How were magical animals created? How was the first Phoenix born? Who thought erumpets were a good idea? What kind of environment were nundus raised in to let them spit Bubonic plague? Were they just mutated from normal animals by the magic of the world or was there a more... active hand in their creation.

What if the magical beasts of the world were created by wizards whether on purpose or by accident? Transfiguration is known to be able to create sentient creatures. Quintapeds are an example given that they were said to be a transfigured wizarding family and wizards considered it credible enough to attempt to untransfigure them. Basilisks are another example, while it's not clear if transfiguration is part of the process to create them the fact is Herpo the Foul was said to be the first wizard to hatch one this could be taken as meaning wizards have to be involved in the process of making them.

Thoughts? Objections?

 

I was thinking more along the lines of the Ford Anglia actually. It was created by wizards with a variety of powers and eventually gained sentience along the way. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of magical animals started out like that.

Or if a wizard got bored one day and thought 'Hmm what happens if I do this' and that's where you get your chimaeras and manticores from. The original Pegasus could have actually been made by a wizard for Bellerophon. Sphinxes could have their roots in a woman who was cursed to be a half-lion riddle giver.

The main problem I'm having is dementors. Were they actually created by a single person or were they made by the collective negative emotions of society coalescing into a form universally feared across the world? Or they might just be a British thing.

 

This is an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:

This doesn't prove much by itself. However, according to J.K. Rowling:

So there you have it. It fits nicely with your assertion that Dementors coalesce in locations where there is an abundance of negative emotions—specifically despair. Extrapolating that line of reasoning, it'd make perfect sense for Dementors to exist in localities beside Britain. They certainly don't have a monopoly on the conditions needed for Dementors to come into existence.

 

If you explain magical creatures with reference to wizards, that just kicks the ball down the line to where wizards came from.

The answer is presumably the same as in real life: either it happened on its own, or God did it.

 

Rather than magical evolution i think it more likely a normal animal became magical somehow.

 

Like with the magical gene? I know they're considered a bit of a joke, but besides having the world's natural magic or God himself make magical creatures I don't think there are many other explanations. Wizards and magical creatures could share the same genes that make them magically inclined and they could come from the same source that way.

At the very least I think it would be hilarious to explain to Malfoy that he's magically related to a flobberworm.

 

Nundus call regular leopards filthy mudbloods.

 

I've sometimes wondered if there are squib versions of magical animals. Maybe every so often, a dragon hatches from its egg a stunted mundane lizard. Or, indeed, a Nundus is born as a normal leopard.

 

Well if the creature in question gained their magic the same way wizards did then yeah squib animals are completely possible. If they were made with transfiguration though I don't think it could happen.

 

In my opinion, Dementors are just a species, like Goblins and Elves and Erklings and so on, not monsters. My way of looking at the sapient species (the non-sapient ones like Nundus and Erumpents being a completely different story), inspired by the fanfics of White Squirrel on fanfiction.net, is that early, stone-age wizard tribes who didn't know spells and instead had to rely on wandless, strongly emotion-based magic, ended up mutating themselves, more or less willingly, into a form that suited them better.

The protowizards who focused on stone-carving slowly became Goblins and started to live more permanently in the caves where they dwelled at night, others became stealthy, teleporting Elves to escape large predators, etc. In this scheme, I would see Dementors as the descendants of born Legilimenses who focused on soul- and mind-magic.