We spent a good month interviewing the students at Hogwarts and listening to their passions and sensitivities.

We spoke to students from different parts of the world, from different houses, and from different years at Hogwarts, asking them what new features they would like to see at Hogwarts or on the HiH platform. We received some thought-provoking replies that certainly made us ponder and conclude that we have a variety of students at Hogwarts seeking various novelties. 

In this chapter of our magazine, we have attempted to reiterate the responses of our fellow students, whom we interviewed. We have stated the answers anonymously to encourage our fellow students to speak freely. However, we have included a special section featuring those respondents who voiced their views more vocally and agreed to have their names and identifying marks displayed along with their replies. Be sure to check out the Special Section towards the end of this chapter.

We asked all of them the same basic question - Do you think there could be some new features added to Hogwarts or to HiH, or anything new that you would love to see at Hogwarts or on HiH in the future? Do you have any suggestions for the same?

Here are the responses we received during our stimulating interviews with our fellow Hogwarts students.

1st Year Anonymous Students

• Been on HiH for 1 year and 10 months - I would love it if we were given a month (for example) to collect as many house points as possible. At the end of the month, all members of the winning house would receive a prize of some sort (it could be a head start next month, an exemption from an assignment, etc). Have a good day. The student was unaware of the House Point Competition Group and was directed to it via messages through owl by our magazine team.


• Been on HiH for 2 months - it would be much better if you could owl multiple people at once (like a group chat), because it’s important to be able to contact certain people at once. Our magazine team suggested the student try using a private group or club at Hogwarts to hold private discussions, where they can reach out to all the members simultaneously, but they wanted the discussions held without the hassle of creating a new group or club.


• Been on HiH for 3 months - I believe that it could be more of a Harry Potter experience and that lessons are made so that many more others can do them. Our magazine team told the student that classes are open and accessible to all, irrespective of their year. However, to be able to write assignments or exams, one would have to fulfil the minimum requirement of passing the course in the previous year. The student clarified that they wanted HiH to be more popular among the wizarding world population and the Muggle-borns so that everyone could get their magical education and no one would miss out on the experience.


• Been on HiH for 1 year - I do have an idea for something new at Hogwarts: I was thinking of a video or something that tours the common rooms and dormitories of each house and of special places and/or classrooms at Hogwarts, just to get the full magical experience, or pictures to make everything more colorful and magical..! . If it's already a thing at HiH, then please tell me where I can find it! Thanks again! Our magazine team: : ).


• Been on HiH for 3 months - It would be great if there was a way to earn house points without studying and taking classes, for example, by winning competitions hosted by Professors, by maintaining discipline, or by publishing many exemplary books in the library. The magazine team agreed that a way to earn house points at Hogwarts, apart from performing in class, does not exist for now.


• Been on HiH for 3 months - hii, sorry I was late in replying to you, but umm... yes, there is one suggestion I had in mind: instead of having to read a lesson, we could have an audio of basically whatever is written. And it doesn’t have to be the voice of an actual person, it could be the voice of a robot or something like that :) The magazine team concurred that some students may benefit from audiovisual learning methods as opposed to reading and retaining, as not everyone learns the same way.


• Been on HiH for 4 months - I already love Hogwarts and HiH the way they are. I suppose the one and only thing that could really make Hogwarts is Here any better is to have like a checkpoint at midterm and if you have a below 75%, or maybe, upon request, an extra class for studying for the midterm, like OPTIONAL; lesson 4.5: midterm studying, between lessons 4 and 5, or something. That is really the only thing I can imagine that could make HiH better. The magazine team agreed that that may be an academic help for students.


