Yesterday finally saw the arrival of the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the second entry in the spinoff/prequel series that aims to expand J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World from the Harry Potter franchise. And going by the trailer, it looks to be much more tied into the Potterverse than the last film, including an appearance from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!
But once fans had calmed down from geeking out about the institution’s cameo in the trailer, they started to notice something very odd. In the establishing shot of the magical castle, we see some figures Apparating (teleporting) into the grounds of the school. This wouldn’t be a problem normally, but it’s been a long established rule of Hogwarts that it’s protected by anti-Apparition spells in order to secure the safety of the students.
Of course, fans have immediately got creative in coming up with ways to explain this away. The most obvious would be that those protective spells simply haven’t been put into place yet, seeing as the film is set back in the 1920s. It could be that Dumbledore himself implemented these safety precautions when he became headmaster. And, as we see in the trailer, Jude Law’s younger version of the character hasn’t risen to that position yet.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the movies have played fast and loose with rules established in the Harry Potter novels. Dumbledore and Harry were even seen Disapparating from Hogwarts in The Half-Blood Prince – though we can hand-wave this away as, if anyone could get around the spells, it’s Dumbledore. More egregious examples, meanwhile, include the time Harry uses the Lumos spell while staying with the Dursleys in The Prisoner of Azkaban – despite underage magic being illegal.
With Rowling penning the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, however, fans had expected these inconsistencies to be ironed out by the notoriously meticulous author. Still, we wouldn’t rule out that a brief explanation for this Apparition mystery will feature in the film once we get to see it in its entirety on November 16th.
