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

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

1) I think the owls are bred from special stock that are traditionally more prone to accepting enchantment. They sell these owls; people don't just go out and catch wild owls to send letters. There are only certain sorts of owls sold in these shops (on the extras in the DVD for example there are only like four varieties or some such. This one takes a tiny leap of faith, but imagine that they have been breeding owls for this purpose for thousands of years. They know which ones are best for the job, which ones shake the spells off or go feral. This would also open up the concept of champion bloodlines for owls. Pureblooded wizards competing at AKC-style bird shows and whatnot.)

2) The owls are brought up by specialty breeders who are experts in how to charm birds for the post. They have a NEWT in Charms. What do those people do? I am sure there is an entire career for people good at Charms to raise and periodically check up on post owls to make sure the spells are all in place.

3) The birds find people to give them their letters through a variation of the Loadstone Charm, but instead of navigating by magnetism, they navigate by setting their internal compass to the specific aura of a human.

4) The Charm used by the birds has a built in clause that disallows them to be tracked. This, since its inception, has been very controversial do to the very sort of circumstance you listed above: the criminal element. However, the breeders and caretakers of owls had a Synod in 1373 and pushed a law allowing them to insert a variation on Obfuscate into the spells used on owls. Sirius Black and his criminal cohorts are just being paranoid about their post being tracked. Anyone attempting to track the flight of a post owl will become extremely confused, fall down, and wake up in the loo three doors down from the Office of Bunged Up Sneakery in the MoM.

[frightened.livejournal.com]

Excellent icon :-)

[prillalar]

Hee, good theory. :) Hmm, what if there were a rogue breeder who put different kinds of charms on their owls? There could be this whole blackmarket thing.