"Model Hogwarts" is the name of a Harry Potter simulator launched in April 2017, after an initial poll on the Harry Potter subreddit ( /r/harrypotter ). It aims to provide an experience as similar as possible to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as described in the Harry Potter series, by providing a space to take classes, learn spells and solve mysteries. Although roleplaying is not mandatory, it is encouraged and is generally the main way users choose to interact with each other.
The project features a fixed body of professors who impart classes, assign homework, and give or take points, and a rotating body of students. A single school year on the model lasts three months, and new roleplayers are always encouraged to join and create new first-year characters. The link to join is here: https://discord.gg/56z6GMM
Note that this page lists tropes that apply to the whole model, or events within it, or are common to a multitude of characters. Tropes for individual characters are listed and maintained on the Characters page. Also, the tropes listed here are generic in flavour. Events that were amazing enough to go down in Model Hogwarts folklore go here, stuff that left us in stitches goes here, moments of cuteness overload belong here and anything that made us blubbering wrecks belongs here.
Model Hogwarts currently contains examples of:
- Ambition Is Evil: A classic Harry Potter trope since the house of Slytherin prizes ambition, this is mostly averted in Model Hogwarts. Slytherins are mostly as nice as those in any other house, with a couple of noted exceptions being Donatello Rolland and Klaus Kruger.
- Animorphism: As in the Harry Potter series, a handful of characters are Animagi, able to transform into an animal at will. Some examples are Ivy Su, Maverick Amaturo, Valeran Levi and Pamela Resfeber.
- Berserk Button: Very common among the student body. Some current examples include:
- Franco Bonventre, if he even suspects that a girl is in danger or distress.
- Maz Hatter, when you insult or threaten her bibliovorous alligators. As Alva Ainsley found out.
- Ricky Brown and Adalia Audrey whenever someone mentions their involvement in the Dragon Adventure. They do not take it kindly, even though neither of them have directly attacked anyone who mentions it.
- Black Cloak: Everyone wears this.
- Boarding School: As this is a role-playing game about students and teachers at Hogwarts, this trope is pretty much a given.
- Cast Full of Gay: Or, at least, Everyone Is Bi. The number of same-sex relationships probably outnumber different-gender ones by about two to one. The roleplay is, to be fair, proudly inclusive.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: Professor Calloway burst onto the scene where a group of first years (and Riley) were attacked by Valeria's dragon... after Val had already saved them and lured him away. She basically arrived in time to heal them and call for Payson to come and punish them.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Naturally, players sometimes lose interest, and their characters have to be disposed of. Those for whom it's harder to pretend they never existed are Put on a Bus instead.
- The Cutie: This fits a number of characters, including Isabelle Reyes, Kylie Whitehorn, Marianne Blanchard and Mei-Xing Xue. All Hufflepuff females... hmm. I'm sensing a pattern.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In their first year, two Ravenclaw girls, Shane Mason and Quinn Gallagher, were caught attempting to steal a potion. Their Heads of House, the Glamii, punished them along with their completely innocent dormmates by instructing the house elves not to clean their dormitory. For an entire year.
- On the other hand, their Hufflepuff partner-in-crime, Sami Lutece, merely got a talking-to from her head of house.
- The same duo, along with Xia-ji Feng, were at it again later that year, putting googly eyes on portraits in the Portrait Hall, leading the Glamii to charm eyes onto the ceiling of their dormitory. In a classic case of Disaster Dominoes, this ultimately led to a dramatic falling out between Adalia Audrey and most of the other Ravenclaw first year girls.
- Doing Research: Being Hogwarts, there are Ravenclaws, and with Ravenclaws comes a lot of research. And quite a few non-Ravenclaws fit this trope, as well.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The Forbidden Forest. Despite (or perhaps because of) its name and reputation, there are always a few students in every generation who try to enter the forest. Sometimes repeatedly.
- To be fair, however, werewolf students (yes, there are werewolf students and they are surprisingly common) do need to go into the Forbidden Forest on full moons, less they transform in the castle and end up hurting someone.
- At one point, in a desperate attempt to deter unwanted explorers, the forest was surrounded by barbed wire which removed your hair upon touching it. It didn't work out so well.
- By far the worst incident occurred in the IC year 2024, when a group of first years (with one second year) entered the forest to try and find a dragon. Which they did. See Too Dumb to Live.
- In the aftermath of this, the teachers came up with the seemingly simple, foolproof and long overdue solution of placing an Age Line around the forest. A brilliant plan... except that it prevented anyone who was already inside the forest from getting out. Which resulted in Valeria Chovnik's death. Well, nearly.
