How to Host a Harry Potter Party

Host a magical “Hogwarts at Night” event for adult fans of the Harry Potter series, filled with immersive wizarding world activities, from magical classes, to a make-your-own potion bar, a spell duel, a triwizard tournament, and of course, quidditch, butterbeer and chocolate frogs!

1. Your own Harry Potter themed souvenirs
2. Items from around your house that resemble Harry Potter's things (like a white stuffed owl or a broom)
3. Items from around your house that could be found in a castle (like candles, lanterns, old books, empty bottles)
4. Harry Potter printables downloaded from free sites
5. Craft supplies for the activities you choose
6. Themed food & drink

The fun of immersive events is helping your guests feel like they’ve become a character in their favorite story.  So with a Harry Potter theme you have a fantastic opportunity to get your guests really excited for your event by creating a letter from Hogwarts as the invitation.  Look in Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (page 51) or online to familiarize yourself with the wording of Harry’s letter from McGonagall, then type it up, personalize and print one for each guest.  If you’re handy with a graphics program, like PicMonkey, you can even customize your envelopes as well. Make sure to mention that your guests should dress in their Hogwarts robes or house colors, and they should bring their magical (stuffed) pet as well.

To decorate for your party, you don’t need to go out and buy all new licensed merchandise. As a passionate Harry Potter fan yourself, you probably have a few official Potterhead-type items strewn about your abode already, and that’s where you’ll start.  Collect all your wands, your house scarves, that sorting hat you got for your birthday and the empty pumpkin juice bottle you brought home from Universal Studios.  Those are going to be the featured items in your decor.

Then scour your house for items that are similar to items mentioned in the books.  Maybe you don’t have a licensed Hedwig figure, but you can put your hands on a stuffed white owl and just tell everyone it’s Hedwig.  Now collect things that all the wizards had, like a trunk and a broom, and maybe some old books.  

Next, look for things that can suggest medieval castle decor – things like candles or lanterns, a pewter punch bowl or tapestries. Keep an open mind as you survey all the random things in your house.  Think “what could I do with this?” … and maybe when you see an old birdcage you might think “Aha! I can put Cornish Pixies in here like Gilderoy Lockheart did in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”

If you want house crests to mark different rooms as common rooms, or Umbridge’s proclamations to hang on the wall, you can grab those off the internet and print them out.  You can print photos of Hogwarts professors and frame them and set them in different “classrooms”, or you can print out Harry’s Hogwarts envelopes and tie them together with fishing line and drape them near your fireplace.  You can even print out autographed copies of Gilbert’s headshot to hand out as favors.  Wherever you have space to fill in amongst your 3D decorations, think about adding some printables to round out the look.

Start collecting interesting-shaped bottles that you can turn into potion bottles with labels that you print from the internet. You can fill these with water tinted with food coloring.  Or grab some battery-operated votive candles that you can wrap white paper around and hang from the ceiling to mimic the Great Hall. You have a lot of options, and Pinterest in particular is chock full of DIY ideas and instructions.  

Think about how your party will flow and that will help you see more clearly what spaces you’ll need to use.  You’ll need a welcome space where you greet your guests and set the stage for the evening.  You’ll need activity spaces, both for the classes that your guests wander in and out of at their leisure, and for the group activities where you’ll need to fit everyone in one space all at the same time.  You’ll also need to think about where you’ll be putting your food – do you have space for one large buffet table, or do you need to spread the food around into several rooms on small tables … and will you be having a bar set up – and is that with a server or are the guests helping themselves?  

Your own personal Hogwarts map is becoming visible!  Maybe your kitchen will be the Great Hall, and your living room can be the Potions classroom …  Now look at what connector spaces you have between those featured spaces and think about what those spots can represent.  Maybe your back hall where your coat closet is can become Platform 9 ¾ , and your bathroom can be Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.  Get creative! You can have a Dungeon and common rooms, and Dumbledore’s office and even the Room of Requirement.  It all depends on what your house looks like and how all your rooms connect to each other.  Once you’ve decided what rooms you’re creating, then you’ll really know what kinds of decorations you need to create to fill in the gaps between the items you were able to collect, so that each of your rooms has a little something in it to visually tie it to its name.  

