Wizards Hearts Game/Fest is underway! Starting September 1, we had over 50 players sign up to deal out some serious love to our fandom creators in the form of thoughtful comments and recs. If you haven’t signed up, it’s not too late.
❤️ Signups are open until November 15.
❤️ Rules & Faq can be found here.
Players are sorted and assigned at random to four different teams. All team activities and discussions are completely optional but can yield extra points to help win the game! There are weekly team activities and longer, creative team activities where players can imagine new, fun headcanons in the Harry Potter universe and perhaps a few stories of their own!
TEAM ACTIVITY 1: Establishing Your Wizarding Casino
What is the name of your Casino? What is the location of your establishment? What is your Casino famous for?
Check out the teams under the cut!
Team 1: Loch Lomond's Treasure
The casino Loch Lomond's Treasure is located under the lake in the Scottish Trossachs. You enter by pulling a specific branch of a tree by the lake, where a tunnel opens up to lead you down underground. The Loch Lomond's Treasure casino is famous for employing Nifflers rather than witches and wizard to care for our coin vault and protect us against the cheaters and thiefs who would take our money.
Team 2: Golden Scales
Golden Scales is located in an old dragon's den inside the top of a mountain in the Dragon’s Hoard mountain range. Complete with original dragon den furnishings, Golden Scales is accessible via both a golden elevator and three monitored apparition points.
Golden Scales is famous for many of its landmarks and attractions. Most notably, the casino, bar, and restaurant floors are home to well over a thousand miniature dragons who are overjoyed to interact with and cuddle with Golden Scales' patrons. Four of our miniature dragons were loaned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1994 and used in the Triwizard Tournament that featured Harry Potter. At the bar, make sure to order a Queen of the Night, our signature cocktail that makes the drinker breathe fire. On your way into the casino, do make sure to stop by the dragon statue in the front lobby. Rubbing the golden ace card held by the dragon has been rumoured to bring patrons of Golden Scales good luck for over three millennia.
Team 3: Vanaheim
To enter Vanaheim you must go to a small, rundown, local pub in a rainy Scottish village called Tyche's Tavern. Once there you order a "Fortuna Major" from the bartender. They will slide your drink over to you on a special coaster, that is a portkey to our Casino. It is an ancient viking ship, sunken deep underwater. It's unplottable and impossible to find without the portkey.
Our Casino has a relic named Hofund, it is the the sword of Heimdall, it is placed in the entry way. It is both an omen of good luck, and a guarantee against cheating. Once you touch it, anyone that tries to cheat or steal from us will be cursed to sprout tentacles that break out in painful boils
Team 4: Arc En Ciel Crêperie & Wizarding Casino
Arc En Ciel looks like just a small, slightly run down, crêperie. However, it is known for selling the best crêpes in Paris and inside there is a secret entrance to the casino.
It is located on the border between muggle and wizarding paris, with the crêperie entrance in muggle Paris, and the casino in the wizarding part of the city.
It is a family business and the owner of the casino is married to the head crêpe chef (well known as the best magical crêpe chef). The chef is also nonbinary and a metamorphmagus.
To enter the casino, you have to order one of the signature wizarding crêpes. When it is brought to you, there will be a special casino chip attached to the bottom of the plate, with a sticking charm. In the upstairs hall, you will find an old marble bust. You must insert your casino chip into its open mouth and a secret passageway to the casino will open up.
The selection of magical crêpes offered is really what it is most famous for. Their signature dish are the rainbow crêpes, which will temporarily change the colour of your hair after eating.
Other crêpes include:
Mood crêpes, which change the colour of your hair according to your mood
Aura crêpes, which make your aura visible
Felix Felicis crêpes, which taste like the potion without the effects of it
Amortentia crêpes, which taste like your favourite food
Romance crêpes, which can make heart, flowers, or bubbles float around you
Spark crêpes, which make colourful sparks shoot from your mouth
Dragon crêpes, which make you breath (harmless) fire, like a dragon
Wingardium Leviosa crêpes, which make you float off the ground
Drarropoly: The Department for International Cooperation and Knowledgeableness (DICK)
As part of the Game/Fest Drarropoly, teams were tasked with creating a new Ministry of Magic department.
Not playing Drarropoly? 🎲 Read about it here! 🖋️ Sign up here!
Can’t participate? 📖 Show some love in the AO3 Collection!
The Department for International Cooperation and Knowledgeableness [Team Cauldron]
DICK for short! Wizards have been known to cringe when they get called over to visit DICK. It is led superbly by Richard Dickinson, a delightful wizard whose communication methods can be a little dodgy. He often forgets which translation spells he has used so most memos are misunderstood anyway. The aims of our department are International Cooperation, sharing magic and enchantments that are unique to each country. Fifteen witches, wizards and elves work in DICK. European Ministers for Magic work there when they are visiting the UK and have offices there.
DICK is located next to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Level Five of the Ministry.
The offices are circular to represent the world.
It is a tower office with a spiral staircase.
It has small rooms for meetings and confidential chats.
The tower has four levels. These are:
The ground floor reception.
The offices.
