As you will no doubt be aware, in canon there are 11 permanent magical schools, with the majority of the global wizarding population being either home schooled or attending transient schools.

You can easily imagine how these transient schools might appear or disappear: someone home-schools their own child, then teaches a friend's child as a favour, then word spreads and more families send their children to this teacher. Over time they may gather around them other teachers and relocate to a school building rather than using their own home. But then the originator retires or dies, and their school lacks the institutional momentum to continue without them, going into decline and finally dissolving rather than becoming a permanent institution.

Of the 11 permanent schools, 8 are known:

• Brazil - Castelobruxo - Amazon Rainforest
• France - Beauxbatons - Pyrennes
• Great Britain - Hogwarts - Scottish Highlands
• Japan - Mahoutokoro - Minami Iwo Jima
• Russia - Koldovstoretz - Unknown location
• Uganda - Uagadou - Mountains of the Moon
• Unknown nation - Durmstrang - Northern Scandinavia
  
• USA - Ilvermorney - Mount Greylock, Massachusetts

The idea of this thread is to come up with ideas for other magical schools. In doing so, we might note that in canon, magical schools are typically located in remote areas. However, this thread is located in "Fanfic Discussion" and not "General Discussion" for a reason. The idea is to be creative and throw around ideas (including AU ideas).

In Victoria Potter I have changed the number of permanent schools from 11 to 13. I felt this was necessary to cover the major regions of the world as well as locations which I felt had sufficient mythology to deserve a magic school (on that front, I probably would not have given Brazil or Russia a magical school, but those already exist in canon).

Here are my ideas:

• Brazil - Castelobruxo - Amazon Rainforest
• China - Xifang Xuexiao ("School of the West") - Jade Mountain (Chinese/Tibetan Himalayas)
• Egypt - Wadi Al Mujawis ("Valley of the Magi") - Theban Necropolis
• France - Beauxbatons - Pyrennes
• Great Britain - Hogwarts - Scottish Highlands
• India - Suvaloka - Mount Meru (Indian Himalayas)
• Japan - Mahoutokoro - Minami Iwo Jima
• Persia - Alcaraz (Palace) - Badab-e Surt
• Peru - El Dorado - Peruvian Altiplano
• Russia - Koldovstoretz - Mount Elbrus
• Svalbard (Muggle Norway) - Durmstrang - Svalbard
• Uganda - Uagadou - Mountains of the Moon
• USA - Ilvermorney - Mount Greylock, Massachusetts

I like the idea that the Indian and Chinese schools have an intense rivalry, a result not only of their close geographical proximity, but also because they have overlapping and contradictory founding myths (Jade Mountain, the residence of the Queen Mother of the West, is supposed to be part of the mythical Kunlun Mountains, the Chinese version of Mount Meru).

 

I completely reject the idea of there being 11 schools, and even 13 is way too little. The problem I see is that where ever a sizable number of wizards congregate, a school will be formed. It's just a natural part of communities. The school might not last as long as Hogwarts, but they won't be "transient".

Pretty much every community over a 1000 or so witches and wizards should end up with a schooling system of sorts, though in large groups I expect centralisation (i.e. this is why the UK has one school and not several smaller schools. Travel is easy for wizards and centralisation makes sense where possible to pool resources and skills).

Also need a school for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

 

To be clear, my definition of transient includes schools which last, say, 150-200 years. The key part is that they revolve around a single talented teacher rather than developing a strong institutional culture which can survive that person's departure.

A similar phenomenon can be found in the Muggle world in the area of small businesses. There are many very successful businesses which may last for decades, but which depend on a single key individual. If that individual does not put in active effort to ensure the continuity of the business without them, the business dies when they stop working.

