Intro

It actually began with an ambitious idea of building Hogwarts in The Sims 2, a long time ago.

I learnt a couple important things from my bitter experience: make sure the lot type is correct before you even start building (can't change it later in Sims 2) and don't ever attempt to delete chimneys ^ ^' Some debugging with testingcheats seems to have helped but after that I avoided touching fireplaces at all. Also, I wouldn't recommend building houses this tall and placing the only bathroom on the 5th floor, haha...

I focused on the interior a lot more than the exterior, especially as I reached the limit of walls I could build, that's why it looks weird from outside, with half of the castle hanging in the air. The courtyard looks good, though. There are many flaws, but I try to avoid them in the screenshots I select.

You can also see the Quidditch pitch I built much later.

I made it a dorm so its students can actually live and study there. Dormies act like extras, they make the place look less empty, but they do things like walking around in underwear and going to wrong common rooms. Surely that could be changed with mods, but I try to avoid mods and only use them when absolutely necessary. So I wouldn't bother making them wear uniform, either.

When I was finishing it, I already knew I wanted my Sims to represent characters from the books, with at least one student from each house. Since eight is the limit, I chose eight characters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Draco, Luna, Cho and Hannah. I did my best to make them look like their respective actors, some more successfully, some less. Only I gave Harry green eyes, that was one thing I remembered well from the book description x)

"Don't you all know staring is rude? There's nothing wrong with me appearing the last."

All the custom content I used here, which is the uniform, eyes and Cho's hairstyle, and practically any other ones you'll see in this series, are from Mod The Sims. I'll try to list everything I've used. By the way, the eyes and hairstyle have been in my game for ages, being the only CC I had before now. Realistic eyes really make a difference. Probably should have used a replacement so these Sims aren't too different from others but it's kind of late now, isn't?