"If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him. Stop Lily an' James Potter' s son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled--"
-- Rubeus Hagrid, about to demonstrate the powers of a pink umbrella (PS4)
Hogwarts is one of the world’s finest wizarding schools, located in a massive castle in Scotland. Hogwarts takes students from all over Great Britain, starting at the age of 11. The students leave school after their seventh year.
The students at Hogwarts are sorted at the beginning of their first year into one of four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The houses are named after the four founders of the school, who established Hogwarts around 990 AD.
Hogwarts is home to a student body of between 300 and 400 students, around fifteen teachers and staff, numerous ghosts, house-elves, and a particularly annoying poltergeist. The many rooms, corridors, staircases, passageways, and dungeons hold many secrets and mysteries from a thousand years’ worth of magical history.
The school motto, which appears on the crest, is “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus,” which means “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.”
Resources to explore the school and the castle:
- About Hogwarts castle and the grounds
- Maps and charts of Hogwarts and environs
- The history of Hogwarts
- Daily life at Hogwarts
- Who’s Who at Hogwarts
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The name "Hogwarts" is actually the name of a flower. JKR said:
"Ideas come from all sorts of places and sometimes I don't realise where I got them from. A friend from London recently asked me if I remembered when we first saw Hogwarts. I had no idea what she was talking about until she recalled the day we went to Kew Gardens and saw those lilies that were called Hogwarts. I'd seen them seven years before and they'd bubbled around in my memory. When Hogwarts occurred to me as a name for the school, I had no idea where it came from" (SMH).
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