Owl Post (Mail System)

What Is Owl Post?

Owl Post is how players write to each other in private. It used to be a small popup window, which the Department of Correspondence has since agreed was not a dignified place to keep a mailbox. It then spent a short, unhappy spell as a page wedged into the middle of the game, which the Department agreed was worse. It is now a layer: it opens over whatever you were doing, and when you close it you are standing exactly where you were, with nothing reloaded and no navigation spent.

Open it from the OWL POST link in the header (the number beside it is your unread owls). On a wide screen the link opens a dropdown, and a conversation you pick opens as a small chat window in the corner of the screen, so you never leave the page you were on. The quill and the chat windows come with the header, so they turn up on the blog, the forum, the Player's Guide and student profiles as well, and a conversation picked from the dropdown there opens in a window on that page instead of marching you into the game. (Signed out, none of it is loaded, because there is no one to write to.) On a phone it is the OWLS tab in the bottom bar: one tap shows your conversations in a sheet above the bar, and tapping one fills the whole screen with it (see On a Phone, below). The sheet ends with See all in Owl Post, which opens the full-screen view, full screen.

The Dropdown

Click OWL POST in the header and a short list drops down under it: your conversations, newest first, with Hogwarts Notices pinned on top. Each row shows who it is, the newest line, and when it arrived, in your time zone as a date and time (such as "10/08 11:38pm"). A green dot on someone's portrait means they are in the castle right now. A row with unread owls carries a New tag or a number, in words, because a color on its own is a poor way to tell anyone anything.

• Click a row and that conversation opens as a chat window in the corner. The dropdown closes, since it has done its one job.
• See all in Owl Post at the foot opens the full-screen view (see The Three Panes, below).
• The number beside the title is your unread owls, the same one the header shows. The three dots beside it open More owl options, the toolbox of the whole owlery in one short list. First Mark all read: every unread owl becomes read at once, and the number goes away. With nothing unread it says All caught up and does nothing, which is the correct response to having nothing to do. It does not delete anything, which is more than can be said for most tidying. Then New owl, then your Friend List, Ignored, Archive and Owl Settings, each of which opens in the full-screen view, and last Open full Owl Post. House leaders also find House Mail in the list, and staff who manage accounts find All Online and All Players. Everyone else never sees those three and is not missing anything. The arrow keys move through the list, and Escape closes it before it closes the dropdown.
• The search box narrows the list to the conversations already in it, by name or by the newest line. Older owls are in the full-screen view, which has the patience for them.
• The cross in the corner closes the dropdown, for anyone who prefers to say goodbye with a button.
• Resting the pointer on the link, or tabbing to it, fetches the list in advance, so the dropdown is usually full before you have finished clicking. It looks again if the list is more than half a minute old.
• Escape closes it and puts you back on the link.
• Opening the dropdown does not read anything. Your unread count falls only when you read a conversation.

Below the width where the header collapses into the Menu button, the link skips the dropdown and opens the full-screen view directly, and the corner stays empty. On a phone the bottom bar takes over.

The Dock

The bottom right corner of the screen holds the dock. It sits beside the character stats panel and never on top of it, so your health and turns stay in view. Its one permanent resident is the quill, a round gold button. Everything else in the corner is a guest.

• Cards line up leftward. A conversation you open takes the place nearest the quill and pushes the ones already open to the left. Nothing is ever drawn over anything else.
• When the row runs out of room, the oldest card folds into a round bubble above the quill, showing a face and an unread count. Three ordinary chat windows fit side by side on a wide screen; a fourth sends the oldest upward. Click the bubble to bring it back.
• Minimize folds a card into a bubble and keeps whatever you had typed. Close puts the card away, and asks first if you have written something you have not sent.
• Enter sends. Shift and Enter start a new line. Your message appears at once, marked sending, and is replaced by the real thing when the owlery confirms it. The Send button is switched off while it is in flight, so a double click sends one owl, not two.
• If it does not get through, the message says Not sent. and offers a Retry. That covers a dropped connection, a server that answered badly, and a refusal. If your login has expired, it says so and tells you to sign in again, because retrying could not help.
• Drafts survive. An unsent message is kept in your browser, per conversation, and comes back when you reopen the card. A browser that blocks storage forgets it.
• Every card says, at the top, that A Vanishing Charm takes every owl 30 days after it is sent, read or not.
• The card knows who is on. Under the name it says Online now, or when they were last about (Active 5m ago, Active yesterday), and a small green dot sits on the face of anyone who is in the game. A group says 4 members, 2 online. "Online" is the game's own rule: signed in and seen recently.
• Days are marked. A line reading Today, Yesterday or a weekday separates the days, in your own time zone. A conversation's name lives in the head of the card, so the bubbles do not wear a heading of their own.
• A group has a menu. The three dots on a group's card open Add a student (only for whoever started the group), Leave group (for any member, after a confirmation), Open full Owl Post and Report. Adding uses the same chooser, offers nobody who is already in, and stops at ten in all. The usual refusals apply: someone who ignores a member, or is ignored by one, cannot be added, and the answer is the same neutral one every time.

