But it did, because I kept finding one more thing I wanted to get right. I found dollar store goblets with a silver coating on the base so the sorting reveal would actually work. I thrifted glass bottles from DI and figured out how to age them with darkened Mod Podge so they'd look old and a little magical. I picked up chocolate gold coins from Winco and a chocolate frog from Five Below for the treasure hunt prize. I organized trivia questions into a few difficulty levels so younger and older kids both had something they could actually answer. It was a lot of little things, but they added up to a day that felt like more than just a theme.

By camp day we had a sorting ceremony, house bracelets, a feather race, potions class, a treat station for freeing the house elves, a clay creature station, a treasure hunt, and a trivia block. All of it came out of genuinely loving this world enough to want to spend a month building it for a few hours with some kids.