The Wizengamot

Where to Find It

The Wizengamot Chamber is reached from the village navigation: look for "The Wizengamot". Inside is a circular courtroom of ancient stone with fifty tiered chairs, five of which are occupied, a ratio the Ministry describes as "right-sized." The plum-colored robes were mandated by a decree nobody can find, which is precisely why nobody can repeal it.

Who May Participate

• Voting requires at least 7 Voldemort Encounters. This is the same bar as the Minister election, on the theory that anyone who has personally annoyed the Dark Lord seven times has earned an opinion.
• Standing for a seat requires the same 7 Voldemort Encounters plus having logged in within the last 14 days. The activity check is run again at seating time, so registering and then vanishing produces exactly the political career it deserves: none.
• One vote in every House race, every day. There are four races, one per House, and you hold one ballot in each of them per game day: a vote for a Gryffindor, a vote for a Ravenclaw, a vote for a Hufflepuff, and a vote for a Slytherin. Merlin's Seat has no race and no ballot, because nobody elects it directly; it is simply awarded to whoever tops the leaderboard across all four races combined. Your ballots refresh with your newday, exactly as they do in the Minister of Magic election. The Ministry finds one opinion per House per day per wizard to be the safe maximum.
• Standing for a seat requires a House. The ballot is drawn up by House, so a candidate outside the four would be a name nobody could vote for. Get Sorted first. The Wizengamot will still be there, in the same chairs, filing the same forms.

The Five Seats

Seat	How it is filled	Who takes it
Gryffindor	Elected	The top vote-getter in the Gryffindor race.
Ravenclaw	Elected	The top vote-getter in the Ravenclaw race.
Hufflepuff	Elected	The top vote-getter in the Hufflepuff race.
Slytherin	Elected	The top vote-getter in the Slytherin race.
Merlin's Seat	Awarded, not elected	The single highest-polling candidate in the whole election, regardless of House -- unless that would leave their own House's chair empty, in which case they keep their House seat instead and Merlin's Seat goes to the best-polling candidate left over. Its holder is Chief Warlock.

The rule is simple until you are the one it applies to: top the entire election, of any House, and Merlin's Seat is yours, provided a second candidate from your own House exists to inherit the chair you are leaving behind. If nobody in your House was standing beside you, the seat cannot be vacated, and you keep it -- Merlin's Seat then goes to the best of whoever is left over from the other Houses instead, exactly as it always used to. There is no Merlin's Seat ballot, no Merlin's Seat campaign, and no way to run for it directly. You run in your House, and the totals decide the rest.

One seat per House means the largest House cannot simply purchase the entire body, however much it may want to. Ties are settled quietly and identically everywhere: more votes first, then whoever registered earlier, and if two candidates are somehow indistinguishable even by the clock, the older account. No coins are tossed. A House with no candidates leaves its chair vacant, and if every candidate wins a House seat there is nobody left over and Merlin's Seat stays empty too. The chairs do not mind. They have excellent posture and infinite time.

The Chief Warlock chairs the body and casts the tie-breaking vote on deadlocked measures. If the Chief Warlock's seat changes hands mid-term, the chair, and the tie-break with it, passes to the successor, so the gavel never goes unheld while the seat is filled.

Elections

• Terms run one calendar month, which the Ministry considers generous.
• Candidacies are open all month; the old term ends and voting closes at midnight on the 1st, but the tally and seating don't happen until the Ministry's next roll (mornings and evenings). In the gap, the Chamber reports the chairs as between occupants rather than pretending nobody ran. If the roll is ever more than a day and a half late, the Chamber stops waiting politely, shows the chairs again, and notes that the roll is overdue.
• The very first month after the Wizengamot opens is the inaugural campaign: candidacies are taken but no council sits yet. The chairs radiate a quiet institutional patience until the first roll after the 1st.
• Winning the Minister of Magic election vacates any Wizengamot seat (one office per wizard) and the runner-up succeeds: from that House for a House seat, or from the field at large for Merlin's Seat.

The Ballot

The ballot is filed by House. Each of the four races is its own block: a heading naming the seat, then the candidates standing in it, listed with their House, their running vote total for the month, and whatever platform they filed. There is no fifth block, because there is no fifth race. Each block also states plainly whether you have spent that day's ballot in it, so nobody has to remember what they did before breakfast.

Totals are cumulative for the whole month. The seat goes to whoever collected the most ballots, not to whoever was briefly popular on the 3rd. Those same totals decide Merlin's Seat, which now belongs to the biggest total in the whole election; only when the leader's House has nobody to inherit their chair does the old arithmetic reappear, quietly handing the gavel to the best of the also-rans instead. Either way, no ballot is wasted; it is simply counted in an election grander than the one you thought you were voting in.

On the 8th, 15th, and 22nd of each month, the Daily Prophet publishes race standings to the news: each House's leader and margin, the Merlin's Seat projection, and the state of the docket, including whether the Minister has used the veto (when the Minister has not, observers describe the situation as "ominous").

The Docket: Five Instruments of Wizarding Law

Seated members may propose measures, up to 2 per member per month; the third is traditionally shouted into a drawer. Each measure gets a 7-day voting window in which the council votes aye or nay. Passing requires a majority of votes cast, with quorum being a majority of the seated members (minimum 2). A one-member council can pass nothing, which is the closest the arithmetic comes to mercy. The Chief Warlock breaks ties.

