The owls are not what they seem.

[prillalar]

I've been thinking about owls and owl post in the HP universe. How does the owl post system work?

Are the owls themselves:

• trained
• enchanted
• not actually real owls

I'd go for enchanted myself, because they are really quite amazing. All you have to do to send a letter is tell your owl who you want to send it to. They do the rest.

But how do they know where to go? As if that weren't extraordinary enough, consider this:

Harry could send owl post to Sirius Black when Sirius was on the run. It would reach him regardless of where he was. So, why couldn't the ministry do the same thing? And track the owl? We know that people receive post that they don't want, so it's not like the owls only deliver letters that you want.

Also, Harry was able to send Hedwig with letters to Ron and Hermione while they were in the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix and protected by the Fidelius Charm.

How could Hedwig have known where to deliver to? Is she not under the Charm because she's not human? If so, then, again, what's to stop enemies of the order owling to see if they can trace the owls back.

I am plagued by questions.

Comments

[debchan.livejournal.com]

Some kind of "consent to be owled" thing? Sirius could be in a strict "don't owl me" setting (enchanted himself?), except for individual, pre-arranged owls, of whom Hewig was one?


Except in GoF he tells Harry to use random school owls, in case someone is tracking Hedwig.

[prillalar]

One thing I forgot when I was writing the initial post:

In OotP, not only is Hedwig attacked while delivering mail, but Umbridge is able to somehow stop the mail for everyone at school, so it can be read by her first.

So, there must be some sort of control over when and where the post is delivered, at least at Hogwarts.