I had a different idea for this scavenger hunt, and in fact had mapped out the work and started on the art, when I realized this would be the first Christmas the girl’s partner would be visiting for the holidays and I wanted to make sure they were included. I had thought of doing a “real life Choose Your Own Adventure hunt before, but it seemed pretty blah. But on reflection, the idea of a branching set of choices seemed like a good idea for a shared adventure, they could each pick a path and follow it out. The idea grew and grew and finally I realized I was going to need 28 books, clues and locations to pull this off!

If you are wanting to see each and every one of these, head on over to 44westwind.com, and you can go through a virtual version of the scavenger hunt. This is the home of the original Marauder’s Map scavenger hunt by the way.

This write-up will just go through the highlights of the hunt and the origami clues and the puzzle at the end.

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The Set Up

Unlike most years, when you open the box, instead of the usual letter, you find a somewhat tatty paperback version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Under it is the previous year’s Marauder’s Map.

This is a higher hurdle than previous years, you have to thumb through the pages of the book until you find one that looks a little different.

The letter from the book reads…

Hopefully, you, the reader, can deduce that you need to go to Ravenclaw and Slytherin (Slytherin as Harry spends a great deal of time worrying about the Sorting Hat thinking he would do well in Slytherin). Both my beta tester and the girl herself got caught for a bit trying to think where the sorting hat would be but they got there in the end.

And now we see why we need the map!

Ravenclaw maps to her bedroom, Slytherin to the downstairs guest room. I very deliberately did not provide any guidance how to tackle this choice. Would they split up and each person would search a separate room or would they tackle it together. In this case, the guest room was next door and so they spent some time looking through the bookshelves in that room until they found the hardback edition of The Sorcerers Stone.

Quickly, they figured they needed to find the replaced page…

A Dead End?

And now they faced another real hurdle - this page is just the text from the book and doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. Fortunately, Yitz had called out that maybe The Man With Two Faces meant that there was something on the other side. After a bit of “Oh, that is ridiculous!”, the girl peeled off the page and saw that indeed, it was so…

The text of this page reads…

One possibility at this point would be that my two adventurers might have chosen to keep going and look for the Floo Network or the Entrance Hall. That would have worked itself out but I was happy that they then went upstairs to look in “Ravenclaw”, aka, her bedroom. There are no longer as many books as there used to be in her room but there are still a fair few, including an old copy of Black’s Law Dictionary.

This was a bit of a challenge as it was the first non-Harry Potter book in the hunt but I had left a slip of paper sticking out which caught their eyes.

The text of the affidavit is…

There was an undesired hurdle on tackling the “Great Hall”, as there is no Great Hall on the map. I had hoped the clue about “where I had lunch” would suffice but “books can be misleading.” The empty circle at the top right is our dinning room and so should have been labled “The Great Hall”. (Also, note the circle at the bottom left that says “Way to Hogsmeade” should have been labeled “Entrance Hall” to help out on this hunt.)

In the Great Hall (aka, the dining room), was a very large book on the bottom of the tea cart with a tiny envelope addressed to the girl.

This origami envelope unfolded to have a letter inside, which concludes with “…I do not think this is the right path”.

Finding the Transfiguration classroom (Suzy’s studio) was comparatively easy and was, more or less on the way.

After a brief search, they found a hard back version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. They then found the replaced page, realized it was also just the normal text and peeled it off to reveal the real clue on the back, another letter from Hermione to them. This time referencing the Whomping Willow and Arithmancy.

Note that this page has two cut-out rectangles on this page. Aside from this being a call out to Hermione’s loss of memory (which is also echoed by the faded patches on the front pages), it will be an important mechanic in the final puzzle.

Back to the Sorcerer’s Stone

If you recall, the Sorcerer’s Stone left clues to search for the Entrance Hall and the Floo Network. Similar to the law dictionary, the Entrance Hall is a dead end, a small brown notebook with a Hogwarts crest has a thin bookmark with the writing reversed.

I got a chuckle that the girl actually said “But how are we going to read this?” and her partner pointed to the full length mirror in front of them. “Duh!” she said. The writing confirms that “this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth.”