Measure	What it does
Educational Decree	A numbered proclamation posted in the Chamber and the news. Numbering starts at 24; Decrees 1–23 were lost in a filing accident the Department of Magical Records describes as "regrettable, scheduled, and in no way preventable."
Ministry Stipend	Every active player receives +25 gold on their new day while enacted, processed by the Department of Coin Redistribution, which exists.
Ministry-Approved Extra Credit	+10% experience from forest encounters while enacted. Forest encounters specifically; the Ministry approves of extra credit but only where it can be supervised by trees.
Commission a Statue	A permanent honorific naming a player, displayed in the Chamber forever. Statues do not expire. Nothing about a statue expires.
Order of Merlin, Third Class	A commendation awarded to a named player, counted permanently on their profile. Third Class, because the first two classes require paperwork nobody has survived.

Stipends, Extra Credit, and Decrees expire when the term ends; statues and Orders of Merlin are forever. Every passed measure is guaranteed to resolve, whether enacted, vetoed, or overridden, by the end of the month. Nothing is left pending; the Wizengamot's memory is long and its arithmetic is longer.

A Statue or Order of Merlin needs a witch or wizard to actually honor, which the Docket accepts one of two ways: search for them by name and click the result, or, for the traditionalist, type their account number directly. The council keeps no record of which method was used. It only records the outcome, which is the sort of thing a bureaucracy calls fairness.

House Points for Legislating

When a measure is enacted, the proposer's House earns House points toward the House Cup: 50 points for the mechanical measures (Stipend, Extra Credit) and 25 points for the ceremonial ones (Decree, Statue, Order of Merlin). The Department of Points describes this schedule as "generous, once." Every seated member has a House, since every candidate does, so every enacted measure pays somebody.

The Minister's Veto (and Other Relations)

• The sitting Minister of Magic may veto one measure per month. There is no re-vote: the veto stands, unless the measure originally passed with 4 or more ayes, in which case it is overridden automatically and enacted anyway. The Minister is reportedly very calm about this.
• The Minister may also sponsor one measure per month onto the docket, which does not count against any member's proposal cap. An enacted sponsored measure awards House points to the Minister's House. The Ministry, as ever, looks after its own.
• At the month roll, the seated council formally invests the incoming Minister, a ceremony consisting of standing up, sitting down, and being recorded as having done both.
• Upon investiture, the Minister receives the traditional lime-green bowler hat, a permanent wardrobe piece that no one has ever asked for and no one may refuse. Every Minister in the historical record owns one; the Ministry describes the color as "distinguished," and the Ministry is entitled to its opinions.
• The Minister election ballot shows each candidate's Wizengamot service record, so voters can see exactly how many chairs a candidate has previously occupied.

Inauguration Day

On the 1st of the month, if a council was seated, the whole realm celebrates: every player's new day brings a small gold gift and +10% experience from forest encounters for the day, courtesy of the incoming council. One celebration per wizard per inauguration; the Ministry has firm views on double-dipping into civic joy.

The Plum Robes

Every seated member is granted the official plum Wizengamot robes as a wardrobe item: a permanent keepsake, not a rental. You keep them after your term, because prestige that has to be returned is merely borrowing. The Chief Warlock receives a distinct variant trimmed in silver, a color chosen to communicate authority to anyone standing close enough to notice. Successors who inherit a seat mid-term receive the robes too; the tailoring department asks no questions.

Forfeiture: The Public Sacking

A seated member forfeits their chair by not logging in for 7 days, or by missing the vote on 2 closed measures. The runner-up from the election succeeds them: the same-House runner-up for a House seat, and for Merlin's Seat the best remaining candidate of any House, since that chair was never anyone's property to begin with. The House seats are settled first, so an at-large succession cannot quietly walk off with a House's own runner-up. The whole affair is announced in the news, because the Wizengamot believes accountability is best served publicly and preferably with an audience. Successors are not held liable for measures that closed before they sat down, which is the single most humane rule in this entire document.

The Annals and Your Permanent Record

• Past Councils: every seated council is recorded permanently and browsable from the Chamber. History is permanent, like all Ministry paperwork.
• Profile service records: your public profile displays your offices and honors: Minister of Magic terms, Wizengamot terms served, terms as Chief Warlock, and Orders of Merlin (Third Class) received. These never expire, reset, or apologize.

Strategy

• Vote in all four races, every day. Votes accumulate for the whole month, so a candidate whose supporters remember them daily beats a candidate whose supporters loved them once. Leaving a race unvoted is a small act of abstention that somebody else is not committing.
• Recruit a second candidate from your own House before you campaign. Merlin's Seat now goes to the single best total in the whole election -- but only if your House has someone else standing to inherit your chair. Win everything with nobody behind you, and the gavel quietly passes you by; the seat cannot be vacated with nobody to hold it, and you are left, however impressively, as a House representative. Recruiting a running mate is not a courtesy. It is the whole strategy.
• Read the House column. The ballot lists every candidate's House, because a seat won by your own House votes on measures with your own House's points at stake. Voting on loyalty is not encouraged. It is merely made easy.
• Mind your House race. You only need to out-poll your own House to take its seat. Out-polling everyone gets you Merlin's Seat, the gavel, and slightly better robes -- provided somebody from your House was standing behind you to catch the chair. If not, you stay exactly where you are, decorated but unpromoted.
• Propose mechanical measures for the Cup. Stipends and Extra Credit pay your House double the points of a decree, and the electorate remembers who paid them 25 gold a day.
• Count to four. A measure that passes 4–1 is veto-proof. A measure that passes 3–2 is one ministerial mood away from a cushion-retired quill.
• Show up. Seven idle days or two missed votes and your successor is reading about you in the news. So is everyone else.