Yes, ANY J.K. Rowling news gets us excited, but the latest may just send us into a hyperactive frenzy!
The author has just published the second installment in a collection of new original writing entitled Magic in North America, exclusively on pottermore.com.
The work of fiction begins in Ireland where an orphaned young girl, who is a descendant of Hogwarts co-founder Salazar Slytherin, escapes her evil aunt and sets sail on the Mayflower.
Landing in Massachusetts with little more than the clothes on her back and a stolen wand, she ventures out on her own, wandering in the wilderness until she encounters several mysterious creatures and discovers she is not the only magical person in the New World.
As she sets out to establish what will eventually become the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Massachusetts, the young girl will also have to overcome great challenges and face new dangers along the way.
In addition to publishing the second installment of Magic in North America, Pottermore announced that, for the first time ever, users of the website will be able to be sorted into one of the four houses of Ilvermorny.
The houses are named after the following creatures, which have been described as follows in the writing:
- Horned Serpent; a ‘great horned river serpent with a jewel set into its forehead’
- Pukwudgie; ‘a short, grey-faced, large-eared creature’
- Thunderbird; a creature that ‘can create storms as it flies’
- Wampus; ‘a magical, panther-like creature that is fast, strong and almost impossible to kill’
The new writing, and the short video that accompanies it, provide a rich background for the upcoming Warner Bros. feature film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which will be released on Friday, 18th November 2016.
The film, which marks J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut, is an all-new adventure starring Eddie Redmayne as magizoologist Newt Scamander who arrives in New York in 1926.
