1.Introduction 1.1 Research Background J.K. Rowling is a British novelist. She was born in Yelt, Gloucestershire, England. She loved writing since she was a child. Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. There were six sequels, of which the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007. She is the United Kingdom's best-selling living author.The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at pound;600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK. In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. Harry Potter is a series of fantasy novels. It is a story about the life of Harry Potter, a young wizard, and his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. They are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry has a sworn enemy called Lord Voldemort. He is a dark wizard who intends to become immortal, overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic, and subjugate all wizards and muggles, a reference term that means non-magical people. At the end of the story, Harry defeats Lord Voldemort, and the world of wizards and muggles has returned to peace. 1.2Need for the Study Since its publication in the world, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series set off a wave of reading craze. So far, the research on Harry Potter has focused on the study of fiction style and literary origins, on the other hand, it has studied the narrative, translation and other aspects of the study, but the research on a series of animal prototype images is not enough. This paper attempts to start with the snake imagery that runs through the entire series of works and study the themes of its meaning. The cultural connotation of the snake is inextricably linked to the meaning expressed in Harry Potter. In the novel, the deeper meaning pursued by the author is often hidden in the surface of the text and needs to be done through metaphor. Harry Potter recounts the story of Harry's constant struggles with Voldemort in the process of growing up and hides the author's thinking on abstract issues such as the opposition between justice and evil and the alienation of human nature from the perspective of text. A snake image is a symbol of seduction that can induce a person's latent desire. A snake image runs through the novel all the time, embodying a powerful metaphorical function: a serpent image is intertwined with the secret chamber and constitutes a metaphor for hell; the image of the snake is basically presented at night, and is always accompanied by evil conspiracy and horror. Death and so on, so the snake imagery and the darkness become one, constituting a metaphor for the night of terror. The imagery in Harry Potter is by no means a simple imagery. The imagery reveals the significance of the work and the theme of the work. To study of snake imagery in the work can help us better understand the rich content of Harry Potter. 2. Literature Review 2.1Research on Harry Potter In recent years, From the advent of Harry Potter to the present, the research on it is colorful and diversified. Along with its reading boom, the related research on the novels is diversified. Up to now, those researches can be roughly divided into three categories. Some studied on the translation studies of Harry potter, such as the spells, humans and animals. For example, in On the Translation of Proper Noun Metaphors in Harry Potter Series by Shao Xue (2014), she figured out the differences of thinking pattern of the two languages and discussed the language characteristics of article writing and the translation method of the Chinese version. Some researched the novels from the perspective of feminism. A Study of Harry Potter Series from the Perspective of Eco-feminism by Mu Nian (2015) explored the relationships between nature and females, the oppression and exploitation from males, the resistances from nature and females, and the harmony among the three. Chen Lu (2011) in A Study of Female Images in Harry Potter Series explored the female images in Harry Potter Series from a fresh perspective of Celtic culture, offering a referable angle for other literature researches in terms of ethnic cultural values. Others focused on the culture origin of Harry Potter. Chen Huilin (2013) in her master thesis An Archetypal Analysis on the Magic Cultural Elements in Harry Potter Series made an archetypal analysis on the magic cultural elements in Harry Potter. Zhou Dan (2012) in The Inheritance and Development of Modern Fantasy Literature--An Analysis on Harry Potter from the Perspective of Mythological Archetype also discussed the archetype theory that makes Harry Potter be full of spiritual meaning and cultural significance. 2.2 Research on Snake Imagery in Chinese and Western Cultures 2.2.1 Research on Snake Imagery in Chinese Culture China's record of snake#8217;s imagery can be traced back to the ancient times. In the classic Shan Hai Jing (Yuan Ke, 1980), an ancient book with an encyclopedia metaphor in the pre-Qin period. There are descriptions of snakes throughout the whole book. Among them are many tribes that use snakes as totems. The book's description of Xia Qi, the first monarch in Chinese history, is that there are two snakes hanging from his ears, and all these show that the ancestors respected the snake. In the later social development, the snake's image has spread widely in the civil society. In recent years, a number of studies on the snake imagery in Chinese culture have emerged. In The Image of Snake in the Book of ”Shan Hai Jing” by Fan Huili (2013), She summarized the main imagery and of snake and revealed the enchantment of snake imagery in Chinese history. 2.2.2 Research on Snake Imagery in Western Culture In many countries of Europe and America, snakes have always been a symbol of vicious, temptation. Peng Huan (2009) in A Preliminary Study of Snake Images Implication Tension in Contemporary Western Novels discussed some classical snake imagery and revealed historical and cultural connotation and philosophical connotation of the implication tension of snake imagery. Lu Xin (2014), in her master thesis A Metaphorical Cognitive Analysis of Chinese ”Snake” and English ”Snake”, made a little microscopic investigation between metaphor in Chinese and English by comparing the cognition of metaphor in both languages. Yong Qian (2016) took snake imagery as clues to analyze the similarities and differences of metaphorical mappings in English and Chinese as well as their causes. Some scholars and postgraduates studied through combine Harry Potter and its snake imagery. Fan Yanyan#8217;s (2011) thesis On the Function of Snake Image in Harry Potter summarized in the symbolic meaning of snake imagery in world culture and novels, and the important role played by snake imagery in the synchronic structure of novels is discussed. It also discussed the important role played by the snake image in the synchronic structure of the novel, and the internal relationship between the symbolic meaning of the snake image and the subject of the novel. A more in-depth study of the function of the animal image of snake. However, study of snake imagery in Harry Potter is relatively scanty. 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