On a Phone

A phone has no corner to spare, so the dock does not exist there. The bottom bar keeps its five tabs (Actions, Game, Stats, Owls, Alerts) and Owl Post lives in the one with the owl on it, laid out the way every phone messenger lays things out, on the theory that you already know how. The parts, in the order you will meet them:

• The Owls tab opens a sheet above the bar, not over it, so the bar stays where your thumb left it. At the top is Owl Post in large letters, then your unread count in a gold chip, a New owl button and a three dots menu holding the same tools as the three dots in the desktop dropdown: Mark all read, New owl, Friend List, Ignored, Archive, the broadcasts for those allowed them, Owl Settings and Open full Owl Post. Below it come a Search box (it narrows the list as you type), an Active now strip of friends who are online (tap a face to write to them), and an Inbox and Sent switch.
• The rows are round faces with a green dot when the student is on, the name in bold when something is unread, one line of the newest owl followed by when it came (You: if you sent it), and a gold dot at the right while it is unread. Hogwarts Notices stays on top. The number on the tab is the same unread count the header shows elsewhere; it falls only when you read a conversation (or use Mark all read), never merely because you looked at the list. Alerts, by contrast, clear when you open Alerts, which is their established custom.
• Tap a conversation and it fills the screen, bar included. At the top are a round Back arrow, their face, their name with Online now or Active 5m ago under it, and the three dots (Open full Owl Post, Leave group for a group, Report). Your owls sit on the right in gold, theirs on the left, with the sender's small face on the last bubble of a run. Days are marked, and the time shows when you tap a bubble, not on every one. The Vanishing Charm notice sits at the top of the messages.
• The box at the bottom is a rounded one that grows as you write. The Send button wakes up when there is something to send. Enter makes a new line; a phone keyboard has no Shift key worth the name, so only Send sends. Your message appears at once and is confirmed, or marked Not sent. with a Retry, exactly as on the dock. There is no subject box on a phone; to start another conversation with the same student, use the + in the head, and for a letter, open the full Owl Post from the menu.
• Back (the arrow or your phone's Back gesture) and Escape close only the current layer: an open menu, the new-conversation name step or its student chooser, the conversation, then the sheet. If you opened full Owl Post from a conversation, Back returns to that conversation. Browser Forward reopens a sheet or view you closed. Whatever you had typed and not sent is kept.
• New owl opens the chooser full screen: New owl across the top with Cancel beside it, a To: field, the students you have picked as chips you can tap to drop, and Friends, Online and Search below. Start owl opens the new conversation in the same place.

For screen readers: every layer is a dialog with a name, and the page behind it is switched off while it is open, so nothing wanders off underneath. Focus lands on the conversation's heading rather than the box, so that a keyboard does not rise over the first words you are read. Back and Escape each undo exactly one layer and return focus to what opened it, and an owl that arrives while you are reading is announced once from inside the open layer. Every button is at least 44 pixels square.

The Quill: Choosing Who

The quill opens a small chooser to its left, pushing any open chats further left rather than covering them. It has three lists:

• Friends: your friend list, online friends first, then whoever was on most recently, up to fifty.
• Online: who is in the game right now, up to fifty.
• Search: type at least two letters of a login (the name you type to sign in, not the display name with the title in front) and the first ten logins that begin that way appear. The punctuation that means "anything" to a database means only itself here, so typing a percent sign finds logins containing a percent sign and not everyone.

Tick one student to write to them. The quill continues your most recent conversation with that student, so a second owl does not start a second pile; to start a fresh one, use the + in a conversation's head (see Several Conversations, Same Students, below). Tick two to nine to start a group (see below). The button at the foot says how many you have chosen. Each name carries when that student was last about (online, 5m ago, yesterday, 3d ago). Players you have ignored and locked accounts are never offered. You are on the list as well, marked (you), for the student whose most reliable correspondent is themselves. An owl to yourself arrives once, already read, in a conversation called Notes to self, which is the only kind of mail that arrives already read. In the full-screen view, New owl skips this chooser and writes in the reading pane instead (see Writing an Owl).