Group your items together for a stronger effect.  In each of your rooms, set up a still life on a table or in a corner that includes a lot of your general castle items, and just one or two of your featured items.  You’ll get a lot more mileage out of your special things this way, and lo and behold, your house is now truly your castle!

The party starts when the guests walk through the door.  As you know, when new students arrive at Hogwarts, they participate in the Sorting Ceremony.  After you greet each guest, and admire their costume, invite them to be sorted.  Many of your guests will already know what house they’re in (or want to be in), but you can get around that by saying “let’s just see if the Sorting Hat confirms your house”  If you happen to have a Sorting Hat, obviously you’ll use that - stand behind the guest while they wear the hat and say astute things like “brave, capable, loyal … Gryffindor!”  Print up a cheat sheet of traits that indicate each house and keep it up your sleeve.  If you don’t have a sorting hat, you can download and print out an origami sorter to use instead -- these are those foldables that used to be known as cootie catchers or fortune tellers.  

This will happen over and over, as people trickle in, since the guests won’t arrive all at once. You’ll welcome each new group to Hogwarts, give them a quick rundown of what’s in the house and where to find it, then encourage them to wander around and enjoy themselves.  Each room will have its own activity station, and guests can choose to participate in anything in any order. If you have the time and inclination, you can even make a map of your space and label it like Hogwarts, complete with footprints like the Marauder’s Map. 

Charms class: This classroom will be set up with all the supplies your guests will need to make their own wands right on the spot.  You’ll need wooden dowels or chopsticks, hot glue guns, paint and paintbrushes, paper plates to pour the paint onto, and either marbles or little rhinestones for the ends.  Be sure to cover the workspace with a plastic tablecloth, collect a few extension cords for those glue guns, and you might want to set up a little sign just reminding people not to touch the glue or the tip of the gun -- not everyone is aware of how hot those get.  You’ll also need to set up a spot with some old newspaper for the wands to dry, and it’s not a bad idea to put out a little bowl of handiwipes for people who get paint on their hands.   To make sure this activity runs smoothly, you can either have a friend oversee this station and show people how to make the wand, or you can print up instructions and leave a few samples around. 

Divination class: This classroom will be set up so each guest can pour themselves a cup of looseleaf tea, drain the liquid, then compare the residual tea leaves to a chart of symbols to see what lies in their future.  You’ll need teacups, an electric tea kettle or a pot of hot water, a bowl of looseleaf tea, a strainer and a large container to take the strained water, and your symbol chart.  This is another class where it will be helpful to have a friend oversee the proceedings, specifically to help safely drain the hot water, and to help people “see” the similarities between their lump of wet tea and the images on the chart.  You might want to promise these helpful friends some extra chocolate frogs at the end of the night :)

Potions class: For this activity, you have two options.  You can choose to make this another crafting activity, where you let your guests put together one of these adorable potion necklaces, or you can set up your BAR as a make your own potion station, and let guests create their own drinks by combining pitchers of ingredients with magical names.  Which option you choose will really depend on the preferences of your particular guests.  If you decide to make this a crafting activity, you can buy these cute bottle necklaces at Michael’s or on Amazon.  You’ll set out clear glue and glitter to put inside them -- and again, don’t forget to cover your workspace with a plastic tablecloth.  Or if you decide to go the make your own potion route, set up pitchers of different colored ingredients and make labels for them with a magical name in large print, and the actual ingredient in small print below. You can call these things like Mermaid Tears or Dragon’s Blood, and you aren’t limited to just liquid ingredients.  You can set out little bowls of powders like KoolAid mix, or solid add-ins like cranberries or garnishes like whipped cream or sprinkles.  Just look up the Harry Potter wiki for inspiration for naming your ingredients.  You can let your guests mix their own, or set out recipes that actually result in something that tastes good and put some measuring implements out and let them follow the recipe. 