 

Romania - Castelur de Lucard - Carpathian Mountains.
Built out of the remnants of Vlad Tepes ancestral halls(by one of his brother Radu's descendants), and relocated at least once following the unintended backlash brought about by the muggle author Bram Stroker's publication of the novel Dracula, which inspired unruly muggles the region over to target their vampire neighbors, Castelur de Lucard offers education to witches and wizards of Romanian descent. It is the only known school to employ a majority of vampire educators as a form of shelter from prosecution.

Only really works given the less than perfect maintenance of the Statute of Secrecy by the Romanian(possibly still Wallachian) branch of wizarding government.

 

Wizards don't congregate though. Hogsmeade has a population of roughly fuck all despite being the largest wizarding settlement and within walking distance of a school. Ease of travel and centralization means that you do not need very many schools at all to service a global population.

As for Australia/NZ, they have a combined population closer to London's than not. They simply aren't large or important enough to have or need a dedicated school without extending that to hundreds of other locations. Does Texas merit its own school?

 

Does Texas even have muggle schools yet?

 

Ask the rest of the country that uses our textbooks

 

Again, why would this happen? Why would a community let a vital part of it collapse? Why would such an institution be propped up by a single individual?

There are many old universities in the world. They manage to keep going. Same with old secondary schools. These are important institutions that won't fall by the wayside without significant civil strife.

I wasn't being literal with the idea they make some town they all live in, I mean in the sense that wizards scattered across a nation will have congregations of shops and other vital services (such as government). These are points for other wizards to meet and form communities. Communities in the sense they interact with each other regularly, not that they live next door.

London has a population 1/4th of that of Australia and New Zealand combined. We'd be looking at at least several thousand wizards.

If American wizards have a singular sense of national identity then why would Texas have it's own disassociated identity? If they did then yes, Texas having their own school might make sense, but they apparently don't.

 

Basically all major cultural/language areas need their own school for any kind of stable society to be sustainable. So in Europe alone, that means at least one major school each for English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak, Portuguese, Finnish and Scandinavian language areas. Sure there might be some overlap, and some smaller language areas might not have enough magical population to sustain a school of similiar academic standards as, say, Hogwarts, but either you have your own school or you don't have a society.

I find it absolutely laughable to claim that there wouldn't be a major Greek school in the world, when you consider that Wands were a Roman innovation, and the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire survived and thrived well into the 15th century.

Barty Crouch is claimed to speak over 200 languages. Assuming he mostly works with wizards and not muggles, that's the lover bound of schools in the world.

 

I think you guys are thinking rather ahistorically. Schools in the modern sense are a recent invention (at least, in the Muggle world), and are absolutely not a requirement for society to function. Prior to the 1500s, education was by tutor or by a religious institution (this is why the old English schools like Eton are known as "public schools", even though you have to pay. They were the first schools which were open to the paying public).

The ancient Greek gymnasia, the Chinese Shuyuan and medieval European universities are not equivalent to schools (for a start, they educated adults, who would have had prior education from private tutors to prepare them), and the vast majority of people did not attend them.

Homeschooling, private tutoring, and informal community education being the norm in the wizarding world is merely a continuation of the historical norm, not some kind of weird outlier. It also suits the scattered nature of wizarding society quite well.

Personally I like the fact that there are so few schools. It makes those schools feel more special, each one having its own legends and myths. Case in point: this thread, which was supposed to be about people brainstorming interesting ideas for individual schools, but has resulted in the proposed existence of hundreds of generic, faceless schools.

 

We can assume there is a lesser school somewhere near Durmstrang. It has a very wide catchment and doesn't take muggleborns. They have to end up somewhere and I very much doubt they could be home-schooled. Unless they have a rich benefactor I imagine this school to be rather poor. The Burrow of schools perhaps.

 

There would surely have to be an Academy or Lyceum of some sort in Greece. There would have to be.

It would likely be much smaller in the modern age in regards to population, assuming the school would be gathering students that were Greek or Greek-speaking. Used to be a lot more of those.

I'd similarly assume something for the Chinese, unless they developed a different educational culture than permanent institutions.