Meeting Rooms
Owlery, filled with different breeds from every country.
Extension Charms are used throughout depending on how many visitors there are.
There is room for exotic birds and their habitat is recreated by magic.
DICK’s uniforms are normally a traditional robe from each country but for our Ministry staff, a small globe is worn on the uniform.
Check out all the content by team:
💚 Team Cauldron
💙 Team Deluminator
❤️ Team Kneazle
💛 Team Snitch
Drarropoly: Structural Maintenance Enforcement and Architectural Regulations (SMEAR)
As part of the Game/Fest Drarropoly, teams were tasked with creating a new Ministry of Magic department.
Not playing Drarropoly? 🎲 Read about it here! 🖋️ Sign up here!
Can’t participate? 📖 Show some love in the AO3 Collection!
Structural Maintenance Enforcement and Architectural Regulations [Team Snitch]
SMEAR is tasked with:
giving permission to add on to existing buildings or create entirely new ones.
denying the Weasleys permission to build unstable, unsightly or just plain unusable extensions to existing buildings
overseeing restorations of existing buildings so that they can be made in a way that is respectful of the original magic
auditing magic interferences within neighbourhoods to see who did not follow regulations
SMEAR offers mandatory training courses that don't teach anyone anything at all, making wizards jump through all the administrative hoops. It was started as a misguided way of helping muggleborns integrate but also to deal with all the dark magic manors that were suddenly on the market after their owners went to Azkaban. After the first five counts of death-by-redecorating, it was decided that the situation needed more bureaucracy and licenses.
SMEAR also oversees things like unplottable addresses in muggle neighbourhoods, making sure there aren't too many on the one street (happened once in the 60s when a coven of new-age hippie witches decided to live in a commune in the middle of Soho. Muggles in the area reported strong migraines and paranoia. SMEAR was forced to obliviate the entire neighbourhood.)
SMEAR absolutely has specific forms for Weasleys. They're charmed to catch on fire if they tick the yes box to one of the following questions:
will the extension be larger than the main building?
will the extension look like a mushroom decided to grow on the side of your building?
have we already denied this extension?
is there a non-zero possibility that the extension might present a danger to the general public in any way, shape or form?
(the last one was added after WWW filed their second-ever query with SMEAR)
SMEAR may be accessed from a door at the back of a second-floor broom closet. No one knows why SMEAR, which is all about denying permits for bad architecture, doesn't have a proper entrance. The reason is that this entrance is a remnant of the 18th-century floorplan of the Ministry and as such is protected by SMEAR’s own rules and laws. So every day, each and every employee steps over mops and buckets to access the office.
View floorplan in hi-res here
SMEAR has quite a few employees. There are 12 positions, one's a team, so 13 members. They’re supposed to have more than one auditor, but the application forms for that position haven't been updated in ages and have too much 17th-century slang in them, so not many people manage to fill one out correctly.
EAVES – Expert Authority on Very Essential Schooling (all the training courses!)
SLAB – Specialist Leader of Architectural Bureaucracy (the forms expert)
MOSAIC – Muggle Ordained Subsistence Area Interference Consultant (magic vs muggle issues)
TOWER – Truly Obnoxious Weasley Emergency Resource (the WWW wrangler)
MASON – Ministry Authority Surveying Office Noncompliance (finding infractions in the ministry itself)
As part of the Game/Fest Drarropoly, teams were tasked with creating a new Ministry of Magic department.
Not playing Drarropoly? 🎲 Read about it here! 🖋️ Sign up here!
Can’t participate? 📖 Show some love in the AO3 Collection!
The Department of Lost Things [Team Deluminator]
This department is overworked and understaffed, and their purpose is to track down anything that is lost, be it a lost ring, sock, your missing krup, or even a family member you haven't seen in years.
They have four employees: three disgruntled employees and one bubbly, energetic one that the others sometimes plot ways to make go away for an extended period of time because she is TOO CHIPPER.
“How Can You Be This Happy About Finding Someone’s Lost Ostrich, Susan???”
It is Ironic that D.O.L.T. spells Dolt which is slang for an idiot, or a person that is prone to losing things...
The department is found winding down back corridors and through a mysteriously difficult-to-find hidden passageway behind the Department of Mysteries. More than half the Ministry doesn't even know it exists, so they get confused when people stop them on the fifth floor asking for directions.
The office is very basic, with walls of file cabinets and a glass ball used to help with scrying for missing things. Four desks sit facing each other in sets of two on either side of the cramped space. The Ministry architect who designed the Department of Lost Things must have had a sense of humour because rather than being a perfectly-normal shape, their office was made in the shape of a question mark.
The uniform's main feature is a coat that has a gazillion pockets with Undetectable Extension Charms on them on the inside (akin to those that Muggle salespeople open up like, "Ta dahhh! Look at all these items inexplicably hung from the inside of my coat!") And Susan, the annoyingly peppy coworker, has bedazzled hers with a million tiny rhinestones.
Check out all the content by team:
💚 Team Cauldron
💙 Team Deluminator
❤️ Team Kneazle
💛 Team Snitch