- Dress Code: This is a school. What do you expect, naked Fridays?
- Dysfunction Junction: Nearly everyone has a Dark and Troubled Past of some description.
- Everyone Is Related: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Ironically, the three Browns are all unrelated. We think.
- Fantastic Science: It is a school which teaches magic, after all.
- Funetik Aksent: A number of heavily-accented characters have their thick brogues written out in full:
- Lisa Edgley and Riley MacAlistor-Kirkwood are extremely Scottish.
- The Casey family (aside from adoptee Phoebe) is Irish.
- Maz Hatter is from... er, somewhere.
- Heel–Face Turn: Cyrus, the xenophobic ghost that terrorized the students during the first year of the roleplay, became the school's librarian and is quite happy to help students.
- Inhumanly Beautiful Race: Veela. By association, their children: Augustin Moreau and Valeria Chovnik are a couple of known half-Veela. Both of which have been known to be the cause of major gay or bisexual awakenings for other characters.
- Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Lots of dark magic is this. Sure, it's really powerful and leaves un-healable injuries, but it's also highly illegal and nearly unusable outside of combat.
- It's All My Fault: After Valeria Chovnik's presumed death, a lot of people fell into this mentality. Particularly those first years that went into the Forbidden Forest and the Professors.
- Those who had nothing to do with the situation, however, are divided on who exactly they believe it is at fault, with some blaming the first years, some blaming the teachers, and some blaming the victim, Valeria, due to the fact that she was the one who had brought the dragon to the school.
- Kaleidoscope Hair: Model Hogwarts has a few Metamorphmagi, most notably Christine Marilyn and Cecilia Evans, who can often be distinguished by their unusually coloured hair. Being young, they are still learning control of their abilities and, especially early on, their hair would respond to their moods.
- Also, since charms and potions for dyeing and colouring hair are relatively simple even for first years, it is fairly common for odd hair colours to be sighted in the halls even among non-Metamorphmagi.
- Kill It with Water: Valeria Chovnik plugs her dragon's nostrils and uses Aguamenti on his head whenever he tries to char-broil anyone. Typically, his response is to try to maul her.
- Killing in Self-Defense:
- Narrowly averted with Emrys Hughes who, in a fight, pushed their mother out a window after being stabbed by her. She got better.
- Played straight with Ben Green, who killed a man in his rescue of Phoebe Casey.
- Love Dodecahedron: What happens when your crush's roommate's crush's crush is in an arranged marriage with their best friend's crush? Model Hogwart's Class of 2031.
- Magic Wand: Come on, this is Hogwarts.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: An Age Line around the Forbidden Forest following the dragon attack in 2024 was, to be fair, the perfect solution to students continually going in there. Unfortunately it stopped Valeria Chovnik from getting out, and she soon died alone of exposure and blood loss. Or so everyone thought.
- Offscreen Breakup: This happens fairly often on Model Hogwarts, most often when one of the roleplayers drops off the face of the earth.
- Plot Armor: Of a sort. Because expelling a student effectively excludes their roleplayer from the roleplay, characters tend to get away with detentions and house points as punishments for even actions as extreme as property damage, kidnapping and attempted murder.
- Also literal, because killing or dealing serious injury to a character requires OOC consent.
- Puppy Love: Model Hogwarts has many, many examples of relationships between students that are far more serious or advanced than their ages would suggest.
- Put on a Bus: If the character of a departing or inactive roleplayer is too important or influential for Chuck Cunningham Syndrome to work, an in-universe explanation for the character's departure is often invented. Most commonly this takes the form of a transfer to another school, such as Durmstrang or Ilvermorny, although a classic excuse is "(s)he ran away to Ibiza".
- Occasionally, if the roleplayer and their character returns, The Bus Came Back.
- Even more occasionally, the character is simply killed off.
- School Newspaper News Hound: Lisa Edgley has her own amateur paper, the Hogwarts Press, which has exposed a few very notable secrets.
- Secret Circle of Secrets: Seveal fifth-generation students have formed an eerily cult-like group. They even have a prophecy. Their goal? Take Over the World.
- Seers: Again, consistent with the Harry Potter universe, Model Hogwarts has a few of these. One of the Divination professors, Professor Wen, will soon be blind, although he is not actually a Seer.
