I actually like most of the new information. I really think that Dreammessage in the African school is fucking awesome and before some of you complain, a teacher is most certainly send to muggleborn students to explain it to them.

It would actually be more believable for the student than the Hogwarts method of sending a letter (which I would probably throw away and think it was a elaborate prank) to accept magic.

Still their are things that are annoying but I think people should wait until we have more details before throwing it away as complete bullshit and flaming JK.

It's cool that wandless magic is officially comfirmed as canon but not in this way. It would be okay if they could do very minor things with it but the thing with the jaw mentioned in a comedic way seemed way to powerful. Only masters of magic like Voldemort and Dumbledore should be able to do a bit more advanced spells without a wand and they still should be 10 times more powerful with a wand.

Still there seems to be a catch to it because the Africans also use wands now so they are probably not as strong or can't do complicated magic like transfiguration or colored bolt spells like the Stunning spell (it just would look to bizarre)

Other problems are the dark magic sensing robes, it seems pretty lame but it would not be as effective as some of you suggest you can probably just take the robes off and still cast dark magic to your hearts content.

It would just be a minor inconvenience to people like Tom Riddle but just seems to paint the picture that Japanese wizards are way more hard ass about dark magic with that honor code mentioned which is kinda lame.

Also not a fan that they can start learning magic with 7 maybe, hopefully they can only practice theory and start going practical with 11 there must be a reason why everybody else starts on 11. In general the school doesn't sound so much fun and like a elitist machinery. But the way the robes change based on your grades seems really awesome and it's a cool way of showing how prestige greedy the Japanese are.

Don't have too much of a problem with the animagus bit I always thought people overestimated the mauraders because they could turn into animagus with 15 the trio could probably also master it that early if they put as much time into it. Always seemed just very time consuming than incredibly complex.

All in all I think we should just wait for more details because this just seems to be bare bones. I can see why some people hate it because honestly it makes Hogwarts sound boring almost mudane in comparison and feels like Rowling is bashing Europe. But I have enough trust in her that I don't believe the other schools are as super as they seem to be after all the two most powerful modern wizards were from England

 

Well I just recently went back to Pottermore, Going from Hufflepuff and 14 inches of Hawthorn and Unicorn hair, to Slytherin and 13 3/4 inches of Yew and Phoenix feather. Well that's certainly a bit of a difference.

Anyway about the new schools, I am worried about both the Japanese one and the African one. As others have pointed it just seems like bad fanfiction, and actually I think I have seen that Dream Messenger idea before on Tumblr, that was also in regards to an african magical school, so perhaps it is based on bad fanfiction.
I dislike the idea of wandless magic being taught, I just think it reeks of: LOOK AT DEEZ AWSUM AFRICAN WIZARDS SO BETTER DAN EUROPEANS. And what was mentioned about animagi in that pottermore entry, also gave me a bad taste in my mouth. Regarding the Japanese one, I severely dislike the idea of robes that detect if a student has broken that Japanese wizard's code, and change color to white in that case. Now I don't mind the idea of robes changing color based on academic perfomance, but changing color if a crime is committed just seems weird and badly thought out. I think the rest regarding the japanese school is fine, the way I see it, it just builds on the foundation laid by the Cherry wand wood description, in regards to how that wand wood is in high demand by Japanese students because it gives prestige.

 

I didn't see much of a problem with the wandless magic bit. The entry does mention that they use hand movements and gestures to cast spells, and also proceeds to mention that they are adopting wands, so there must be a reason for this. I imagine wand casting is faster, more efficient, and more reliable than waving your hands, which means Dumbledore with a wand would probably wtfpwn Babajide Akinbagde. There is a reason why three of canon's premier wizards in Grindelwald, Dumbledore and Voldemort all hail from wand-using areas. Still it's cool, especially for situations where you are rendered wandless - imagine kidnapping an African wizard and taking his wand away only for him to easily escape anyway.

I also honestly see no problems with Dream Messengers - Africans set a lot of store by dreams and their meanings, far, far more than other cultures seem to, and I can easily see a child accepting he has magic based on a message in a dream. The Animagi bit isn't terribly surprising either, considering that a large part of African folklore regarding witchcraft is the ability to transform into animals. Uagadou does sound suspiciously like the first part of Ouagadougou, which is the capital of West African nation Burkina Faso, which leads me to think the school is likely in that country or somewhere nearby.

 

Its...interesting, but wasn't there suppose to be eleven schools all over the world? Did JK Rowling retcon them? And what happened to the Salem Academy for Witches?

