My party wants me to run a campaign set in Hogwarts...

Let's do the what-do-I-find-interesting exercise.
What I remember liking most about the first movie books are for nerds was that amazing castle with all its secret corridors and dangerous creatures that somehow ended up there.

>The players find an old torn map that contains the location of an amazing magical stash
>Sneak out of classes and dorms to explore the castle But let them actually learn stuff in class that could be useful for the adventure, trade-offs
>Talk to ghosts, visit libraries, fight hidden traps, avoid the teachers...
>Twist The map was made by some rebellious ex-students who made a cool hang-out for themselves among the dangerous magical rooms, where they stashed some stolen artifacts and some wizardweed or whatever. On of them turned out two-faced and messed up for some reason and he murdered his fellow students before disappearing himself.
Unknown to all, his ghost now roams the castle. He's the friendly ghost that seems to know a lot about the map and is eager to help, all because he wants to see the players perish in the dark parts of the castle.

Just make it about what all seven of the books/films are about. Everyone trying to bang Hermoine.

As a way of generating your own: Character Name and the Two-Word MTG Cardname.
Really, these are an endless mine. Just looking at a bunch of the Enchantments starting with A, for example:
C.N. and the Abzan Ascendancy
C.N. and the Aegis of Honor
C.N. and the Aether Rift
C.N. and the Angelic Gift
C.N. and the An-Zerrin Ruins
C.N. and the Artificer's Intuition
C.N. and the Ashling's Prerogative
C.N. and the Aysen Highway

Rifle through card art for ideas, then alter the name slightly so it's not obvious what you're stealing.

Make it about the rise of "science wizards."

That one nigga with the spoon in the movies was reading some hardcore science books. Imagine how fucked the people who have to make up rhymes for their spells would be if a DnD sorcerer just showed up, pissed lightning, and generally said "lol wands" the entire time?

It'd be a complete role-reversal of Muggles and Purebloods, because Muggles would have their breaks immersed in the world where science and shit is relatively common and accepted.

evil teacher? mystery left by an olf founder of hogwarts in the building? some rivalry with another magic school? it practically writes itself

You're UK TV licence inspectors. Hogwarts never paid for its TV licence, not it doesn't matter that they neither know what a TV is nor had one in the first place.

THe Harry Potter world is quite horribly built, filled with holes, discrepancies and incoherent shit and generally lacking interesting events. The one thing that caused all the commotion and mayhem justifying the plot of those books was the rise of *one* dark wizard, which is not charismatic or powerful enough to deserve the title of "Dark Lord" (more like "Dark Neighbourood Gang Ringleader").

That said, you can come up with some stuff for adventures related to that and hopefully have fun with it.
Remember, if your players are students, they shouldn't be the ones taking care of big problems in the wizardry world (but they'll end up doing it anyway- you have to figure out how to hook them into it).

For example: after the fall of Volderidiculousnamemort, some of his lieutenants are trying to take advantage of the 'army' he has gathered to do Evil Wizard Stuff. An Auror that is a relative of one of the PCs is searching for clues of suspicious activities in the forest near Hogwarts but gets caught. He manages to send the hanwavium magic equivalent of a distress call that, for random reasons + "the power of love", is caught by the aforementioned PC. They do the stupid thing and go rescue them instead of telling the grown-ups, because that's what Hogwarts kids do.

This is what I'd do - while the whole Harry Chosen One thing was alright from a story perspective, the background of Hogwarts was what made it work, in the first couple of books especially, so I'd say that problems that can be closely linked with the setting are the way to go.

>One of the ghosts is pissed off with one of your characters and making their life hell, but you don't know why
>A Hufflepuff heard you chatting shit about her house, she wants to duel you. Worse, she doesn't want to do it at duelling club, even though she is a member. She's also pretty hot.
>One of the teachers seems to be deducting points almost every time they see you, and that's getting you ill-feeling from the rest of your house.
>There's something not right about one of the people in your dorm, but you can't put your finger on it.
>There's a rumour about something mysterious in one of the lower dungeons/tall towers
>If your players get caught doing something, serious detention time - they're helping in the Dark Forest or tasked with helping to clean the Lake
>Quidditch shenanigans - ball tampering, broom tampering, match fixing, gambling, you name it. Maybe even playing on the team

You've got good points about ways of getting the PCs involved in bigger stuff (and about Hogwarts kids not telling adults), but in what way wasn't Vold powerful enough?

>They do the stupid thing and go rescue them instead of telling the grown-ups, because that's what Hogwarts kids do.

Along these lines, you could (at least if running young students) not have grown-ups as NPCs at all. Rather there's Classes, and there's two special actions: Appeal to Head of House and Appeal to Headmaster, which aren't modeled as personal interactions but resolved behind scenes and may result in the student getting penalizes for incomprehensible adult reasons. Pushes the PCs towards handling things themselves.

OP here. I am using a Jerry rigged version of world of darkness and I have teachers being handled similar to animals. There is a skill called teacher handle and it determines how good you are at dealing with teachers

Your campaign happens after the books. The garbled rumors of all the crap from the books that serve as folklore for current students and are ultimate imagination fodder. A steadily-increasing number of students go sneaking about at night, hoping to stumble upon cool stuff in weird corners of the castle.

Security is slowly ramping up as the prefects and teachers notice that they're dealing with more and more delinquents, but the castle itself seems to be on the side of mischief, as the shifting stairwells and winding hallways seem to do what they can to encourage sneaking....

hm that's all i got for a premise so far.

Other than "wannabe mauraders" all i can think of is, have an underground dueling circuit between students. Or blend the two: the player-characters sneak around at night seeking good dueling venues. then if that proves to not be enough of a hook they find some random crap that makes for a terrifying bad time.

First of all, what year are they in? What house are they in? That will have a big effect on the roleplay, character interactions, and magic the characters have access to.

Unfortunately, I'm just as lost as you are when it comes to making a story set in Hogwarts, but my one piece of advice is to do something totally original. You can have dark wizards, sure, but make sure the main villain (if there even is one) isn't a You-Know-Who wannabe

What system? This sounds fun OP.

Also maybe a cult conspiracy?? Corruption involving the ministry leaking into school.

You don't even realize how wrong you are, do you?

It's a jerry rigged version of world of darkness.
Dice system works the same, but the skill system I changed a bit. It's not done yet and the game is going to be about 50% game 50% playtest, but here is what I have thus far:
docs.google.com/document/d/1Rxiv4a75OuTYMeIeK7s87FoRD9CfszsWFPB_-TF_YyU/edit?usp=sharing

Looks sweet. Really intelligence heavy if seems.

>Really intelligence heavy if seems.
uhu

Yeah, honestly if anyone has any other ideas for skills that would be great

Is there a list somewhere where you can view these cards?

What is Academagia for 300, Alex?

If I were you I would consolidate the physical attributes to one, since it won't come up as often.