• Been on HiH for 7 months - As is well known, everything must be done in English and it is understandable, but why not include a second language, the one that is the second most spoken? I'm not saying that they do it in classes, because it would be tedious, but I do say that tasks are accepted in English and the other language. The translator is something that many use (students), but doing it in the native language helps to perform tasks with greater confidence than in a language that perhaps not everyone fully understands, or that can create more confusion when translating a task already written. For example, it happened to me personally once that when I finished my work there were three different, but similar, definitions that were translated with the same name, which made me go to the lesson to see how it was actually written. That would be it, really, because I'd give the site a 9/10 if it weren't for that. Well, it's not the first time he mistranslated something for me and when I did the homework it turned out to be wrong. The magazine team responded that they totally understood the translation issue.

2nd Year Anonymous Students

• Been on HiH for 5 months - Please install a feature like a forum where students can put up posts for all other inhabitants of the Hogwarts castle, from students to Professors to people role-playing as other adults or children, to see and comment. Since Professors and the Headmistress will also be present, the students will be expected to maintain discipline and be monitored. While all may not like it, many will find that it's easier to communicate with other active members on a large scale through this feature, which can otherwise be very challenging. For those who don't like it, a muting option may be made available, through which they can mute that feature completely and only check back when they want. To bolster more house pride among the students and enthusiasm towards earning house points, a similar feature specific to each house may be installed, where only those students and Professors who belong to that house may enter. The Professor who is the Head of House may hold the position of group administrator or moderator for that feature, assisted by student monitors from his own house, to maintain discipline. The Headmistress may be the only one given magical access to the feature for any of the houses, so that she or he can oversee everyone in the Hogwarts Castle. The student clarified that they wanted an auto-joinable feature where all inhabitants of Hogwarts castle are automatically present and can see each other's posts. Our magazine team: : ).


• Been on HiH for 8 months - I would like to see an improvement in appeals, if there were a button where people could appeal to their grades without having to send an owl to Professors ( they often conctact Professor Assistants or PAs first, and PAs need to contact a Professor, or they don't include their grade ID), it would make this process so much easier. I would also like to see an update where you automatically advance a year without having to manually do it, as it is often problematic and sometimes takes a lot of time to work properly. Our magazine team: Your points make a lot of sense. Are there any old features that you would like brought back? I have not been here long enough to know any past features that would be beneficial to bring back, so I can't say much on that subject. Our magazine team: : ).


• Been on HiH for 5 months - I would love to see more interactive assignments at Hogwarts, similar to the "Flying Tapestries" exercise in Flying classes, in my first year at Hogwarts. Our magazine team was glad to know that the student enjoyed the assignment and hoped that the Professors would brew up more such assignments soon.


• Been on HiH for 10 months - I would like to see a new zoom call feature that allows us to connect more personally. Our magazine team: : ).

SPECIAL SECTION

Our magazine team decided on this special section when Lily Lavender, Third Year Student, Defense Against the Dark Arts Head Student, and author of many academic guidebooks in the Hogwarts Library, gladdened us by saying that she would love to reply to our interview with her identity disclosed completely. We gleefully removed the veil of anonymity to reveal the answers of those students who chose to have their opinions heard and reflected out loud and clear in the open.

