The Terrible World-building Of Harry Potter Maps

[@possiblehistory]

Why did I make a video about Harry Potter maps on my history channel? I don't know, but I hope you all still enjoyed it anyway as a fun extra release, don't worry, the regular alternate history video will still release on Saturday. As always, thank you for watching, and to support the content consider leaving a like and a comment to help against the algorithm, and subscribe for weekly history content!

[@Dhaiky]

I liked it, normally I don't enjoy these type of videos but this was good.

[@regneva1957]

Do more of fictional worlds, please!

[@ETB3341]

It'd be interesting to see your thoughts on star wars worldbuilding if you're going to do more of this type of content

[@Dhaiky]

@@ETB3341 Star Wars seems rather unrelated, as it doesn't even have an earth, so bit hard to do alt history for that.

[@firelordmarklin6166]

Hey, it's always fun to explore fictional settings. History is "The story of us" after all, so a historian exploring such a fictional setting seems like a logical extension

[@Marshmellow3971]

She honestly could have said most countries have their own school, named like 5 and left the rest up to the audience’s imagination and most people would have been cool with it.

[@abiean222]

or even just said that these few schools are the elite schools that only the best of the best get into. hell, she could even say that england has other schools for students who aren't as good at magic and it would sense.

[@liam6nugget]

Yeah, I always found the idea of trans-national, government-controlled schools weird

[@auliamate]

Literally. Could have said “most nations have their own, some are just Hogwarts and Ilvermorny in the US. Kthxbye” Like the fanfic opportunities we could have had (not like I actually care much for Harry Potter’s universe) but JK ruined everything

[@bluegold1026]

My thoughts exactly. There have to be WAY more than 11 wizarding schools worldwide.

[@kid14346]

@@abiean222 This is said as if Midichlorians didn't happen... Seriously ever since the beginning Star Wars has been tripping over its own canon, throwing shit in for no reason, or throwing shit out for no reason. My favorite thing to say is, "Remember everyone the second piece of Star Wars media made was the Holiday Special."

[@hicetnunc1129]

There's a lot of sketchy worldbuilding going on in Rowling's work, but the "1 in 10 is a wizard" number has got to be the most ridiculous, if that's really from her. There's just no way the wizards would have to keep their world secret if every 10th person going around had magic powers.

[@Jdudec367]

nah 1 in 10 is pretty low tbh

[@ΓιώργοςΠαρασκευόπουλος-ω4τ]

​@@Jdudec367that means that 800.000.000 people have magical abilities and that is ignoring things like squib population. It's WAY too big to make it hidden.

[@Jdudec367]

@@ΓιώργοςΠαρασκευόπουλος-ω4τ Not really, it still can be hidden.

[@ΓιώργοςΠαρασκευόπουλος-ω4τ]

@@Jdudec367 It CAN be hidden but they shouldn't, they are literally 1/10th of the population, moreover it isn't like we are in the dark ages .

[@icantthinkofaname8139]

@@Jdudec367how is 1 in 10 small by any stretch of the imagination!? Walking down the city street and you pass ten people, one of those is a wizard!

[@NosebleeddeGroselha]

Having 11 schools for the entire world and mixing up a bunch of people who shouldn’t be mixed up is the most “A British person organized it” thing in the world

[@alexvang5639]

I hate that I laughed at this

[@simonrespeto]

They got so good at drawing lines tho

[@GingeryGinger]

In fairness it wasn’t made for or by any one else so it’s valid to just half-ass that part

[@unvergebeneid]

​@@GingeryGinger_not_ doing something is an underappreciated option. There was no need to name every school or even say how many there were in the first place.

[@TY-Tianyou]

​@@GingeryGinger it was made for people living where most of those nonsensical schools are

[@SickegalAlien]

What's most amazing to me, is that Rowling absolutely didn't have to do it. She looked at it, thought for a while, and specifically decided "yeah, I'm going to step on the rake."

[@AedanTheGrey]

Seems to be a recurring habit of hers. Especially lately.

[@christophercaldwell192]

If I was in her position I would love to flesh out the wider wizarding world, but she takes the laziest approach to it instead of using it as an opportunity to be creative and think about how different cultures would relate to magic

[@ellenkarlsson9490]

She just hates leaving things up to imagination, doesn't she?

[@jaymevosburgh3660]

This is hilarious 😂

[@jeanv8249]

Even an average geography nerd would come up with better map and possibly names too than she initially did

[@leaderunith4l324]

I’ve seen someone online argue just how much of a missed opportunity this was for worldbuilding. It seems to be a universal thing in the HP universe that wizard schools lag severely behind the muggle world. Imagine a school in Austria that only enrols wizards living in the 1541 borders of the HRE; or imagine wizarding schools acting as refuge for otherwise extinct peoples, a school in Greece that openly worships the Olympians, or one in Egypt that still venerates Amun-Ra. Instead of just 11 around the world, there could’ve been hundreds in just Europe or Africa alone, each of them a microcosm of millennia old traditions in their area. You could even have schools in places like Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley that are so old that no one really knows _when_ they were formed.

[@comradewindowsill4253]

imagine the purebloods of the middle east being zoroastrian, sumerian, ancient egyptian etc. and then imagine how much they must dislike the local muggleborns...

[@miracledev2656]

Someone needs to try and do this because Joanne is clearly not capable of writing something this interesting

[@graynight3478]

Agree!

[@adenkhan5071]

In addition to European-style schools like Hogwarts, Durmstang and such, there NEEDS to be a number of shamanism schools that have been hiding from both Muggles and Order of Merlin Wizards. They probably wouldn't be tied to a building, but would try to preserve their ancient and unique magic styles. In the USA there should be at least one of Native American Shamans and one of Voodoo Witchdoctors. There should also be two in Europe representing ancient Germanic and Celtic cultures respectively.

[@baph0met]

This is why I hate the Harry Potter, look at Middle Earth, look at Star Wars, phenomenal world building with 1000s of years of history. Harry Potter is just such a waste. Sad.

[@biropgrules]

Frankly, the way the actual books implied every nation just had their own schools(With the three we knew by name being specifically referred to as the greatest in europe) made perfect sense.

[@Kromiball]

Every nation having their own schools would cause problems because some of them are way too small to keep a secret, can't build a secret wizarding school in say... Monaco or Liechtenstein. I also reckon that any countries that are (relatively) flat like Hungary or Poland wouldn't be able to make a wizarding school either. Added in after 11 Feb 2023: I wanna clarify that these 11 schools are not all of them, they are the oldest and most prestigious schools to go to. There are small schools but they're often short-lived. A change I would make is that most countries could probably have their own schools, let's say Spain; but richer wizards would look down upon it as a cheap wizarding school and would prefer to send their kids to one of the Prestigious 11. I also wanna say that just building a school and then using an invisibility spell is a Deus Ex Machina, that's not fun. If magic were real I'd imagine you'd need a lot of energy to maintain that invisibility spell but apparently the Magic System in Harry Potter can just do anything. So yes, you can just cast an invisibility spell; it's just lazy and not fun compared to selecting a good hidden place. I'd give underground schools a pass tho, sounds cool.

[@MrDalek2150]

@@Kromiball I'd assume the smaller nations like Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Luxembourg would be grouped into their neighbors (Liechtenstein probably being split between Austria and Switzerland magical side).

[@poutsovgalthsxarilaos5663]

@@Kromiball austria and hungary could and in fact should have a joint school just for old times sake

[@user-zz3sn8ky7z]

@@Kromiball I mean, they have literal magic so while i agree that places like Luxembourg shouldn't really have their own school it's not impossible. We already saw it on a small scale with 9 3/4

[@kamo808]

I think it would be grouped up by languages. Besides sub-saharan Africa as they would probably use some kind of tribal magic.

[@Frenchaboo]

I live in Eastern Europe and I was already questioning Rowling when I was maybe 12, feeling gaslit by the fact she kept describing BULGARIA as a cold decrepit country where people need to wear fur coats and hats, and for some damn reason the school has a super Germanic name. Bulgaria is literally the golden coast of Eastern Europe, peak summer destination for good weather and beach parties lmfao.

[@l.n.3372]

I never want to defend JKR cuz she sucks. But Krum wasn't calling Bulgaria cold and dismal. He was calling Durmstrang cold and dismal, saying he vastly prefers Hogwarts. Of course, that's just JKR being her typical Anglosphere bias above all else.

[@apoorvam5385]

When I first read the books I always assumed that Durmstrang was never meant to be in Bulgaria. It’s described as being in the north so I always thought it was in Scandinavia instead

[@l.n.3372]

@@apoorvam5385 I don't give much credit to interviews because I prefer to only view what's in the books as canon alone. But I'm fairly certain JKR once said that Durmstrang is in Scandinavia, which confused many fans who believed Durmstrang was in Germany.

[@localabsurdist6661]

@@apoorvam5385I thought it was supposed to be in Russia but the German sounding name didn’t make any sense

[@Feuerhamster]

All slavic countries have perpetual winter and gray color filter over them, obviously. Can confirm, am slavic.

[@dogski2822]

This is a part of a greater problem with Rowling’s world-building philosophy. Instead of saying “of course there’s many, but here’s a few examples” she goes “yeah, but only a handful exist and I came up with them in 15 minutes”. She didn’t say “of course there’s many Jewish students at Hogwarts - Anthony Goldstein for example- Hogwarts welcomes all” she just said “yes, there’s a Jewish student, his name is Anthony Goldstein, no I will not list more”. Same thing with these schools.

[@peregrinecovington4138]

She really just isn't very smart at all.

[@tjenadonn6158]

She absolutely refuses to leave a single thing up to the reader's imagination, which isn't the biggest fault if you're writing technical manuals. Unfortunately she sold herself as a fantasy author.

[@Memu_]

I still can't get over the fact that the only "canonical" jewish character is named Anthony Goldstein. The most stereotypical jewish name possible.

[@DoubLL]

Tbh I really don't get why wizards would have a lot of traditionally religious people among them at all, seeing as most of the miracles used as proof of God by non magical people are trivial feats for wizards. "Oh, Jesus cured the blind? We've been doing that for thousands of years. Are you sure Jesus wasn't just a wizard trying to manipulate Muggels?"

[@DoubLL]

I mean to be clear, they could still have their own religious beliefs, but the big religions we know? Pretty much out of the question.

[@jorikrouwenhorst7220]

Honestly seeing both maps makes me think most wizards and witches are probably home schooled.(seriously putting Dutch students going to the French one is just insulting)

[@fusssel7178]

considering the history of (for example) germany and italy, I don't thinkt either country would have its own school, maybe multiple smaller ones. There is also japan, while they were fighting during the sengoku jidai, they were still considered one country. That is different from italy and germany, they became one country each in the 1800s.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@fusssel7178 And those are also countries where homeschooling isn't a thing. So unless wizards get a special exception, their children would have to go to a licensed/registered school like anybody else. Just that it is a wizard school.

[@benismann]

albanians, hungarians, swedes, poles, serbs and romanians are in one school

[@fusssel7178]

@@HappyBeezerStudios well, that only was a thing later, about the 1700s or so I think. So either the wizzard communities kept their children secret and out of muggle schools or sent them to the muggel schools while also teaching them magic at home after school.

[@dblum]

Imagine having to to your Fr*nce to go to school

[@lnt305]

Putting China, Korea and Japan into one school for historical reasons is absolute madness to me

[@AnnaEReady]

Ikr? These countries do not get along /because/ of their history it makes no sense

[@cunxu2697]

Ever heard of the sinosphere?

[@shreyvaghela3963]

Sinosphere is not real. it only tells about cultural influence. japan and korea are american allies

[@Phantom-bh5ru]

@@AnnaEReady mostly it would be every Asian country hating Japan and a bit of each other as well. Basically if you are Japanese in that school, good luck

[@vikkran401]

And I thought putting Irish students in the same school as English and Scots was ridicules enough considering their cultural differences. Imagine entire East Asia in one school or having Isreali, Arab and Persians attending the same school. I'm surprised Rowling even passed first grade considering her knowledge

[@frankenstein6677]

Rowling's attempts to expand Harry Potter to a worldwide scenario make me really question her geographic and cultural knowledge outside of Britain.

[@cienkitv2854]

Don't look up what she called a Polish character in one of her books.

[@ottovonbismarck7578]

​@@cienkitv2854 worst mistake of of my life

[@charcoaleater343]

​​@@cienkitv2854what did she call them? I don't really know what should i google specifically

[@charcoaleater343]

​@@cienkitv2854 nevermind 💀

[@gambigambigambi]

​@@cienkitv2854 .....Pieroginski?

[@baguettegott3409]

Rowlings Worldbuilding is so funny. It's so incredibly successful at creating a mood and an atmosphere (for some time there just about every human I knew felt at home in hogwarts), and so unfathomably horrible at LITERALLY everything else. Nothing makes sense, nothing is consistent, and most of the time it falls immediately apart when you try to extend it past the walls of Hogwarts (let alone the borders of the UK).

[@_Just_Another_Guy]

Even within the borders of the UK, her fictional lore building falls apart terribly: 1. If the Minister of Magic had contacts with UK's actual Prime Minister's office, where was the secret department of the British government that specialized in working with the Ministry of Magic? The PM can't handle all the required diplomatic notetaking and meetings by himself/herself 2. You would think that the Royal Family of Britain would be quite involved since they will become one of the prime Muggle targets for wizard terrorists and must be protected (by wizard bodyguards) at all cost lest the magical world be exposed if the rest of the UK finds out their Queen (or King nowadays) was murdered by an evil wizard 3. The annual thousands of groups of students all arriving at the real King's Cross station each year carrying large owl cages and long robes would've aroused suspicion a long time ago; not to mention King's Cross has since been renovated and remodelled so what happened to the magical wall there?

[@PineappleLiar]

It’s like a Potemkin Village of worldbuilding.

