Witches, Wands, and Wizards - An HP RP [Discussion Thread]

[WitchHazel]

@Chamrosh: That sounds great! I'll get started on the list when I get home; I'm posting from mobile right now :P

Merlin's beard, I didn't realise how many US kiddos we have! Eek
Yeah, there are plenty of other places out there, even more explored areas like Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.

I originally had the idea for Sydney's transfer inspired by my own life; I moved to England for my parents' work when I was seven, but moved back to America after a couple of years. Her situation was kind of a reverse of mine; going from England to the US and back.

[Chamrosh]

@Witchhazel Yeah, I have no issues with there being transfer students but there's quite a lot of them. (and Sydney was first so I can hardly accuse you of putting in an undue bias). I actually know quite a lot of people who came from the US originally, or moved to thw US and now leap-frog across occasionally. They're probably, in situations where every country either has a school or is close to a school, going to be one of the largest transfer demographics to the UK.
I an honestly so tempted when I get back to reliably being able to access the internet (14 days to go!) to make a character transfering from a school-less country now. I'm thinking I'd probably go Zimbabwe, Iceland or Germany, because I know each of their cultures pretty well (thanks to my Geography teacher, a school trip with a very talkative guide who inspired the curiosity in Icelandic culture and my mother respectively). All could be very fun for me.
I might even make all my future characters from them, as it's a good opportunity to learn bits about other cultures and get some variation in naming styles (making remembering names easier, and repeat names rarer).

Edit: okay, I did a quick scan through all the profiles, looking at names, family member's names, the history and the wand core. I think I saw all of them. I am ignoring a character by default if I don't see anything that indicates nationality. In no particular order:
Confirmed US born, or US raised students; Sydney, Charlie C., Alexis, Opal, Lilah, Gwendolyn, Juniper;
Confirmed Japan born, or Japan raised students; Atsuko, Farukon;
Confirmed Irish born, or Irish raised students; Aghadreena;
Confirmed French born, or French raised students; Atticus (although he's Pyrenean, which means he probably would call himself "Catalonian" rather than French);

Suspected Japanese; Mei (Not many cultures have a tsu- sound at the start of words without using loan-words. It's basically Japan or Russia and probabilities with the name "Mei" point to the former)
Suspected US citizens or US raised; Lena (no Britain-raised person would naturally call anyone Tiger Lily, as far as I'm aware, unless their name was Tiger, Tyger, Lilian or Lily), Vincent (British people normally have a very strong sense of weird names, even if they're really not that weird, and Maverick), Nathan (mermaid scale wand core, which was not bought at a British wand shop), Natalie (I think she mentions going to Kindergarten. Very small chance of being German, Swiss, Liechtenstein born or Austrian, so there's a natural conclusion there. Might be Canadian.)

[WitchHazel]

^^ This is very helpful; thank you! c:
I'm constructing the list now.
I was very tempted to make a foreign exchange student from Beauxbatons; seeing as I'm semifluent in French and I know a lot about French culture (I've been to France twice, mainly when I lived in England, and I've taken in french classes for the duration of my entire academic life), but I don't think I can handle more than four characters at a time.

I believe Amelia is a transfer from Ilvermorny as well; moonstone said something about her being kicked out of Ilvermorny if I remember correctly.

[koi.fish]

I'm quite confused about what's happening. Is it breakfast or are students having lessons. If they are what lessons.

[moonstone514]

@LunarDragonTamer Well, I'm going to detention right now, so I guess its evening?

[Chamrosh]

@LDT
I think it's a mix. I'm personally keeping mine on the slowest timeline anyone else seems to have, but not everyone is.

In terms of lessons, they should pretty much all be different sets.
Should be 28 sets of possible time-table bases, 20 of those having slots to put extra-curriculars in; each house and each year have different time-tables.
Each lesson will normally be sat in by two houses, but since Harry never seems to be in a lesson with Ravenclaw as far as I remember, it makes sense to assume that Ravenclaw and Gryffindor are rarely in the same class and Hufflepuff and Slytherin are rarely in the same class. Alternately, those pairs are together for History of Magic and Charms, neither of which we see much of, and the reason we don't see them together is because I think we only have details of one lesson of each of those classes in the entire seven years (wingardum leviosa and chamber of secrets monologue).
Astronomy is before the school day.
I think realistically there should be two teachers for each of the core subjects, or the time-tables just can't work, because the teachers don't have time; alternately, there's a lot of frees designated for independent learning for each subject. Running with the second option is easier, so probably better. Final suggestion is that students only get 1 lesson per week in each subject, and have extra-curriculars before and after the normal school day; this does not fit canon events, but is the easiest, so also probably fair enough. I'll be using option 2 though, as it allows slots for extra-curriculars to fit into.
There seem to be 3 lessons a day, two in the morning, one in the afternoon, but this gives very few lessons and most British secondary schools have 6 or 7 lessons a day, so we can assume that Hogwarts just has a lot of double lessons.
I'd presume a normal day looks like;
Breakfast | Lesson 1 | Lesson 2 | Break | Lesson 3 | Lesson 4 | Lunch | Lesson 5 | Lesson 6 | Free time | Dinner | Free time | Curfew
With 1+2, 3+4 and 5+6 normally making doubles. There may be a lesson 7 somewhere, which is where extra-curriculars fit, normally giving space for doing 2 of them. Probably each lesson is an hour long and lunch is an hour long. Dinner is probably fairly flexible as providing 1000 cooked meals at the same exact time without a lot of time to prepare would be hard, even with magic, and having flexible meals would ease the workload, as students would naturally stagger themselves- this would explain why in the films at most meals, no one sits next to the golden trio as well.
I wouldn't fuss if the lessons overlapped, because time-tabling is hard even for people actually trained for it, and anything that fits ^ all that is already a good effort. Probably worth discussing with other people with characters in yours' year and house, or the years could be especially big so those are split into classes. Probably some freedom for interpretation.
Probably worth checking all that thinking with Withhazel though!

[koi.fish]

What is canon characters and canon events?

[Chamrosh]

"canon" means anything established to exist within something, normally a book or TV show, but I'm going to use "work".
In Harry Potter, some canon characters are; Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, Winky or Celestina Warbeck. Anyone who turns up, even if they're not named, and is known to exist within a work, is a canon character.
In Harry Potter, some canon events are; Harry's parents dying, Harry being told he's a wizard, Umbridge using cruel and unusual punishments in detentions or Dobby deciding to wear 50 hats at once the one time the golden trio go into the kitchens when Hermione's taken up knitting. Anything that happened within a work is a canon event. Note; things that happened in dreams are still canon, but they are not canon events unless they're prophetic or visions because those things did not actually happen, but the character having that dream is a canon event; so that dream at the start of the fourth film is a canon event because it was actually occuring as well.
Might also be useful to define canon facts; these are things like wands contain cores made of part of a magical creature, gringotts is a wizard bank, gryffindor house is in a tower, and that Dumbledore likes fizzing wizzbees. These are things which are true within a work but may not be true in reality. They can include actual facts too, like that drill companies exist, but normally those aren't what's meant. Canon facts can also contradict real facts; in the work of Lewis Carroll, walruses habitually make friends with carpenters; that is most definitely a canon fact, because it happens in the work, but it is also most definitely not an actual fact.

[WitchHazel]

It's still morning as far as timetable goes; no one's eaten breakfast yet.

[koi.fish]

@ Moonstone514

I know you're not doing this but please don't make Amelia and Charlie Crimson the main characters and Ginny and Charlie Dragonheart revolve around them.