Potterhead Uncovers The Four Houses Of Ilvermorny

This is huge news for American Potterheads. We all know that we would be attending Ilvermorny, but there’s a crucial knowledge gap. We don’t know what house we would be in, or even what the houses would be called. That all changed due to a hack of Pottermore by Federico Ian Cervantez, a redditor with a strong background in web design. He posted his methodology in a LinkedIn post, but here’s the meat and potatoes. So far it's unconfirmed, but the presence of the house names in the source code of the website seem to indicate that they're either the official names or close to them. Are you ready? The four houses are: Horned Serpent, Wampus, Thunderbird, and Pukwudgie. So our first reaction is: What is a Pukwudgie and how can we avoid becoming one? But there’s more to the names than just random collections of syllables. This post on Potter fansite The Leaky Cauldron breaks down the house names in great detail, but we can provide executive summaries. Unlike their British counterparts, these houses are all named after magical animals rather than people. Horned Serpents, according to the Harry Potter wikia, “are typically described as dragon-like serpents with horns and long teeth. They are often associated with or said to control the weather, particularly rain, lightning, and thunder. Magical abilities ascribed to them include shape-shifting, invisibility, and hypnotic powers.” The Wampus is a large cat creature “described as some kind of fearsome variation of a cougar.” It’s apparently been used in the construction of some wands by legendary wandmaker Johannes Jonker. The Thunderbird is roughly the North American equivalent of a phoenix. It’s “often described as a very large bird, capable of generating storms and thunder as it flies.” That sounds pretty cool. Pukwudgies are the most confusing and disturbing of the four houses. According to the wiki, they’re “two-to-three-feet tall and human-shaped, but with a larger nose, ears, and fingers and smooth, grey skin that sometimes glows. Its magical abilities include disappearing and reappearing, partial or complete transformation into a porcupine or cougar, and creating fire.” Right. That’s totally picturable. We’re all over that.