BEAUXBATONS ACADEMY OF MAGIC
Location: The Pyrenees Mountains, France
Student Body: Between 1200 and 1500 students with approximately 70 to 100 students in standard grades, though there are multiple classes in each grade which number around 25 students
Student Ages: 7 years through 19 years
Magical Specialties: Charms, Magical Control, Precise Wandwork
Originally a seasonal estate of Marchioness Louise-Augustine de Montmorency- a veela who had married into muggle nobility, the Marchioness opened Beauxbatons to those fleeing the guillotine following the French revolution. She and her family hid muggle and pureblood alike until the end of the Revolution and the Terror. When there was no more use for the building as a sanctuary, it was converted to a school. The Marchioness spent a veritable fortune recruiting expert professors from all over France to teach, and appointed herself as Headmistress.
The French school is unique in that it is the only institution that begins to teach its students before they are able to perform magic. Students are recruited when they begin to display signs of magic, as young as seven years old. Students are taught French History, Etiquette, Wand Safety, and how to control their magical abilities long before they ever learn a spell or hold a wand in their hand. Standard classes normally begin around age eleven. Student relationships are normally quite close, as classmates are practically raised together nine months out of the year.
Beauxbatons prides itself not only on it’s extensive schooling, but on it’s welcoming attitude towards those with mixed heritage. The school is made up of almost 50% muggleborns, and those with veela and giant heritage are commonplace. Though several traditional pureblood families and even the French Ministry of Magic have tried to change this over the years, the descendants of the the Marchioness (many of whom still work at the school or number among the Board of Governors) have always raised fierce protests, backed by an extensive fortune and most of the school’s staff and students. “My grandmother started this school as a refuge for those the country had shunned,” Former Headmistress Charlotte de Montmorency is noted to have said during one such upheaval. “I would rather close the school forever than see one magical child turned away because of something as immaterial as blood status.”
The school holds several seemingly frivolous traditions near to their heart, many of which were started in the time of the Marchioness. Most are known only to Beauxbaton students themselves, though some are more widely known. While Beauxbaton has no official uniform, students are expected to be well dressed, and it is traditional to dress in the colors of the school, pale blue, white, and gold.
The large amount of students at the school demands an equally large staff. The sprawling estate requires dozens of housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners, and there are over one hundred professeurs and sous-professeur employed at Beaubaxton, all exemplary in their fields. Classes from ages six to eleven tend to be smaller, taught by the same handful of teachers every year until they receive their wands and move on.
Those classes that follow tend to be resemble college lectures, and may contain as many as 100 students, depending on the subject. Should students find themselves struggling, sous-professeurs have extensive office hour for individual education and advice, and may be assigned a tutor from a higher grade. (Several hours of tutoring are required from each student in order to graduate, as it is considered a service to the school.) Each grade is also assigned a Sponsor de Classe, who acts as something of a confidant and advisor for that group of students from the time they come to Beauxbaton until they graduate.
Students are required to demonstrate practical applications of what they have learned weekly to their professeurs, and testing is done three times a year- a month into classes to see what the students have retained over the summer, before Winter Break, and at the end of the year. OWLs are done during a student’s sixth year. Students are expected to be able to perform a noverbal, wandless Avis charm by the time they graduate.
Nicholas Flamel – Alchemist & only-known maker of a Philosopher’s Stone
Adelene Bellerive – French Minister of Magic, 1990-1995
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