Newt Scamander: Are we there, yet?

In Harry’s world, transportation to and from both Muggle and magical places can be a bit of an issue. We see not only normal Muggle transportation in the Potter books, such as cars, buses, and trains, but also magical means of travel, which are a little more exciting. Brooms, Thestrals, Floo powder, and matching Vanishing Cabinets may have given the creators of a new website application on TravelBag some of the inspiration required to answer the perhaps centuries-old question: Are we there, yet?

In honor of the newly released information regarding the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, we’ve taken the liberty of coming up with some interesting questions surrounding travel using the new application on TravelBag, so put on your traveling cloaks, and see how Newt Scamander was able to travel the world and study all of those fantastic beasts!

From the anagram puzzle J.K. Rowling released last month, we’ve learned that Newt was only supposed to visit New York for a small amount of time. Set 70 years prior to Harry learning he was a wizard, we wonder how would Newt have gotten to the many places he would have visited to study the magical creatures described in his book.

One mode of transportation for the Magizoologist may have been a trusty standard in the wizarding world: a broom!

We also know, based on the first page of Scamander’s book in the “About the Author” section, that he worked closely with the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau. Naturally, this leads us to wonder if Scamander, much like Harry and his friends during the famed Gringotts escape, ever rode a dragon anywhere as part of his research. If Newt were to have ridden a dragon – say the Peruvian Vipertooth, which is the smallest and fastest flier in the species – how quickly could he have made it from Peru to Romania?

Perhaps on one of his many great adventures, Newt was studying one of the most dangerous beasts in the world – the Nudu, whose breath causes diseases so devastating that it can take out entire villages! In order to study one of these leopard-like beasts, Newt would have to travel to East Africa. Since these beasts move silently and pose a great threat to all (they are a MoM Classification XXXXX, after all!), Newt may have had to find a safe way to observe without endangering himself. If he took a hot air balloon from Romania to East Africa and observed the Nudu from the air rather than the ground, how long would it have taken?

Our Magizoologist is not simply limited to his study of beasts that live on land – there are many water dwellers Newt may have wished to observe as well! Leaving the dangers of the Nudu in East Africa behind, Newt could have employed Muggle travel by boat to the middle of the Indian Ocean to observe the Ramora, a silver fish that is a guardian to seafarers and protected by the International Confederation of Wizards. By boat from the coast of Mombasa, it would only have taken Newt a little over 12 days, and who knows how many Ramora he might have encountered?

Your turn! Use TravelBag’s app to come up with an adventure for Newt, and tell us where you think Newt would have traveled and which beast he would have been studying! Be creative, and don’t forget to leave your comments below, Tweet us, or post to our Facebook page. You never know who will read them – we know a certain author in the middle of writing a magical script…

To learn more about these beasts and experience Newt’s travels and adventures, check out his book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them!