Group Owls

Choose two to nine students and the owl becomes a group conversation: you and up to nine others, ten in all, which is as many as the owlery will carry at once. Everyone in it sees each message once, whoever sent it, and the group appears in the list with a few faces and a head count. A group made from the chooser is named after its members.

Adding someone puts a line in the group, such as "Alpha added Cara", and tells the new member. They see that line and everything after it, and nothing earlier: the group's past is not a thing you can be handed on arrival. Any member can rename the group (see Conversations, Not Letters).

• Each message in a group is one send for the purpose of the per-minute and per-hour limits, however many people receive it.
• Two students where one ignores the other cannot share a group, and a locked account cannot join one. The refusal reads the same in every case, so it gives nothing away.
• A member whose mailbox is full does not receive that one message. The sender sees nothing different.

Doing Things to an Owl

Every owl in a conversation, in a chat window, the full-screen view or the phone view, answers to the same short list of verbs. They live behind one button at the owl's top corner, Actions (three dots). On a wide screen, pointing at an owl raises a bar over that corner with the three verbs people use most, React, Reply and, on your own owl while it can still be edited, Edit, each with its name written on it, and a three-dot button for the rest: Forward, Copy text, and either Unsend (yours) or Report (theirs). The Actions button itself, which is what a keyboard reaches, lists every verb in one menu. On a phone the three dots sit at the owl's corner all the time, and holding a finger on an owl for half a second raises the same list as a sheet from the bottom, with all 5 reactions in a row along its top. That makes three doors to one room, which the Department of Correspondence regards as excessive and has resolved to allow.

The list only shows what you may actually do. An owl someone else wrote never offers Edit or Unsend, and an owl whose time has run out stops offering them while you watch.

• React. There are 5 reactions: lightning, heart, laughing, surprised and skull. They appear as small counted buttons under the owl, and the students in the conversation who received that owl can all see them. Press the same reaction again to take yours back. Only a student who received the owl can react to it, so a member who joined afterward, or left, sees none of it. Notices and the "Alpha added Cara" lines take no reactions, on the grounds that nobody has ever wanted to. The owlery allows thirty reaction changes a minute, which is more indecision than the job has ever required. Reactions go when the owl does, whether it is unsent or simply reaches the end of its 30 days.
• Reply. A bar above the box says Replying to and a name, with the first line of that owl and a × to change your mind. Send, and your owl arrives with a small card at the top of it: a colored edge, the sender's name in bold, and at most two lines of what they said. Nothing is pasted into your words. The card is drawn from the original owl each time anyone reads yours, so it follows an edit, says This owl was unsent if the original is taken back, and says Original owl has vanished once the Vanishing Charm has had it. Press the card and you are taken to the whole original: it scrolls into view and is outlined for a few seconds if it is already on screen, and if it is older than what has been loaded, the full-screen view opens at that owl. You only ever see a card for an owl you received or sent yourself. An email copy of a reply carries the quote as a plain line starting with >, because email has no cards.
• Edit. Your own owls only. A free account has 10 minutes from the moment of sending; an active VIP member has no clock. Either way an owl takes at most 20 edits, after which the owlery's patience for that sentence is spent. The editor opens in the owl itself with the stored text in it. Save keeps it, Cancel or Escape puts everything back, and focus returns to the owl's Actions button. An edited owl carries a small Edited button just under its outer edge, in the same small type as the time. Press it (or Enter, or Space) and the earlier versions open under the owl, newest first, each with when that wording was current; on a phone they open in a sheet. A screen reader hears "Edited, show earlier versions", and the list is announced with its count. Escape or Close shuts it and puts focus back on Edited. Only the students in the conversation can open it, only while the owl still exists, and an unsent owl has no history to show. Everyone in the conversation sees the new words, not just you, and the old ones are kept exactly as long as the owl is.
• Unsend. Your own owls, inside the same window and with the same VIP exception, though the 20-edit limit does not apply, since you are only taking it back. It asks you to confirm first. For everyone the owl then reads This owl was unsent, any unread copy stops counting toward the badge, its reactions are removed, and so are the unread @mention alerts it caused. Two things it cannot do: recall an email copy that has already gone out, and stop staff from reading the text for 30 days, which is how long the owlery keeps it before it lets go.
• Forward. Opens the form with that owl quoted and nobody addressed, as in the full-screen view's Forward button.
• Copy text. Puts the words of that owl, and only the words, on your clipboard. The quote card, the time and the buttons stay behind.
• Report. Another student's owl only. It opens the staff desk with that owl already quoted, the same as the Report button in the full-screen view. You cannot report yourself, which the owlery considers a missed opportunity.

