Ilvermorny

It’s found in North America, on the highest-peak of Mount Greyock, Massachuttes, where it’s where it is concealed from non-magic gaze by a variety of powerful enchantments, which sometimes manifest in a wreath of misty cloud.

It was founded by Irish immigrant Isolt Sayre, and her No-Maj husband James Steward. It was at first meant to be their home, a cottage. It became a school when their adoptive children Chadwick and Webster Boot hoped they could return to Ireland so they could attend Hogwarts, so it started to spread and became a castle.

It has four houses too, which were inspired by Hogwarts, the founders at first wanted to name them as their name, like Hogwarts one, but they soon realized that it would have sound better otherwise. They decided instead to call them as their favourite beast. 

Thunderbird for Chadwick, a magical creature which can create storms as it flies. Wampus chose a magical panther-like creature that was fast, strong and almost impossible to kill. For Isolt, it was, of course, the Horned Serpent that remembered her the one of her childhood, she still visited and with which she felt a strange sense of kinship. And finally, James chose the Pukwudgie, because the stories his wife told of curmudgeonly William always made him laugh.

The peculiarity of Ilvemorny, is that one of the four founder was a no-maj, James precisely. For this reason Ilvermorny has the reputation of being one of the most democratic, least elitist of all the great wizarding schools.

Marble statues of Isolt and James flank the front doors of Ilvermorny Castle. The doors open onto a circular room topped by a glass cupola. A wooden balcony runs around the room one floor above. Otherwise the space is empty except for four enormous wooden carvings representing the houses: the Horned Serpent, the panther Wampus, the Thunderbird and the Pukwudgie.

While the rest of the school watches from the circular balcony overhead, new students file into the round entrance hall. They stand around the walls and, one by one, are called to stand on the symbol of the Gordian Knot set into the middle of the stone floor. In silence the school then waits for the enchanted carvings to react. If the Horned Serpent wants the student, the crystal set into its forehead will light up. If the Wampus wants the student, it roars. The Thunderbird signifies its approval by beating its wings, and the Pukwudgie will raise its arrow into the air.

Should more than one carving signify its wish to include the student in its house, the choice rests with the student. Very rarely – perhaps once a decade – a student is offered a place in all four houses. Seraphina Picquery, President of MACUSA 1920 – 1928, was the only witch of her generation so honoured, and she chose Horned Serpent.

It is sometimes said of the Ilvermorny houses that they represent the whole witch or wizard: the mind is represented by Horned Serpent; the body, Wampus; the heart, Pukwudgie and the soul, Thunderbird. Others say that Horned Serpent favours scholars, Wampus, warriors, Pukwudgie, healers and Thunderbird, adventurers.

The Sorting Ceremony is not the only major difference between Hogwarts and Ilvermorny (though in so many ways the schools resemble each other). Once students have been allocated a house they are led into a large hall where they select (or are selected by) a wand. Until the 1965 repeal of Rappaport’s Law, which enforced very strict conformity with the Statute of Secrecy, no child was allowed a wand until they arrived at Ilvermorny. Moreover, wands had to be left at Ilvermorny during vacations and only upon attaining seventeen years of age was the witch or wizard legally allowed to carry a wand outside school.

The robes of Ilvermorny are blue and cranberry. The colours honour Isolt and James: blue because it was Isolt’s favourite colour and because she had wished to be in Ravenclaw house as a child; cranberry in honour of James’s love of cranberry pie. All Ilvermorny students’ robes are fastened by a gold Gordian Knot, in memory of the brooch Isolt found in the ruins of the original Ilvermorny cottage.

A number of Pukwudgies continue to work at the school into present day, all grumbling, all of them insisting that they have no wish to remain there and yet all of them mysteriously present year after year. There is one particularly aged creature who answers to the name of ‘William’. He laughs at the idea that he is the original William who saved Isolt and James’s lives, rightly pointing out that the first William would be over 300 years old had he survived. However, nobody has ever found out exactly how long Pukwudgies live. William refuses to let anybody else polish the marble statue of Isolt at the entrance of the school, and on the anniversary of her death every year he may be seen laying mayflowers on her tomb, something that puts him in a particularly bad temper if anyone is tactless enough to mention it.