Harry Potter Escape the Room

Ages 14+ (too difficult for younger folks)
Escape room designed using the plans of librarian Beth Crawley from the Programming Librarian Interest Group on Facebook

1.  Scenario Card: You must navigate the room and complete the clues in order to find your lost Hogwarts Express ticket and catch your train to Hogwarts on time. Good luck. You have 30 minutes to complete the room and are allowed only 1 hint. If you want a hint ask one of the moderators by yelling “HINT” from the top of the stairs in your best indoor library yell.

The moderator will hand the group a lockbox with a blue multidirectional lock on it with a riddle on the top that reads:

Start at the end.

2. On the table will be three of the HP books. In the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, hidden among the pages is the Marauders Map.

3. On the map, the group will find the names of Moony, Prongs, Padfoot, but NOT Wormtail.

4. Hidden in the room will be a plastic rat. Taped to the bottom of the rat will be this riddle:

When you arrive at Hogwarts
On to your head this is placed
It will then tell you out loud
In which house you will be based.

5. This riddle will lead the group to the sorting hat. Inside the sorting hat will be a lockbox with a red combination lock. The group must use the numbers from the Quidditch match poster to unlock the box. The scores on the Quidditch match poster will read Gryffindor: 30, Ravenclaw: 20, Slytherin: 26, Hufflepuff: blank. This is the code to the box.

6. Inside the lockbox will be four cards, each representing one of the four Hogwarts houses. Each of the cards will have a number in each corner and a scrambled word on the back (this will represent the order of the houses/items). If you unscramble the words they will say: crown, locket, chalice, sword

7. The group will then need to find the four items in the room belonging to members of the four houses:

Ravenclaw: crown 

Slytherin: locket

Hufflepuff: chalice

Gryffindor: sword

8. On each of the items hidden in the room there will be a directional arrow. The group will have to put the items in order as per the numbers on the corner of the Hogwarts house cards.

9. The arrows on the items will open the blue multi-directionallock The combination is up (Ravenclaw), down (Slytherin), right (Hufflepuff) , left (Gryffindor)

10. Inside the multi-directional lockbox there will be a Howler. The Howler will read:

Excuse me!

How dare you lose your train ticket!

I am absolutely disgusted.

You better locate it shortly or you are going to be in serious trouble.

The train will leave without you mark my words.

If you do happen to make it on time just know that

If you put another toe out of line, you’ll be brought straight home!

Oh, and dear, if you’re looking for your next clue,

“I allow thedrinker to assume the form of someone else.”

11. This clue will lead the group to the bottles of potions, specifically the Poly Juice potion.

12. Behind the label of the Polyjuice potion will be XY390. This is the Azkaban number Sirius Black is holding.

13. Tucked behind the frame holding the Wanted Poster for SiriusBlack will be a postcard and blue decoder. Place the decoder over the postcard and certain words and numbers appear.

14. Once decoded, the code will read: I open at the close and 1/2/13

15. Inside the room will be a backpack. Inside the backpack will be miscellaneous items including a lockbox with My golden snitch written on top of the box.

16. When the group uses the code 1213 from the postcard to unlock the box with the 4 number combo lock they will find the goldensnitch and the train ticket (can be printed from the Scenario Card).

NOTES:

BOXES: I could not find lockboxes that would work for me so I made my own. I bought these plain wooden boxes from Amazon. I painted them in metallic colors and added this hardware to them. They came out wonderful and really fit the HP theme. 

POTION BOTTLES: I got the glass bottles from Amazon and printed the labels out. I applied them to the bottles with Modge Podge. I have a soap making business so I have lots of clay, herbs, etc. So I used those to make the potions and powders. Just make sure whatever you use is non-toxic. Some of the ingredients I used: tea leaves, carrot root powder, rose clay, calendula, charcoal powder, food coloring, vanilla, sandlewood. 

POSTCARD: Print out both sides and put together then laminate. To make the decoder I used a large index card and cut out squares to reveal the words I wanted below. A trick is to print a second copy of the postcard text, use an X-acto knife to cut the words out, then put over cardstock and trace the empty squares. Cut those out and you have a decoder you can

lay over the postcard to reveal the hidden message!

RED HERRINGS: 

• I used stuff laying around the library to actually make the room look like a study. In fact we used one of our study rooms! I used this fake brick wall since half of our room was glass and I wanted to obscure the view. 
• I put this cutie in a decorative birdcage I had previously bought at Michael's Craft Store. 
• I made our own Tom Riddles Diary 
• Printed out a couple of Daily Prophets (1) (2) I tea stained them to age them as well. 
• Not really a red herring but thought this would be helpful to put in the room to help those who have not used a combo lock in a while!

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