[@panda4247]

While I agree that JKR's consistency is questionable at best, The real question is, why does it matter? It's a fairt tale for children. You know the Red Riding Hood's grandma was eaten by the wolf, and then they cut his gut open and rescued her... why does nobody complain, that the wold must have chewed her to pieces, not swallow her in one piece... it does not make sense... It's better when people point out flaws in HP than if somebody actually started the conspiracy theory, that the schools are actually real

[@PineappleLiar]

@@panda4247 I suppose that goes into the question of how suspension of disbelief is a fundamental part of stories in general. Media criticism always stands the risk of falling to a hyper-critical cinema sins style analysis, where the audience is primed to nitpick literally everything that happens and refuse to engage with the story beyond that. In turn you have to ask the very subjective question of how critically should a given piece of media be analyzed? In my own opinion the answer is less about the given audience, and more about where the author fills in the details. Some stories refuse to elaborate on points other stories would commit time to, like a David Lynch movie or, like you said, children’s stories. The point gets glossed over because that’s not the important part of whatever the story wants to tell. You can dig into it, but odds are what you find will be nonsensical. On the other end you have narratives that love planting details to be paid off later on down the line, and encourage readers to speculate on the elements they are given. These are your murder mysteries, or dense fantasy stories with rich histories and interconnected lore. I think what bugs some people about Harry Potter is that its trying to be both vague and detailed at once. It will answer a question about history or the mechanics of magic, but usually the answer isn’t enough to be satisfying. My personal grievance is usually how the first Wizarding War was handled, where Rowling just copied and pasted the broadest strokes of WW2 directly on top of actual WW2, with zero consideration for the implications of that (tldr she had her Nazi parallels accidentally be the only ones who actually fought the Nazis, whoops!). So, in short, Harry Potter couldn’t pick a lane between hard worldbuilding and soft worldbuilding, and so achieved neither.

[@panda4247]

@@PineappleLiar Thanks for the answer. It makes sense... you're right that JKR tries to give details to fans without considering their broader implications... (have you read Harry Potter and Method of Rationality? Without going into details about the plot, one of my favourite things that they pointed out was, that with the weird exchange rate between the galleons and sickles (and them being solid gold and silver) a person with access to both the wizarding world and muggle world could make infinite money (or make one of the markets collapse)) Anyway, aside from trying to be both/neither of the two two world-building alternatives that you described, there is one more thing I'd consider: Especially with the fantasy genre, suspension of disbelief often works such that we can accept a completely strange thing (something that is completely out of this world), but we can't excuse a minor detail that is similar to our world, but a bit off. Like... we have no problem accepting a magic castle, but what the hell is the muggles' house on a small rock in the middle of they sea, and even if it existed, how did uncle Vernon get access to it (what are the chances he knew somebody who owned that?)

[@iansahleen1173]

Imagine giving Indian and Chinese kids magical powers, making them go to the same school and not expecting nothing to go horrificly wrong

[@baph0met]

Imagine the Tibetan kid

[@nickyliu8762]

Put some Jews in there and this would be the most academically successful school on the planet, if it wasn't already

[@danielsurvivor1372]

Kid Named Indian/Chinese: 😈

[@PhoenixT70]

Imagine the absolute mess that the Middle Eastern school would be. Israeli Jews, both major sects of Islam, and the odd Christian for flavor, no way that isn’t a powder keg. There could even be a lore tie-in to real life that something to do with the school was what started the Six Day War or something.

[@nickyliu8762]

@@PhoenixT70 all three religions denounce magic, especially Islam and Christendom strongly condemns witchcraft as Ifrit/Satan's work. So anyone who enrolls in those schools cannot be very strong believers anyway. This is why they hide from society in the first place. So, if there were any bad blood (whatever the term for that in the lore), it wouldn't be from religion, or at least our religions.

[@tuliofaustino783]

just to leave a note that in the portuguese sense, the translation "castelobruxo" means that the castle is the wizard

[@BahamutEx]

wizard transformer

[@repenexus518]

wizard turned themself into a castle

[@MikaelaKMajorHistory]

The wizard’s face is probably plastered somewhere on the castle. Imagine Mother Willow from the Disney Pocahontas but it’s a giant old man on the side of a building.

[@lucjanl1262]

​@@repenexus518funniest crap i ever seen

[@pardonmyreach]

Probobly would have some sick legends to explain the the name lmao

[@adrianguevara2319]

I just hate that in the cauldron of fire we're exposed to much more about the wizarding schools with the tri-wizard tournament and mentions of a brazilian school, because everything pointed to roughly every country having a school and then she comes up with this random idea of only 11 schools in the whole world

[@WasatchWind]

As an author, all I can say is dropping random numbers like that, rather than leaving some things unsaid, is a terrible idea.

[@NotAnEvilMastermind]

@@WasatchWind As someone who does a bit of worldbuilding in my free time, absolutely. One time i was doodling around, and wrote down that there are 3 factions somewhere. The next day i added a bit, changing it to "3 factions we will be focusing on for this story" or something along those lines, then immediately sketching out ideas for at least 4 or 5 other factions i had though of that day at work. Specific numbers in fiction are a tricky beast, because unless you're extremely careful, someone is gonna show up, do math, and say "this doesn't make sense."

[@WasatchWind]

@@NotAnEvilMastermind And in general I'd say, avoid piling on a ton of stuff in worldbuilding. A couple things explored at a great depth is far more interesting than a dozen things explored at surface level.

[@kjn3350]

@@WasatchWind Just as a human being I find it terrible writing. There just doesn't need to be mention of other schools - if there is, then mention those necessary. There's no need to make up numbers that simply don't make any sense just for the sake of information - if you're gonna do that, then plot it out properly. 11 schools for all the wizards in the world? Assuming many thousands of wizards in Britain (65,000 for simplicity, though it could well be much smaller), you'd have around 0.1% of the globe being wizards - that's 8 million people. Even if it's 6,500 wizards in Britain, that's 800,000 people. It just doesn't work and shows shoddy worldbuilding.

[@WasatchWind]

@@kjn3350? I don't think there's any problem with mentioning things about your wider world. As a writer, you are constructing an iceberg so to speak, trying to give the illusion that there is a much larger world beyond that which we see in the story. It is why people get into these worlds in the first place. And even then in the fourth book, showing us other wizarding schools is an important part of the story, adding depth and interesting flavor to the story. As for laying out really detailed stuff like how many schools there are, that you do not need to mention in book - and she should have taken the time to figure out, or simply said "there are a number of schools throughout the world." Brandon Sanderson, I'd say, is the perfect example of how to slowly leak out your worldbuilding. Everyone is chomping at the bit to find out more about his literary universe, the Cosmere, but he does his worldbuilding very carefully, and consults with experts in different fields to give him more accurate details.

[@killerkitten7534]

It’s crazy that she could have just said “yeah these are the most famous schools for certain regions, but there’s much more out there” but she just doubled down and went “NO THESE ARE THE ONLY ONES!” Like imagine if Harvard was the only school in the entirety of North America and Cambridge was the only one for the greater UK area

[@VinnieMF]

These are precisely only the most prestigious ones, that's the lore information. There are more schools. What you are asking for is already the case.

[@fredrikhelland8194]

On the other hand, it would be quite condescending to project the “civilised” way of European and East Asian schooling upon every other culture in the world…

[@Val-Off-Topic]

I don't even want to imagine what these schools must be like with students from countries like South Africa, religions like the Sunni or Shitas, much less in times like the Second World War.

[@MakeVarahHappen]

She did say that but she gave them the moniker of unofficial.

[@ionabab7274]

Pretty sure she did say that though. Could be remembering wrong, but I think it was stated most wizards are home schooled or sent to small regional schools. The 11 named ones are just the most prestigious. Still having only ONE well established school in an entire continent is suuuper bad world building. There should be, bare minimum, 4-5.

[@georgeiii2998]

Imagine the language barriers in the schools in Africa, SA, Oceania, Asia, and Western Europe. Also, whilst schoolchildren in Britain have to take an 8hr train trip to get to Hogwarts (something that already doesn't make sense because it relies on all wizards living in London), kids in Africa or South America have to travel across a continent.

[@TankEngine75]

I'm from the SE Asia region, if all of SE Asia and Oceania share a school then that would cause a Major Langauge Barrier, I've read somewhere that Singapore, Malaysia and The Phillpines all are the most English Proficient countries in Asia but not alot of Thais, Vietnamese, etc speak good English, atleast just have The English Speaking Parts of Oceania + The Three SE Asian Countries I've mentioned share a school, that would make a little bit more sense

[@andrejs4984]

@@TankEngine75 it would actually make more sense for at least some Filipino students to attend Ilvemorny, or maybe the japanese school when it comes to language, and also history. I also don't understand how strict this might be. Do you have to attend the school assigned to your country by Rowling? In real world, lots of indian/chinese students are sent to the UK or the US to study, especially if they are talented and/or have money to study abroad. Even in the pre-modern times, like middle ages, people that did study, would often attend school in a different country, at least in Europe. Draco Malfoy was once shitting on Hogwarts (I think in the sixth book) how pathethic the school is and that his dad considered sending him to Durmstrang instead since they teach dark magic there as well. So it is hinted it is possible, or was malfoy just making this up? Why don't we see kids from all around the world in Hogwarts the same way muggle british universities have tons of foreign students. A Pinoy with good english skills would be much better off attending american/british schools than having to attend the asian school where chinese and hindu students would probably be the largest groups and thus the language of teaching might not be english (or tagalog :D )

[@99batran]

They probably used teleportation stations as we have seen before

[@simnm8057]

I mean boarding schools exists

[@BigGreekCock]

Bro, they got Magic for that, the school can just cast a spell so everyone understands their language

[@Banter07]

According to each dormitory containing 5 pupils if I remember rightly, times 2 for both gendered dorms, times 7 for the 7 years, times 4 for the houses, brings the hogwarts student total to 280. J.K. Wasn’t kidding when she said she wasn’t good at maths.

[@fionn_mac_ribs]

And if we assume each house has an equal population, there’s only 70 kids in each house. Meaning each year every house gets 10 new students. Times that for four houses, means Hogwarts gets 40 new students every year.

[@sailiealquadacil1284]

Is the number of students fixed per year and house? I'd always assumed that these numbers would vary, since you can't count on the students being split evenly between the houses every year. Also, the yearly intake should vary.

[@comradewindowsill4253]

@@fionn_mac_ribs doing the sorting hat nonsense before dinner makes more sense now, at least.

[@robbiesmith8055]

​@@sailiealquadacil1284 You would assume it'd vary, but I gather Jo wrote a list of the 40 students in Harry's year at Hogwarts (mostly so she could pluck names from it at random to be hanging out in the background of scenes). Harry's is the only dormitory we learn the entire population of (we literally only ever meet 3 Gryffindor girls in his year, who tf are the other 2), but the 40 student list seems to indicate that his entire year maps onto a 10 per house/5 per sex split. So while she doesn't state that this maps onto the rest of the school, that gives me the impression that it's supposed to. Either that or Harry's year is Comically small, since if there's 1000 students like she claims, each year group would have around 140 students.

[@nick3805]

@@robbiesmith8055 The years from ca. 1970-1981 being smaller than usual would make sense through, considering there was Voldemorts war. Usually birth rates and the number of young adults crumble in times of war.

[@JorgeLRojas-95]

I love these books, but it's impossible to defend the lack of appropriate worldbuilding in them. Also, Malfoy mentions in book 4 that his parents almost sent him to Durmstrang, so the entry qualifications aren't exclusively geographical. Durmstrang's location is secret but it's believed to be somewhere up in the Urals

[@michaelramon2411]

This is a good point. Plenty of people go to colleges far away from their hometown rather than something closer, so a lot of school choices would probably be based on school culture, reputation and philosophy rather than geography.

[@adonisjunior3197]

Yeah i was always bugged as to why Durmstrang location is secret, they are part of the triwizard tournment, supposedly they house some of them.... how do the other schools get there? teleport? what if something happens i would definetly not send my students to a secret location in onother state in a school that practices necromancy.

[@jamaluddinkhalifa8371]

according to Wizarding World currently, Durmstrang is "believed to be situated in the far north of Europe", not up in the Urals. so it would appear to be intended to be a Nordic institution. after all the actual Russian school was Koldovstoretz.

[@andrasszabo1570]

@@michaelramon2411 These wizarding schools are not colleges for adults, but high schools for teenagers. Sending 11 year old kids to live-in high schools far away from their parents is much less common than 18 year olds moving away. But since Rowling lives in the one country where this is prominent, she thinks British boarding schools are the peak of education, so the whole world should copy this system.

[@jamesdinius7769]

Malfoy potentially going to Drumstrang doesn't really mean much for their entrance requirements. It was because Lucius and Kakaroff knew each other as Death Eaters. Most families wouldn't have those connections.

[@trickster80]

America and Britain get interesting names like Hogwarts and Ilvermorny meanwhile everyone else just gets "uhhh magic ... school??"

[@YouveBeenMegged]

Not even “magic school”, most of them are just “magic place/house”.

[@xhantTheFirst]

French people be like "that's a nice stick"

[@wenington]

@@xhantTheFirst HELPP LITERALLY THE NAME MAKES SO LITTLE SENSE (maybe its trying to reference wands??)

[@nonono9194]

Because Harry Potter is European/Anglo Saxon mythology and so focuses almost exclusively on those areas? Why would it not? You gonna go tell the Japanese to stop focusing on Japan so much? Go tell the Africans they need to expand on India and China in their story

[@yrooxrksvi7142]

As a semi-retired Potterhead, I think Rowling should have taken a cue from Lucas and let other authors expand on her worldbuilding outside of Hogwarts instead of placing it all on herself.

[@priya8855]

At least she's destroying her own world building unlike Lucas' whose entire Star Wars universe is in shambles after the disastrous sequels

[@yrooxrksvi7142]

@@priya8855 Sad, but true.

[@74810Eric]

@@priya8855 Now that you mention it ...

[@Gnome-kc7pr]

@@priya8855okay yeah but the prequels were almost the end too, lucas was drunk on money and added fuckin jar jar into the movie

[@ramadansteve1715]

Nah, opening up your universe to tons of authors is just asking for a laughable amount of inconsistencies. The star wars EU for example, has some gems but is overall a jumbled mess

[@Xiuhtec]

"I'd like to avoid cultural and language issues as much as possible." >shoves Japan and China in the same school< I laughed so hard at this part.

[@cunxu2697]

he just grouped the sinosphere together which isn't the craziest thing, all those countries at some point in their history used Chinese characters And if we consider that the school would probably be a few thousand years old then indeed it makes sense that China would house it for the rest of east Asia because of all the influence China had on east Asia

[@RealPersonGuyDude]

@@cunxu2697 on top of this, if we use that same amount of "specificity" of languages that did form separately, that would mean that India would have 2 separate schools to account for the Dravidian/Sanskrit divide, meaning that JUST Sri Lanka and HALF of India would have their own school, despite Tamil being influenced by sanskrit words, and many Tamil speakers knowing hindi. And that's still better than grouping Urdu with its Arabic script, Hindi with a devenagari script, Bengali with its own(admittedly similar) script, burmese, AND chinese have just ONE school. Meanwhile, Japanese(which borrowed some characters from chinese), Korean(i think something similar happened), and chinese. 11 schools, over 7,000 languages. Of course there's going to be mildly annoying grouping together like what you're laughing about.

[@veryangryduckpl2122]

And grouping Poland and Russia...

