Alerts
A small bell in the header, next to Owl Post, that keeps a running tally of people paying attention to you: replies to things you wrote, and classmates typing your name in chat, in the forum, or under a blog post. The Department of Unread Correspondence was originally chartered to track exactly one kind of event, has since been handed three more, one of which turned out to be three places at once, and describes its workload as "expanding, in the way paperwork expands."
Where to Find It
Look for the bell (🔔 ALERTS) in the header, between Owl Post and your Profile link. It appears on every page, in-game or otherwise, the same way the Owl Post and Blog links do. A small number on the bell means something is waiting; no number means the Department has nothing to report, which is most of the time.
On a desktop screen, clicking the bell opens a small panel right there under it, listing your most recent notifications, each one a link to the reply in question. You never leave the page you were on, which the game's navigation system appreciates more than it lets on. Press Escape, or click anywhere else, and the panel folds itself away. The number beside the panel's title says how many arrived unread, the cross in its corner closes it, and See all alerts at its foot leads to the bell's own page, which holds the last fifty.
On a phone the bell lives in the bottom bar instead: the ALERTS tab, last from the left, with the same number riding on it. One tap opens a sheet that slides up over the page (the Department resists calling it a drawer, on the grounds that drawers hold socks), lists your most recent notifications, and filters them with the All, Mentions, Replies, and Action needed buttons at its top. Close it with the X (or Escape, for a keyboard), and the page you were on is exactly where you left it. In the narrow band of screen sizes between the two layouts, the plain header bell described below still does the walk-to-the-page job. When something is waiting, the browser tab's title also carries the count, in the familiar "(3) Hogwarts Live" style, so the bell can nag you from another tab entirely.
Unread notifications carry a small gold dot and brighter text. Read ones fade politely into the background. Each row starts with the portrait of whoever did the thing, or with a plain seal when nobody did (a giveaway opening, your turn in a duel), and says how long ago it happened in short units ("2m", "3h", "2d") the Department has grudgingly adopted in place of timestamps. Hover over one and the full date appears, for the archivists.
What Rings the Bell
| Event | Who gets notified |
|---|---|
| Someone comments on your Blog post | You, the post's author (unless you commented on your own post, in which case the Department declines to congratulate you on your own wit) |
| Someone replies to your Forum thread | You, the thread's starter (same rule: replying to yourself rings no bell) |
| Someone types @yourname in chat, in a forum thread or reply, in a blog comment, or in a new blog post | You, by name. The row reads "mentioned you in chat," "mentioned you in the forum," or "mentioned you on the blog," and links to the conversation where the name was typed. Students on your chat ignore list cannot ring your bell this way. One person can ring it at most ten times a day, counted across chat, forum, and blog together, so ten forum mentions spends the same budget ten chat mentions would. And a mention you have not read yet does not stack: saying someone's name five times before they look files one notification, not five |
| A game is waiting on you: a Card Duel challenge needs your answer or it is your move in one, a Polyjuice Inquiry vote is open, or your role in the Inquiry has a night action to take | You, and only until you act. The row reads "Your turn:", "Vote:", or (for the night's errand, which the Department will not describe in writing) "Action needed:", says how long the window has left ("closes in 3 hours"), and links straight to the thing. Unlike every other row, it does not clear when you open the bell: the bell keeps ringing until you make your move or the window closes, whichever the Department notices first. Look at it as often as you like; it will still be there. The "Action needed" button on a phone's alerts sheet shows only these |
| Someone sends you a friend request | You. The row reads "sent you a friend request." and carries Accept and Decline buttons of its own, so the whole transaction happens without leaving the bell. Answer there and the row says so ("You and Hermione are now friends."). The request still arrives as an owl as well, because the Department files in duplicate whenever it is allowed to |
| Someone accepts a friend request you sent | You, the hopeful one. The row reads "accepted your friend request" and links to their profile. An owl comes too |
Some friend business never rings the bell. Declining a request, ignoring someone, and un-ignoring them are all silent, for the other player as well: nobody is told. Removing a friend sends the same owl it always did, and no alert.
That is the complete list of rows. The bell's number, however, also counts reactions: the applause other students leave on your deeds in the news. Those are not listed on the bell's page as rows. Instead the page shows a short note above the list ("4 reactions", or "1 reaction"), and the note sticks around until you next read the news, which is where reactions have always been cleared. This is why the bell may show a number after the list beneath it is all read. The Department is aware this looks like arithmetic misbehavior. It is, technically, two ledgers in one bell.
Mentioning Someone
Type @ and the first letter or two of a classmate's name in chat, a forum reply, a new thread, or a blog comment, and a short list of matching students opens under your cursor: their full display name, the @login underneath it, and their profile photo if they have one. Use the arrow keys and press Enter or Tab, or just tap a name, and it drops into your message as @Login followed by a space. Escape closes the list if you were only writing an email address. Students who were around most recently come first, on the theory that the person you are shouting at is probably still in the room.
The list matches logins, the name you sign in with, not titles or display names, because titles change and logins mostly do not. If someone's display name looks nothing like their login, the list shows both so you can tell the Dark Lord from the student who merely bought the title. Nothing is required of the list, either: typing @Login by hand works exactly the same.
Once posted, every @Login that belongs to a real student turns into a gold link to their profile, wherever it was written. A name nobody owns stays plain text. Logins with spaces in them cannot be mentioned at all, a limitation the Department has filed under "regrettable, structural."
Clearing It
Open the bell's panel, or visit its page, and the unread count clears itself, the same way opening the Blog clears its own "new post" mark. Nothing needs to be clicked individually; looking is enough. The one exception to "looking is enough" is a row asking you to act (a duel move, a vote): those stay unread until you act or the window closes, because being told about a deadline is not the same as meeting it. Reaction counts are the exception above: they clear from the news, not from here.
Housekeeping
Notifications you have read are kept for ninety days and then quietly swept. The Department's archives are deep but not infinite, and it would rather store the next bell-ring than your March.