Open conversations keep up. A conversation you have open, in a window or the full-screen view, picks up edits, unsends, reactions and "added" lines from other people by itself, usually within about ten seconds, with no need to close and reopen it. If someone edits or unsends an owl you are looking at, a screen reader says so once ("Alpha edited an owl", "An owl from Alpha was unsent"). Reactions arrive silently, because a room full of hearts read aloud is a different kind of ordeal. Your own edits and unsends are not announced back to you twice.

Mentioning Someone in a Group

Type @login in a group owl and, if that student is in the conversation, they get an alert: mentioned you in an owl, with the group's name and not a word of the message. Opening the alert takes you to that very owl. The suggestion list that appears as you type offers any student, so a name from outside the group will complete happily and then notify nobody. A student who ignores you never received the owl and so is never alerted.

• Direct owls never send a mention alert. The owl is already the alert.
• Mentions share a daily budget of 10 with chat, the forum and the blog. The budget is all or nothing for each owl: if your owl would take you past it, it alerts none of the students it names, not merely the surplus ones. The owl itself still goes out.
• Editing an owl to add a name alerts nobody, which stops an edit from becoming a free second shout.
• Unsend the owl and any alert for it that has not yet been read is taken back. An alert already read stays, and points at the line that now says it was unsent.

Several Conversations, Same Students

A conversation is people plus a name. You can hold as many conversations as you like with the same student, or the same group of students, which is how a long story avoids being filed under "hi" and a second story avoids being filed under the first. The first conversation with someone may stay unnamed, and is then called by the student's name. Every new conversation with people you already write to must have a name; two unnamed "Rowan" conversations were the problem, and the owlery has declined to build a second one.

The name is one stored value that each view calls by its own habit. The full-screen view calls it the Subject, as every mailbox does; the chat cards and the phone call it the Conversation name, as every chat does. It is the same words either way, and every student in the conversation sees them.

• In the full-screen view the subject is the bold line in each row and the heading of the open conversation, with with Rowan · 2 other conversations underneath (the count links to a search for that student). New conversation, beside Reply, opens a blank owl to the same students with a required Subject; the students sit on the To: line as chips you can remove, and you can add more. A conversation with no subject shows an Add subject button, which names the one you are in and never starts another. A name, once given, can always be changed and never taken away: the owlery revises, it does not retract. A group's name runs to eighty characters and a two-student conversation's to a hundred and twenty; anything longer is quietly reduced to what fits. The pencil beside the heading renames in place: Enter saves, Escape cancels, and focus returns to the pencil. Without a script, the pencil is the older rename form.
• New owl has an optional Subject and a hint that rewrites itself when you change the To: line: how many conversations you already have with those students, and where a blank subject goes. Leave it blank and the owl joins your newest conversation with exactly those students, not a new one named after its first line. Type a subject and it starts a new one. If you have no conversation with them yet, the conversation is called by their names.
• In a chat card and on a phone a named conversation shows its name as the title, over with Rowan, and who is online moves to the green dot on the face. The title is a button: it lists every conversation with exactly those students (a group that merely includes Rowan stays in the main list), and choosing one switches the same card to it. New conversation with Rowan is at the bottom of that list, and the + beside it does the same. Both ask for a Conversation name first, show the students as chips you can remove, and offer Add students; Start stays unavailable until there is a name. Nothing exists until you send the first owl, so closing the card empty leaves nothing behind. There is no + on Hogwarts Notices or Notes to self, which are one conversation each.
• Adding students to a conversation between two students always makes a new, named conversation; the old one keeps its history to itself. On a group you made, the + asks which you mean: Add students to this group (they see owls from then on, not the history) or New conversation with these students. On someone else's group it goes straight to the new conversation, since only the student who made a group can add people to it.
• Rename in a card is under the three dots, as Rename conversation (or Name this conversation when it has none); the title turns into a field, Enter saves, Escape cancels.
• A new conversation starts empty. Nothing is copied from the old one and the old one stays where it was. House Mail opens, or continues, your first conversation with each student it reaches.

