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Why J.K. Rowling Should Have Set America's Hogwarts In New York

By Kristy Puchko | Lists | June 9, 2015 |

By Kristy Puchko | Lists | June 9, 2015 |


Maybe you’ve wondered if Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had an American affiliate. Well, J.K. Rowling has confirmed the fictional existence of such a school, though she’s refusing to tell us what it’s called or where it is. Except to say, it’s not in New York.

THR reports the Rowling’s screenplay for the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will mention this mysterious school, and provides all of the author’s tweeted clues about its name and location. You can play detective, if you like. But as a proud New Yorker let me outline why such a school should be in New York City and nowhere else.

We’ve got loads of locations.
Sure, the Ministry of Magic is hidden the in the middle of London. But what? Between the sprawling museums, miles of subway tunnels and glorious parks with actual castles in them, there’s nowhere a Hogwarts could hide? Please. We know they can magic up means to hide entrances, like they did that safe house Grimmauld Place or Platform 9 3/4, or Diagon Alley. And we’ve hidden a goddamn Godzilla. You think we can’t hide some li’l wizards?

No one would notice anyway.
So much weird, random shit happens in New York on a daily basis, that neither the hardened native nor the naive tourist would think anything of seeing a batch of middleschoolers flying about on brooms. Flying kids would be written off as another guerrilla ad campaign.

Seriously. We have recurring brawls between costumed characters in Times Square. There’s a local celebrity guy who rollerskates around with pink, purple and blue rats on his shoulder. NBD. Sharks get left on the subway sometimes. Basically, any weird magic outburst would be popular on Gothamist for a day, and then the school’s (witch)crafty PR team could claim it was just another flashmob prank, like when time stood still at Grand Central Station.

But whatever, Rowling. Put in Salem. That’d be stupid obvious, and provide way less landmark backdrops for big action sequences. But hey, it’s your world.

Kristy Puchko applied to Hogwarts as her safety school.