MYTHTERY: Is Mrs. Norris Really Filch’s Wife?
Mythtery
Mrs. Norris, the cat that everyone loves to hate, is really Filch’s wife.
Evidence
Argus Filch is known for being attached to his cat, Mrs. Norris. He is also a very lonely, disgruntled man. This has led to the creation of a rumor that Mrs. Norris is not just Filch’s cat but also his wife.
Let’s go through what we know about Argus Filch and Mrs. Norris. When we are first introduced to them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Chapter 8, we learn that Mrs. Norris has eyes just like Filch and will report back to him if any student does anything wrong. We also know that Filch is a Squib, which sets him apart from most of the wizarding community. We don’t know much about either character’s background. Filch began to be the caretaker of Hogwarts sometime during the 1970s, but we don’t know anything about his life before Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling gave us a clue about Mrs. Norris on her Twitter on September 16, 2015. When she was asked whether Mrs. Norris or Crookshanks would win in a fight she was ready with a reply:
It would be brutal and very close, but Crookshanks’ Kneazle ancestry would bring him out on top. https://t.co/qLc08eGuMz
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 16, 2015
Because of this, we can rule out the possibility of Mrs. Norris being even part Kneazle.
The event that is the most telling about Filch and Mrs. Norris’s interactions is when the Basilisk Petrifies her. When Filch discovers that she has been harmed, he becomes hysterical, shouting, “My cat! My cat! What’s happened to Mrs. Norris?” (CoS, ch. 9). He immediately begins to accuse Harry of murdering her. When Dumbledore, Lockhart, Filch, Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to Lockhart’s office to examine the cat, the entire conversation was “punctuated by Filch’s dry, racking sobs. He was slumped in a chair by the desk, unable to look at Mrs. Norris, his face in his hands” (CoS, ch. 9). Filch, a generally bitter and unpleasant man, shows quite a bit of grief when he believes that Mrs. Norris has been killed. This reaction hints that Mrs. Norris is more than just a cat to him.
Potentially the most compelling piece of evidence has to do with the Marauder’s Map. There is no proof that the map shows animals. At no point do we see evidence that the map shows animals, like Neville’s toad or Hedwig. However, we do know that the map is not fooled by Animagi, Polyjuice Potion, or invisibility cloaks. We do know that Mrs. Norris shows up on the map. When Harry first receives it from Fred and George, J.K. Rowling described what Harry sees:
A labeled dot in the top left corner showed that Professor Dumbledore was pacing his study; the caretaker’s cat, Mrs. Norris, was prowling the second floor” (PoA, ch. 10).
Because Mrs. Norris shows up, we can assume that she is more than just a cat. There are two possibilities as to who Mrs. Norris really is. The first is that she, like Sirius Black and Rita Skeeter, is an unregistered Animagus. The second is that someone attempted to transfigure human Mrs. Norris into a cat and something went horribly wrong. The bad attempt at transfiguration led her to be stuck as a cat.
We cannot 100% prove that Mrs. Norris is more than just a cat. However, the evidence certainly points to her being more human than cat and we know for sure that the bond between Argus Filch and Mrs. Norris was incredibly strong. It’s certainly possible for Mrs. Norris and Argus Filch to be married, or at least deeply in love.
– Myth Managed
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