[@larfee5191]

​@@veryangryduckpl2122and how exactly grouping Poland and Russia is crazy ?

[@veryangryduckpl2122]

@@larfee5191 They are basically our nemesis. We wre at war with them for longer than we were at peace. We were constantly fighting their occupation, we were constantly getting attacked and needing to kick their butts out of our land

[@DisneyDahling]

Fun fact: The official Japanese Harry Potter merch store uses the Japanese school name but it's changed to "Mahou Dokoro" instead of "Mahou Tokoro" because it is gramatically very weird, and also I think most Japanese people don't know it's supposed to be a school name because it sounds incredibly stupid. The pronunciation that JK wrote is also wrong.

[@docbraun9458]

So as Koldovstvoretz sounds very weird for russians. I’ll never believe, someone from Russia may invent such a name of school. Grammatically this name sounds ridiculous.

[@uriel9777]

The Brazilian school naming also makes no sense.

[@LoisoPondohva]

​@@docbraun9458 she obviously just used Google Translate or an equivalent. In English "magic" is the same as noun and adjective, but not in Russian. Also Russian doesn't use grammatical suffixes as roots for portmanteaus, obviously. It's like using "magiced" as a word and saying "Ed" stands for "unleashed" or something. Obviously you wouldn't use an ambiguous grammatical suffix to represent a word, you would use a root or part of it.

[@ErikaCartet]

@@LoisoPondohvayeah, it’s like… mind numbing how poorly the other school names are put together. she really should have had someone help workshop the names instead of going with the first half-baked word combo she thought to run through google translate

[@apollo1694]

Imagine if Hogwarts was named "Magic Place". Idiocy.

[@Missingno_Miner]

I mean, I'm not sure what anyone expected from the lady who gave us token characters with names like Cho Chang, but it's so incredibly baffling to me that Rowling unironically thought "yeah, eleven schools worldwide, and Europe gets three of them." was a good idea. It would have been so easy to just say that most countries have at least one major school and usually a few smaller ones, provide a few examples, and move on, but no, she went out of her way to set up a big ol' rake and then deliberately step on it.

[@mechadeka]

Cho Chang is a valid name that a significant number of actual, living people have.

[@Missingno_Miner]

@@mechadeka Perhaps. You'll find people with unusual or just flat out weird names in every culture. Doesn't change the fact that it's a highly implausible name, and a terrible one for a white author to use for an already stereotypical token diversity character. And it's a recurring thing that happens with the majority of non-English or non-white character. Seamus Finnigan(naturally, an Irish character who blows sh*t up, a trait deliberately emphasized in the movies), Anthony Goldstein(because, you know, the goblins weren't enough of a red flag), Kingsley Shacklebolt(particularly concerning with the weird pro-slavery messaging surrounding the house elves), etc. Of course, names are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ways Rowling's deeply problematic beliefs leak into her writing.

[@CallMeAuranna]

And the European schools are all set up to be shared between countries that just DON’T GET ALONG AT ALL and have been in centuries long conflicts like- I’m sorry but why oh why would a 19th century spaniard want to share school with french ppl? And why would a 16th century french want to share school with a spaniard? Or why would a 17th century catholic austrian want to share school with someone from the Germanic protestant territory? Or how would have any of these two schools worked during the 30 Year War? Bcs I’m more than sure that the climate wasn’t pretty AT ALL.

[@Missingno_Miner]

@@CallMeAuranna Ilvermorny is similarly weird. Supposedly founded in the early 1600s, but, even checking the wiki page for it, no mention of tension between people living in different parts of North America, even during the US War for independence. More concerningly, there's no mention of conflict between Indigenous wizards and those of European descent. Despite, you know, the whole attempted genocide thing with residential schools. Also, I really can't see there not being a separate French Canadian school given how Quebec tends to be very protective about their language, and would probably be deeply distrustful of the doubtlessly Anglophone-dominated Ilvermorny, while also not being entirely comfortable with sending their kids overseas to Beauxbatons. I get the feeling this sort of issue would be pretty widespread in the wizarding world, but, being a bilingual Canadian, Quebec is the most obvious example to me. Really, most of the schools are horrendous and there is absolutely no way in heck they wouldn't have splintered off into many smaller schools over the years even if they were once the only option. Most encompass speakers of several languages, countries that have been in historical conflict and/or actively oppressed one another, or simply make no sense to have only one major school covering such a wide region or such a heavily populated region.

[@harryfeng4199]

@@mechadeka”Cho” is literally not a Chinese spelling (I’m Chinese). By that I mean it doesnt exist. No word in the Chinese language sounds like “Cho” and the spelling simply doesn’t make sense. The closest would be “Chou” or “Chao”

[@nikoliniminizoaki2542]

Personally the way I understand the whole "11 schools" is "the 11 schools the anglo-centric magical government recognises", because it feels really stupid that countries with different religion, language and traditions would hold the exact same magical standards as Hogwarts does, to me it makes more sense of the other 10 schools to be sister schools of sorts. There's many more schools, many are homeschooled, they just don't recognise the rest as of any significance.

[@kaylaHat]

I think you put waaay more thoughts into this than JK ever did

[@Nehu_22]

I think I might have heard that those were the 11 most "important" ones. But I wouldn't put it past Joanne to not really think that in depth, with spells like "Petrificus Totalus" 😂

[@ernie39]

I like that interpretation! (and also kind of equate Rowling's own opinion/world-building with the recognition of the anglo-centric magic govt)

[@minim-ms]

Definitely agree, it really fits in with anglo-centric ideas that Rowling continues to espouse.

[@jasperlawrenson]

right, kind of like ivy league schools - theres heaps of others but these are the most prestigious

[@TheAustralianMapper5378]

Oh, yeah. Ima make a alternate version of this with like over 30 schools.

[@kringle7804]

You're gonna need 100 for just Africa with the amount of cultures and languages there

[@venmis137]

@@kringle7804 Just group them together. Small enough cultures and languages probably won't have that many wizards, if those cultures start communicating and the wizards find each other, start to set up wizarding schools, then you can easily get multinational schools there.

[@Chosen_Ash]

@@kringle7804 no

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@venmis137 Considering that basically all the schools would speak english, french, spanish, arabic or mandarin, just to get communication across. How well are the second language skills of 11 year olds? I didn't saw english before the age of 9 and had no contact with any other language (in that point the options tended to be french, spanish, and latin) before the age of 13, one could assume that at least the first two years of wizarding school would either have to be taught multilingual or they need some sort of babelfish to be even able to teach the majority of students.

[@kringle7804]

@HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul African children are built different they know one of these as a base English,French,Belgium,Portuguese German,Spanish Then they know there native tongue and then possibly 2 other languages of the tribes in the area that'd how many cultures there are

[@Padubiaso]

As someone who is a native brazillian portuguese speaker, if it is really a magical world, I think the south america- Portugal - Spain and italy schools should revive the latin writing and speaking since latin is often associated with magic (and sounds really cool)

[@akeel_1701]

Verum est

[@tuamigalafurraconvozdeloli3690]

I wish i can speak latín

[@lucciqs]

Agreed!!! it should be a compulsory subject across all 7 years of school

[@IntrepidFC]

Also, as a Brazilian, I think if this was really a real thing, we’d have a school for our own. I will not speak to Iberians, because I couldn’t if I tried

[@rodrigoblancogalvao8268]

But that way you'd ignored the amerindians culture intirely

[@seprithlicastia463]

I am pretty sure Rowling confirmed most wizards/witches just never attend school. The Weasley twins also confirm there a lot of demand for grown adults to have some way to use what are considered basic spells -- one of their biggest sellers during the war, they claim, was a hat that automatically cast the Shield Charm. The idea of formalized and mass mandatory education systems is a relatively modern one. It makes sense that a society, largely cut off from the modern culture since the late 1600s, would not have adopted it.

[@wjzav1971]

Sometimes I thought about that. Voldemort installed an openly bigotted racist puppet government after Scrimgor's death with relative ease and little resistance. Nobody put up any real resisntance on why Muggle Borns are suddenly persecuted and muggles are villified. The Persecution happens due to some report from the Mystery Department which nobody can check or falsify because it is stated in-universe that nobody really knows what the Mystery Department does or how they do it. So there is a government department that has no oversight and does not answer to any checks or balances, meaning when they claim shit, everybody has no choice but to believe it. Sirius Black was sent to Azkaban for life without a proper trial because Barty Crouch had the political weight to do that. Rubeus Hagrid was sent to Azkaban also without proper trial because the Ministry thought he MIGHT be behind the Chamber of Secrets Attacks without any proof whatsover. Azkaban, a prison that constantly mind-tortures its inmates, exists as a government sanctioned facilty. No mention of parties or voting whenever a new Minister of Magic steps up. They just do. Sending Eleven Year olds into a forest full of monsters to find a creature vile enough to kill unicorns while accompanied by a guy who cannot do magic is considered proper punishment for being out late at night. An official in the American Wirzarding Government can sentence two people (one of them being a government agent and one of them a foreigner) to death just like that. Again, without trail or without even needing to clear that with the Government Head. Execution carried out immediately after sentencing. It kind a seems as if the wizarding world is stuck in 1600s politics as well....

[@simcoe4045]

The problem with Rowling saying that, as with much that she’s just saying after the fact, is that there is no evidence for this in the books. Every character we meet has attended one of the magic schools.

[@seprithlicastia463]

@@simcoe4045 The writing is all very much post-facto world building; Rowling wrote a children's series, and when those children grew up they started asking questions. That said, I think this post-writing justification holds up. We know of very few characters' education background, and those we do are wealthier and/or influential people and families who could have certainly afforded to pay and send their kids to year-long boarding school. The Malfoys and Blacks, for example. Even the Wealeys, a canonically poor family, still have a middle-management government official for a patriarch -- they are only considered poor because of how many kids they have.

[@kingofdemons948]

@@simcoe4045Harry Potter lore exists in other places. Rowling posted some world building on the wizarding world website

[@seprithlicastia463]

@@alephnulI If you display magic in a way a Muggle can see it, you can have your wand snapped; that was the basis of Harry's canonical expulsion charge. But using spells within a magically registered home is perfectly fine. For the Lupin example, I can offer two answers: 1) Remus' father was a single parent working a demanding Ministry job and could not home-school Remus, and likely could not hire any tutors because, you know, werewolf. 2) As Remus stated, it was a huge deal Dumbledore even accepted him in the first place, likely as a result of the laters' more liberal ideologies, but even Dumbledore took precautions; the explicitly say the Whomping Willow was only ever planted to give Remus a safe place to transform: small enough for a child to enter, too small for a werewolf to leave. All of this combined with the implication that, while home-schooling is an option, naturally a government would prefer a formal education.

[@concept5631]

Considering Rowling named her only Asian character "Cho Chang," its not surprising she's this creatively bankrupt. Edit: Bigots are malding and seething.

[@danitron4096]

You’re seriously calling th creator of Harry Potter creatively bankrupt? The entire wizarding world is irrelevant for the books

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

@@danitron4096 It is a creative world sure. But you have to abandon all logic to really be immersed in it, thats why its popular for children and loses its charm for adults that tend to analyze movies

[@HappyBazinga]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 well you have to abbandon our worlds logic for a made up one, dont hate to hate. Yes she has dumb politics but you are just insulting her just cus its cool

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

@@HappyBazinga Dude children try to knock each other off from brooms 30 m in the air, a student unalived a teacher in his first year and a time travelling device is given to whoever has the best grades. Even fictional logic has its limits

[@HappyBazinga]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 we have a sport where we punch each other til one passes out and the teacher was the reincarnation of basically hitler. If you have trouble with suspension of disbelief you should try watching onyl documentaries cus you must believe those. What fictional story do you like?

[@lorddashdonalddappington2653]

Bruh really said that it pained him to put Spain and Portugal together but then mashed Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece into one school without a second thought.

[@thiswillagenicely9702]

I’m surprised she placed the entire Soviet Bloc in the same school despite it being made relatively recent compared to other history in HP universe and straight up added Scandinavia

[@pizzasteve5825]

That school is gonna be lookin like 1991 all over again

[@StraightFromNyíregyháza]

And putting the WHOLE Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Islamic school... Feels like a mistake, doesn't it? 😂

[@DawidKov]

@@thiswillagenicely9702 Soviet Bloc was preceded by the Russian Imperial sphere, and it's largely Slavic nations anyway. Culturally though, Slavs used to be the main population all the way to the Elbe river, before the Germanization of Polabia in the early Crusades. If magical schools are generally as old as Hogwarts, then at the time of founding a Balto-Slavic school would cover all of the southern coast of the Baltic, and then go south to the Balkans. Can't justify Scandinavia though. And "Durgmstrang" is as German a name as you can get, so why Slavs are there at all is a mystery. Makes more sense for the Bulgarians like Krum to go to a pan-Slavic or better yet, Slavic Orthodox school instead. Use the Old Church Slavonic as the school's language.

[@baileyyh72]

i think his main issue was significant language barriers, which he did well in some parts, not so well in other parts ^

[@BeautifulMutant]

One more thing to remember: Durumstrang doesn't take muggle-born kids, so if there isn't an option for kids in Scandinavia, Germany, and the rest of Eastern Europe to apply to Beauxbatons or Hogwarts, then there'll be some problems. Obscuruses will be appearing, and magical mishaps will be occurring all over the place!

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

Durmstrang is a huge mess in general. It has a German-sounding name, founded by a Hungarian, most students have Slavic names, and it's supposedly located somewhere in Scandinavia.

[@chimera9818]

@@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer I heard wakanda is similar mess for African to watch

[@battlesheep2552]

​@@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejerit probably would have been cool if they left out the Scandinavian parts and just have it be a school founded during the Holy Roman Empire. After all, i think there is a case for modern political and cultural divides in the muggle world not mattering as much for the wizard community.

[@GalliadII]

I bet Grindelwald was looking into some sort of final solution to that problem...

[@AeonKnigh432]

Lol like she knew obscurials existed when she wrote Goblet of Fire

[@JoelJames2]

There was a lot of missed opportunity here. One thing I don’t quite understand is that the Wizarding World (of at least Britain) split off from the muggle world centuries ago, to the point that even their so-called muggle specialists are woefully out of touch with muggle society. Why on earth are wizarding governments respecting muggle borders? Imagine the differences in dynamics if idk, a super militant magical Prussia still existed. And heck, there is no requirement that politics need to transfer from the muggle world over. Imagine if the reason why no one have a shit about Voldemort internationally is because while that war was being fought by a couple dozen combatants on either side, there was a large scale civil war erupting in the magical superpower of the Qing Empire threatening to spill over into neighboring countries. Furthermore, this automatically assumes that all wizards go to a formal school and some point. Given how dispersed and nomadic some populations are, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were vast swathes of wizards and witches who just learned from their elders. There was so much opportunity to make the magical world something more than a copy/paste of magical Britain with a slight bent, but she completely threw that away.

