My daughter was turning 11 years old and she begged for a Harry Potter party for several years so we went all out. We used many of the ideas on this website. Our invitations we exactly like many of the other entries since it was based on the first book. We used tea stained paper, burnt the edges, rolled them up and hand delivered them. We took three weeks to prepare. We used ideas found on this website for Diagon Alley including a sheet of fabric painted with red bricks that they had to go through. They went to Gringotts to get chocolate gold coins to buy robes that I made, dollar store witches hats and cauldrons, feather pens that I made, spell books and potion books with a list of all ingredients used in all 7 books which I got from the internet. We used the idea of the kids turning Ollivander into an animal if they picked the correct wand. Then we had our feast with a cake in the shape of a castle with a flag flying from a turret saying Hogwarts". Afterwards we used the idea from this website to use red cabbage juice vinegar laundry soap and baking soda. We named them from ingredients in their Potions book. This really stunk up the house!!! Next was Defense Against the Dark Arts class. We used the idea from this website to teach the "Expecto Patronum" charm while a friend of ours had on a mask and came at them. If they got caught they had to freeze and eating chocolate would unfreeze them. We gave all the kids some chocolate in case they needed some later. We also taught them about a Chimera which is a mythical creature mentioned in one of the books. It is the head of a lion body of a goat and tail of a dragon. It is extremely fierce only one wizard every survived from meeting one and died from exhaustion not long after. We taught them that they lay eggs which have the power to protect themselves by stupefying you if you touch one. We taught the spell to unstupefy and told them they should destroy these eggs if they find one. The eggs at our party looked alot like small balloons. My husband made their wands from willow sticks and drilled a hole in each one put in a stick pin that only stuck out a few millimeters but was enough to kill a Chimera egg. Next they went to Divinations where they learned palmistry. In the class we had a light under a crystal ball that came on during the class unexpectedly Professor Trelawny looked into it and said "All is not well there is another Horcrux and Voldemort can come back if you do not find it. You must start your search in the tallest tower of this castle". They figured out to go up to our room. We put up a sheet right under our fan with 250 balloons or Chimera eggs. The fan was throwing Chimera eggs out trying to stupefy them. They pulled the sheet down and had a fabulous time killing Chimera eggs. There was a note attached to the sheet that said you must find 2 weapons to help you destroy the horcrux. The first was a clue to search in the house. The second said they had to go one at a time out to a graveyard to find the weapon. The first was the sword of Griffendor (made from old wood). The next step was to go to a fake graveyard that all the girls saw when they first came because it was still light out but now it was very dark. There was alot of screaming and trying to work up the courage because a dementor was out there. I escorted the kids one at a time to the graveyard where a dementor was hiding they used the spell they learned then they had to reach into a cauldron with dry ice in so they could not see their hand and they pulled out a water pistol. They all thought this was by far the best part of the party because they liked being scared but they really liked conquering their fears and being rewarded for it. The last kid's water gun had a garage door opener attached to it an obvious clue. So they ran over to the garage and inside was a wall of about 100 candles surrounding the horcrux - a black ball hanging from the ceiling (a pinata that I made). They used their water guns to put out the fire for a while until they decided to blow them out. They had to use the sword of Griffendor to take turns trying to break the horcrux. It was a lot of fun one we won't forget for a long time.  "