- Sticky Fingers: The school's resident kleptomaniac, Savannah Rey. Never more so than when she stole 60 Galleons from the school bulletin board in broad daylight.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Played straight with a number of characters with Abusive Parents, but spectacularly averted when Emrys Hughes is rescued from the Audreys.
- Too Dumb to Live: A group of first years in 2024 (and one second year). Ooh, there's a dragon living in the Forbidden Forest? Let's go looking for it! What could possibly go wrong? They found the dragon, nearly everyone got hurt, and Valeria Chovnik disappeared, presumed dead, for six months.
In the past, Model Hogwarts contained examples of:
- After Action Patch Up: Students get injured a lot, which used to result in a lot of these scenes. More recently, though, students tend to just skip the infirmary after fights.
- The Alleged Expert: Healer Phil and Professor Dobs were both believed to be experts before running away to Ibiza.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: When possessed by the ghost-entity Cyrus, the students forgot what they'd done afterwards.
- Big Bad: The villain of the story in the beginning was a mysterious ghost-like entity, known only as Cyrus. Then he became the librarian and a new villain arose: Elizabeth Bathory.
- Big Brother Instinct: Jem Hapunda's older brother Lalo was quite protective of her at times. Even more after his best friend was brutally murdered at school.
- Body Horror: Alexander Lyons' hand was a bit of a gory sight after he decided to punch a ghost. A ghost known for burning things that touch it.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Everyone who drank the underground lake water or ate the underground tunnel's mud was susceptible to this
- Cool Teacher: Most past professors fit this as well. The coolest among them was Professor Dobs, the groove-obsessed History of Magic professor. Another contender was Sir Comorant, the DADA substitute, noble knight and boisterous story teller.
- Cursed Item: Played straight with every single item "gifted" to students by Natalia Caline.
- In all fairness to the now deceased Caline, she didn't know the items were cursed and hurting students.
- Deadly Gas: The ghost-entity Cyrus emitted a dangerous gas all around him that burned anyone who passes through it.
- Dem Bones: A weak skeleton army attacked several students.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Allegedly where the Hufflepuff house was heading for due to its massive amount of Slytherpuffs and its shifty prefects. See: Conan Lebrowsky as an example of both items.
- Ghostly Chill: The first indicator that the ghost-entity Cyrus was nearby was an unnatural chill.
- Insistent Terminology: Seen a lot with Alexander Lyons, Jem Hapunda, and Julian Rhodes, when talking about muggleborns. Alex casually and mockingly used 'mudblood', Julian insisted on 'normal', and Jem didn't like either of those terms.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The ghost-entity Cyrus was not a normal ghost, even by the standards of the Harry Potter universe.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Mainly, because they're not werewolves at all. They're girls on their periods, which, to be fair, is a bit Too Much Information.
- Except Jem, who was actually a werewolf.
- The Paralyzer: In the IC 2017-18 school year, the Full Body-Bind Curse, Petrificus Totalus, was popular amongst the more talented students for its ability to decisively end most fights without any lasting damage. Ivy Su was particularly infamous for judicious use of the spell. Medraut Prince favoured the Freezing Charm, Immobulus, which has similar effects.
- Plant Person:
- Danae, the dryad the students met when venturing into the Forbidden Forest with Professor Thropp, who spoke of a mysterious "Lady of the Wood".
- Also the numerous wood nymphs the students saw at the Ithaca Institute of Magizoology.
- Also the other dryads in the forest, who became evil for some reason.
- Serial Escalation: The ghost-entity Cyrus' threat level escalated with every appearance. In the second year of the model, things only intensified with the outright murder of the Head Boy.
- Although, on the other hand, since the opening few years of the roleplay, things have really quietened down on the life-threatening plot event front.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Played straight with Sthenis, a snake god that had the ability to possess those who drank the water of his underground lake. Subverted with Boop, the Basilisk that lived at the Ithaca Institute of Magizoology, who was fitted with special sunglasses that allowed him to live in captivity.
- Too Dumb to Live: Through taunting and a slip of the tongue from Professor Seward, Alex Lyons found out that Seward was a former Death Eater, and what did he do? He kept taunting her until she was angry enough to not just threaten him with torture and death, but to actually consider going through with this. Luckily, she kept her composure just enough to simply stun him instead of torturing him.
- Tornado Move: At one point, Professor Mahoney, the Herbology professor, taught several students how to work together to create a dirt tornado.
- Was Once a Man: The 'Shadowy Amalgamation' which attacked students in the school halls is implied to be a group of kidnapped experimentation victims. Also, they're all children.