History of Magic: This class is actually a trivia game in disguise.  Type up a bunch of questions and number them.  Cut them into individual strips, then fold and mix them up in a bowl.  Type up a separate list of numbered answers for the friend who’ll be helping out in this classroom.  As guests come in, they’ll be challenged to choose a random question from the bowl.  Each time they answer correctly, they can choose another question, up to a maximum of 10 questions.  If they answer incorrectly, they must stop.  The game host will keep a tally of how many correct answers each guest got, and at the end of the night you can announce the winners and potentially give them a prize. 

Defense Against the Dark Arts:  For this activity you’ll need a friend to play the role of their favorite DADA professor, and they’ll be showing your guests how to resist an imperious curse by actually showing them a self defense technique.  There’s a simple method for escaping from someone who has grabbed your two wrists.  Your helper will demonstrate this technique, then pretend to cast the imperious curse, grab the guest’s wrists, and invite them to test out the new escape move they just learned.  When they do this successfully, they earn some chocolate, which as everyone knows is also the antidote to the presence of dementors.

Dumbledore’s Pensieve: Fill a large punch bowl with water and get some of these plastic balls from Amazon.  Type up a list of events that happened to Harry and his friends, in the format of “I remember when ___ happened.”   Like “That time I ran into Buckbeak in the forest”, “The day I ate a vomit flavored Bertie Bott’s Bean”, “My first trip to Fred & George’s joke shop”, things like that. Cut them up into strips, fold one into each plastic ball, and float them in the water.  Each guest can fish out one ball, then open it and read it aloud and continue the thought by ad-libbing their own memory of the event.  So someone might open up “that time I got knocked out by a bludger”, then go “oh yeah, then I fell off my broom and broke my collarbone and woke up in the infirmary”.... Now when you combine this activity with a photo booth that you’ve set up, you have something special.  Have the guests standing in front of your themed background when they reminisce so you can take their picture or even a video while they’re acting out their memory - which makes for a funnier and more dynamic pose.  

Quidditch: Set up this game with cups, hoops and ping pong balls.You can actually turn into a drinking game if you have that kind of a crowd. Just remember as the host of any party where you’re serving alcohol, it’s up to you to keep an eye out for people who shouldn’t drive at the end of the night. 

After your guests have had about an hour or so to meander through all the stations and have some of the refreshments, you’ll circulate around and announce that Professor Dumbledore has called an All-School Assembly.  At this point, you’ll run some group activities, such as:

Triwizard Tournament: In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, three wizarding schools compete in a series of challenges to see who will earn the Triwizard Cup. At your event, your guests will divide into three teams and do the same, except their challenges won’t be so dangerous.  No dragons, or drowning, or mysterious portkeys to cemeteries.  Your challenges will be fun things like holding a plank, moving jelly beans from one plate to another using only chopsticks, or walking balancing a book on their head (you get to decide).  You’ll need to set up stations for each challenge and have a monitor at each one to keep track of the score, then each team takes a turn at each station and after everyone has completed all three, add up the scores and congratulate the winning team. You could potentially offer the winners a little prize, like a Harry Potter bookmark or a little Hedwig stuffie, but they’ll probably be more excited about special food, like chocolate frogs or little boxes of Bertie Botts Beans. 

Spell Duel: In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry and Malfoy duel in front of the school using their wands, casting spells at each other both on offense and defense.   Your duel will be a variation on Rock Paper Scissors, and will use an elimination format.  Only three spells may be thrown - expelliarmus, expecto patronum, and stupefy.  Expelliarmus beats expecto patronum, expecto patronum beats stupefy, and stupefy beats expelliarmus.  Divide your guests into two teams - each team can decide what house they represent.  Have the teams stand opposite each other, with a referee in the middle.  Each team will send a dueler forward, and the two wizards will have three chances to throw spells.  Just like in rock paper scissors, one person’s spell will beat the other’s, the referee will keep track of points, and the first wizard to three wins moves to the “champion’s circle.”  Ties are thrown out.  Repeat the process until everyone has dueled, then have the champions on each side duel amongst themselves, eliminating losers until each team has one champion.  The two opposing champions duel each other, on behalf of their team, with five or even seven opportunities to throw spells so there’s lots of opportunity for cheering and suspense, until there’s one clear winner and their team receives the Hogwarts house cup.  This is a great activity to end the night on.  Lead all the guests to the bar and everyone can celebrate their win or drown their sorrows if they lost. 

