J.K. Rowling Says We'll Learn About the American Hogwarts in 'Fantastic Beasts' Movie

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Occasionally we forget that J.K. Rowling is making a movie out of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and then something happens -- like Eddie Redmaynebeing cast as magizoologist Newt Scamander -- and we remember all over again that next year we’re returning to the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

To be fair, Fantastic Beasts will take place 70 years before the Harry Potter films (the script itself is inspired by a textbook of the same title that was required reading in the Care of Magical Creatures course at Hogwarts) and won’t take place in the U.K., but in New York.


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But! But! The exciting thing about being stateside is that Rowling revealed we’re going to learn about the U.S. school for young wizards and witches:

O.G. Harry Potter fans already know that there’s an American school -- in a 2000 interview, Rowling said Americans “have their own school...Hogwarts just serves Britain and Ireland,” and in Goblet of Fire, The American Salem Witches’ Institute is in attendance at the Quidditch World Cup -- but nothing else is known about the school.

Especially since Rowling clarified it actually isn’t Witches’ Institute:

She teased a little more information in subsequent tweets. Not enough to tell us anything concrete, but enough to send our imaginations into overdrive:


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Meanwhile, another Harry Potter fan tweeted Rowling asking why he never got a letter to Hogwarts. To which she replied:

“Of course it happened inside your head, but why on earth should that mean it wasn't real?” she then tweeted. And now we’re crying. Our childhoods!

Plus, find out what Harry Potter bombshell Draco Malfoy himself, Tom Felton, recently dropped on fans: