40 Fun Facts About Ilvermorny

Ilvermorny stands hidden on the highest peak of which mountain, itself the tallest in its state?

Mount Greylock is where J.K. Rowling placed the school, concealed from non-magic gaze by powerful enchantments, and the real summit stands 3,489 feet above sea level in the Berkshires.

Disguised as a Muggle boy called Elias Story, Isolt Sayre crossed to the New World aboard which ship?

The Mayflower carried her among the Pilgrims of 1620, and once she vanished into the mountains her shipmates assumed 'Elias Story' had died in the first harsh winter.

Which two colours are Ilvermorny's robes, chosen to honour the founders Isolt Sayre and James Steward?

Blue and cranberry recall Isolt's childhood wish to be a Ravenclaw and James's love of cranberry pie, a pairing no Hogwarts house wears.

What shape is the gold clasp fastening every Ilvermorny robe, recalling a brooch Isolt found in her ruined birthplace?

A Gordian Knot brooch of her mother's was the only thing besides a stolen wand that Isolt carried out of Ireland, and the same knot is set into the entrance-hall floor where new students are sorted.

Seraphina Picquery, claimed by all four carvings at her sorting, chose which house, the one representing the mind?

The Horned Serpent favours scholars, and Picquery was the only witch of her generation offered every house, an honour that comes round perhaps once a decade.

Argumentative but loyal Webster Boot named his house after a panther-like beast almost impossible to kill; which house?

Wampus stands for the body and favours warriors, and its wooden carving roars when it wants a new student.

Which house did intelligent but often temperamental Chadwick Boot name after his favourite magical beast?

Thunderbird represents the soul and favours adventurers, and its carving beats its wings to claim a student at the sorting.

Which house did Isolt's No-Maj husband James name for the grumbling creature whose antics made him laugh?

Pukwudgie represents the heart and favours healers, a fitting pick for the only founder who could not consort with magical creatures himself.

Isolt Sayre christened the stone house that grew into the school 'Ilvermorny' after what?

The cottage where she was born had been destroyed by her aunt Gormlaith, and the new house on the mountain was raised by magic in a single afternoon from James's design.

Isolt Sayre's stolen family wand, cored with a fragment of Basilisk horn, had belonged to which Hogwarts founder?

Salazar Slytherin had taught the wand to 'sleep' on command, a secret handed down the Gaunt line that Isolt never learned, which is how her aunt later disabled it.

What name, her murdered father's, did Isolt give the grey-faced creature she nursed back to health in the forest?

William refused to reveal his true name, grumbled at Isolt's heels for months, and an ancient creature answering to the same name still grumbles around the school today.

Which nocturnal forest spectre killed the Boot boys' parents, who had mistaken it for a common Boggart?

The Hidebehind can contort itself to hide behind almost any object, and only a witch or wizard is likely to survive an attack; Mr Boot's attempt to ridicule it proved fatal.

Martha, the elder of Isolt's twin daughters, found life at a magic school painful because she was what?

A Squib born to the school's first family, Martha eventually married a non-magical man from the Pocomtuc tribe and lived as a No-Maj, while her twin Rionach stayed on to teach.

Under Rappaport's Law, at what age could an Ilvermorny student legally carry a wand outside school?

Seventeen was the threshold, and until the law's repeal wands had to be left behind at Ilvermorny over every vacation.

If more than one carving wants a newcomer at the Ilvermorny sorting, who makes the final choice?

The student themselves decide, while the rest of the school waits in silence for the enchanted carvings to react.

Straight after being sorted, Ilvermorny students are led into a large hall to do what?

They pick out a wand (or are picked by one), a real difference from Hogwarts, where pupils arrive already armed, though Rowling notes the two schools otherwise resemble each other in many ways.

What did Isolt intend to do to the concussed No-Maj James once he recovered in her shelter?

Obliviate him and send him home was her daily vow; instead his fear of magic faded until it seemed simplest to admit they were in love.

On which website did fans first sort themselves into an Ilvermorny house, the day Rowling's founding story appeared?

Pottermore released the writing, a video and a new Sorting Ceremony on 28 June 2016, months after teasing the school's name alongside Rowling's pieces on Brazilian, Japanese and Ugandan schools.

Which film first mentions Ilvermorny on screen, released months after Rowling's 2016 writing about the school?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opened in November 2016, five months after the Ilvermorny writing, with Tina and Queenie Goldstein as its Ilvermorny-educated leads.

How do the enchantments hiding Ilvermorny from non-magic eyes sometimes show themselves on the peak?

A wreath of misty cloud is the only sign No-Majs ever see of the school, which Rowling describes as founded in the seventeenth century as the great North American school of magic.

Isolt's father nicknamed her after which ancestor, a famous Irish witch whose Animagus form was a crow?