[@cynic2201]

The one issue I take with this is that it assumes an identical wizard/general population ratio across the world.

[@possiblehistory]

Absolutely fair and totally agree, but there is no real way of verifying something like that so I had to go with my standardized version. I could/should have also been more precise in population calculations and have made many assumptions/estimates, but I didn't want to do hours of research for this extra video, as it would have taken the fun out of it for me and made it into a chore.

[@ummdustry5718]

I mean, it is a bad assumption, but the alternative is saying "yeah australians just aren't very magical, sucks to be you" which I get the feeling wouldn't go down well.

[@conansglasses2645]

Pretty sure it was confirmed somewhere that the muggle-wizard ratio IS actually consistent around the world in order to keep a semblance of balance ( which explains how some wizards pop up from non magical muggle families , while some other pure blood wizard families give birth to non magical squibs )

[@myrddinemrys1332]

@@conansglasses2645 no, it's not. The US has less wizards than their European counterparts due to overly suspicious muggles and wizard criminals who hunted other wizards to give to muggles known as Scourers.

[@josephleebob3828]

the hell does that mean does it mean like magic people and no magic people have too similliar ratio

[@TheRetroShepherd]

-Puts entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa into one school -Puts entirety of the Middle East and North Africa into one school -Both Koreas in the same school as Japan, that's a certified historical oh no moment (also now I'm curious as to how North Korean wizard stuff works out) -Puts India, Pakistan, Taiwan AND China into one school (Aside from obvious demographic tensions, that school is either fucking gigantic or laid out like Kowloon Walled City to fit all those students in) Yeah that sounds like a British author wrote it, alright (Bonus: I know this map was made long before tensions broke out but having Ukraine in the same school as Russia is a big bruh moment as of right now)

[@MerkhVision]

Good points but you overlook the fact that wizards have entirely different cultures and concerns than muggles and may not even identify with or know about any of the issues you mentioned lol.

[@only_fair23]

​@@MerkhVisionmost of these schools wouldn't be separated then

[@dinosaurpower3862]

Ngl there was tension between Ukraine and Russia since 1658

[@judynyairo9791]

@@MerkhVisionThis could be true, but tbf i feel like even pureblooded wizards would notice if their country went into war or something, and those can definitely start stereotypes. not to mention that, at least in the uk, purebloods are a minority so the majority of wizards have at least some connections to muggles.

[@hastur-thekinginyellow8115]

@@dinosaurpower3862 Exactly. People acting like Crimean geo-politics only started existing as of 2014 are ridiculous lol.

[@Immortal-Daiki]

As a Japanese, lemme just say. If JK Rowling knew some Japanese, she would've known that Mahoutokoro should've been pronounced as Mahōsho (魔法所), using the onyomi reading of 所 (dokoro). Alternatively, she could've named the Japanese school something like Mahō Gakuen (魔法学園), which translates to Magic Academy. The latter sounds much better in my opinion

[@mirceazaharia2094]

The anime Mashle is a better Harry Potter story than the one JK Rowling wrote, anyway.

[@shio_juniper]

I like your version! It seems that Rowling knows only English language AND English culture both. Well, I know that she knows French pretty well, but no one who read HP can say that. For example, Beauxbatons, which means "pretty wands". Ugh. Kinda stereotypical, I would say. As if she knows just a few French words.

[@erizamisorafujoshi7002]

Mahõ Gakuen sounds actually pretty cool

[@ChibiRagdoll.]

Came immediately into the comments just for the Japanese school, as a casual student of the language, because just calling it "magic place" seemed insultingly uncreative. I didn't realize there was kanji for it, and she couldn't even be arsed to find the right way to say it 🙄 Even just Mahou Gakuen would still be pretty terrible, though, because "magic school" is still not a proper name like Hogwarts.

[@nikki607]

Lol, aren’t there multiple pieces of media made by Japanese people where the magic school is called “[something something] mahō gakuen”?

[@JustSomeDude42]

This tackles an interesting issue of Rowlings wizarding world, but I think the big thing everyone overlooks is how easy a statute of secrecy was imposed globally when many cultures likely would have been fine or integrated heavily with their local wizard cultures. Honestly it’s a great thought experiment to look at how dystopian the wizarding world is as what was essentially the magic British empire destroyed cultures in order to force their own politics on a global scale.

[@LethargicScientist]

Yeah, if Rowling was an even slightly smarter person instead of just stealing all her ideas from Neil Gaiman she could have seen all the implications there and maybe even written cool stories about them. That kind of insane level of cultural imperialism happened constantly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Road not travelled I guess.

[@fruity4820]

Yeah, I thought of that too, anti-magic sentiments are a very euro-centric idea that is rooted in Christianity. How is it fair to assume that everywhere else in the world is like Europe where wizards have to hide?

[@Illuminatorofshadow]

It seems Magical Europe colonized the rest of the world more than 200 years before Muggle Europe did. Hence relations of power between Magical Europe and Magical Global South is even more skewed than in the muggle world.

[@Acidfrog475]

That is a fascinating thought experiment and I’d love to see it properly realised. Just not by Rowling.

[@al_eggs]

she would probably think the British wizards were in the right

[@michaelramon2411]

As a minor note, it is entirely possible that Hogwarts in Harry's day is somewhat underpopulated compared to historical trends. Harry was born at the end of several years of significant violence that shook the entire British magical community. It's not unreasonable to think that between people being killed by Death Eaters, fleeing the country or just otherwise putting off having children, the British wizard birthrate might have plunged for a few years, which would result in Harry's class being smaller than normal. So British wizarding populations extrapolated from his class size might be misleadingly small.

[@jamesdinius7769]

That's a good point. Great Britian's magical population is probably unusually small at this point. It would also explain why Hogwarts seems to have a lot of unused classrooms. I imagine there was a point where each major subjects (Poitions, Transfiguration, DoDA, etc.) had multiple professors, not just one. Yes, the Great Hall always seems at capacity in the films, but having it half empty would've been less cinematic so...

[@godoflightning5030]

@@jamesdinius7769I think in the books they talk about that a bit but I don’t see peoples problems with the schools. You have to think of wizarding culture which they are forgetting. Over 10 percent of the magical population is pureblood according to Rowling and to keep that status they have to marry other pure-bloods. This makes it so marriages between different wizarding cultures and religions will happen so they won’t have the hate their countries have for each other. These schools have to be made by a group of magicals and they have to find a way to fund them as well as find the magical students which would be very hard to do so. Finding other magical was easy for the countries she pointed out for the schools because of their longer history as a civilization. Uncivilized people would not have a common language and were usually at war for resources or any other reason. This makes it so they have to have a long history or be in the civilizations starting point like the US. Africa would not have many because of how hard it would be to build them or combine cultures like he said. Any modern or already built country would have trouble starting one up with technology and more curious people. China and India as well as japan have faced countless wars through its time and schools would probably be destroyed in wars limiting the amount of schools and with how few wizards there are in the world a large enough school could fit the ones that are magical in that population. Because of the fact that purebloods are ten percent of the population even with families dying out and so this leads to the belief that purebloods are a lot more likely to give birth to magical children. If it was the same for the muggle borns there would be a lot more wizards and less percentage of purebloods. And with these familes ruling there magical side of their country the bigger colonial powers are more likely to have schools but Spain most likely would not because it was usually on good relation with either France or britian so I imagine it always had a choice between the two schools and in its infancy had to fight Muslims invading. France and britian need their own because they are rivals and very unlikely to have their children go to the same schools while they fight eachother. Scandinavia would be raiding britian and France and so on so would know about the schools from their magical sin the raids probably and would build their own school. The US had time after its independence where it was not being paid attention to to build its own school and with people from France and britian as well as Scandinavia joining the colonies. Brazil probably got one from Portugal because most of its population was in Brazil and would not want their children going to the same school as the Spanish so built their own. There is no actual reason for other countries to build their own when the children are 12 and can learn a new language at the school or if they are pureblood families would learn it growing up or a simple spell can take care of that.

[@AlexisFloofer]

Saying Hogwarts has 1000 students is already massively inflated from what we see in the books. Harry's year has something like 40 students, Even if we assume his class is an aberration and is half the size of the other 6 year groups you still only get 40 + (80 * 6) = 40 + 480 = 520 students, even tripling his classes' size for the other 6 years still only gets you to 760 students. There needs to be ~142 students per year and 250 per house for Hogwarts to have 1000 students. That's 36 per house per year, which the common rooms we see really aren't capable of accommodating. It's honestly hard to make the numbers even get to 400 students at Hogwarts during the books.

[@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527]

@@AlexisFlooferJK only came up with 40 names but there could very well be more students

[@stormpetrel5645]

Not to mention the fact that a lot of witches and wizard are homeschooled - something which is easily forgotten due to the fact that the story revolves around Hogwarts

[@audreyglass3125]

I never knew Rowling said there were only 11 schools. I just always assumed every country had their own wizarding school. I even thought large countries might have more than one. That would make the most sense to me.

[@jamaluddinkhalifa8371]

she didn't say that there were only 11 schools, she said that there were 11 especially prestigious schools registered with an international wizarding organisation, many much smaller schools existed and most wizards were homeschooled

[@audreyglass3125]

@@jamaluddinkhalifa8371 oh ok cool. Thanks. 🙂

[@danielcaputo90]

​@@jamaluddinkhalifa8371I might be wrong, but are you sure most wizards or witches are homeschooled? I remember when it is mentioned that only some (not most) wizards are homeschooled. If so, it is also a big problem in the worldbuilding, because appart from the Gaunts, if I remember well, all characters in the books went to a school. Where are the most wizards that were homeschooled?

[@jamaluddinkhalifa8371]

@@danielcaputo90 Outside Britain. Britain is a small place and all the British wizards are packed into that small place. So even with just the one magic school in Britain, formal magic education is in the reach of all young British wizards. The case may be similar with Japan and other densely populated medium-sized islands and archepelagos. But with mainland Europe being way bigger than Britain, and Asia and Africa and the Americas being way bigger than Europe, and with wizards being scattered over these huge geographical areas, there will be very few areas where building a big magic school will be worth it as in most places there just won't be enough wizards living within the school's radius to warrant it's construction.

[@kingofdemons948]

@@jamaluddinkhalifa8371yeah this guy clearly didn’t read up on his wizarding world lore this is basic knowledge

[@slowestofallmoons]

even sticking to just Europe, not only did she put about 24 countries speaking 20 different languages from 4 different families together, she also put Poland and Germany AND THE ENTIRETY OF THE BALKANS TOGETHER?? Let's be real Drumstrang would be just a pile of rocks at the end of 1st month

[@redshirt5126]

I think in general you would have regions of the world that just couldn't have their own schools for either political reasons or safety reasons. Example: Korea. Kids from North Korea would have to go to a Chinese wizarding school while south Korean students would have to go to a Japanese school simply because asking a bunch of young wizards and witches to find some way to cross the demilitarized zone just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

[@PaulFisher]

imagine cross-strait relations at the Chinese/Japanese/Korean school

[@andreeacat7071]

@@redshirt5126I don’t doubt that (unless the Wizarding population opposed the dictatorship and this side along apparated their children out to be educated) North Korean would probably have its own school for propaganda reasons. Because if they were to go out of their country to learn they’d realize how much of a bad place it is, and that China and the rest of the world have it much better, and then try to rebel, or escape, etc. And then congrats NK, your entire population of magic users is gone!

[@l.n.3372]

​@@redshirt5126 Playing devil's advocate, I'd argue that maybe Korean wizards don't even acknowledge a demilitarized zone. After all, why would the Korean war have necessarily affected Korean wizards? It does not seem like the British wizards were all that affected by WW2, given by how little JKR ever mentioned the effects of WW2 on Hogwarts and it's students. It's probably likely that wizards don't recognize muggle wars or their "separations of land" after said wars. Thus Korean wizards wouldn't necessarily have any problems with attending the same school. Hell, they may not even care as much that it's North and South Korea; maybe they just see themselves as Korean?

[@SpinDuality]

​@@l.n.3372This only works if wizards are only pureblood wizards. There are halfbloods and muggleborns too. Someone who does live in the muggle world would bring issues in the wizarding world about it. This is why I hate HP worldbuilding, because even if you try to make it make sense, there's a plot in there to make another hole. Let's say, they don't care at all about muggles wars and separations of the country. We have to figure out how muggleborn thinking works exactly in this scenario. We also have to figure out the language system. The culture.

[@razhelfombelle]

About Uagadou, it may be even worse actually. It likely comes from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's Capital city. She just... cut the last syllabus off. She probably heard that name and decided to change it a bit and use it for her school. At least if Uagadou was in Burkina Faso, it could have been argued that it simply took the name of the city it's closest too (like some actual schools over the world do), but since she couldn't be bothered to do any research for her own world-building (and let's be clear, even she had chosen the example I gave, it'd still have been incredibly lazy), she managed to be even more ignorant and racist than your average british writers...

[@giratina6665]

​@markstein2845I don't want to come off as arrogant, but your definition of racism is pretty bad. For large scale social phenomenon to dumb it down that much, isn't gonna work out. This definition also doesn't take into account why racism came into being and how it thrives as a system and ideology. Going by your logic racism doesn't exist outside of settler colonialism and literal outspoken fascists, which I think is quite a useless term then. The fact that you don't seem to understand the difference between stereotyping Italians and stereotyping Africans shows that you are using quite the mechanical definition for what is a historical, social phenomenon. (yes, it does make a difference)

[@Acro_YT]

@markstein2845Don’t speak the name of Araki to try and meatride Rowling. Araki’s not an ignorant racist like Rowling, and he’s also not transphobic (eg. Dragona Joestar) unlike that woman.

[@Acro_YT]

Is anyone honestly surprised that Rowling, an outspoken transphobe is also an ignorant racist? Because I ain’t.

[@geniei91]

do you know Ouagadou is a thing that exists

[@johnnye87]

​@@geniei91 Well I certainly didn't. TIL.

[@alej2297]

An extra layer of funny is that by Rowling’s own rules, a map of all the wizarding schools is impossible because all the schools are supposed to be “unplottable” on a map.

[@josefmuller86]

I think that "different schools, different flavors of magic" was the original intention. Like where do French guy wizards go to school if the French-named school is nearly all-female? Maybe it is just that this magic is more appealing to girls... But it kinda devolved into this

[@alej2297]

@@josefmuller86 Except Beauxbatons is not an all-girls school. That was only a movie design decision. There are male students in the book. She just wanted to break it down by nationality but didn’t think through the logic that came with it.