 

I quite like the idea that Greece has one of the few magical universities in the world, rather than a school.

 

Tbh I do believe that a Greek organized institution would start later and be more focused and demanding.

So, a University. Fair enough, though I have this idea in my head that this Greek university would be more of a small community of organized learning where age would be less of a rigid rule, and people well into their adult years would still be studying/researching whatever it is they have an interest on. What's the english term? Majoring? And then researching in the university itself? Kinda like that.

 

From a practical standpoint, it eases your narrative burden to add to canon than to simultaneously add and subtract. With the latter, readers don't quite know where they stand and you have to be quite explicit in explaining things.

From a canon-compatibility standpoint, I feel like it's less of an AU to say "the person who made the list of 11 schools was biased, actually there are two more" (aka the "Sacred 28 escape route") than to say "these canon schools don't exist".

 

I really liked the approach in PotDK, where muggleborn children are taken away from their muggle parents and placed with wizarding foster families in order to integrate them into magical culture. I'd like to see that used as the starting point for a magical school - with the potential to affect the factional dynamic in a different way. Pureblood children could be homeschooled up to a certain age - say, eleven, to match Hogwarts - whereas mudblood brats would be hauled off to school as soon as they first showed signs of magic.

I'd probably drop this on an Indian or Asian school - it seems like a cultural fit with attitudes in the muggle worlds.

 

An old idea (polished and refined a bit), because I've always loved the idea that some wizards are completely obsessed with Atlantis. And because the Statute is sacrosanct.

The Teclis Tower - South off the coast of Florida

Created in the North West Atlantic by the International Confederation in the late 1750's, 3T houses the vast majority of the World's school-age witches and wizards. Those excluded from their local school's cachement due to blood status, or species; those too poor to afford school fees; or those who refused the polite letters inviting them to attend normal schooling. All are welcomed (some with great enthusiasm!).

3T is set up to provide the absolute minimum training for wizards and witches, so that they can learn how to avoid muggles, whilst also keeping them out of the way so they cause minimal disruption during their younger, 'wilder' years. The actual curriculum is pretty poor, with spellwork focusing mostly on concealment and escape, but has a pretty large selection of courses aimed to allow students to 'pass as muggle'. However, most students take only the minimum requirement for this course, and instead live their graduate lives separate from the muggle world.

Due to concerns back when it was founded, there is little to no focus on any form of offensive (or defensive) magic, as many of the members of the ICW expressed concern that this could turn into a private recruiting ground. Teachers are rotated quite frequently from the Ministries (or equivalent) of volunteer nations, which means there can be a wide variety in quality for any given class.

The floating castle has a relatively large range, and has been charmed with multiple overlapping anti-muggle spells. Some incoming muggle-born students have expressed fear over passing so close to Bermuda, but their elders manage to concisely excise these issues.

 

Since this started from a Reddit thread, I'll add my comment there to here.

• Vaults of Hatta, underneath Cappadocia [teaching in Greek, Arabic]
  
  
• Before Thought (a.k.a Temple of Zero), Nepal [Nepalese, ancient Tibetan]
  
  
• The Bo-lor, Sierra Leone [Krio, Mande (old Bantu)]
  
  
• Caana's Shadow, Belize - [Spanish, Ch'olti'an]
  
  
• Murphy's Un-Natural Wildlife Preserve and Toxicology Lab, Gibson Desert, West Australia [English]
  

Some other non-scholastic libraries have survived as well, including the Vatican, Stockholm's Sequestry and the Smithsonian archives.

Other schools have been destroyed over the centuries, most notably Alexandria in Egypt, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and the Dynastic libraries in China (16 different centers of learning, each destroyed as harbinger of that dynasty's loss of the Mandate of Heaven).

My thinking was to cover the major language groups- where the Brazilian school also takes promising candidates from the lower half of Africa where Portuguese colonialism has left a significant imprint.