Professor Trelawney: "Everything went pitch-black and the next thing I knew I was being hurled headfirst out of the room!" Harry Potter: "And you didnโt see that coming?" Professor Trelawney: "No, as I say it was pitch โ โ [Glares at Harry angrily]
J. K. RowlingChildren being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole.
J. K. Rowling