[@Roxor128]

I find the idea unplottability to be ill-thought-out. How is it supposed to stop you from plotting on a map? Freeze your hand when you try to put down a dot in the right location so you can't make the mark? Let that hand freeze, then make other marks with the other hand some distance away and just say it's in the centre of those marks. Force your hand away when you try to make a mark where it should be? Make multiple attempts and get a ring of dots around the actual location. Or is it supposed to mess with your memory, so you can't remember where it is precisely enough to plot it? If so, why doesn't that prevent the staff from apparating to the gates? Or the house elves? Can it stop you just saying the latitude and longitude if you were able to figure it out? What's the range on the effect? Surely you could only force the effect out so far before the spell runs out of power? And then there's the matter of photographs. Take a camera up on a broom and do some landscape photography and tape the photos together. The resulting panorama is as good as a map. Possibly better, depending on what you need. Seems to me that it's either impossible or would have a heap of workarounds that'd just prove an annoyance to anyone serious about the matter. Personally, given the existence of the Marauders' Map, I think impossibility seems more likely, and it's just said to be unplottable as a ruse.

[@ayathados6629]

​@@Roxor128 unplottability makes a tonne of sense if you actually read the books. Complex wards against muggles that make it impossible to go to (without forgetting and randomly turning around), or even view without their eyes slipping off and focusing on something else (like how the leaky cauldron functions) as well as designated squads to make people forget magical occurances or atleast blending them into somewhat more plausible experiences (a dragon sighting replaced by seeing a fighter jet and letting their mind do the rest. Obliviation) The thing is, these locations aren't on any maps that are allowed to circulate with muggles; meaning that you can't mark them because inherently the maps are *wrong* and wizards are keen on making sure they're never right.

[@Roxor128]

@@ayathados6629 I'm not talking about muggles. Their maps being edited is a given. I'm talking about a wizard making one, so you're off in the woods.

[@nickstoneham5629]

Admittedly, the Japanese school does make sense being on its own, since historically, Japan was a very isolated nation with little to no outside interaction. So its wizards would likely need to make their own school which I imagine would still be run today. Like Hogwarts, it would just be another small school compared to the rest. But that doesn't bode well for the rest of the world if we limit it to only 11 schools. So I do believe there is either many more schools that are equally small, or most of the world is home schooled or it is based on just local schools for Wizards in the immediate area.

[@Hiroakiarai88]

she didn't think of that probably

[@HackerArmy03]

@@Hiroakiarai88 Probably since she wrote a book made for kids whose story is centered around a kid named HARRY POTTER. So obviously she really wouldn't polish the world that much, as there is literally nothing to do or a way for them to be all involved in some way or another where a detailed background is needed.

[@kjn3350]

You make perfect sense, but the problem the Japanese school produces is that if the Japanese have their own since it was isolated, then so should the Koreans, because they were similar, the Chinese because they did everything on their own, the Indians, because they were completely separate from the Chinese, the Greeks/Romans, the Mayans/Incans/Aztecs just to name a few who would surely have developed their own schools. The history of ancient nations is essentially the history of self-sufficiency and creating the idea that these are truly ancient institutions ruins each possible argument.

[@nickstoneham5629]

@@kjn3350 Thus, why I argue there are plenty more schools for this to be at all a functioning society with the knowledge we are given. Alternatively, there is the argument that it is useless to speculate about what the world is like outside of Hogwarts since it is just an isolated story about one young boy in the events of only one school, but I don't like that argument as it sounds far more fun to speculate lol.

[@kjn3350]

@@nickstoneham5629 Yeah, I completely agree with you, I'm just saying I'm far more inclined to ignore what JK Rowling is saying than to try to say that there are other, smaller schools. It's a case where it's better off to overrule the author because it makes too little sense.

[@levongevorgyan6789]

If she ever gets to the Middle East School, I really think she should focus it in Iran. For one reason: the word Magic. It comes directly from the ancient Iranian Magi, the Zoroastrian Priests of the Medians and Persians. So Iran, being the source of the word magic and mages, the concept inspired by their priesthood, should have the oldest magic school in the world, formed by the ancient Median Empire to train its magically gifted children. And for a name: Atash Mazda, the Fire of Wisdom.

[@iskanderaga-ali3353]

Least Iran simping Armenian:

[@hydro-filia1107]

I think you’re giving her too much credit

[@turkishissunlanguage]

@@levongevorgyan6789 least Turk - hating armenian

[@turkishissunlanguage]

@@levongevorgyan6789 🇦🇲💩🤢

[@levongevorgyan6789]

@@turkishissunlanguage Sunlanguage-Least indoctrinated Turk

[@aspacelex]

If the schools are supposed to be ancient, the Slavic school should be in Kyiv. Maybe in Novgorod, but it's at the edge of the Slavic world and also the city is tiny now so no one would choose to do that in a book.

[@budakbaongsiah]

Yeah, it should be based on historical significance of older times. Like how I feel like there should be a magic school in Greece (Greco-Roman magic), Benin (Voodoo magic), Mexico (blood sacrifice magic), and China (transmutation alchemy)

[@aspacelex]

@@budakbaongsiah This is a frustrating exercise because while any curious person can come up with a plethora of ideas for that world, in reality it's run by someone who names Black people like Slaveman Chainguy.

[@Mia199603]

Kyiv or Lviv for Central European Slavs, for sure

[@landkonnudur]

No, they shouldn't be in a city, they should be in that area sure - but not in any city. It makes sense to have wizarding schools away from Muggles (like Hogwarts), not in the middle of a city, while it would make more sense to have old, important wizarding centers hiding in places like Kyiv, comparable to Diagon Alley in London.

[@RadenWA]

I remember Tibet playing such a big role in the Fantastic Beast serie. Very funny that suddenly that area became almost central to the wizarding world and yet it doesn’t have a named school.

[@vinnie-chan]

Well Tibet is occupied by China

[@PahadiSher]

If the Tibetans had a school, it would be in India because their current culture is amalgamation on traditional shamanism & East Indian Buddhism.

[@priya8855]

Tbf,Tibet is kinda not in a good place. Even the Dalai Lama fled to India for refuge

[@Mixed_Activist]

Nope instead Tibet goes to… CHINA !!! I’m African European living in America, and even I know that’s ludicrous!! PS i stand with Tibet.

[@michaelramon2411]

I think that was Bhutan, not Tibet (though they are next to each other). And it's not wholly unreasonable to center your election on what is essentially "neutral" ground, where no polity has enormous control. The capital of the United States, for example, is not in any one of the 50 states, but was specifically put in its own district (Washington D.C.) so that no state would have control of it. As a side note, it appears that the original plan for Fantastic Beasts 3 was to have the finale in Brazil, but COVID filming made that too difficult, so they moved it to Bhutan.

[@BoredChild5823]

The name for the Russian wizard ing school actually comes from a movie made in USSR which is about a University called Koldovstvoretz, where they study magic. It’s actually shown to be more open to “muggles” (they’re not called that there), the movie is set during winter, before New Year, and ends during the night of New Year. It also has many iconic songs.... long story short, Rowling just took an already “existing” “school” of magic in Russia that has alike laws of magic.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

What's the movie's name?

[@ГригорийКузярин-т1ъ]

I hope you're not talking about "Чародеи" because there is no mention of Koldovstvoretz. It's about a research institute called "НУИНУ" (a joke abbreviation) in a fictional town called Kitezhgrad. There were no other toponyms

[@ribozyme2899]

​@@ГригорийКузярин-т1ъ If that's the case, why would you even suggest they're talking about that movie?

[@LoisoPondohva]

​@@ribozyme2899 because that's the movie the original commenter is remembering. There's a movie loosely based on novels by Strugatski's that is made in USSR, takes place on new year's Eve in a university of magic called NUINU. There isn't such a movie using the name Koldovstvorets. The word doesn't even make sense in Russian.

[@ribozyme2899]

@@LoisoPondohva Hm, you are right, I've looked it up too now and I agree there are quite the similarities. Then yeah, I also think that OP probably just misremembered.

[@mistertwister2000]

Countries like India, China, United States, etc are not only geographically huge but have massive populations, they each should have multiple wizarding schools for sure, not to mention *every other country*

[@airistal]

Also consider apprenticeships.

[@Phantom-bh5ru]

America would likely have just one school. Since they are so new and were never really divided for long. China had many divisions throughout history but they did have long stable times so while China would likely have multiple schools it likely would have 1 main school. India has basically always stayed divided so it would likely have multiple schools too

[@mimorisenpai8540]

More make sense if Tibet have their own school separate one from china proper

[@PahadiSher]

@Phantom-bh5ru lol, as if China or the US had the exact same borders as today, even 100 years back. By that logic, Hogwarts should cater to US because it is basically an oversea colony.

[@imaginekudryavka9485]

@@PahadiSherWhat? I don’t think that’s what they’re saying. Just that if you have a long enough history (hundreds if not thousands of years) with certain divisions between peoples, it would make sense that they would have had schools of their own which carries on to the current day. It’s much more like saying that the Native American wizards would have a separate school (or schools), since would have their own culture apart from the wizard colonists, and for good reasons would want to hold on to whatever is left of their land and their traditions. Even if that wizarding school would be pretty small in the current era.

[@ijj2286]

She had not thought this through. Her world building was limited to her own country and a few outside its borders. The rest was just fan fiction she thought was a good idea to be canon.

[@All-ze9cl]

I bet JK Rowling sat down one day, pulled up google translate and a map online, and slapped them on a map. She didn't even look for language barriers, lmao

[@haldalas]

This is 100% what happened. And honestly I’m surprised she even bothered doing that. She should have just taken her money and dipped out years ago

[@All-ze9cl]

@@haldalas fr, we did not need this. This is so disrespectful and pointless. Can she please leave the series alone? I want to actually enjoy the re reads without thinking about all the other shit shes done.

[@BurningQuestion]

I'm glad she's just having fun without overstressing about what others think. XD

[@jak1165]

This is probably the most British thing ever, honestly lol

[@Reydriel]

@@jak1165 LMFAO

[@Tomasrrb]

The Harry Potter Universe can only be enjoyed if you don’t ask questions and just be happy about magic. As soon as you start asking questions, everything comes crashing down.

[@starrynight6268]

But questions are expected to be asked the bigger the franchise goes.

[@LordDanielG]

Rowling just sucks at world building as much as she sucks at character writing

[@ThermonuclearICBM]

Yeah. I much prefer LotR because it leaves NOTHING out. If you have a question, there is some unfinished book of lore that Tolkien wrote to definitely and *canonically* answer the question. Even the map of Middle-Earth is extremely detailed, with thousands of places that are never even referenced in the main books, but still have thick lore surrounding them.

[@Tomasrrb]

@@ThermonuclearICBM except who or what the hell is Tom Bombadil, he purposefully never explained that. What a genius of a man, his work is eternal.

[@arthurbriand2175]

Don't forget for the Middle East that the schools must have been instituted in historically great civilisations as there is often a symbiosis with the muggles. So the two middle Eastern schools should be in Persia and Egypt. And the Latin school probably in the mediterranean to link with the great cities of the Mare Nostrum.

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

The elephant in the room should go to the U.S one

[@dontreadmyprofilepic2124]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 WDYM?

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 I feel like a US school would be on the east coast, most likely split off from one of the european schools. So a british fork in Massachusetts or a French fork in Lousiana or Quebec. Maybe even a mesoamerican School that goes from Chile all the way up the coast to California.

[@pelinalwhitestrake3367]

Latin school might me in Rome.

[@peterwindhorst5775]

@@pelinalwhitestrake3367 bet that is going to be a problem with the Vatican there and the fact that the inquisition was in full force up until 1811.

[@SuperTrainStationH]

I've been saying this for YEARS before it became "fashionable" to criticize Rowling's world, but I ALWAYS felt like her Wizarding World was like a water balloon, it holds water PERFECTLY, as long as you don't poke or prod at it even the slightest bit. It hold together precisely enough to tell the actual story she wanted to tell, its a masterfully assembled castle of cards, but its not designed to stand in the wind or have cards pulled from it.

[@orirune3079]

I think it's one of those cases where she started writing a story without really thinking about the wider world too much, and then it became popular beyond anything she expected. And people started asking about the "wider world" of HP, and she didn't have good answers. She also has a tendency to just make stuff up that doesn't really make a lot of sense, which doesn't help her case. I remember reading the series as a kid and having the sense that the HP world was one in a long, slow decline, where Wizard numbers are decreasing each generation, their culture is stagnant, their government is bloated and overbearing, and the greatest wizards are all long in the past.

[@justas423]

Rowling really was just a Facebook Mom who accidentally got her Children's Book turned into a YA Novel Series and was suddenly forced to develop her world.

[@red_calla_lily]

Exactly. She wrote it for children - but the children refused to let go of her world and have become adults. And now these adults demand answers for the plot holes that are inherent in a children's book. Maybe it's more the fault of adults who refuse to grow up than of the creator of something meant for kids. They like Harry Potter because it reminds them of their cozy childhood but they end up bringing in the issues of adulthood into the world, corrupting it in the process. While I read Harry Potter, I played a Pokémon game for the first time. If I scrutinized the world of Pokémon the same way today, it would also fall apart in a second. But back then it was a blast.

[@VonVikoGoat]

@@red_calla_lily i mean you can say its for children all you want but you can't deny is inappropriate. the books not only have a pro slavery message but they also have this character i think that is literally an antisemitic caricature

[@I_love_dr_stone]

​@@red_calla_lilythe part about scrutinising the pokemon world in same way just isn't true. the pokemon world is a much more well developed world.

[@oddsdenver9673]

​@@seventeenseventysix5589yeah books fitting in with my morals is pretty normal thing to want, yeah.

[@hollowwoods7130]

​@@seventeenseventysix5589you're absolutely overreacting to that comment lmao. Being against a book literally being pro slavery is basic decency not moral high ground.

[@JaylukKhan]

She could have easily avoided this by just saying every country had their own wizard school.

[@anvos658]

That would be equally bad in the opposite way where you'd have way to many schools that don't have enough students.

[@JaylukKhan]

@anvos658 why???

[@anvos658]

@@JaylukKhan Its rather self explanatory when way too many would be the equivalent to a 1 Room School House, at that size your less a school and more a group apprentice program. Then add in the big one that past around 1400-1500 your muggle nation only means something to the small portion of the wizarding community that tries to integrate with muggles in daily life.

[@DarthFhenix55]

​@@anvos658She could've said there were tens of schools or at least there were schools in the most populated countries of their regions. Limiting the number to 11 is just not knowing how big the world is.

