Fans and moviegoers who saw
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may have noticed an interesting piece of information during the MACUSA interrogation scene between American Auror Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) and Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), that being Newt's near-expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, viewable here.
Notice the form Graves is reading from? Guess what, all the information about Newt's expulsion was indeed on that paper, as revealed in the new book,
The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Undoubtedly, graphic designers MinaLima, who created the form (shown below from
The Case of Beasts), received the details of Newt's expulsion from J.K. Rowling.
SnitchSeeker took a very close look at the text (which is tiny in the book itself) and was able to extract the following information on the MACUSA form:
Quote:
NAME: Newton Fido Artemis Scamander
AGE: 29
RESIDENCE: England, United Kingdom
APPEARANCE: Hair: dark; Eyes: green/blue; Built: Tall and slim.
OFFENSE: Illegal possession of a magical beast causing endangerment of human life and violation of Animal Welfare Laws 101/304.
DATE: 1913
LOCATION: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, United Kingdom
LEVEL: 3
WITNESSES: Multiple.
NOTES: Proposed expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry due to the illegal possession of a magical beast causing endangerment of human life and violation of animal welfare laws 101/304.
Magical Beast: Jarvey, Level 3
Punishment: Expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
- The expulsion was never enforced - Hogwarts Professor Albus Dumbledore defended Newton resulting in his name being cleared.
* The Ministry of Magic Animal Welfare Department were also informed of the violation and required to rehouse the magical creature.
Newt was expelled, but just like Harry Potter before him in
Order of the Phoenix, Professor Dumbledore stood up for his beloved student and allowed Newt to remain at Hogwarts, to finish his magical education. As Newt was born in 1897, and the event resulting in the expulsion took place in 1913, the young Hufflepuff would have been around 16 years old, and somewhere between his fifth to sixth year at Hogwarts when expelled.
On a related note, Newt's former girlfriend, Leta Lestrange (played by Zoe Kravitz in the film series), was to blame for Newt's near expulsion from Hogwarts. This was something
J.K. Rowling alluded to when SnitchSeeker asked the
Harry Potter author about the subject during the
Fantastic Beasts world premiere last month.
From page nine of
The Case of Beasts book:
Quote:
In addition to name checking Albus Dumbledore, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also includes a good number of elements from the Harry Potter series, including a brief glimpse of Grindylows, the Deathy Hallows, symbol, Gellert Grindelwald (one of the most powerful Dark wizards who ever lived) and a certain Leta Lestrange who, it is revealed, was the real reason Newt was forced to leave Hogwarts.
Finally,
IMDb released a new summary for the second
Fantastic Beasts movie (now changed back to a generic boilerpoint), out in November 2018, that implied Leta's involvement with Newt, and bringing Albus Dumbledore into the series:
Quote:
Newt tries to move on, but Leta keeps turning up when he least expects it. After a while, he realises she is only there to tell him about Dumbledore, who needs to defeat Grindelwald.
Pre-order J.K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the following formats now:
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Amazon Exclusive) (Niffler Figurine/Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD UltraViolet Combo Pack)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD UltraViolet Combo Pack)