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

[frightened.livejournal.com]

Some vague guesses:

* Maybe the owls are sort of the wizarding equivalent of Muggle owls (like Kneazles are the equivalent of cats) and have inherent powers?

* Maybe, in the Potterverse, all owls are just that smart and powerful, and the Muggles just haven't figured it out yet? (OK, that one's a bit of a cop-out, because you could argue 'well, it's just that way in the Potterverse' for anything)

* Maybe the owls are under the same injunctions as their owners? So if the owner was capable of going somewhere, so could their owl? Though that still doesn't explain the OOTP thing, as Harry hadn't received Dumbledore's note then. Wild guess. Perhaps owl post is just untraceable?