How a Harry Potter-inspired tour of London reminds us that connection is the best magic of all. ♦
One of the things that I most looked forward to was visiting the Warner Bros. Studio Tour. I’m the type of person that doesn’t really plan ahead for things, but I made sure to buy two tickets in advance and hope that I would make a friend on this trip who would want to join me (and I did). On a Monday night—it was the only time slot left by the time I decided to look for tickets—my friend and I made the journey to the spot where most of the Harry Potter movies were filmed. It was amazing to see the sets for some of my favorite places in the movies, such as the Gryffindor common room, Diagon Alley, and the Burrow. I saw some of my favorite props and costumes, such as Sirius Black’s Azkaban prison uniform, Hermione’s beautiful Yule Ball dress along with Ron’s horrid Yule Ball robes, the Mirror of Erised, and Remus Lupin’s suitcase that visitors can wave their wand to magically make all of the compartments open and close.
After we drank some butterbeer (my friend was not a fan), we visited some of the outdoor sets. My personal favorite spot on the tour was the Hogwarts covered bridge. As I walked through the bridge, speakers at the top played dialogue that was spoken on the bridge in the movies. I felt like I was part of Dumbledore’s army in The Order of the Phoenix as I heard the characters laughing and Hermione remarking, “It’s quite fun, breaking the rules.” I also heard the dialogue from the bridge in The Prisoner of Azkaban in which Professor Lupin has a heart-to-heart with Harry about his parents. It was such a special experience to feel so immersed in some of my favorite scenes from my favorite movies, and it was fun to be able to share it with a new friend who loves Harry Potter as much as I do.
Another thing I knew I had to do in London was visit Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station. The station is always packed with Harry Potter fans waiting in line to get a picture with a luggage cart that looks like it’s halfway inside the wall. After waiting in line for more than half an hour, it was time for my friends and I to get our picture taken. There was a man working at the front of the line who would ask everybody what their Hogwarts house was, and then he would place a house scarf on them and throw the end in the air for a picture. When one of my companions told the man that she was a Ravenclaw, he said to her, “I would have thought you were in Gryffindor.” To this, my friends and I all responded at the same time with Draco Malfoy’s famous line, “Red hair and a hand me down robe ... you must be a Weasley!” After that, we all got to choose a wand to wave in the picture, and I quickly identified which one belonged to my favorite character (Sirius Black) and held it up for my photo. The man working at the platform guided us into poses for a silly group photo by asking, “Who wants to die?” so in the picture our Hufflepuff friend is being strangled by her scarf and held at wand-point. It was so fun to see that even the people working at the platform had as much enjoyment for Harry Potter as the people visiting.
As we traveled around London, I was shocked at how many of the places we visited had connections to Harry Potter. As the class traveled to Stratford, we stopped at Blenheim Palace, which had a tree that appeared in the fifth film. Oxford had a surprising number of locations that were used for filming the series. Even just walking near certain tube stations or around the West End had me questioning, “Was this in Harry Potter?” Some of the most enjoyable Harry Potter things I did in London really didn't have much to do with Harry Potter at all. Every time I tapped into the tube, I recalled the scene in Order of the Phoenix in which Arthur Weasley was amazed by the gates in the tube station and awkwardly walked backwards through them when Harry put in his ticket for him. Every time I saw a billboard across a tube platform, I thought of Dumbledore appearing out of nowhere in front of a perfume ad in the tube in Half-Blood Prince. On probably the second or third day after arriving in London, my roommate and I were sitting on our bunks in a pile of British sweets, and I remarked how I felt just like Harry and Ron when they bought every kind of candy off the cart on the Hogwarts Express. After that, on every long trip we went on, we made sure to bring a pile of candy to live out our dream of “taking the lot” on the Hogwarts Express.
At the heart of the Harry Potter stories are the characters and their friendships, and I got to build so many friendships on this trip. I felt like Harry Potter at the beginning of the journey, alone and going to school far away from home, but instead of Ron Weasley coming into my traincar and offering me half a smashed sandwich, my roommate who would soon become one of my best friends walked in and offered to get coffee with me at Pret a Manger. So, even though there are many amazing Harry Potter places in London, I think I felt most connected to my favorite characters when I lived out my own adventures with my new friends in London.
