Beauxbatons Academy of Magic was a magical school that admitted young witches and wizards. Located in the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France, it had magnificent gardens that left visitors in awe, surrounded by vast magically created lawns and breathtaking mountain scenery.
It was simply famous for having far more girls than boys.
If Hogwarts Castle looked like it could actually be used in a war, then Beauxbatons's school buildings could not quite be called castles. They were more like a king's palace complex fitted with magical defenses, towers, and walls.
Its walls were a ring of ice-and-snow sculptures dozens of meters tall, apparently depicting the struggles of French Wizards over the past several centuries. They reflected blinding light beneath the sun, as though there were a vast Crystal Mine in the valley.
This was not some seasonal sight, but a creation of magic. Even in summer, those ice-sculpture walls would not melt away. Instead, they coexisted with the babbling streams and sprawling green forests of the valley.
Passing through the gate guarded by two Pegasus statues in the wall led one into Beauxbatons's courtyard. Unlike the icy world outside, this place was eternally warm as spring under the effects of magic. Vast lawns, seas of flowers, perfectly trimmed flowering hedges—looking in any direction, gardens lined both sides of the main road.
It was astonishingly beautiful. Even the sunlight seemed golden. In the square before the palace stood statues of Nicolas Flamel and his wife, surrounded by a huge fountain whose clear columns of water were driven skyward by magic.
That statue was also one of Beauxbatons Academy's treasures. It had been imbued with a whole string of spells that could maintain the temperature and humidity over a vast area, shield Muggles' senses, provide protective barriers, and more.
Beauxbatons was also