Letter Mode

Some owls are letters. Expand to letter mode, in the three dots at the top of a chat window, turns it into a large card headed New Owl, Letter, which sits next to the quill like any other card and leaves the page behind it as it was. The conversation's history steps out of the way so that the writing leads. Your other chats fold into bubbles, drafts intact.

• To is a row of recipient chips, each with a small face and a × that removes it, followed by an Add another student field: type two or more letters of a login and pick from the list (arrow keys and Enter work).
• Leave the chips alone and the letter goes into the conversation you opened. Change them, whether by adding someone or removing someone, and it goes out as a new conversation to exactly the students on the line: one name is a direct owl to them, two to nine make a group of three to ten with you, and it needs a subject if you already share a conversation. The old conversation is not touched, and the card turns into the new one. With every chip removed there is nobody to send to, and it says so.
• On a conversation you already have, the letter shows its Subject as plain text with a Rename pencil beside it, and a line under the writing area reads Goes into The Forbidden Forest. A letter to new recipients has a Subject field instead and says Starts a new conversation. The writing area is large, and the Send button is a word, not an icon. Next to it a Draft saved line shows the time your words were last kept, and a small chip reminds you the letter self-destructs 30 days after sending.
• The shrink button, or Escape, returns you to the small card. (If the add-a-wizard list is open, Escape closes that first.)

There are no attachments. An owl carries words, which the Ministry has determined to be the correct amount of cargo.

The Keyboard and Screen Readers

The dock is built to be used without a mouse and without sight, and a test checks it on every change.

• Tab reaches the quill and every open card. Each card is a labeled dialog.
• Escape closes one layer at a time, in this order: the chooser, then letter mode, then the card you are in, and the dropdown last. The full-screen view, when it is open, is the top layer and takes the key first. Focus goes back to whatever opened that layer. A card with an unsent draft is minimized instead of closed, so the draft survives.
• The chooser and letter mode keep Tab inside themselves while they are open. Chat windows do not; you can Tab straight past them.
• An owl that arrives in a window you have open is announced once, with who it is from and the start of what it says. An owl that arrives with nothing open is announced as You have a new owl. Neither moves your focus or opens anything.
• Each conversation's owls are one tab stop. Tab lands on the newest owl's Actions button, and the Up and Down arrows, Home and End walk between owls without Tab having to visit each one. Right and Left move between an owl's Actions button and its reaction buttons. Enter or Space opens the Actions menu, the arrow keys move inside it, Escape closes only the menu and puts focus back on the button. Every result is spoken once: "Reacted with Heart", "Owl edited", "Owl unsent". Pressing Escape inside the editor or an open @mention list closes that and nothing else.
• Every button in the dock is at least 44 pixels square, and nothing is shown by color alone: a failed message says Not sent. in words, and a reaction you have given says "including you" in its name as well as wearing a heavier border.

The Three Panes

See all in Owl Post opens a full-screen view over the page you are on. It has three columns, in the manner of every mailbox ever drawn:

• The rail (left): New owl, then Inbox (with your unread count), Sent (with how many you are holding), Archive and Notices. Under Students are your Friend List and Ignored, each with a count when it has one. Under Settings is Owl Settings. House leaders also get a Broadcast heading holding House Mail; staff who manage accounts get All Online and All Players beside it. Anyone else never sees the heading, and is not missing anything, and typing the page's address does not help either: the page checks who is asking. House Mail itself is one box and one button. The owl goes to every student in your House who is online right now, from you, into each one's conversation with you. The screen says how many that is before you press Send, and nobody is emailed about it, which keeps the common room's inboxes calmer than its common room. If you already have a conversation with a student, the owl lands in your first one with them; if not, it opens one.
• The list (middle): your conversations, newest first, with a search box above them. The one you have open is highlighted. Every row uses the same date and time as the dropdown, in your time zone.
• Times inside an owl, such as when somebody started the duel that ended you, show in your own time zone wherever you read them. The email copy cannot know where you are, so it writes the time out and names the zone it means. Owls written before this change still say what they said, which was the server's time, and they are not going to start lying about it now.
• The reading pane (right): the open conversation, oldest owl at the top, or the owl you are writing.

