)
  6. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 16 - (Through the Trapdoor)
  7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 1 - (Owl Post)
  8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 9 - (Grim Defeat)
  9. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 6 - (Weasley's Wizard Wheezes)
  10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 14 - (Percy and Padfoot)
  11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 10 - (Kreacher's Tale)
  12. As students are seen in Honeydukes, breathing cold air after moving their hand up to the mouth.
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