Here you have choices to make.  You can serve replicas of foods that were specifically mentioned in the books, like chocolate frogs and butterbeer, or you can create your own dishes inspired by items in the story, like pumpkin pasty shooters and half blood oranges. There are great Harry Potter cookbooks available for inspiration.

You will also need to decide whether you’re offering a “full service” menu at your party, meaning you’ll be serving appetizers, dinner food, desserts and drinks, or whether you’d rather pare down the food and concentrate on one particular course -- maybe your event has a cocktail party vibe and you just want to offer finger foods, or you have a sweet tooth and you love the idea of a dessert buffet.  Your choice.

Appetizers: You can MAKE these Slytherin Snake Slivers really quickly.  These are little mini pizzas made of zucchini slices, topped with a pepperoni slice and grated parmesan cheese.  These are so simple to make - you’re really just assembling things.  Just arrange your zucchini slices on a baking sheet, add the pepperoni and cheese on top, and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is starting to melt and brown. These are light and really flavorful, and they go fast so make a lot.  

Next we have the appetizer you can BUY, for those times that you just want to have fun at the event and not worry about cooking.  Huffle Puffs are simply savory puff pastry appetizer bites from the frozen aisle at your local grocery store.  These can be filled with spinach and cheese, or potatoes and bacon, or roasted peppers - there are a lot of options out there.  Just heat and serve, and don’t forget to make a little sign to set by the tray with the name of the food so people can enjoy the pun!  

And our last appetizer, the one you can MODIFY, is pretzel wands.  These are very simple as well. Start with long pretzel rods, cover half with ready-made frosting, and roll them on a dish of colored sugar or sprinkles. Super fun. Serve these with a napkin, because they drop sprinkles all over when you eat them. 

Buffet Foods: You can MAKE Hogshead Cornish Balls, which are actually sweet and sour meatballs, in all of 15 minutes if you start with frozen meatballs from your grocery store.  Just dump two bags of Italian meatballs (still frozen) into a large pasta pot over medium heat on your stove, add a large jar of grape jelly and a large bottle of taco sauce, then stir occasionally as the jelly melts to coat all the meatballs in the sauce.  I know it sounds like a weird combination, but people LOVE these meatballs.  You can serve them on platters with a toothpick in each one, or set up a crock pot and keep it running on low during the party and let people help themselves.  

You can MODIFY carrot soup to become Pumpkin Pasty Shooters.  Mix prepared carrot soup from the store mixed with a little bit of canned pumpkin and some cinnamon & nutmeg.  Heat this together on the stove to get it combined well, then you can actually serve these warm or chilled.  Your proportions here are 4 cups of soup to ½ can of pumpkin, plus apple pie spices to taste.  It’s perfect in tiny cups since it’s so thick and heavy -- your guests can just knock back an ounce of flavor then move on to the other foods.

And you can BUY Basilisks in a Blanket, which are just cocktail franks wrapped in pastry from the frozen section of your grocery store.  Heat these up, add a cute sign made with a Harry Potter font, and you are all set!

Dessert: Chocolate frogs are iconic Harry Potter images, and you can buy them but they’re actually very expensive and can sometimes take forever to ship.  On amazon they’re $3 or $4 apiece, but you can MAKE them for about 50 cents each, and that’s including shelling out $6 for a candy mold.  You just melt a bag of Hershey Kisses or chocolate chips in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds.  Then spoon the chocolate into your mold, pop into the fridge for about 20 minutes, display them on a plate or in cupcake liners, and that’s it!  You will have to repeat this process several times if you just have the one mold, so this is a good project for the day before the event.  

The second dessert you can MAKE is Bloody Brilliant Cheesecake Dip.  Just mix together a block of cream cheese, half a jar of marshmallow fluff, and a tub of Cool Whip.  Spread this in a baking dish, then top it with a can of cherry pie filling.  Serve this with graham crackers that you’ve broken into small pieces, and set a pile of small plates next to this dish and a big spoon so people can scoop a big pile of dip onto their own plate instead of having to stand next to the serving dish as they eat. Don’t forget your cute sign. 