 

From what I understand these are only the Great schools (the old and prestigious ones), in the description of the african one, it was mentioned that there are more schools in Africa than that one. So I don't think it's unreasonable to extrapolate on basis of that, and say that there are more schools around the world than those seven, perhaps there's only eleven, though it's more likely that there are more magical schools than eleven. But we know there are these 7 schools plus 4 more prestigious schools around the world, and that there are atleast a few more in Africa.

 

I just had a small thought about the Japanese school's robes. Let's say that Harry goes there, does the robe immediately turn white because he has an evil horcrux in his brain?

 

The problem with those robes is that "evil" is such a subjective concept. The declaration that Dark Magic means Illegal Magic simply makes it sound like there's a bunch of illegal spells, and if you use some of them, your robes turn white. Which is stupid, because of the old "Levitation could be used for evil blah blah blah" argument. If Harry was sent to this school he would have been expelled and ostracized, not because of the piece of soul attached to him, but because he used a bunch of Dark spells, and had killed people.

Anyway, I'm peeved that I lost my yew and phoenix feather wand for a sycamore and unicorn tail-hair. That test doesn't seem to be very consistent.

 

There was actually a good explanation that I found in a fanfiction story once. It said that the original merlin was born before hogwarts but the one on Slytherin was actually named after him. Many of the things that one Merlin did was atually attributed to another.

My own personal explanation is that Merlin got bored, took an aging potion, turned into his Colin Morgan self and attended Hogwarts when he was 300+ years old.

 

Salem is not a school, its an organization for witches.

Something like this, but for witches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Institutes

 

Another nitpick from me is the fact that Castelbruxo takes people from, apparently, all of South America. There's like two countries that speak Portuguese in all of America! If it was a magical school solely for Brazil, I wouldn't see an issue since Brazil is such a big country. But if this implies it takes from say, Chile, it is a nitpick from me.

Now, of course Spanish and Portuguese share some similarities but unless the Brazilian school of magic has a dedicated Spanish-talking staff it sounds lame. I mean 11 year old bilingual kids are hard to come by.

Same nitpick for Beauxbatons.

 

Either they learn the language or they don't attend. I'm not seeing the issue here.

The same issue is with Durmstrang too.

 

Regarding the sorting on Pottermore. You folks do know that the site doesn't actually give a shit what your answers were, right? They do it to fill out a quota for every House, to be approximately equal in numbers.

I answered all those questions in the same way on two separate occasions, with about two months of time having passed in between, and I was sorted to Slytherin and Hufflepuff.

Also, this new info is not particularly useful and comes way too late.

 

And here I was all smirking how I'm cunning enough to get to Slytherin.

 

Anyone else who's American a tad bit PO'd that Rowling revealed information about the other schools but not the one that's clearly in the U.S.? I've been hoping she would reveal info about the U.S. for years and now I probably have to wait until the premiere of Fantastic Beasts.

 

I'm not. I developed an entire Head-Canon about America, like how sheer distance forced the creation of a series of schools spread across the country that are individually smaller. Rowling giving us actual Canon on the matter would ruin it.

 

You're smirking, that in itself proves you're a Slytherin.

 

Actually I did too, believe it or not. The most obvious difference being that the U.S. since we have so many people, would need more than one school to accommodate all of its youth. I envisioned three types of schools and I even have an entire list of names of people serving in the magical Congress

 

Well, that was the joke, you know…

 

Here is the latest from JK Rowling on magical North America.

Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century
By J.K. Rowling
Though European explorers called it ‘the New World’ when they first reached the continent, wizards had known about America long before Muggles (Note: while every nationality has its own term for ‘Muggle,’ the American community uses the slang term No-Maj, short for ‘No Magic’). Various modes of magical travel – brooms and Apparition among them – not to mention visions and premonitions, meant that even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact with each other from the Middle Ages onwards.

The Native American magical community and those of Europe and Africa had known about each other long before the immigration of European No-Majs in the seventeenth century. They were already aware of the many similarities between their communities. Certain families were clearly ‘magical’, and magic also appeared unexpectedly in families where hitherto there had been no known witch or wizard. The overall ratio of wizards to non-wizards seemed consistent across populations, as did the attitudes of No-Majs, wherever they were born. In the Native American community, some witches and wizards were accepted and even lauded within their tribes, gaining reputations for healing as medicine men, or outstanding hunters. However, others were stigmatised for their beliefs, often on the basis that they were possessed by malevolent spirits.

The legend of the Native American ‘skin walker’ – an evil witch or wizard that can transform into an animal at will – has its basis in fact. A legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.

The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand.

The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.