The Wizarding World is home to many magical creatures and plants, some of which are familiar from folklore and myth. Giants, dragons, unicorns, boggarts, and goblins all have roles in the series, while many plants long believed to have magical properties, such as mandrake root, aconite, asphodel and wormwood, also make appearances. Within the stories, the conceit is that these creatures and their magical powers are real, but have been hidden for centuries from the non-magical world by the efforts of wizards, to the point where they have faded into folklore. In Hogwarts, some types of pets are allowed: cats, owls, rats, and toads. J.K. Rowling wrote a spin-off book about magical creatures to complement the main Harry Potter novels, titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Laws concerning magical creatures

In both the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the film of the same name, laws governing magical creatures are often referenced. Like any laws, these are changed over time and vary from country to country.

There are three distinct definitions for all magical creatures given in the Fantastic Beasts book, which are "Beasts", "Beings" and "Spirits" (spirits being for ghosts) which were defined in 1811 by the British Minister for Magic. "Beings" are defined as "any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws".

Laws have been created surrounding the management of magical creatures, largely for the purposes of their protection, but also to protect wizards from dangerous creatures, govern ownership of certain creatures, and also to hide them from the Muggle world. In the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them film, the political climate of the wizarding community at the time saw a blanket ban on possessing all magical creatures.