Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Characters/Silvanus Kettleburn

Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Character
Silvanus Kettleburn
Gender	Male
Hair color	Unknown
Eye color	Unknown
Related Family	Unknown
Loyalty	Professor Dumbledore

Overview

Professor Silvanus Kettleburn is the Care of Magical Creatures teacher in Harry's first and second years at Hogwarts.

Role in the Books

Prisoner of Azkaban

At the Arrival Feast, Professor Dumbledore informs the students that Professor Kettleburn had "retired at the end of last year to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs," and that Rubeus Hagrid has been appointed Care of Magical Creatures teacher in his stead. This announcement receives mixed reviews; some, including Fred and George, are quite enthusiastic about having Hagrid as a teacher, others are not pleased.

Weaknesses

Professor Kettleburn seems, from what we learn in Dumbledore's commentary in The Tales of Beedle the Bard, to have the same fondness for dangerous creatures, and perhaps the same mistaken belief in his own ability to control them, that we later see in Hagrid. Perhaps this is a requirement for the post. Because of his fondness of dangerous creatures, he lost most of his limbs and was forced to retire because of this predicament.

Analysis

Most of what we learn about Professor Kettleburn comes form a book written after the final book in the series. The Tales of Beedle The Bard, supposedly written as a collaboration between Professor Dumbledore and Hermione Granger, includes a number of anecdotes about events at Hogwarts involving Professor Kettleburn. We learn there about damage to the Great Hall caused by his Engorging an Ashwinder for use as a prop in an ill-fated play, and we also learn there of the specific limbs he has lost in his career, and how he lost them. It is quite likely that Professor Kettleburn was brought in to book 3 as a single-occurrence jape, as he is never mentioned anywhere else in the main series. Why he was put in such prominence in The Tales of Beedle the Bard is uncertain, but while his contribution to the series is negligible, the humour in his appearances in this later book is quite welcome.