Firenze (Harry Potter)

Firenze is also the Italian name for the city of
Florence

Harry Potter Character
Ray Fearon provided the voice of Firenze in the first Harry Potter film.
Firenze
Sex	Male
Hair Colour	White-blond
Eye Colour	Blue
Residence	Hogwarts (formerly the Forbidden Forest)
Species	Centaur
Loyalty	Unknown
Voice Actor	Ray Fearon
First Appearance	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Firenze is the name of a character in the Harry
Potter series of novels by J. K.
Rowling. Firenze is a centaur and appears in books one, five and
six.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or
ending details follow.

Firenze's first appearance comes towards the end of Harry Potter and
the Philosopher's Stone, in which he rescues Harry from the
evil Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Having carried Harry to
safety on his back, Firenze is involved in an altercation with the
other centaurs resident in the Forest, who object to the symbolic
suggestion that centaurs are subservient to humans. They argue
further about the responsibility of centaurs to read the future
in the stars and whether it is correct to intervene in the
unfolding of that future. Firenze remains with his herd but he is
clearly at odds on some issues.

The character does not make another appearance until Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix, in which he is appointed by the
Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, to teach Divination
at Hogwarts in place of Sybill Trelawney, who has been sacked by
High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge. When Harry sees
Firenze in class, it is obvious that Firenze has been attacked, and
it emerges that he was indeed cast out of the centaur herd for
agreeing to answer Dumbledore's request for help. Firenze ignored
the centaurs' taboo on assisting humans because he felt he had an
obligation to contribute to the struggle against Lord Voldemort. At
the end of the fifth book, Firenze remained a member of the
teaching staff, and in Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince he shares teaching duties with a
reinstated Professor Trelawney, a situation which she finds most
distasteful. The reason Dumbledore keeps them both on, he explains
to Harry, is that he can ask neither to leave: while Trelawney is
wanted by the Death Eaters for her prophecy, Firenze would
have no place left to go, being an exile from his herd.

His appearance in the movie is much more bestial than that
suggested in the book; in the story he is described as having
white-blond hair and deep blue eyes, and girls at the school are
apparently very intrigued by his upper-half at least. His bottom
half is that of a palomino horse.

In Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince, he is mentioned by Professor Trelawney as
"Dobbin".

Firenze bears some resemblance to Chiron, a centaur
who tutored many of the ancient
Greek heroes in astronomy and medicine. His
name was probably chosen because Florence is the last resting place
of Galileo Galilei, the first modern
astronomer.