Essential Magical Buildings for a Thriving Community
Shaping the Soul of a Settlement—One Structure at a Time
By Harry Potter
By now, your magical settlement has taken root. You've built a school to educate the next generation, a government building to maintain order and justice—but a truly vibrant magical society needs more than rules and lessons.
It needs places that bring people together, celebrate magic, and meet the daily needs of magical life. From shops and libraries to greenhouses and inns, the buildings you choose to raise will shape the rhythm and spirit of your community.
This chapter outlines the key buildings and spaces you should consider to complete your magical settlement.
1. The Grand Library or Arcane Archive
A magical community without a place to store and study knowledge is like a wizard without a wand.
✔ Filled with ancient tomes, spellbooks, enchanted scrolls, and talking portraits of scholars
✔ Often guarded by magical creatures or shifting staircases
✔ May include restricted sections, divination rooms, or even portals to other libraries
Bonus: Include a scrying dome—a magical observatory where wizards can study the stars or seek visions.
2. Potions and Apothecary Hall
More than a shop—this is the heart of magical health and alchemy.
✔ Shelves of dried herbs, enchanted roots, crystal vials, and bubbling cauldrons
✔ Open space for community brewing days and potion instruction
✔ Storage for emergency antidotes, healing salves, and enchanted brews
✔ Possibly connected to your hospital or healer's ward
Tip: Invite local potion-makers and herbologists to form a Brewer's Circle or Guild to manage the space.
3. Market Square & Magical Merchant Alley
A place where trade, laughter, and invention flow freely.
✔ Stalls and shops for wands, robes, familiars, broomsticks, and curios
✔ Seasonal festivals, enchanted fireworks, and magical street performances
✔ Spaces for both permanent shops and temporary vendor tents
✔ Enchantments for weather protection, floating signage, and magical coin exchange
Feature Idea: A central magical fountain that grants a bit of luck to anyone who drops in a coin—and a wish.
4. The Community Hearth or Great Hall
A gathering place for feasts, storytelling, voting, and magical celebrations.
✔ Long enchanted tables that refill themselves
✔ Floating chandeliers and spell-lit fireplaces
✔ Flexible charmwork to change the space for weddings, debates, or dueling exhibitions
✔ Place for seasonal holidays, youth coming-of-age ceremonies, or town council meetings
5. Greenhouses and Enchanted Gardens
Magic grows in the earth as much as the air. These spaces serve herbology, food, and alchemy alike.
✔ Enclosed greenhouses with season-shifting enchantments
✔ Gardens for growing mandrakes, gillyweed, venomous tentacula, and healing herbs
✔ Public garden paths with wand-polishing trees and whispering blooms
✔ Hidden groves for quiet meditation or nature-based spellwork
6. The Magical Inn or Wandering Hearth
A welcoming place for travelers, merchants, or newly arrived witches and wizards.
✔ Guest rooms that resize based on the occupant's magic
✔ A fire enchanted to share news from around the magical world
✔ A map wall that glows when a new traveler enters
✔ Tavern area with magical music, food that changes flavor with your mood, and house-brewed butterbeer
Ron's Suggestion:
"Call it something brilliant, like 'The Levitating Lantern' or 'The Toad & Talon.' Magical inns need personality!"
7. The Spellsmith's Forge & Enchanter's Studio
Where magical tools are made, repaired, and reborn.
✔ Home to wandcrafters, broomwrights, enchanters, and rune forgers
✔ Often smells of cedarwood, starlight ash, and molten enchantment
✔ May include testing chambers for spells, charms, or magical inventions
✔ Connects well to your broom racing league or magical sports supply shops
8. Sanctuaries, Shrines, and Reflection Spaces
Magic is deeply personal. Sacred places allow people to reflect, seek guidance, or honor magical forces and ancestors.
✔ Shrines to celestial beings, ancestral founders, or elements (fire, air, earth, water)
✔ Quiet sanctuaries with memory pools, dreamweaving altars, or floating candles
✔ Locations for rituals, dedications, or magical oaths
Optional: A Hall of Founders with portraits of the community's earliest visionaries—enchanted to offer advice or share stories with the next generation.
9. Recreational Spaces (See Chapter 23 for full coverage)
✔ Quidditch Pitch
✔ Broom Racing Course
✔ Dueling Grounds
✔ Park with floating swings or anti-gravity climbing boulders
10. Creature Care Centers or Familiar Clinics
A safe space for the treatment, care, and bonding of magical beasts and companions.
✔ Run by magizoologists and healers
✔ Contains wards for healing wounded owls, taming wild familiars, and studying magical biology
✔ May also include an adoption space for young witches and wizards to meet their first familiars
Final Thoughts: A Living World of Magic
These buildings are more than walls and charms—they're where stories are told, bonds are made, and the daily magic of life unfolds.
As you build your magical community, remember that each structure should reflect your people, your values, and the magic you wish to nurture.
Because one day, a young witch may walk into the marketplace or library and feel—truly—that she's home.
— Harry Potter