Climate is a consequence of an awful lot of factors. Meterology is something people study for years and still get wrong on a pretty regular basis. I'm pretty sure Lima's weather is the way it is due to the landscape and geology as much as location.

If you really want to look at weird, possibly magical weather patterns, go and look up the Catatumbo Lightning.

I know the post you’re talking about - you’re in the notes for it and I run both this blog and @themonsterblogofmonsters. Further, both of these blogs are, I will say here and now Harry Potter Headcanon Blogs, that is to say, though I draw from existing folklore and stories for a lot of things, I am seeking to find ways to incorporate these into the magical systems of HP and so there will be variance. 

In a traditional sense, yes, perhaps those would be the accurate read on likely Fae foods (... except coat cakes and lamp. I suspect you mean oatcakes and lamb?). In the post, however, I’m referring to magically enhanced food. Adjusting for a world where a) it’s modern day, and so those things are far more accessible and b) where there’s magic in place already and which can be used on food. If you’re going from a folkloric basis solely what you’re saying is fine, but what I was going for, with the HP setting as baseline, was magically enhanced food - which is why it’s effects are so much more absolute.

It’s one thing to have a plate of really really well-made curry, it’s another thing to have a meal enchanted to ensnare the senses so thoroughly you believe thereafter that nothing else could ever taste as good.

It’s not a matter of coming back, dear, nor a matter of minding! The blog is on hiatus, but I am still more than happy to answer asks and to accept submitted posts.

I do not know how many years students of Beauxbatons attend, simply because we don’t get told in canon at any stage. However I would imagine that they start attendance at the same time other French students begin their secondary education - age eleven - if only to help the transition for muggle-borns. Thing is, whether purebloods like it or not, if they wish to remain hidden from muggles then it’s essential to make it easier for muggle-born students to have an excuse for their absences to the magical world. 

The French sixth-year exam is said to be equivalent to the OWLs, which I’ve kind of always taken as, hmm. Preliminary GCSEs, basically, with NEWTs (where subjects become optional) being equivalent to A Levels - these are of course all shunted down a year or so compared to the actual exam times for British students.

Thus, I think you could have a few of interpretations for how Beauxbatons works depending on your preference - we don’t know enough to say specifically how it works. Options include:

One: They start age eleven, same as Hogwarts, do the BAC/OWL-equivalent exam a year after Hogwarts (sixth year) and then spend the seventh year refining their studies towards whatever vocation they wish to do, ending with either entering the profession or some kind of an apprenticeship.

Two: They start age eleven, and the OWL-equivalent exam is also a partial-NEWT equivalent as well, with the last year dedicated solely to specific subjects they want or dropped entirely for some, as a sped-up NEWT course (which doesn’t entirely make sense with them giving an extra year for the OWLs).

Three: They start age eleven, study through to the OWL-equivalent exam and then spend several further years in education at Beauxbatons. (Does make sense with the extra year for OWLs, does kind of make sense with France’s schooling system except that usually it’d be two separate schools, does not make sense with the fact that seventh years were the eldest we know to be at Hogwarts for the Triwizard... unless older students were disqualified for some reason or opting out due to greater exam stress. Who knows.)

Four: Insert your own interpretation here.

Tagging @tobermoriansass @cosmonauthill and @notyourexrotic in case any of them have ideas to add.

I absolutely LOVE all your blogs, especially this one. Last summer, my friend and I started to create our own headcanons about Ireland’s magical community/culture/government/school. 

Aw thanks! Glad you like them. And ah that sounds great! My friend @cosmonauthill briefly did something similar, but ended up hiatus-ing it.

I know Ireland already features in your list of magical schools from around the world but, by any chance, would you be open to reading about and maybe even adding other people’s ideas for magical schools from a country you’ve already added? 

I’m not gonna make any promises about adding them to my list. I’ll certainly read them, and I may incorporate some if they fit with my own headcanons but I make no promises - it depends too much. If you have a blog for these headcanons and a promo post for it, however, I can and will happily promo it on @themonsterblogofmonsters, which is my most active blog.

I’d love to discuss wizarding Ireland after I’ve fully thought everything!

Yes please do! If you wanna chat in private there’s an email address you can contact me via on the about page for monsterblog!