Everything happens inside the view. Picking a folder, opening a conversation, paging, searching, replying, ticking and deleting, Owl Settings, the Friend List and Ignored all swap what is on screen without the address in your browser changing, and nothing you do in it counts as a move in the game. Escape or the × at the top right (a plain mark with no box and no word, whose tooltip says Close window) closes it and returns you to where you were, with focus on the link you opened it from. The page behind is switched off while the view is open, and Tab stays inside it, so nothing wanders off underneath. Every button is at least 44 pixels square, and a screen reader is told where you have landed after each move.

On a narrow screen the three columns stack on top of one another, which is the same information with less dignity. On a phone the view fills the screen.

The Owl Post Window

Without scripts, the OWL POST link cannot open a layer, so it opens a window instead: a new tab or window with the same three panes and none of the game around them, no header, no menu, no stats. It fills whatever size you give it, and stacks to one column when that is narrow. It has a Close window button at the top, and its links stay inside it. A group works there too: the group's own Add a student (for whoever started it) and Leave group are plain pages in the window, with a search by login, your friends and whoever is online to pick from, and a confirm page before you leave. The same rules hold as anywhere else: ten seats, the creator adds, and anyone who ignores anyone in the group is quietly not added. It never touches the game window you came from, which is the whole point: you can click around Owl Post for an hour and go straight back to your village.

The same window is the fallback when the view cannot load: if your connection drops or your login has expired, the view says so and offers a link to the window.

Conversations, Not Letters

Owls from the same person are kept together, and so are your replies to them. Each row in the list shows the other player (their face is a small crop of their wardrobe look, or their profile photo, or a colored tile with an initial if they have neither), the newest line, and when it arrived. A row with unread owls carries a New tag, or a number when there is more than one. The tag is text on purpose; a color on its own is a poor way to tell anyone anything.

• Opening a conversation reads it. Every unread owl in it is marked read at that moment, and your unread count drops to match. Looking at a list does not read anything.
• Older owls: a long conversation shows its newest fifty, with a link to the ones before. The list shows fifty conversations a page, and the bar above it says 1 to 50 of 212 with Newer and Older buttons beside it. Notices counts as one of the fifty on the first page. Open a conversation from page three, or from a search, and the list beside it stays on page three of that search; Back, Archive and Delete return you there too, rather than to page one of everything.
• Search looks through your own conversations for a name, a login, a group title, or a word in a subject or message. It needs at least two characters, and it looks at nobody else's mailbox. Sent has the same box.
• Select, Archive, Mark read, Delete: the checkbox in the list header ticks everything on the page, and the buttons beside it act on the conversations you tick. Archive tidies them out of the Inbox (see The Archive, below). Mark read clears their unread owls. Delete asks first, then removes your copies of every owl in those conversations, including the copies you sent. It does not touch the other person's mailbox, which is theirs.
• Rename, in the head of the conversation or in the card's menu, changes a conversation's subject, or a group's name, for everyone in it. Any member may do it. The pencil beside the heading does it in place. The conversation keeps a line saying who did, such as "Alpha renamed this conversation to Quidditch", so a rename is never a secret. Renaming is rate-limited, so a conversation is not mistaken for a ticker. Hogwarts Notices keeps its name.
• Reply turns the reading pane into a compose form addressed to the conversation, and what you send goes into it. Report opens a petition with that owl already quoted, and when you send it staff also receive the owls around it, as you saw them (a handful before and after, with names and times, unsent owls shown as unsent); in a chat window it opens the staff card already set to Another player is bothering me, with the student you are reporting listed and one press away from Ignore, and a Draft saved line under what you type. Delete in the pane removes the one conversation.
• Forward opens the same form with the newest owl quoted under a line saying who wrote it, and nobody addressed. Reply all (in a group) answers everyone in it, also in the pane. Open in dock closes the view and continues the conversation in a chat window in the corner.

The Archive

A conversation you are done with but not ready to delete can be archived: tick it and press Archive in the list, or press Archive at the foot of the reading pane. It leaves your Inbox and waits in the Archive folder in the rail, where it opens like any other conversation and offers Unarchive (the toolbar calls it Move to Inbox) to send it back.

• It is yours alone. Archiving changes only your own view; the other people in the conversation still have it in their Inboxes.
• Archiving reads it. A conversation you have tucked away does not keep the unread count up behind your back.
• A new owl brings it back. When anyone writes in an archived conversation, it returns to the Inbox for everyone who had archived it. Nobody has to remember to look in the Archive for the reply.
• It does not stop the clock. Archived owls still vanish 30 days after they were sent, like all the rest. Hogwarts Notices stays pinned and cannot be archived.

