Fantastic Beasts will introduce Harry Potter fans to a new type of magical power
Thought you knew all the magical abilities in the wizarding world? Think again...
If there's one thing we've learnt about the world of witchcraft and wizardry, it's to expect the unexpected.
Fans who thought they knew all about the magic powers in the Harry Potter universe are in for a surprise, as it's been revealed that a character in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has very different abilities to what we've seen before.
In the film, new character Queenie Goldstein, played by Alison Sudol, is a mind reader – a Legilimens. But although this power has appeared before, it takes a very different form in Queenie.
"She's basically a complete and utter magical empath," Sudol told Entertainment Weekly,. "She's able to read people – so it's not just reading somebody's thoughts. She can read into someone's story, she can see people's goals. And even though she's able to do magic with her wand, a lot of her magic is actually internal, which makes her a different type of wizard or witch."
Harry Potter fans will, of course, be familiar with Leglimency – but the way Queenie appears to use it contrasts with the methods of, say, Snape who used it as an attack on the resisting mind.
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Queenie works a menial desk job at the Magical Congress of the United States of America, and is "incredibly fun, playful, joyful and free-spirited, kind and wise, and also has a sort of stillness about her because she's always tuning into people." Sounds like our kind of witch.
There's now just 100 days to go until the film – JK Rowling's screenwriting debut – hits cinemas, so expect more secrets about the American wizarding world to emerge over the next few weeks. Can't. Wait.
