Story Time: My School Had Harry Potter Day and It Was Amazing

I thought I would do a story time on this since Harry Potter recently celebrated 20 years! Also, fair warning, this may be the nerdiest post on this blog, complete with a couple nerdy photos as proof haha!

Anyway, I went to an all-girls private school for high school. The school is well over 100 years old (which is old for California). The cobblestones alone are probably also over 100 years old. One day a year in the fall, we would have a “Harry Potter Day”. I thought every school did this until I got to college and realized no school did this! A lot of people were fascinated that we got to do this!

So, each grade (9-12) got assigned a Hogwarts house and that was their house until they graduated. My class’ house was Slytherin. We all collectively agreed that this was probably because my class were also the biggest bunch of troublemakers by far. (Different story for a different time haha!) At the end of the day, the class with the most house spirit won the House Cup. And every year, my class won by a landslide!

The day before Harry Potter Day, all the girls in my class would pass on the message to each other as to what the dress code is, who’s playing Snape/Draco, and what time to show up to school. The dress code was green tie (preferably striped, we all raided our dad’s/boyfriend’s closet for those), white polo or button-down, grey skirt, and our navy sweater or sweater vest. Pretty much every single person in our class abided by the “set” Slytherin dress code (unless they were the Snape or Draco).

Normally, school started at 7:45 am on the dot. Some teachers were lenient and wouldn’t mark you tardy as long as you were there at some point during homeroom. Other teachers would mark you tardy if you were even a minute late. And, then, there were some teachers that would write you up for a detention if your bum wasn’t actually attached to your seat by 7:45 am.

For Harry Potter Day, people from my class started showing up at 7:00 am. This was because there were about 3-4 artists picked out from the class (I was one of them) to show up with Sharpies the day of and draw the Dark Mark on everyone’s left arm. I think there were only a couple girls without them out of the ~170 of us. In addition, nearly everyone pinned the Slytherin house crest over the school crest on our uniform. Typically, a couple girls would come with a few pages of house crests printed out in case anyone forgot. I never brought a wand with me, but I know a ton of people who did.

The day of, all the school bells were changed to the Harry Potter intro song. During our lunch hour (we only had one for the whole school), the school leadership would set up amps and carry out a mini House Tournament. Also, pretty much everyone knew the opening song to A Very Potter Musical (which, if you haven’t seen it, are you even a real Harry Potter fan?) and during the “Slytherin” part, our entire class would shout it and hold up our left arm. I know, so nerdy! But also ridiculously fun 🙂

In fact, our class photo for the yearbook was taken on Harry Potter Day since we killed it every year. I wish I had my yearbooks in Tucson so I could show you all! But you just have to trust me when I say it’s pretty amazing to see an entire class completely dressed as their Hogwarts house.

As a side note, I’m a Ravenclaw. My best friend is a Ravenclaw. But, you know, Slytherin is cool, too 🙂 Anyway, that’s the story of what Harry Potter Day was like at my high school. It was awesome! We were all a bunch of little nerds that were obsessed with the Deathly Hallows, Platform 9 & 3/4 and all things Harry Potter (still are, in fact). Definitely one of my favorite school spirit days!