[@commas1]

I think there are a lot of countries she doesn’t think are worthy lol

[@Alexeiyeah]

Considering that Witchcastle (Castelobruxo translated) has a mayan temple design while in the middle of brazilian Amazonas, I would say that Europe having 3 to 4 schools on it's own while the rest almost nothing is pretty fitting.

[@ThePaulodash]

Every thing in castelobruxo feels wrong to me, first is a portuguese name, but it exist before the colonization, it has a mayan temple design but the mayan empire was further more to noth closer to mexico, i think it will be more fitting if it was an inca structure like the city of machu picchu and having a tupi guarani name.

[@moonshinefox]

@@ThePaulodash oh i love this! i’m argentine and i was thinking about how i’d ‘fix’ the SA school situation - and your idea totally makes sense. to build off it more: maybe the original SA school was and still is in modern day perú (love the inca ruin idea), and teaches magic and spells based on a mixture of guaraní and some spanish (like, classes are in spanish, i mean the magic language itself). maybe there’s also another school that was opened by the spanish coloniser wizards (?) in monte video or buenos aires that was seen as a place to teach “civilised” latin-based magic. as far as modern day brazil and other countries go, though - the ‘inca’ school makes sense because it was an empire that stretched over multiple modern day countries, while idk if the native peoples of brazil, patagonia, and northern south america would have gathered together to learn magic in one school 🧐 so i could see a modern day brazilian school, while maybe also places in northern brazil keep the tradition of smaller, independent schools or apprenticeships. that would leave three main schools in SA: inca/spanish + guaraní/pre colonial school in perú, ‘civilised’/spanish + latin/colonial school in arg/uruguay, colonial/portuguese school in brazil, with the existence of smaller, native based ‘schools’ from before the colonial times scattered around. as far as central america goes, idk enough about their history and culture to say, past the fact that there would definitely have been some form of magical education within the mayan and aztec empires

[@guigazalu]

@@moonshinefox The Brazilian school could even have some floating buildings, to fit the aesthetic of modernism seen in our capital!

[@KasumiRINA]

Still better than the "fixed" neocolonial map where they arbitrarily had Yalta 2 and gave half of Europe to be enslaved by moscow, and either China or Japan puts the other into concentration camps. The original with russia in Ukraine together is horribly offensive (BTW, boycott Atomic Heart, all profits from it will bomb my house) but westerners thinking they can improve someone drawing lines on a map with a ruler by doing the same again is too realistic to be funny.

[@gordogunso]

Might I suggest looking up the real life stories of the Warlocks of Chiloé. They’re supposedly a mafia esque group of wizards who came into being after a legendary interaction with Basque navigator José de Moraleda y Montero and Huilliche machi Chillpila. The lore podcast episode 25 elaborates on the history of these wizards. Check it out!

[@camerapasteurize7215]

*looks at map* *Sees that North Korea, South Korea, and Japan are all under the same school* How

[@user-us7el6ss2l]

Wizarding politics does not equate to Muggle politics. There may be a line in Korea, Palestine and india, but united in the WW

[@camerapasteurize7215]

@@user-us7el6ss2l It's not "North and South Korea" so much as it is "the Koreans and Japanese" that would be the problem.

[@sanguinetales]

in my headcanon, the schools listed are only "Ministry approved" schools. Which means there could be dozens of unsanctioned secret society type schools. Also the percentage of wizards to humans is small enough that they really don't need 100s of schools per continent.

[@flannelsone1159]

I find the idea of self-taught wizards cool

[@007kingifrit]

HOMESCHOOLING ftw

[@IronAidan260]

A good explanation I heard for this was that there were 11 Major schools around the world, kinda like the Russel Group of wizarding schools, then there are a bunch of smaller wizarding schools which allow smaller cultural groups to have their own wizarding school and for populations to kinda make sense. So for instance, Castelobruxo is the largest wizarding school in the South American continent, but places like Mexico and Central America have their own school, but with the option of sending their children to either ilvermorny or castelobruxo if they want their children to have a better education, or something

[@KillerOrca]

Wizarding community colleges too o? Like, the University of Washington isn’t the only college in Washington for example but it’s the one people know of

[@LuccaV1314]

That is the correct answer lorewise, she stated in this same article that the map was in that there are thousands of small schools, but the major ones are the 11 she named, not every kid gets to go to a major school in our world, actually, most do not, and I think it is just like that for the wizards in her world

[@VinnieMF]

That's the correct information on the number of schools. The video is simply poorly made.

[@Marconius6]

Putting Spain, France and ALL of Latin-America into one school seems like a stretch historically, even if it works out by population numbers. More realistically I would imagine a variety of European cultural centers would each have their own schools, and then Latin America would have a separate one, just like the US does. Although it would be interesting if Canadian and Aussie kids still went to Hogwarts...

[@hopejohnson6347]

I'd also like to think that there would be at least one separate school for the francophone world - like divide Canada up and give the french speaking african nations as well as the francophone oceanic nations' wizards to that school, have two english speaking schools - one being Hogwarts and one in the US... and consider the kid's native languages a bit more since... while kids in that age group can absolutely learn another language and start getting language lessons in school around that age, it would be really difficult to get them to a level of proficiency to have all their lessons in another language just like that when they get the letter of "hey, you're a wizard. Time to learn swedish, spanish, russian or arab now, you're gonna need it, soon!"

[@l.n.3372]

Not gonna lie, if canon was different and Hogwarts was always meant to be the school for the English speaking world of wizards, then it could have been really cool to see the existing characters broken down into different nationalities. Because in this version, Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand would need to be included along with UK and Ireland. Maybe some of the students could have been like: Harry is English Ron is Irish Neville is Canadian Hermione is American Just to name some examples. The adults would be different nationalities too, so maybe Voldemort and Dumbledore wouldn't necessarily both be British in this hypothetical version anymore.

[@fawkewe]

Spain and italy make sense. Italy was controlled by spain for most of the last 1000 years.

[@Marconius6]

@@fawkewe No it wasn't? The southern half was for some time, but not even close to 1000 years.

[@irfanadhin5918]

@@hopejohnson6347 its a magic world. There is probably a translation spell or something lol.

[@Dangthisdoinnumbers]

Can’t believe a Key and Peele skit put more thought into wizarding schools than Rowling.

[@audiovisualcringe]

here’s a wand with a silencer on it. WHY.

[@warrioroflight6872]

It's not like anything in Harry Potter has ever been logically thought through. Dumbledore is an excellent example of a character that is supposed to be smart but is actually an idiot. For example, at the beginning of the series: - He drops off baby Harry on the porch of a family he knows will abuse the poor tyke and never even meets with them to warn them that he doesn't approve of their methods in order to force them to improve. (Let's be honest, he's lucky Harry didn't end up becoming a serial killer with that upbringing.) In year 1 he: - Allows children to play an extremely dangerous game on flying brooms without their parents' permission. - Sends all students to their dormitories without protection when a troll gets in the school, (which also means the Slytherins were headed directly to the dungeon where the troll supposedly was) instead of having all the students stay in the great hall and sending out some teachers and prefects to get anyone who was missing while going after the troll himself. - Has an evil wizard teach the defense class when he should be able to sense Voldemort's presence literally on the back of the teacher's head. - Allows some 11 year-olds with barely any training to be forced for detention into the dark forest which is known to be filled with dangerous monsters in order to hunt down something drinking unicorn blood, all with only one adult who is already known to be irresponsible. - Gives Harry a powerful invisibility cloak when he's still a kid. (Also, did he just forget to give the cloak to Harry's parents 10 years ago when Voldemort was hunting them, or was he trying to get them killed all along?) In year 2 he: - Never does anything about the new defense teacher even though he must be reviewing the assignments he gives his students. - Never notifies any parents about it when the school is attacked and some students are being petrified, and continues to keep all the children at school. - Sends his phoenix to help Harry by bringing a sword to kill the basilisk instead of coming himself to help with his powerful magical abilities. In year 3 he: - Hires a werewolf to be a teacher without telling any parents about it. - Never had any of the students taught to use the patronus charm against the dementors that were deployed on school grounds. (Admittedly, that would be beyond the ability of the younger students, but it doesn't matter because he should have tried anyway if there were monsters around the school that could literally suck out people's souls.) - Allows Hagrid to run a class with live magical beasts when, as stated before, Hagrid has already proven to be highly irresponsible. - Never gets rid of the bad-tempered tree on school grounds that he had planted to keep the werewolf a secret back when said werewolf was a student. (Also, why did he ever think that planting that tree was a good idea in a school full of kids while never even putting so much as a sign or a fence around it?) In year 4 he: - Never even inspects the tri-wizard cup at the tournament or takes any other precautions with the final challenge even though a man was recently murdered. And I haven't gotten past that point in the series yet, but I'm sure that he's just as stupid in the future books. In any case, that's why I call him DUMBledore. Oh, and yes, Voldemort is just as stupid.

[@ErisCalamitasButFR]

It's been a hot minute since I've read books 5-8 but I'd just like to add that he did NOTHING about the methods of "discipline" of Dolores that _bitch_ that basically involve the punished student to commit self harm like. What??? HOW DID HE ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN, ITS HIS SCHOOL

[@danielsurvivor1372]

What does "poor tyke" mean?

[@ErisCalamitasButFR]

@@danielsurvivor1372 eccentric person

[@Tundra0stalker]

In year 4 he *was* smart enough to put an age line around the Goblet of Fire, one that was strong enough to tell when someone (Fred & George) artificially aged themselves to try and enter the tournament. But *wasn't* smart enough to prevent other people from somehow putting other people's names in the Goblet (Barty Crouch Jr. disguised as Moody to Harry). Something which could and *did* result in one of his underage students not only being specifically targeted for assassination, but it was the one person he should've been *most* concerned about. Getting them forced into a magically binding contract. Harry didn't even plan on entering if he could. All this also directly let to the death of Cedric and the full revival of Voldemort. Like, the Goblet chose two champions for Hogwarts, it could've chose more. What if it turned out some older student snuck in a first years name without them knowing? They'd have to complete in a tournament that is explicitly deadly for student far more experienced than them! All for not doing something that would logically be next on the list after preventing underage students from entering. Did he seriously not expect older kids to enter their underage friends, or to do that as a prank? Let alone death eaters he *knows* are active and on the move and would *love* to basically pit non-purebloods against each other in a life-risking tournament!

[@arthurmorganSUN]

@@danielsurvivor1372 baby.

[@litl1922]

As a Korean I would not be happy going to a Japanese magic school, or even a regular Japanese school for that matter, and I can't think of any Korean parent(s) living in Korea who would happily send their child to Japan without any worries or concerns at all.

[@MetalBansheeX]

Is that because of facing discrimination for being Korean? :o

[@DropingOut]

@@MetalBansheeX I think it chalks up to how Japan and Korea are notorious for not having good relation with each other due to their history, specifically 1910 to 1945 as Korea was ruled as part of Japan (forcibly).

[@mirceazaharia2094]

>angry Japanese noises >angry Korean noises And that's how it would be year round. Maybe a few duels and prank wars going too far, and the occasional Romeo and Juliet thing. But yeah, as a Romanian, I would not be very stoked to go to school with fans of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or those that still support the horrid way the Allies treated my country after WW2.

[@gabimferraz5212]

literally, i could never send my kid to portugal or spain to sotudy just like that, absolutely not my kid is staying in brasil

[@kouusa]

EXACTLY

[@eamonreidy9534]

Jk clearly never envisaged world building at this level. She wrote a book or two, it became bigger than she ever could have imagined and then she had to cover plot issues and world building issues.

[@greenamber9827]

It's evident that Harry Potter wasn't meant to be the start of an extended universe.

[@eamonreidy9534]

@@greenamber9827 in a world of flying cars, brooms, magic chimney travel, apparition, and anything else conceivable, kids get in a regular train in London to go to school in Scotland. None of it makes sense.

[@greenamber9827]

@@eamonreidy9534 I'm not saying Harry Potter doesn't make sense, but that it was meant to just be a series of seven books.

[@mrcephalopod]

Rowling is a very vivid world-builder, but by God is she an inconsistent one. She can't even keep things straight across her 7 books, where the hell was priori incantatem and veritaserum in the trial of sirius black?

[@ConfusedRambutan]

i feel like a good description of her world-building is "all aesthetics, not much substance"

[@BlitzHUB_Ky]

If wizards are 10% of population, why even hide? By this point this may be seem not even rare talent, it more likely to see wizard than scientist. If 3K in uk, thats 0,05% of all population

[@m0thlegs938]

Idk if anyone’s said this yet, or if it’s an actual thing, but honestly, it would’ve been way better if she had like made it a fun challenge for the worldwide fans to make their own versions of their magical schools for their diff countries and cultures. Then, not only would it be a cool way to bring the global community together and for fans to contribute to the fiction they love in a creative way, but it would also be more culturally accurate and rich for the world building, since it’s coming directly from the people who live there. I’m not too familiar with the HP fandom but I feel like it could be a cool idea rather than just have every single witch or wizard crammed into 11 schools worldwide lol

[@zoebrugg7594]

That’s what I was thinking.

[@kylenetherwood8734]

Haha I can just imagine the trolls now. Give Iceland 10 schools and everyone else goes to Hogwarts. I really hope she does this now.

[@alexvang5639]

Oh absolutely. With so many Harry Potter fans across the world, I’m sure everyone would feel awesome being represented in the wizarding world. Each country having their own wizarding school- each one tailored by fans from that country to be culturally and mythologically accurate is an easy way to do so.

[@trianglemoebius]

That would have been great... but it was never going to happen. Rowling is notorious for hating the idea that anything about Harry Potter might not be her direct creation and under her control, to the point of her having her legal team take down fan websites to centralize everything on Pottermore (which she obviously controlled). Apparently even at fan meetings, if fans would ask questions about theories they had she'd get cross because people dared think about her world in ways she didn't approve of.

[@apollo1694]

Collaborative worldbuilding always sucks

[@nakenmil]

One thing I think you could say in the "Wizarding World's" favor (and bear in mind I am not really a too knowledgeable about HP stuff) is that many of the wizarding communities are a lot older than the modern states or even ethnic groups in their regions. Wasn't Hogwarts founded in the high middle ages? That's long before a unified Britain as a thing, before England and Scotland unified. I kinda assume that some of this is true for other regions as well, especially Eurasian ones (Ilvermorny still comes off as an obvious construct of colonialism), and at least partially, the wizarding communities might exist as separate cultures less affected by mainstream divides. Maybe the MENA school PREDATES the split of Islam? Or hell, maybe it predates Islam itself. Maybe the South Asian or SEA school is so old it effectively has its own internal philosophy that's neither completely hindu or buddhist? Drumstrang being a central-northern European school kinda implies it predates the Reformation and maybe even arose alongside the early state formation in the region, so it might be as old as 800-1000 AD or something. That's long before most of the ethnic groups and countries that exist today were even conceived of. I know most of this is nonsense, I'm just trying to have some fun with it, and I kinda like the idea of the Wizarding world have cOMPLETELY different ways of viewing the world, even if the Anglocentrism of the actual books is very clear and implies a fairly conventional worldview (ie. a British ministry, an American thing, etc. etc.)