I do not believe this has been asked before of this blog. So far as I know canon says nothing with regards to Australian wizarding education so its basically free-for-all headcanon space. My personal belief is that, as a result of the history of Australia, as well as where is easily habitable, Australian wixes are largely educated in small local schools - the country is too large and the population too spread out around the edges to really host a singular large school that wouldn’t require truly ludicrous travelling requirements. Then again, I guess JKR went and pulled Ilvermorny and Koldovstoretz (for America/Canada and Russia respectively) out of her arse, even given their insane cachement areas so…

There could, by JKR logic, be a single Australian wizarding school. Going by JKR logic its probably located at Uluru/Ayers Rock or some equally culturally appropriative place. But if you want my ideas…

I think that magical Australia is… complicated. Australian Aborigines have been there for years upon years and they have concrete oral records very nearly all the way back. The oral records are so precise and so well-maintained that archaeologists have used them for reference, I say this knowing this because I studied archaeology at uni and Aboriginal knowledge came up during the ethnoarchaeolgy section - you should never underestimate the knowledge of native groups, nor dismiss their knowledge, because if you try to interpret their archaeological history without it my darling you are screwed.

… Sidetracked. Apologies. I have strong feelings about archaeology. Back on topic.

I think that Aboriginal Australian wixes 100% exist. I’ve also headcanoned over on @themonsterblogofmonsters about Aboriginal Australian vampires… sort of. See, all Aboriginal Australian groups are closed cultures, so its generally a bad idea to take anything from their culture for fic purposes. So… I don’t. 

Aboriginal Australian groups have been in Australia for, as I said, years uncounted. Or, to be specific, years counted and so many years it will blow your mind to consider that they have constant and reliable records of it all. Years that, in most western cultures are uncounted. You get me? With that kind of a basis there is literally no way I can conceive of that Aboriginal Australians didn’t have a huge and complex magical culture of their own unless you want to make the hella racist assumption that for some reason they just didn’t have magic or were all killed off. However, HP’verse mirrors our own. Australia is part of the British Commonwealth. And that means one of two things.

Option the first: UK wixes struck some kind of deal with Aboriginal wixes.

I don’t think this is likely. Or well… if it happened, it didn’t last. Native groups are rarely well treated when conquered and what happened to Aboriginal Australian groups was genuinely horrifying - still is, if you look at what Australia’s government is up to. And I don’t think a long established wixen culture would just let their non-magical kin be hurt like that. They’d fight back. They’d help their kith and kin get out, get to safety, set up protections for them and fight back the fuckers who hurt them. The only way we’d get to the Australia we have in our world (remembering that because HP’verse mirrors ours, it has to) is if these groups were utterly utterly wiped out… and I don’t think that matches up well with the narratives that JKR gives us about bigotry being wrong and something to fight back against.

Which leads us to Option Two.

This is what I think is most likely. I think that the Aboriginal Australian wixes took as many of their non-magical kin as they could and went into hiding. We know that magic can fold space, make locations Unplottable, hide things in plain sight with the Fidelius - and these are all Latinate magics, from cultures far younger than that of Aboriginal Australian groups. If they didn’t have their own ways of doing these things then I will punch JKR in the face.

They couldn’t take everyone. Colonisation split up and separated groups, mixed them in disparate groups and divvied them up - there’s no way they could have found where everyone was taken, especially if the magical government was also helping with this, which it well may have. But they would have taken everyone that they could, and hid. 

And when the new western government doesn’t know the magic you’re using, they’re going to have one hell of a hard time finding you. 

I also think that this is what happened with a number of Native American groups. I also don’t believe it is utterly uniform in either case. Some groups kept some tentative contact back - a way to return to help out those of their own that they could, to fight back if they needed to, to maybe emerge again if there was some hope for peace and reconciliation.

So. I think there’s clusters of very small Western-based magical schools in Australia, and I think there are whole settlements of Aboriginal groups hidden in folded space that take in and teach Aboriginal Australian muggle-borns whenever they can. I think there is some very slow re-integration going on, but that it fluctuates with a government that is a piece of shit towards the native groups. 

But I think that a large number - maybe even a growing number - of native wixes hide in folded space, along with any native vampires, who only emerge to help their own and fight off those who might find and attack them. Who’ve made their own space and their own safety and reinforce it as much as they can - and that’d mean that sites sacred to them, such as Uluru, would be rigorously protected from any attempt by colonising wixes to turn it into something so crass and appropriative as a school.

