Everything is interlinked and nothing is original....

 ....was my conclusion of the Intertextuality lecture.  I suppose ideas don't really come out of thin air and often the best ideas is when you've seen something else really good and modified it or added your own twist to it.
  Certainly a lot of the success of the Harry Potter books can in part be accredited to the ancient myths and legends it takes references from.

Drawing from 'Orlando Furioso’ written by Ludovico Ariosto, a poem about a Charlemagne warrior (1532)

Harry riding Buckbeak the hippogriff (2004)

I also leant from this lecture that things can be linked either consciously or unconsciously so often you don't realise you associate one thing with another.  Like perfumes you begin to associate a certain perfume with one person so the next time you smell it you always think of them.