[@Jotari]

That makes sense for pureblood only schools, but the existence of muggle borns and even half bloods with muggle parents means the modern world is effectively going to seep in. Unless the wizards are just very effective at propaganda wiping away all of their original culture. After all, the original series does take place in the early 90s and we see zero tension between Seamus and any of the students over the ongoing Northern Ireland conflict known as the Troubles.

[@CrystalLily1302]

also rowling confirmed that castelbruxo existed since the year 400CE ish I think but it's a portugese speaking school.....

[@lucciqs]

this makes sense!

[@bibbr4137]

​@@Jotarimost wizards canonically do not give af about muggle culture. if a pureblood saw a chinese and korean fighting, that'd just be funny to them. pureblood supremacists would completely destroy whatever preexisting cultural differences were in modern muggles.

[@gustavolopes5094]

​@@CrystalLily1302That is dumb in so many different levels I'm chocked to even hear it. But I don't doubt it for a second.

[@captainH023]

Japan getting it's own school kinda make sense when you know that it's historically one of Harry Potter's biggest market and one of the few countries where the Fantastic Beasts movies hadn't completely crapped the bed commercially yet lol

[@ChesireWaltz]

Fantastic Beasts imploding the way it did is depressing. I thought Newt was a BRILLIANT and fresh lead character, I wish it just followed him instead of all the drama shoe horned in. Given his job it could have taken us on adventures all over the magical world and instead we got dragged into bullshit that had already been touched on by the main series again -_-

[@alexanderackerman3807]

I feel fantastic Beasts was a pretty good stand alone movie. It's the sequels that try and tie it into the larger world that ruin it for me

[@thevoidlord1796]

You can really tell that Rowling is British because she divided the European countries with (some) consideration, and then just divvied up the rest of the world with no regard for history, culture, language, religion, geography or geopolitics.

[@rafexrafexowski4754]

Good thing you added the "some" when it comes to Europe. The Dutch going to a Latin school is absolutely insulting.

[@myfairytalelife3]

Considering the fact that Draco almost ended up in Durmstrang, and that it's pretty common for parents to teach their own children magic instead of sending them to a Wizarding school I think it's safe to say that what matters is where the schools are and not where students come from.

[@jonasnee]

i feel like maybe lots of africa and perhaps other regions could simply be "self taught" or "apprentice system", central schools makes sense in states that were central when they where made like europe and asia, less centralized areas could easily just mimic their societies in being more person to person training like you would a trade.

[@ELDETECTIVE-CREEPY]

i also thinck that something like that would happen in mexico, altinoamerica and other regions were magic thinking is more "alive", magic user probly would be teached by their parents, for generetion to generation, but there are gona be some especializated institutions.

[@nataliemccarthy9140]

I could certainly see a case where the sub Saharan African school was set up during colonization for any wizards/muggle born wizards with parents involved in the colonial effort so the school is primarily made up of expats/elites while the average person learns magic at home

[@robertgronewold3326]

You are correct. The article where she explains the schools say that many young wizards in isolated areas are self taught or in apprenticeships. But that information is commonly left out of maps.

[@ChesireWaltz]

@@robertgronewold3326 I think the problem with that is it also doesn't quite make sense; how is everyone not getting their cover blown when muggleborns exist? If everyone is self taught without a central body, who manages arguably one of the biggest risks to the secrecy of wizards? Or does the one school just manage ALL the muggleborns? It just seems odd, feel like only I can imagine why she didn't just say there are major prestigious schools and then a bunch of smaller regional ones, it makes perfect sense and addresses pretty much every problem.

[@MrLeemurman]

I agree, which is a map of "magic communities" would be ideal to start with, then decide if there is an institution in said community or not.

[@MellonVegan]

Durmstrang is just an anagram of Sturm & Drang, a German literary genre from the time of the enlightenment. Just realised this, so felt like commenting.

[@veejayroth]

For historical reasons, the Czechs and the Poles would 100% be part of the Germanic school, despite the language difference.

[@thediethrower1803]

So would Northern Italy. But not the Balkans or Scandinavia.

[@bluedaybae8393]

1940s have entered the chat 💀

[@daroguk8071]

​@@bluedaybae8393Try to learn any history that's not WW2

[@darken2417]

Old Harry Potter lore was pretty straight forward but then changed over time. Originally it was fairly clear that the reason Wizards left the normal world is because of Witch hunts which were successful. So essentially that normal technology had outpaced the potency of magic. The Wizarding world was thus like a sanctuary for magic users and magical creatures and the reason why revealing its existence is forbidden is because it would threaten all of their lives. Voldemort being a magic supremacist and having followers makes more sense in this context, resentment toward normal humans for past grievances and for taking the world. But of course now magic has been buffed far too much that it makes little sense for why Wizards are hiding away although we could always just forget that the Fantastic Beasts series exists.

[@akiraraiku]

Buffed in what way ? I'm still of the opinion that most long range fire arms and artillery are nigh uncounterable with magic.

[@MementoMoriGrizzly]

@@akiraraiku Imperio on important people is really powerful.

[@baph0met]

@@MementoMoriGrizzly Well I guess we know why the world wars happened now

[@Jotari]

@@akiraraiku That suitcase from the first movie is bonkers. And Newt, a highschool drop out, did that himself!? What's the point in having St Mungos and Under Ground ministries? The wizards can manipulate spacetime so effectively they can create their own planet!

[@Gustoberg]

You divided the schools by religion (wich is the least worst way to approach this) BUT the linguistic barrier is probably way too high, like, when I tried to learn arabic and discovered each arabic 'dialect' is actually a whole different language (wich, as someone pointed down here, they are understandable with each other, so it would be as substantial as differences in english accents)

[@Gustoberg]

@@ArabianCrescent thank you for the information! I'll edit the comment

[@emersonpage5384]

Considering HP magic is already basically just a variant of Latin that needs to be learned, adding on language courses shouldn't be *too* big of a challenge.

[@Ballin4Vengeance]

From not learning arabic, I've read there is a standardized version of Arabic: The language Qu'ran is in and that that is the version most arabs at least know, even if they use their own dialects at home.

[@user-us7el6ss2l]

@@Ballin4Vengeance Quranic Arabic is known as Classical Arabic and has a lot of advanced "Quranology" studies for those who want to truly interpet it as it is (The top Ulema)

[@freakishuproar1168]

Rowling doing the whole "aFrIcA iS a cOuNtRy, rIgHt?" thing is hilarious and very on-brand for her. Admittedly I don't know very much about the Wizarding World and Harry Potter lore in general, but I just think it's an enormously egregious missed opportunity to not have dozens, if not hundreds/thousands of magical schools around the planet. Surely it'd make the in-universe version of Earth feel a lot bigger? EDIT: I just noticed the whole lumping together of South-East Asia/Australasia/presumably the Micronesian islands. You know, just that whole corner of the planet... xD

[@jamaluddinkhalifa8371]

that lumping together is on the random Potterhead, not Rowling herself

[@abydosianchulac2]

I think having that many schools and that large a clearly-defined population would minimize the story, actually. It's hard to have an evil, world-threatening wizard if that wizard's support base is so badly outnumbered by the rest of the magical world. It becomes less "global domination" and more "Taliban retaking Afghanistan" - certainly horrible to those living there, but difficult to spread influence outside that geosocial sphere.

[@FlatDerrick]

It's split into two. 'Our' Africa and 'Frances' Africa, in British Imperalist terms- which is what JKR is.

[@arx3516]

And you also have to take into account cultural differences. A magic school in Kenya or one in India, Japan or China would look nothing like each other, and would teach very different types of magic.

[@DontMessWithCaesar]

Having only a casual understanding of the Harry Potter series, the system that Rowling sets up makes me think magic and wizardry culture is incredibly Eurocentric with large parts of the world and billions of people completely excluded from their society and with no access to an education. It's a pretty bleak world to be honest.

[@realdragao6367]

Im brasilguayan (paraguayan-brazilian) and honestly, castelobruxo would be the most creative name on this continent. The school i study in is literally named “educational institution”.

[@MikaelaKMajorHistory]

I’ve done a lot of place name studying and frankly, I’m sad to say that a LOT of places are just named “war zone” or “free fort” or “crow town”.

[@realdragao6367]

@@MikaelaKMajorHistory well i’d certainly like to go to a school named war zone.

[@daedalus1453]

@@MikaelaKMajorHistorydo you have any funny examples

[@MikaelaKMajorHistory]

@@daedalus1453 I have yet to find some really funny ones but most them are just very literal. For example, there’s Steinwald (stone forest), the Po River and Po Basin in Italy mean “itty bitty River and basin” because Po comes from the word pocco, and Andhra Pradesh is a mix of old and current languages meaning “South State”. There’s even a tribe in the US that many refer to as the Nez Perce, but their native name translates to “the people”. Also the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel just means “new castle”. People just like to keep things literal. Even the capital city Bern is said to have been named after the word for bear.

[@bumblingbureaucrat6110]

Those places have all got nothing on the number of places called "collection of farming huts"

[@Eliastion]

I think it would make sense to assume that in some parts of the world the wizards don't really attend the central wizard schools - especially in sub-Saharan Africa that never in its history got unified as a single country/culture/civilization it would make sense for the wizard world to be mostly fragmented, with children largely aught at home in reclusive wizard clans, likely tracing back to tribal shamans (in some cases even still holding the job). That could actually result in just a single wizard school in Africa, probably dating to the colonial times and established by European wizards as a means to deal with the problem of muggle-born (and thus lacking any training whatsoever) African wizards - leaving them be would be asking for them to be noticed by European muggles which would, in turn, increase the risk of European wizards' cover being blown. Another thing worth mentioning is that some strange groupings could make more sense considering that muggle culture and especially religion doesn't seem to have much impact on the wizard community. Same with muggle politics - they don't leave wizards completely unaffected but they're not that crucial for them. This removes (or at least makes significantly less severe) many seemingly unsurmountable divisions between countries, making it much easier to squeeze them into a single magic school - it's much easier to fit Shia and Sunni students together when they can be assumed to typically hardly even count as Muslims, considering wizards' strong propensity for atheism.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

That makes me thing that french and german wizards would indeed go to the same school, probably set somewhere in Belgium. While the muggle world split the empire in the mid 800s, the wizard world never did.

[@DogDogGodFog]

Wizards atheist? Where did you get that from? 90s Britain wouldn't have a particularly large percentage of visibly religious people. We have e.g. the Fat Friar as a counterexample to your claim...

[@johnroach9026]

@@DogDogGodFog even in 2001, 78% of people identified as Christian. You'd think Hogwarts would have a chapel of some form for those who did want to practice their religion, yet in all six books, we don't get anyone mentioning religion. While this is almost certainly a deliberate choice made by Rowling, it is a little odd that nobody ever brings up religious afiliation, with over 150 named characters in the books There's also evidence that British wizards have a distrust of organised religion, considering how in History of Magic, its mentioned that persecutions by the Church forced wizards into hiding. Its unlikely that wizardkind would keep its loyalties to a church that was actively hunting them down

[@DogDogGodFog]

@@johnroach9026 In Western society categorizing as Christian was something akin to the default, regardless of how religious you actually were in person. In fact this is still true in some countries to this day, where kids are forcibly baptised as babies and then end up wanting to become atheists, but legally exiting the church is nearly impossible with how much bureaucracy it requires, and thus those atheists show up as "Christian" in censuses. Because they are registered as members of the church, even if they're straight up atheists.

[@lucyandecember2843]

o.o

[@kuroazrem5376]

I don't really see religion as an issue because most religions ban magic. As such, I don't think wizards would be the most practizing type, if they care about religion at all. Also, there might exist spells for interlingual communication so that language is not a problem either.

[@ummdustry5718]

Certainly none of the characters we see in harry-potter seem particularly christian, I'd imagine that likewise iranian wizards probably aren't Muslims. That being said, that also bothered me about the books, you'd expect religion to be a bigger deal for people than it is. On the one hand muggle-borns who come from religious families are 100% freaking out, on the other hand why doesn't the wizarding world have any kind of religious beliefs of their own?

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

Christmas is celebrated in Hogwarts so it is assumed that Hogwarts is christian. Which also contradicts what J.K Rowling said about Dumbledore later but whatever the HP world doesnt make much sense

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

@@ummdustry5718 The muggle born kids should also have some moral opposition to some of the surprisingly cruel things that are taught. Like turning people and animals into inanimate objects (playing with creation) or murder or paralyzing someone or trying to throw someone off from a broom flying 30 m in the air

[@conansglasses2645]

What about muggle born wizards tho ? I honestly can't see a mugglr Muslim family taking the news that their child is a wizard very well , let alone send them away to learn witchcraft

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 Christmas is also celebrated in Japan and they have neither a big christian population nor history. One could assume that it has moved to a more cultural/family than religious event.

[@sparklepawz1185]

China: literally called the Middle Kingdom and was the central power of the world for centuries. Every Asian country had to pay tribute and recognize the Chinese emperor as the emperor of Asia at one point. Korea: the gateway for trade between mainland Asia and Japan. The early Korean kingdoms brought written language, steel smithing techniques, and administrative systems to Japan and helped the then Yamato kingship dominate the island and eventually form what would be Japan as an island nation. Japan: little presence in the Asian sphere until the 19th century, mainly trading with Korea. Until the 15th century they mainly kept to themselves due to centuries of civil war and when that finally ended they immediately tried to get a foothold in the Asian sphere which led to their invasion of Korea, which ended in such a devastating defeat even Europe heard about it, after which they had to pay reparations and went into isolation. Why is Japan the place where the magic boarding school is located in again?

[@dc6502]

Duh because of anime.

[@thegreatestoctopus9739]

My question is, were there any global conflicts and if they were, how did they go down with all the magic happening. It will be extremely interesting for you to make a video about that

[@robland3253]

WW2 had hitler & Grimwald marching around killing people, Great leap forward, cultural revolution, and Chinese civil war would have killed a lot of Chinese wizards

[@Astro_Guy_1]

Fantastic Beasts did pretty much confirm that there were Magic-Nazis and a Magic Hitler. With German wizards fervently supporting him. I chock that up to lazy writing though.

