View source for Our Session 2

Ellen takes a mundane train from her no-maj family home in Blyth, Ontario down to Ilvermorny.  Professor Eulalie Hicks walks the young first year students from the mundane train station at North Adams, Massachusetts up Mt. Greylock to Ilvermorny, as is tradition.

Along the way, Professor Hicks explained a little of the [https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/ilvermorny history of Ilvermorny], including William the Pukwudgie and Isolt Sayre.

Once at the courtyard of Ilvermorny, Ellen was tapped on the head by the Snakewood tree and received a branch of snakewood for use in constructing her wand.  She and the others received their blue and cranberry robes and proceeded to the House Sorting ceremony.

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Ellen was selected by the Thunderbird, Pukwudgie, and Wampus statues during the ceremony and soon chose Thunderbird, feeling most at home among those misfits and outcasts.

Later, Professor Hicks offered to send off Ellen's snakewood branch to [[Shikoba Wolfe]] the Thunderbird wandmaker.  Its return would be delayed by a few weeks due to unknown circumstances.

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That evening, Ellen and most of the other 150-odd first years ambled to the little nearby wizarding town of [[Bellows Pipe]], nearby on the Greylock ridgeline.  A friendly fellow Thunderbird, [[Cormac O'Brien]], was gobsmacked to learn Ellen was born of no-maj parents and had never had butterbeer.  He immediately directed her to [[Sweetonius]] Paulinus's Tasties and Delectables shoppe.

While waiting in line for Ellen's first-ever butterbeer, she meets two additional Thunderbird students, [[Jaina Gaunt Snowlight]] (swathed head-to-toe) in a burka-like garment) and [[Equebus James Henkenius]], an affable Montreal kid with a thick Canadian accent.  

They enjoy their butterbeers at a booth table while James teaches Ellen her very first charm, [[Aqua Eructo]]!  They are immediately chastized by Professor [[Haiduc Grubb]] (wearing a brown three piece suit and 1920's spectacles) for casting magic in a town shop.

They overhear a newsie just outside the shop hawking the sunset edition of the ''[[Wizard's Voice]]'' newspaper: 

* [ [[The Dark Wizard]]'s ] murderous spree across Europe, all seems to have begun near [[Godric Hollow]] in England.
* An unnamed but renowned magizoologist doing a national speaking tour up the Atlantic coast.
* Pan-Pacific Wizarding Tournament to begin. [[Taisho-era Japan|Japanese]] wizarding school [https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/mahoutokoro Mahoutokoro] to compete with Ilvermorny this year.
* Are Rougarou being hunted to extinction? Experts weigh in.