A stamp featuring the Moddey Dhoo

SOURCE: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (1999).

DESCRIPTION: "'The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen-- the worst omen -- of death!'" (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling)

NOTES: Professor Trewlaney sees the Grim in Harry Potter's tea cup, predicting that he will soon die. Unfortunately for Harry he has seen such a dog, a few weeks earlier near the Durseley's. That dog turns to be an animagus, Sirius Black, not a portent.

HISTORY: Rowling did not create the idea of the black dog that signals death. Known as the Moddey Dhoo as well as other names, the creature will appear or howl to signal the coming death of a person. It is a similar legend Arthur Conan Doyle used as the background of his Hound of the Baskervilles.

---