Morrigan, the crow-witch of Irish legend, was honoured in the nickname because young Isolt loved all natural things, and her parents quietly brewed cures for Muggle neighbours and their livestock.

Isolt Sayre was born around 1603 in the valley of Coomloughra, in which Irish county?

Kerry was where her early childhood was idyllic, with parents quietly helpful to Muggle neighbours, before her aunt carried her off to the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee.

Isolt's future husband James, like the ill-fated Boot family, had come from which New World settlement?

Plymouth was also where Isolt landed, but she slipped away into the mountains at once, judging a witch unlikely to find friends among the Puritans.

Gormlaith's curse left Isolt and James in an enchanted sleep; what finally broke it as she attacked?

Their twin babies' screams did what rage and magic could not, even as cracked walls and broken windows failed to rouse the sleeping parents.

Rionach, Isolt's younger twin daughter, who never married, taught which subject at Ilvermorny for many years?

Defence Against the Dark Arts was her post, and a family rumour held that Rionach, unlike her sister Martha, could speak to snakes and chose never to pass that ancestry on.

Chadwick Boot married Josefina Calderon, a Healer from which country, founding a still-prominent wizarding family?

Mexico's Josefina gave the Calderon-Boot family its name, and Chadwick himself wrote the seven-volume Chadwick's Charms still used as standard texts at the school.

Webster Boot, an 'Auror for hire', fell in love with a young Ministry of Magic witch from which country?

Scotland was her home, and the match drew the Boot family back across the Atlantic, so Webster's descendants were educated at Hogwarts rather than at the school he helped found.

Having lost the family wand to Isolt, Gormlaith Gaunt bought a replacement from which wandmaker she despised?

Ollivanders supplied a dragon-heartstring wand that burst when she died, leaving only smoking dust, a broken stick and a charred core on the floor.

Rowling's Ilvermorny piece was published as the second part of which series of her essays on American wizardry?

History of Magic in North America was written as a lead-in to the first Newt Scamander film, covering Scourers, Rappaport's Law and the continent's wizarding past before the school got its own chapter.

When Gormlaith silenced Isolt's wand, what did the Boot boys' horn-cored wands do instead?

Both wands emitted a low musical note, exactly as the river creature sounds danger, because their cores vibrated to the ancient language and woke Chadwick and Webster to fight.

What flanks the front doors of Ilvermorny Castle, which open straight onto the circular sorting hall?

Marble statues of the founders Isolt and James stand either side, and inside the only furnishings are four enormous wooden carvings of the house creatures.

Gormlaith refused to let Isolt take up her Hogwarts place, calling the school dangerously what?

Egalitarian was the charge, though Gormlaith had attended Hogwarts herself and her bitter stories only made the school sound like paradise to her isolated niece.

According to a 2016 tweet by J.K. Rowling, sisters Tina and Queenie Goldstein were sorted into which two houses?

Thunderbird and Pukwudgie fit the sisters' paths: the adventurers' house for Tina the Auror and the healers' house for Queenie, who worked in MACUSA's Wand Permit Office.

Which Ilvermorny teacher is in contact with Nicolas Flamel through an enchanted book in The Crimes of Grindelwald?

Lally Hicks and Flamel talk through phoenix-embossed books as Grindelwald's Paris rally looms, and she later joins Dumbledore's team in The Secrets of Dumbledore.

Disguised as a man under her murdered brother-in-law's name, Gormlaith Gaunt crossed the Atlantic on which ship?

The Bonaventure brought her ashore well south of the school, and she crept north to the mountain travelling under the name of Isolt's dead father, a wicked echo of her niece's own disguise.

Gormlaith Gaunt raised Isolt in the valley of Coomcallee, known in English by what name?

Hag's Glen lay next to the valley where Isolt was born, and the community soon learned to avoid it as Gormlaith cursed anything that strayed near.

Chadwick's eleventh-birthday wand, the first Isolt and James ever made, was carved from which wood?

Prickly ash enclosed the shard of horn the river creature bowed its head to give Isolt, after she dreamed of the creek the night before his birthday.

On her early trips through the forests, Isolt fought which dragonish creature and watched frog-headed Hodags hunt?

Snallygaster heartstring later became one of the wand cores Isolt and James used for other students, alongside antlers and hair from other native creatures.

The circular entrance hall where Ilvermorny's sorting takes place is topped by what?

A glass cupola caps the round room, a wooden balcony runs around it one floor up, and otherwise the space is empty but for the four enormous carvings.

Isolt and James named their twin daughters Martha and Rionach after whom?

Their two grandmothers were honoured, Martha for James's late mother and Rionach for Isolt's, and before the school took boarders only the family slept there overnight.