[@justaponyyy]

agree it sounds very lazy

[@RenegadeShepard69]

It's what I was asking myself about in another comment thread. Basically a Wakanda situation, where were those african wizards when their continent was getting torn apart? I guess it would need her to elaborate on internal tribal warfare between wizards who are more preoccupied with the magic world than the muggle world, or/and isolationism, with wizards not wanting to and not having resources to fight off colonizing wizards. Lol the more you think of this stuff the less magical it sounds and honestly, the story should just be as much about a lonely orphan with a funny scar as possible, it's not LOTR, the worldbuilding is around the characters not otherwise. Still, it'd be better to have most german wizards turning their backs to their muggle counterparts, or even being persecuted, during the third reich than nazi witches, sounds too op to me lol.

[@comradewindowsill4253]

@@RenegadeShepard69 I mean, I was mostly surprised that she went with nazi wizards and DIDN'T go for the obvious opening of the Ahnenerbe, a division of the SS dedicated to supernatural phenomena and artifacts- basically, the guys Indiana Jones was up against. I could see it working- in fact, other magic realist works have made that connection, for example the Rivers of London series, but the way she did it was so ham-fisted and obviously lacking in any actual effort to connect the two factions properly, or do even a bare minimum of historical research.

[@samuelconnolly347]

I'm a teacher and the idea that 1000 students go to Hogwarts gives me a lot of sympathy for the teachers there. Snape, Flitwick, et al. are responsible for covering their subjects by themselves. I think that number of 1000 is absolute nonsense though as frankly it doesn't work with a timetable. Also, we know how many Gryffindor students are in Harry's year so it would be easy to extrapolate, and the number will be much less than 1000. Very few, if any, UK private schools (which is essentially what Hogwarts is) have that many students.

[@Jotari]

It might functionally draw on the imagery of a private school, but it seems to be very much a public school for practical attendance matters. And 1,000 isn't that crazy a number. What is strange is your point about the number of teachers though. Having just one teacher for each subject would make for a very intense schedule. I went to a secondary school with only 600 or so students and even there each subject had at least three teachers.

[@missgiroud97]

​@@Jotarithe problem is that there isnt 1000 students. They have between 4 and 5 for dorms of just one grade and gender. If we multiplicate that for the other gender, 4 houses and 7 years gives us less than 300. Harry and Ron share a room with Seamus, Dean y Neville. They dont mention any other one in their Gryffindor grade

[@auliamate]

@@Jotari I live in Canada, and there are virtually 0 schools, for children who have not graduated high school/secondary school, that have 1000 students.

[@msky_uwz7451]

I just graduated a grammar school with almost 1000 students (930 to be exact). If I remember correctly we had roughly 80 teachers.

[@Jotari]

@@auliamate You've phrased that strangely. Are you saying all high schools in Canada have more than 1000 students?

[@lindseylorio6153]

The cannon of the Wizarding World tends to fall once you leave Britain, and I think this is as good as any other attempt to try to make it believable. As a hard core Harry Potter fan, my personal head canon is that 11 schools exist, but most magical children never have access to a magical school. They would practice magic differently than the British and Americans most likely, and each culture would have their own ways of handling magical education. Some cultures may even consider it better for children to be educated with muggles if their magical community isn’t large enough in their area to be self sufficient.

[@snakewithapen5489]

Like learning languages. People who learn a language in an academic setting in one country may be able to speak it with proper grammar, but it will always be fundamentally different to the way kids grow up speaking the language natively in small towns on the opposite side of the world, and communication between the two might be difficult. There's probably a significant difference between the school-taught way to use magic, and the vernacular way magic is commonly used by kids without access to a school.

[@andmos1001]

In the game, we actually get to know that the African school is the largest and oldest school of magic, and their main study is natural magic

[@lourdesastudillo7532]

You know, I've always assume that these schools were like the most famous school, not the ONLY wizardings schools in the world. Like, I thought that every country had its own schools but, for example, going to Dumstrang it was like going to Harvard, like hoing to a top magic school.

[@VinnieMF]

That's not just your assumption, that's the canon information. This video was simply poorly researched.

[@m4rcyonstation93]

​@@VinnieMF source? I cant seem to find anything on it

[@johannes4123]

I tried to make a wizarding school map that made sense (relatively speaking), I ran into two major problems 1. Grouping cultures together in a functional way is hard 2. I ran low on visually distinct colors surprisingly quickly (I didn't run out of colors, but I'm not bothering making a distinction between golden yellow and honey yellow)

[@Lostouille]

Use orange

[@yeeyee5057]

4:53 Every country has the chance to have magical students, except for Liberia apparently 😭😭😭

[@ETB3341]

They already have their own magic with figures like the cannibal president or general butt naked

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

That is just the same situation we usually have with Greenland or West Sahara: No Data

[@kenyabrunson4985]

Liberia would probably have its own school, as it was founded in 1822, by Americans of African descent. Another reason why 11 schools worldwide makes no sense -- even going with the "top tier schools" head canon, it's simply too few schools as it fails to take into account, well... History.

[@simongosimon]

When I went to music school in Denmark where I live, we were visited by a band that was a fusion between Scandinavian jazz and west African folk music, specifically Gambian I think. The way they described studying music in Gambia was that the school was essentially the estate of a family of musicians, who they then lived, worked and played music with. I feel like I can imagine a similar situation regarding the study of magic, considering how relatively few actual magicians there are, and how its kinda weird that the entire world is supposed to use the same model of British boarding school, if you really think about it

[@michaelstowe2167]

Harry Potter is an anomaly. It was the first novel that Rowling ever published, and it absolutely exploded. That never happens. J.K. Rowling was an amateur writer that got astronomically lucky. So yes, there's a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies. I try not to dwell too much on it and just enjoy it for what it is.

[@zimniok7602]

It's even weirder when you realise that book sucks

[@killerkitten7534]

Tbh if JK just went on Twitter and said “yeah, the books have a lot of inaccuracies. That’s just what’s going to happen when you’re making a world this big, did my best but yeah certainly some errors here and there” most people wouldn’t have an issue. But it’s like she’s just incapable of admitting she isn’t perfect

[@familiescharf4207]

@@zimniok7602 how

[@HeatherMason-fi1qr]

her later works are even more laughable

[@LordMayorOfDairyBell]

Logically, there'd be way more magic schools then just 11. So here's my alternative. China has the most magic schools in one country based solely on population size and the many dialects of China (at least 18; One for each ethnic group over 1,000,000). India also has a bunch of magic schools but has that nasty caste system to deal with so it could result in less to no learning of magic for different people. Europe, despite having not having a high wizard population, has a staggering amount of magic schools (from Ancient Roman forts to old Soviet bunkers). The Muslim world has hidden schools all over it (as varied as the faiths and people of Islam). Sub-Saharan Africa has the newest and most numerous magic schools as formal magic training is a fairly new concept to much of their population (the most ancient schools are in located in Mali and Ethiopia). America has quite a few schools and the international English world tends to go to them (most are located on either the east or west coast). Latin America is doted with lots of magic schools (most of them leftovers from the time of the Spanish Empire). Japan has a couple of magic schools (they serve both Japanese and Korean wizards). Southern Southeast Asia would attend either the Chinese or Indian schools or share a school for their region. That's all I got. Anything else you can think of, fill in.

[@LordMayorOfDairyBell]

Side Note: I'd really like to see a follow up where you realistically map out magic schools without the restrictions of only doing 11. You'll probably do a better job than my idea since I'm basically running off sleep deprivation and whatever I can google in under 10 seconds.

[@comradewindowsill4253]

Speaking historically, the middle east and china would have very old institutions of magic, older than the nations themselves in the case of the middle east. I could absolutely see magic-using ancient egyptians maintaining a tradition of magic even past the collapse of the pharaoh, having competed and cooperated with greek traditions at various times. In the fertile crescent, same deal. I would not be surprised if the local pureblood populations were not actually muslim for the most part, but built on a bedrock of the original polytheistic local religions. also explains islam's animosity towards magic, considering. then there'd be another layer of magic-users who are zoroastrian, dating back to the days of the Persian empire, as well. And, then, sure, there would most likely still be certain sects of islam which formed around a core of magic-users, creating yet another, newer layer. and you thought middle-eastern religious tensions were convoluted already... the magic world only makes it worse. and then you'd have modern muggleborns, who might well be disowned or worse by their families, and having to deal with the sudden pressure of being a sinner under the eyes of god... and there's what probably was the original reason that european purebloods didn't like muggleborns very much.

[@graynight3478]

good

[@Omouja]

The wizard schools in South and North America would gonna be much more older that the arival of the Europeans, built in the Inca, Aztec and Maya period, even before

[@gokbay3057]

There is an issue with combining Japan and Korea, considering what Japan was going in East Asia in the first half of the 20th century. And Muslim world would probably both have local pre-Islamic schools and Muslim-derived schools in various regions.

[@nathishvel5725]

As a spatial science student, I think this was a very good exercise in GIS, that is, making strategic decisions on where to allocate schools with several datasets (e.g population size, ethnicity, travel distance etc), and using a map to display that information. Just an excellent way to start my school week!

[@mirceazaharia2094]

o7

[@AndrewMakesPuns]

The sheer commitment to making Rowling's mad groupings of people work is impressive

[@overgrownkudzu]

i mean they don't work, there is no way in the world to make this even remotely close to working. it's just less terrible than before

[@arx3516]

Most likely some places don't have any magic school at all. In Italy and Spain wizards have all been slaughtered by the Inquisition,while in Africa they have shamans, who practice a different kind of magic and pass on their knowledge directly from master to pupil.

[@moon4236]

Britain also had witch trials but they have a school. Also I doubt witches would be that affected by the inquisition they were not that affected and we know actual wizards could survive an execution, it's in the books.

[@zuarbrincar769]

Spain was one of the countries with the lowest participation in witch hunts. Most inquisitors were skeptical of witches☠️

[@artimist0315]

You forgot Romania and Moldova in the latin schools, they may be eastern europe country but as the name Romania suggests, it is part of the latin world. Also given this is a map for the wizarding world, I think it's best to assume it wasn't affected much by religious divide, but is mostly divided between different linguistic region and magical traditions. For exemple I don't think there would be a big conflict between wizards from different branches of islam as I don't think wizards take religion particularly seriously.

[@lexthemystic3541]

Precisesly.

[@TheLuigiBrother77]

Well, one would assume that the wizards have had their own secret societies or empires throughout history with different borders than our own. For example, would one really assume that the wizards didn't know about or had contact with America before the muggles did? The schools in the Americas and most wizards there are probably Indians, whereas the only Spanish/English etc there would likely be Muggleborns who came from the colonists

[@wilhelmbaur]

@ايمان احمد Bot

[@conansglasses2645]

What about muggle born wizards tho ? Also most wizards were shown to live AMONG muggles ( like how the Black mansion was stuffed in the middle of a normal neighborhood , or how the potters also lived in an average English neighborhood)

[@iandavidvillaloboswong5180]

But magicians can also be born out of muggles. Wouldnt this cause everyone to eventually become magicians?

[@conansglasses2645]

@@iandavidvillaloboswong5180 not exactly , it was stated that the muggle to wizard ratio is actually consistent everywhere on earth , its why wizards can be born from non magical muggle families while at the same time a pure blood wizard family like the weaslys can give birth to a non magical squib

[@dunbass7149]

@ايمان احمد congratulations or sorry

[@Glockas]

Unless there's any official canon saying otherwise, I'd like to think the Rowling Map is a map of the top-tier schools rather than these being all of the schools with catchment areas, Hogwarts being the equivalent to Eton or Oxford in the wizarding world, with only the extremely gifted or elite/wealthy going there. The obvious problems in the original map can be explained through different countries being more likely to have elite wizarding schools and not many schools are likely to reach that level just like IRL Education with a lot more of the top-tier schools and unis in the western world. Meanwhile the vast majority of Wizards go to unmentioned "regular" Wizarding schools (potentially classified as something else so Hogwarts and gang can be "THE Wizarding Schools"), or go to Muggle schools while being home-schooled for wizarding matters (in my head canon the later makes more sense, further explaining why it would be hard to establish a new school akin to Hogwarts and gang as there would be no "regular" wizarding schools to rise up the ranks). It would also make the 1:10 wizard-muggle ratio for more believable. As shown in the video a 1:10 ratio of 11-17 year olds in the UK doesn't equal 1000 Hogwarts students. I'm disregarding the 3000 total UK wizards as that would mean 1/3 of the wizard population are aged 11-17 students at Hogwarts. Edit: Spelling

[@airistal]

There are also options for tutors and apprenticeships.

[@nilavanathi7336]

My personal favourite way to sort this is to imagine that the Stature of Secrecy was a very Western European thing, so most other wizards either have their own schools that haven't been registered since they're not properly hodden from muggles, or go to blended schools and unis (or even other styles of learning, like at temples or madrasas). The "Schools" on Rowling's map are there for registration purposes, and if you plan to go to western europe you owl them and they send you a shiny graduation certificate and you're free to make up whatever stories you like about the school. (And maybe they have a standing Quidditch team, who knows)

[@Illuminatorofshadow]

By canon the Statute of Secrecy is global, thus Magical Europe had already colonized the rest of the world by the 1680s.

[@kajamiletic3223]

Yeah, I was also thinking about how other cultures would have other types of education, like perhaps some sort of apprenticeship model or temple schools

[@graffiti9145]

Angola and Mozambique should join the Spanish-portuguese school, cause they speak Portuguese, and I know they have religious difference but they get along with Brazilians pretty well, specially Angola

[@guy027]

Adding to this, Equatorial Guinea should also join the Latin languages school because they speak French, Portuguese and Spanish.

[@riadelliane5053]

I imagine there are multiple smaller unregistered schools in each country. Like homeschooling, some may have an indigenous apprentice system learning traditional magic taught by self-learned witches/wizards in the more remote areas (mountains/woods) of a country for discretion.

[@SocialistStrike]

Maybe this will sound insensitive to religious people as I am a devout atheist, but I really don't think there would be that many religious wizards. Culturally speaking, the Wizarding world is a secret world hidden practically parallel to our own, they seem largely immune to global politics, and at least in Ilvermorny, Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beaubaton there doesn't seem to be any religious element among the wizards. This is all to say that I don't believe the Arabic/Muslim world would have a Shiite/Suni issue. It could exist of course, but I just think wizards have bigger problems to deal with than 'infidels' and Judases. Their issues seem to rest on a different plane considering WW2 was almost a non-issue for them. Still, it's entirely ridiculous to have only 11 schools for a global Wizarding population of about .5% of the global pop.