This year’s scavenger hunt starts with a very small booklet from Luna…

Who explains that hearing about your last Christmas hunt has inspired her to make this years — using Owl Post.

Naturally, she writes in a spiral, to promote thinking in all directions…

To make it easier for you to read, here is the text:

The next page is a riddle, followed by the clues, one for each star you will need to find…

Eight OvO’s

Four like the mail they can take,
    the rest, unique as snowflakes.
Not with a map of mayhem,
    but your wits, must you find em,
Each owl is fit for one task,
    for that, they do glow and bask
Instead of mail, they carry
    eight stars to line their aerie.

One OvO is…

…fit for the boy
…fit to rot your brain
…fit for drinking with
…fit to spend the night
…fit for Pigwidgeon’s friend
…fit to rot your teeth
…fit for being made
…fit for feeding

Note that one of the things I like about this mechanism is that you can solve them in any order, though it forms a bit of a puzzle to put them in.

The next page has an Owl face, with tabs to hold the stars you find (in this photo, the stars have been put in, so no peeking!)…

Solving the scavenger hunt

…fit for the boy

Harry, the titular boy, has an owl named Hedwig. So the first star is found inside our Hedwig puppet.

…fit to rot your brain

A euphemism for watching TV, and under the TV was a tiny owl - one of four that I made. ² These were the “Four like the mail they can take” - that is, made of paper.

…fit for drinking with

Surprisingly, the girl had forgotten she had given me her Bar Owl - which has a bottle opener underneath. But eventually she found…]

…fit to spend the night

Another origami owl, this one on the side table next to the guest bed.

…fit for Pigwidgeon’s friend

A very small, windblown owl indeed, up in our bedroom…

…fit to rot your teeth

In the Kitchen larder, next to the candy was another origami owl.

…fit for being made

Admittedly not the best clue. But I made this owl from some walnuts we found while walking together and had sent it to her in college. Perhaps a better clue would have been ‘fit for cracking’?

…fit for feeding

And on the side board next to the dining room, the last origami owl.

Putting the stars in to the Owl face, reveals the final clue.

This feathered fowl’s no owl but still fit for the Headmaster’s mail

And who else would this be other than Fawkes…

Merry Christmas!

Behind the scenes

Making the holders for the stars that make up the Owl’s eyes (the compass rose in the 44 Marauder’s Map)…

To make the stars, I again rolled up some SVG based on the prior map…

Footnotes

1. OvO is Luna’s way of making an Owl - an Owl face made from letters. ↩

2. From the book The Guide to Hawaiian-Style Money Folds ↩