Pottermore: Eleven Wizarding Schools

The second installment of the Goblet of Fire on Pottermore.com was released today. In the twelve new moments, there are several galleons, Wizard Cards, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, potion ingredients, (Ravenclaw) house points, and other magical items to collect, but more importantly, there are three new articles by J.K. Rowling to study.

They are: Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, Durmstrang, and The Daily Prophet. All three have been added to the “Pottermore Index” page here at FictionRow. Remember that you need to “discover” the articles within their respective moments in order to click on the links that I’ve posted on that page, which is why I also include a link to the moment, so that you can go to that moment first, find the object connected with article, click it and read it.

I don’t want to give too much away, but there are a few tidbits that I am too excited about to keep them to myself! Firstly, while we did learn from J.K. Rowling’s original article about Nicholas Flamel that there are streets in Paris named after him and his wife Perenelle, the article about Beauxbatons tells us that Nicholas and Perenelle met each other while they were both studying at Beauxbatons. This new information makes me even more irritated that the Goblet of Fire movie made Beauxbatons an all-girls school and Durmstrang an all-boys school. We also learn that, while its students are primarily French, some come from Spain (which makes sense since Beauxbatons is situated in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain) or from other neighboring nations. Beauxbatons is also much larger than Hogwarts.

In the Durmstrang article, though, we learn the most exciting factoid: there are eleven wizarding schools. Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons are featured in Goblet of Fire due to the Triwizard Tournament. Salem Witches’ Institute (presumed to be located in or near Salem, Mass.) is briefly mentioned in Goblet of Fire, before the Quidditch World Cup. Judging by its name, unlike Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, Salem is a school for witches only.

However, Goblet of Fire does also briefly mention an unnamed Brazilian wizarding school, where Bill Weasley once had a pen pal. In Wonderbook: Book of Potions, which also includes new content written by J.K. Rowling (as both Book of Spells and Book of Potions were created through an extension of Sony’s “Pottermore partnership” with Rowling), we also learn of a wizarding school in Japan named the “Mahoutokoro School of Magic” (see the Harry Potter Wikia), as well as one in Russia and another in South Africa, the names of which I was not quite able to catch while playing this game.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling also mentions a Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts (or W.A.D.A.), though this is an academy of more specific study (for witches and wizards who seek a career in theatre or other performance arts) and is not a “general” school of wizarding education. In other words, I don’t know if I would include W.A.D.A. in the aforementioned eleven wizarding schools.

If W.A.D.A. is not included, there are a total of eight that we know about (Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Salem, plus those in Japan, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa) already, leaving three more “general” wizarding schools that Rowling hasn’t revealed to us yet. I for one am very excited to learn about the rest and learn even more about the schools that we already know about! I also wish that I could subscribe to The Daily Prophet! Who’s with me?

Share your excitement for learning more about the wizarding world around us in the comments!

  • MoonRose10695 – Pottermore

    It would be really cool if she made one in Australia or neighboring countries. I would feel sorry for us Australians who would have to move continents to go to Wizarding School otherwise

  • Elliot Wilson

    I find it frankly stupid that there are only eleven wizarding schools in the world. I mean, even for a population that’s gone into hiding, that’s horrendously low.

  • Pingback: Pottermore: QWC Over, Goblet Final Chapters Coming Soon | FictionRow.com()

  • Terry

    I’m of the opinion that it’s not simply eleven wizard schools for the entire world – sure, it’s a population in hiding, but that’s just abominably unrealistic. I think that the eleven schools are the equivalent of the most well-respected colleges, e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard and so forth. There are of course others, but the eleven are the, ah, Blue Ribbon. I can’t remember the term unfortunately.

  • Andrew Hanson

    Oh my GOSH, I LOVE that theory, Terry! And I think the phrase you’re looking for is “Ivy League”. Thanks for your comment!

  • Jeff Wright

    My guess is that the eleven don’t count any outside of Europe, not even the unnamed schools in Brazil, Japan, etc. The Durmstrang article says that it once had the darkest reputation of all eleven wizarding schools but the wizards and witches in the world of Harry Potter don’t appear very concerned with what goes on outside of Europe so probably wouldn’t take much notice of schools from other places. It would also be ridiculous to think that eleven schools would be enough to accommodate all the magic children from around the world and we know there are at least some others in Europe that haven’t been named because the Tri-Wizard Tournament is described as a contest held between the three largest schools of magic in Europe, not the ‘only schools of magic’ in Europe.

  • Joe

    I reckon there’d be one on each continent, so one in Australia, one in the middle east, and one in China

  • Joe

    hear hear

  • Lenworth Free’Dom Poyser

    I agree, probably more than just the 11 schools. I always imagined there was a hidden island in the Bermuda triangle that housed a magic school for Caribbean peoples. All that magic in the west indies, Voodoo, Santeria, Obeah, they’ve gotta have school somewhere for the islanders, looks something like pirates of the Caribbean lol

  • Erik Lauritzen

    I always imagined that there will be more than those eleven schools. Perhaps, what she means, is the eleven largest schools.

  • Bec Halls Wolfers

    I think there would be an Australian school on the list. I’m pretty sure that earlier on in the series, in passing, Hermione mentions Australian wizards. And in COS Lockhart mentions defeating magical creatures in “Wagga”, an Australian town. Also, it’s a massive island country, so it makes sense Australia would have it’s own school.

  • luke-vdv

    Well if you’re Australian then you should spell it ‘neighbouring’ with a ‘u’.

    I hope it it is in a cool looking old school like Hogwarts, obviously not a castle because we have none but there are some pretty big old schools here.
http://fictionrow.com/2014/01/pottermore-eleven-wizarding-schools/comment-page-1/
fictionrow.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-34
63781
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ENROBGIL6AHBELQJRHWEN3UFYPRPUJC7
<urn:uuid:b3765fb4-2c45-4296-ba8d-2901b9fac0a1>
2017-08-24T08:48:50Z
166.62.115.254
text/html
sha1:AFESSWFFFT6NG3GNFAXF3ZTMB6WHSV3O
<urn:uuid:a9a37dff-a191-438b-8719-3ff914b49c3b>
http://fictionrow.com/2014/01/pottermore-eleven-wizarding-schools/comment-page-1/
response
<urn:uuid:17ba004a-0819-48a6-ab65-f5126816b118>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-145-153-149.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-34
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf