Detention System

Just like any school, students at Hogwarts are bound to get into trouble. Should a prefect or professor come across their misdeeds, detention is almost surely to follow. What follows is the procedure for issuing detentions and what the punishment entails. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask them in the FAQ Thread, the Hogwarts Help room in Discord, or send an owl to myself or any staff.

Note: IC = in character. This system applies to in-world rulebreaking, not to OOC (out of character) rules like word count and metagaming.
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What qualifies as a detention-worthy offense?

All IC-rules are listed in this post. Breaking any of these rules can be grounds for detention. The severity of the punishment will depend on the individual prefect/professor. Some may let you off with a warning. It's possible that your character could bully a prefect out of giving a detention. Do note that this will likely result in a much bigger person to come after you with a much harsher punishment.

Please note that while your character may get punished, you the player are not in trouble. Your character can get detention once a week and still be in excellent standing with the community. Further, please don't take getting busted as a personal attack from the staff. This is only an IC encounter.

How does a prefect/professor catch a rulebreaker?

First, a staff member must determine whether it makes sense for the rule-breaker to be found. Factors such as environment, item possession, and time will be used to determine if rule-breaker is caught. 

• Environmental factors such as darkness may make one harder to see. As an example, a Lumos spell could reveal someone breaking curfew. 
• Items such as the invisibility cloak could hide someone from prefects and professors. 
• The amount of time passed since the post was made is also considered. If a week goes by since rule breaking post was made, the staff has missed the offense by default.

Some professors/prefects may include a 100-sided die roll: everything above 51 is a success, everything below is a failure. This is at discretion of the staff and dependent on the individual situation. For example, having an invisibility cloak is not a get away with anything for free card so they may just make it a lower chance that they discover you. This is all discretionary and logic-based.

Once the above have been considered, the prefect/professor may post in your thread showing their character either missing the offense or confronting your character. This is regardless of whether thread is marked private, solo, or otherwise. Making a thread as private does not prevent the IC staff from stumbling upon you if you are causing IC trouble, it is merely an indicator to normal players that you do not wish to be disturbed and we will enforce this.

What does a detention entail?

Punishments are dependent on the prefect/professor giving the punishment. Regardless, all detentions have these things in common:

1. Thread is RPG (200 word posts)
2. Limited to 3 posts (can be more if staff AND student desire).
3. Posts can be consecutive: player does not have to wait for a reply from prefect/professor if the prefect/professor is too slow for them.
4. Offending student cannot make or join new RP threads until detention is complete. Threads that were created before the detention thread was created can be continued as normal.

Please note that the player is not barred from continuing present threads or creating OOC threads.

If the student has not been owled the link to the detention thread within a week of it being issued, the detention is retracted. The detention is not in affect until the detention RP is made.

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Additional FAQ:

What if people are getting multiple detentions? Would they post in the same detention thread they originally posted in? And if that's the case, would someone get a more severe IC punishment after, say, 3-4 detentions?

If each offense happened in different threads, they should get its own detention thread. If multiple offenses occurred in one thread, one detention thread should be enough. If character undergoes multiple detentions, future detentions could have more advanced requirements (RPG++, 5 posts, etc).

Are staff expected to make a full 200+ WC post every time someone breaks a rule even if we walked by and didn't see it?

If a staff member issues a detention, then they absolutely must post in the thread, following all rules on word count. If staff chooses not to issue a detention (whether the staff character missed the offense or the staff player doesn’t have time), then they don’t have to post anything and you are completely off the hook.

Expulsion System

If your character has been expelled, there is no "going back", you did something too heinous for detention so going away for a few months or giving up a few Saturdays is not going to cut it.

What gets you Expelled: (This is not all-inclusive)

• Casting an unforgivable (the spell trace is on your character, it will not take long to figure out it is you)
• Killing someone, PC or NPC
• Turning someone into a bloodthrall
• Turning someone into a werewolf
• Veela's charm
• Repeated breeches of statute of secrecy: practicing magic outside of school (as a minor) in areas where it can easily be tracked by the ministry such as muggle neighborhoods.

When this happens you lose access to Hogwarts proper - the school and the house. You have access instead to Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, and the areas outside of Hogwarts except the other wizard schools. You also no longer learn new spells. The only way to learn new spells will be by completing homework. You will not be able to participate in NEWTS and OWLS unless you have already participated in them. You will not be able to join a sports team. At the end of each year you will still earn 5 stat points and access to 1 additional ability annually as you normally would but you will not automatically learn any spells at the end of the year. Your continued learning of spells would be explained as either independent learning or tutoring.

How is this done?

I create a new role on site (expelled). Their title will be Year __ and expelled rather than a house. They will have no ability to post in any Hogwarts proper forum area. They will be able to see the areas of the school OC with the exception of the houses and staff areas. They will have access to classes this way to continue to learn spells but they do not automatically get spells (except ones we grant automatically at the end of the year because they are in no class).

Can I get expelled and complete all of the homework available to me?

The homework will open up for you year-by-year as it always had. The only difference now is that at the end of the school year you will not have access to any spell you did not take a class for. You also need to remain on Index, if you are removed from Index and do not go up a 'year' you will not be able to access next year's classes.

How am I supposed to explain learning spells outside of school?

Magical learning is compulsory in the UK. It would be presumed that you were taught by a tutor or given access to books for study.

Would I lose my wand?

We are aware of the Hagrid example from decades before Potter's time and even more decades before the present era. That was then and this is now.

This does not feel like much of a loss, what is the catch?

Actually it is a big loss for your character:

• Sports are the only alternative means of stat gain and you are not able to join a sport team.
• Most events and activities take place in Hogwarts.
• You do not have access to the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library for spells because... you're not at Hogwarts. You are welcome to know what you already know. [This means you cannot get the restricted spells from any prodigal or restricted section abilities after you've been expelled]
• OWLS and NEWT exams are a big part of the adult system. When your character is an adult they will have to achieve similar credentialing via other means which will take a protracted period of time.

Can I backdate threads?

The expulsion system is access-driven so you are not able to circumvent the lack of presence in Hogwarts proper by claiming that your character did things in the remote past so that you are allowed to continue to RP in Hogwarts. So you can backdate, but you will not be able to backdate into Hogwarts.