Fantastic Beasts: Would You Get Expelled From Hogwarts?

Anybody who grew up with Harry Potter will have, at some point or other, imagined what it’s like to attend Hogwarts – you weren’t a child of the nineties if you didn’t eagerly anticipate your eleventh Birthday on the outside chance you got an acceptance letter for the school for Witchcraft and Wizardry. And why wouldn’t you want to go? Being a wizard aside, across the seven books and eight films the school became the backdrop for all manner of adventures, lessons and incredibly complex, once-in-a-lifetime wizarding tournaments. It’s not without its dangers though – as Hermione chastises Harry and Ron in The Philosopher’s Stone, there’s always a risk of being “killed or, worse, expelled.”

Yes, expulsion. You could make it to Platform 9 3/4, across the deadly Great Lake and through the tense sorting ceremony, but some ill-placed magic could still see you kicked back to the mundanity of Muggle school. Something along these lines happened to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them protagonist Newt Scamander, who was expelled following a rather unfortunate event involving some sort of magical creature that endangered the life of a fellow student. The details aren’t explained in the movie itself, but it goes to show that while some may go through Hogwarts and save the entire world from the forces of darkness, others won’t make it to their seventh year N.E.W.T. exams (oh the irony). This begs the question: if you did get in, how would you have fared?

A new infographic flow-chart from Lucidchart attempts to answer this with a series of questions to determine how mischievous your antics would be. The queries vary from the mundane – “Are you patient?” – to the magical – “Big Quidditch fan?” – to the frankly extreme – “Do you sympathise with Lord Voldemort?” – and from all that one thing’s clear: it’s actually pretty hard to get expelled, with most paths leading to detention or, worse, losing ten points and becoming the shame of your entire house.

It’s a fun little chart that serves as a nice warm-up for a viewing of Fantastic Beasts and returning to the Wizarding World, although it’s a bit of a shame that it doesn’t honour Newt by including a reference to unleashing a monster on your fellow students. Given that was back in the early 1920s, perhaps the school’s security in that regard has been improved.

While this infographic ties into the release of Fantastic Beasts, due to the film being set on the other side of the Atlantic (nearer to sister school Illvermory) Hogwarts is only referenced in regards to Newt’s past and doesn’t actually appear in the stone. Whether it will play a part in the next fours films is unclear, but with Albus Dumbledore set to factor into Part 2 it certainly seems likely.

KEY RELEASE DATES

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them release date: Nov 18, 2016

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 release date: Nov 16, 2018