• Lily Lavender, 3rd year Gryffindor student, been on HiH for 3 years and 1 month, Defense Against the Dark Arts Head Student, author of numerous First & Second Year Study Guides of all subjects and many other books in the Hogwarts Library, holder of previous mentions in many magazine and newspaper issues (her beautiful lavender colored backstory is exceptionally detailed and can give you a list of the academic guides and other books she has written in the Hogwarts Library) - I think that a couple new features would be beneficial for all of Hogwarts is Here and its students and staff. One of them is new courses! To my knowledge, Arithmancy will eventually be available, according to the Headmistress! I would love to see a history course on how the Dark Arts came to be, how the unforgivable curses was formed, and the history of how Voldemort rose into becoming the most feared wizard in the world. I would also love a course on the complete history of the ins and outs of Hogwarts castle. Wouldn't that be cool?! As far as the backstory and book editors go, I would love it if dropdown coding or similar could be brought back to Hogwarts is Here! I know many others who were here when Hogwarts is Here transitioned to the site we all know today feel the same as well. It is quite a pain to scroll through heaps and heaps of content on a person's backstory just to get to a section you want. By having those dropdown lists again, it would make a long backstory so much shorter and still have the same amount of content on a backstory, while it also makes it much nicer and cleaner than what we have currently! So many more students must have tons of ideas on how we can all make Hogwarts the place we know and love even better! Our magazine team: We would love to study Arithmancy too. Could you elaborate on drop-down coding? Is it some sort of formatting? Maybe it's something like the Chapter Selector in a library, you pick the topic and it opens up? Yes, it is exactly like that! HiH used to have that, along with being able to have backstory music, different mouse cursors for computers, flashing images, and all sorts of things with coding! Sadly, we can't do any of that anymore, as the coding for those is no longer allowed. Oh well! I'll bid you all readers farewell for now, and happy studying! :) Our magazine team: : ).


• Evony Senoj, 2nd year Slytherin student, been on HiH for 7 years and 10 months, Charms, Transfiguration and Flying Professor Assistant - One thing that I would love to see is an old feature brought back: the Theme Weeks! These were fun, limited-time classes on things like Prehistoric Magical Creatures, Magical Cooking, and Writing Challenges! The magazine team was amazed to learn about such an interesting feature.


• Dane Lautner, 6th year Slytherin student, been on HiH for 8 years and 1 month, Transfiguration Head Student, Potions and History of Magic Professor Assistant - I really would like to have feeds back. Many people think the site is inactive because there are no public venues to interact with people. Even if feeds were limited to Professors and PAs, that would help change perception of activity. As for improvements… I’d love more courses! I feel like electives are particularly long and unchanging; there’s no need for electives to be available all the way to Y7 and for us to have such a limited pool. Our magazine team: These are amazing suggestions. How has your experience on HiH been so far? I love HiH. It’s true that many of us love HiH but still hope the website would be taken better technical care of, but I absolutely adore the community and what the project stands for. Our magazine team agreed that it's such a privilege to get to go to Hogwarts.


• Alex Halsey, 1st year Slytherin student, been on HiH for 1 year, Astronomy Professor Assistant - I don't really have many insights on features and improvements, but I have heard about theme weeks as a thing that has been done before, and I'd love to see them for myself. 😊I suppose I would also like if you could insert images straight from your PC into essays, as sometimes you need to include an image or might have a strong desire to do so, but it currently requires uploading it elsewhere and linking to that, I think? Our magazine team: We don't know how to do it. You have to put the picture link in the source box, I think. So you can put an image straight from a website, but if you want one that you've taken yourself, you need to upload it elsewhere before you can include it. Our magazine team agreed that it would be great if we could just directly upload pictures from our PC or phone gallery.

We were amazed by the wide variety of responses that we got. After the interviews, the members of our magazine's team concluded that the newer inhabitants of the Hogwarts Castle are often in the dark about existing features that they would have loved if they were aware of their existence. Some students want a more competitive environment for earning house points or for other activities, while others want to reach out to certain friends all at once. Many students would like the HiH platform to be more tuned to the magical world through animations or videos, to make the experience more similar to the Harry Potter universe. Many active members of the castle are seeking other active members to communicate with but are failing to do so because they are unable to find each other. We concluded that craving better, more effective communication was a major expectation of quite a few students. Some students, mostly older ones, want old features such as limited-time and themed classes, competitions, and activities brought back.

While incorporating all of these features may not be feasible, it was certainly worth it to get to know the aspirations of diverse groups of students. We also inferred that it might be beneficial for the students to explore and reach out as much as possible when it comes to Hogwarts, because oftentimes what we are looking for is right in front of us. As our famous former headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, said, "Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.".

- Hiya Debnath, Journalist, Compiler, Publisher, Editor, Hogwarts Monthly Magazine.