Which thus forces Australian wixes to either have local schools, or a large magical school at a location which isn’t sacred to Aboriginal groups. 

… That was a lot more than I expected to write.

Anyway. I hope this helps? It probably doesn’t have as many answers as you’d like, however. So, if any Australian followers - especially Aboriginal Australian followers - would like to pitch in with ideas, feel free to reblog or reply with ideas of your own. It’d be appreciated.

I’m afraid that I do not! However, if you want some fun stuff then I advise you go and check out the hiatus’d blog @thepostmodernpottercompendium, which has some very fun and interesting headcanons regarding magical Russia, which play into some of the old Russian folklore and fairytales.

Wix/Wixes/Wixen is a gender-neutral term for witches and wizards - humans with magic if you wanna go full gender neutral even in descriptives. I explain this one my Glossary Page on @themonsterblogofmonsters. It originally came from the now-an-archive @magicqueers, where the prevailing headcanon was that it was invented by Luna. It’s prevalence in US HP Headcanon is due to the large proportion of the fanbase which is US-based and who thus headcanon primarily about their home country.

Wix is the individual, Wixes is the plural, Wixen is the descriptor, e.g. Wixen World. It doesn’t rely on blood status at all, so... I’m really not entirely sure what you’re asking about nonny. If you mean is there a term for Muggle-Borns which is different and doesn’t have the same connotations of “lesser” as perceived by some in the magical world then I’d suggest you read This Fic, which uses the term Newbloods.

If you mean is there an alternative term for muggles which isn’t used so patronisingly I’m afraid I have none to suggest. I did once upon a time participate in discussion regarding this over at the currently-on-severe-hiatus blog for @thepostmodernpottercompendium but in the end we had no singular consensus of what was likely. You can find the links to some of the main points of that discussion Here, Here and Here.

Interesting! But no, I don’t think it’d necessarily work? It has a direct connection to him, which I don’t think is a magic he’d put in the hands of people who weren’t bound to him lest they use it against him, and while having people brand themselves would really show the Death Eaters to be nothing more than absolute monstrous murderers, I think that would take away in some aspects from things like Draco, being forced into it all. Arguably, of course, it could also add to this, with him being forced into marking himself, while Narcissa had the canny to keep from being marked/marking herself. But still, I think we come back to the root problem that I don’t think Voldemort would put the ability forge a connection to him into the hands of people not already bound to him - and that’s assuming they could Mark themselves in that way. For all we know for the connection to him to be formed, he has to do it himself. Otherwise, how would it connect if it is only a spell? And if it is more than a spell, if it’s something requires, let’s say, his blood, then, again, why would he put it into the hands of others? It’s a part of his power, and he holds tight to it.

That all said, if you want to talk about your theory more extensively and argue for how you think it could work, I’d be interested to hear it! If you can bypass Voldemort’s power issue with giving another the power to forge a connection to him, I think the idea of him convincing, arguing, cajoling or forcing people into taking the mark and marking themselves could add a wonderfully awful horrorful aspect to the whole thing.

Hi, J.K. Rowling said in an interview that Voldemort affected American wizards during his reign during both wars. I was wondering how much of an influence do you think he had in wizarding america?

It’s hard to tell? I imagine it mostly led to an increase of race-politics-problems in America as much as anything, as well as impacting safety of travel and recruiting easily-radicalised purebloods or magic-supremacists. He was across an ocean and focussed on what was going on there, so I can’t imagine it being much of an impact. I imagine Grindelwald had a much bigger impact, given Grindelwald was actual literal wizard Hitler.

Do you think that many wizard would follow him? 

Like I said, the easily radicalised, purebloods, and magic-supremacists. All those who wanted in on the violence and felt they weren’t being treated appropriately.

How do you think MACUSA would have reacted? 

Unhappily. If it was mild enough they might not have really noticed, and they might have passed off American Death Eaters as “the acts of private individuals” which would be accurate. I don’t know if they’d try to step in or not - or how they could step in - and I think they’d have been very careful in communications with the UK.

Finally do you think he's influence effected other places as well? Europe? South America? Africa?

Well we know from canon that Voldemort recruited from Europe - Karkaroff, Dolohov - so I imagine waves were being made there with copycat groups. South America... I don’t know. Africa, ditto.