The Floo network on the other hand had another tatty copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which had a replaced page with the clues right there on the front.

Our Story So Far

Just to recap, here is our path so far. We started with the paperback version of HP 1, which led to Slytherin (law book) and Ravenclaw (hardback version of HP 1).

These led to two places, in each case, one a dead end, the other to two more new places. (Transfiguration leads to the Whomping Willow and Arithmancy, the Floo Network leads to the Infirmary and the Library Annex.) This pattern continues to repeat, with each “level” producing the next hardback version of the series. That hardback version has a replaced page they need to find, peel off and read the back side for the real clue to move forward. The other path leads to a book that mostly has some Harry Potter theme to it but not always. I only had the three paperback versions, and they all have a plain replaced page with altered text. The others have some thematic papercraft element. Each path takes turns, that is, if you stay on Slytherin’s path, every other level will have a hardback version, and the same for the Ravenclaw path. Each path also has an equal number of deadends. At the end, you have a lot of origami, and seven pages from the hardback books with a front and a back.

The non-Harry Potter books and Origami

I wanted the other books to have some thematic connection to the room they were in, and the clue to also be thematically connected to the book. The Whomping Willow was the Monster Book of Monsters that we had gotten at Harry Potter World. I had printed out the page where Harry first encounters the book and chopped it up to make it look as if the book had shredded it.

In the Infirmary was Disease and Civilization, inside it was a Prescription for H. Granger (Unknown).

In the Prefect’s Bathroom was The Writer’s Map, which has a nice section on MinaLima’s Marauder’s Map. In it I had created a miniature Marauder’s Map of our house, which nicely spirals open to reveal the note (that you are still lost).

Madam Puddifoot’s has a romance novel with a howler that looks like kissing lips (or at least, that was the intent.)

If the book in the Prefect’s bathroom wasn’t quite thematic (I chose it as that is where it lives), I made up for it with Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom which has the Big Necessity. The bookmark for that was a green basilisk.

Dervish and Banges had How to Fix Damn Near Everything which had an origami wrench. It didn’t fix anything however.

The Cauldron Cupboard had the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, with the (really good) recipe for Cauldron Cakes (Pancakes). While Hermione was too full to eat more, it did lead on to other places.

Hogsmeade Station had All Aboard, a book on the history of the Lionel Model Train company. I also wanted the clue, deadend or otherwise, to be equally thematically connected. So All Aboard has a Hogwarts Express train ticket (that has been cancelled as this was a dead end).

The Three Broomsticks (Aba’s kitchen) had a book of hers in its normal place, Menus. It is a beautiful book where you record your dinner guests and their menus.

I made my own menu for Hermione.

The Great Room had been the site of an epic chess match between her partner and I, played on a large rug chess board with oversized chess stuffed pieces. It was a natural place for Chess Mazes.

For that I had found a great origami chess knight fold to contain the next clue.

Zonko’s was a joke shop, but had the Handbook of Model Rocketry with a red origami rocket from Creative Origami. (“That must be where Fred & George learned how to make their fireworks” Hermione muses.)

Lost Wands (the girl’s closet) had a very tiny book, the Book of Secrets which had an officious sealed note from the department of lost wands, regretfully informing you no wand of that description was found.

And finally, in the Boat House (the garage), was Chapman’s Piloting, with a small origami sailboat envelope that unfolded to inform you that boat had already sailed.

The final puzzle

After you have gotten all the hardback books and removed all the pages to look on the back, you also find what looks like a hardback version of the last book that turns out to be a box with a piece of paper that is the same size and shape as all these other pages. As noted earlier, each of these two sided pages has more and more cut out holes in them until by the end, they are filled with holes. This page from the box, with the title “The Spell of Animadvertere” also has these cut out holes.

Our scavenger hunters figured out how to stack these pages with the “spell” page on top to reveal the final clue.

This takes you to the Potion’s room and the final Christmas present (a matching bowl and plate Mama had made).

Hope you enjoyed this year’s Scavenger Hunt. Do give the virtual version a try!