The world of Harry Potter is full of small and large secrets. Numerous details from the movies are not easily noticeable at first glance. One involves a mysterious creature that can only be seen by very few. This leads to a funny moment in the fifth school year.
Hogwarts is full of secrets. Alongside the countless students, teachers, and other staff, magical creatures also roam the grounds of the castle and the adjacent Forbidden Forest. Among them are the centaurs and unicorns, as seen particularly in the first part.
Another creature is the Thestrals. They resemble winged horses and may appear frightening at first. Their bodies are gaunt, and their skeletons stand out sharply. They can be ridden but are not permitted as ordinary travel animals in the wizarding world, because they might be seen by Muggles – under certain conditions, more on this below.
In the Muggle-shielded Hogwarts, well-trained Thestrals serve as substitutes for horses and pull the carriages that take students from the castle to the train station in Hogsmeade.
The exciting part is that most students cannot see Thestrals and think that the carriages are simply enchanted and can move on their own. This ignorance leads to a funny situation in the fifth movie that you probably overlooked.
We have ranked all the films in the series against each other on MeinMMO.
Seeing Thestrals has a sad reason
What kind of scene is this? At the end of “The Order of the Phoenix,” the students leave the grounds of Hogwarts. Several carriages are ready, being pulled by invisible Thestrals. At 02:07:28, you can see Harry, Ron, and Hermione walking through the woods in the foreground.
In the background, a Hogwarts student gets off a carriage and walks past. Suddenly, she collides with something invisible and turns around in confusion – she has bumped into a Thestral.
It is a small detail that shows: Not all students know about the Thestrals and are aware that the carriages are being pulled by them. Suddenly colliding with an invisible being leads, of course, to confusion. You can watch the scene in a clip on YouTube – skip to minute 1:40.
Why is the creature invisible to the student? Thestrals come with a unique feature. They are only visible to those who have seen death. This means the creatures are only visible to people who have witnessed someone die and accepted and understood death as a concept.
Among the few students at Hogwarts who have sufficiently dealt with death is Harry. He can only see the magical creatures since he confronted the death of Cedric Diggory in the summer of 1995 and began to better understand death as a concept.
Other notable students who can see Thestrals include Neville Longbottom, whose grandfather passed away, and Luna Lovegood, who lost her mother. She is one of the most powerful Ravenclaw students.
The student who gets off the carriage in that scene was likely fortunate enough not to have faced death yet. Or she simply hasn’t dealt with it sufficiently.
However, it is another small detail that shows how rich the film adaptations of Harry Potter are. Keeping an eye out and examining the background closely is worthwhile. Another franchise is also full of secrets: If you pause Star Wars 5 at a certain moment, you will witness the terrible fate of one of the greatest bounty hunters in the galaxy