Hogwarts Notices

Everything the game itself sends you (House business, events, receipts, the occasional reminder that something ended) used to sit in the inbox looking like mail from a person. It is now one list called Hogwarts Notices, pinned to the top of the list of conversations, with a star where a face would go. Notice subjects are plain text; the notices themselves are what they always were.

• Each notice is its own row, newest first, with its own unread dot and its own Delete. Opening the list reads nothing; opening a notice reads that one. Mark all read clears the lot.
• Delete all system notices, in Owl Settings, is the deliberate wipe. It removes Notices only: the "added" and "renamed" lines inside your conversations stay where they are.
• There is nobody to reply to, so the pane has no Reply, and nobody to report, so it has no Report.
• The Notices link in the rail opens it directly and shows how many of them you have not read.
• System owls still arrive when your mailbox is full of unread player owls.

Sent

The old Outbox is now called Sent, and it works for every owl you write, however you wrote it. Each row shows who it went to, the subject, and when. An owl you wrote to one player opens its conversation; a House Mail or other broadcast is listed once, as going to Everyone on the list, because that is who it went to.

Sent copies follow the same rule as everything else here: they vanish when the owl does.

Owls Are Not Forever

An owl is deleted 30 days after it was sent, whether you read it or not. The clock starts when it is sent, not when it arrives, and not when you open it. The game says so in five places so that nobody can claim to have been surprised:

• A notice at the top of every conversation, in a chat window as well as in the full-screen view.
• A countdown on each owl, such as vanishes in 12 days.
• A chip in letter mode saying the letter self-destructs 30 days after sending.
• The note at the foot of the rail, which also records that nobody has ever filed a successful complaint about this, because the complaints vanished too.
• This page.

A conversation whose owls have all gone disappears from the list on its own. If an owl matters, copy it somewhere permanent before the Ministry takes it back.

Writing an Owl

1. Click the quill in the corner and choose who it is for (see The Quill above). In the full-screen view, New owl turns the reading pane into a blank owl instead, and Reply, Reply all and Forward do the same, so you never leave the view to write.
2. Write your message. A New owl with a subject starts a new conversation under that name. With the subject blank it goes into your newest conversation with exactly those students, or starts the first one, called by their names. Reply stays in the conversation you are reading, and New conversation next to it starts another with the same students. The body may be up to 5,000 characters. Color codes work; anything past the limit is left at the owlery.
3. Press Enter or the send button. Delivery is immediate, and a copy goes into Sent.

In the full-screen view and the Owl Post window, the pane starts with a To: line. Search by login name (not display name), or tick someone under Friends or Online now; the people you pick sit on the line as chips. One student makes a direct owl, two to nine make a group. The Subject is optional, and as above, a blank one adds the owl to your newest conversation with those students. Send turns the pane into the conversation, now at the top of the list. Cancel or Escape goes back to whatever you were reading, and what you typed waits for you, which is more than most drafts can expect.

There is a limit on how many owls one player may send each minute and each hour, so that the owlery is not mistaken for a drum kit. Staff are exempt. Staff with the right to send as someone else find Send as someone else under the form, which opens the older address page with its From box; leave it empty to send as yourself.

Limits and Manners

• Inbox limit: you stop receiving owls from players once you hold more than 50 unread. System notices still get through. Reading or deleting some makes room.
• Ignored players: an owl from someone you have ignored is never delivered, and they are not told. The same goes the other way, and nobody can ignore staff. See the ignore list.
• Full mailboxes: if the person you are writing to is over their limit, the composer says their mailbox is full instead of pretending.

Owl Settings

The bulk tools that used to live under Options are now Owl Settings in the rail. See Owl Settings for what each button does and what it refuses to undo.

Tips

• Use the Notices row for the game's business and the other rows for people. That is the entire point of the reorganization.
• Keep a chat window open while you play. New owls arrive in it without a reload, and the count in the header follows.
• Write long things in letter mode and short things in the small card. The owlery cannot tell the difference, but the recipient can.
• Read a conversation to clear it. Do not read a conversation you would like to stay bold.
• Stay well below the unread limit if you rely on hearing from your House.
• Give a scene its own conversation and name; a long story is easier to find when it is not filed under "hi".
• Send to the login name. The display name has a title in front of it, and the owls are not impressed by titles.