The simple dessert you can MODIFY is Half BLood Oranges.  You’ll again be melting chocolate in your microwave, then line a baking sheet with waxed paper, dip blood orange slices, or even clementine slices, halfway into the chocolate, set them on the sheet and let them cool at room temperature or in the fridge.  That’s it!  You don’t want to leave these in the fridge for hours though, because the chocolate can oxidize and turn white.  There’s nothing wrong with it, but it doesn’t look as nice. 

And lastly, the dessert you can simply BUY is Treacle Tart.  We’re going to cheat a bit here and use a pecan pie and call it Treacle Tart with Nuts, because the taste is very similar.  A traditional treacle tart is very very close to the filling of a pecan pie, so your guests will get to enjoy the flavor without you having to try to track down the British ingredient called golden syrup to make it.  

And lastly, let’s talk about drinks.  The easiest Butterbeer recipe is simply cream soda topped with a mixture of Cool Whip and butterscotch pudding powder.  You can sprinkle a few butterscotch chips on top and maybe even some gold sprinkles if you’re feeling fancy, and let the sugar high come crashing over you.  

You can also serve potions in pitchers.  Pick your favorite punch recipes in a variety of colors, mix them in glass pitchers and set out some signs that say what potion they are.  Call your green punch Polyjuice potion, your yellow punch Felix Felicis (the good luck potion), and your red punch SkeleGro, or really, whatever you want.  Some simple punch recipes are:

• Sprite and green veggie juice for the green drinks
• Pineapple juice, orange juice and mango juice for the yellow drinks
• Ginger ale, cranberry juice cocktail and orange sherbert for the red drinks 

If you’re planning to serve cocktails, you can again choose your favorite mixer recipes and give them themed names, like the Fizzing Whisbee , or you can even set out a variety of craft beers and call them Ales of Beedle the Bard! One fantastic Harry Potter themed cocktail is the Goblet of Fire, which is essentially a pomegranate martini made with pomegranate juice, orange juice, a tiny squeeze of lemon juice and vodka. 

Just like with your make your own potion bar, you can print up signs that feature the name of your drinks in large letters, and the ingredients in small print, or you can make a game of asking your guests to guess what’s in their potions. 

And now the final element of your epic, immersive Hogwarts at Night event -- costuming.  Obviously if you’ve picked up an official robe somewhere along the way, you’re most of the way there.  All you’ll need is a few accessories, like a Monster book of monsters, or even your trusty Bowtruckle.  

If you have been lucky enough to buy or receive a Quidditch sweater or jacket then all you’ll need is a broom! But if you don’t have any Hogwarts gear hiding in the back of your closet, there are still a few fun and easy ways to deck yourself out as a character in the Harry Potter series. 

It’s actually pretty simple to mimic the Hogwarts school uniform with a v-neck sweater, a white button down shirt, and a house tie.  Any dark colored pants or skirt will work with this outfit, and you can accessorize with your broom, your pet, or your time turner.  

If you have a simple maroon sweater, add a large R on the front and you’ve got the sweater Mrs Weasley knit for Ron at Christmas.  If you’re brave enough you can wear it over blue and white striped pajamas!

Or simply wear all black and wrap a house scarf around your neck.  Carry and wand and it will be completely obvious that you’ve come straight from wizarding class. Any type of witch or wizardy type hat also works in this case.  

If you’re up for a challenge and you want to stand out amongst all your guests, you might like to try to dress as a well-known character from the series, like Professor McGonagall for example.  Just a few nods to her standard uniform will make it clear who you are, like a high necked black shirt under your robe with a pin at the neck, or wire rimmed glasses that you can peer over.  You’ll need to pick up a tall witch’s hat for sure, and start practicing your Scottish accent!  

You can become Professor Trelawney with some coke bottle glasses and a head wrap, especially if your hair is already long and wavy.  Just add a few layers of street-person chic with dark sweaters and a wool skirt.  

And you can even channel Luna Lovegood with a Ravenclaw tshirt, a long blonde wig, a set of sparkly winged glasses that you can make from cardboard, and maybe even some awesome radish earrings!

And now you’re ready to host the most memorable event your Potterhead friends have ever experienced!