Harry Potter & The Girl Who Never Got Her Letter

This is it! The reason we’re in London. Nearly two years ago I bought tickets to Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, the final story in the Harry Potter saga. Tickets to the play were selling like hot cakes and I thought, why not? I’ve wasted money on much dumber ideas than this. The tickets were non-refundable, non-transferable, and basically un-sellable due to Rowling’s decision to require the original purchaser’s ID at the will-call window. She knows her fans are loyal and didn’t want them paying exorbitant prices for tickets that had been bought up by third-party sellers looking to make a profit. If I couldn’t make it, I would be out a couple hundred bucks (and very disappointed). But here I am!

I suppose the life lesson is this: Just buy the tickets — to Thailand, Burning Man, or whatever you’re into. You can figure the details out later. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you tried. You can always make more money, but living out your dreams is priceless. Plus, having tickets in hand, a date set, and money already invested creates a great motivation to save money for your trip!

But before we get to the play, we’re doing something else that is only available here in Harry Potter’s birthplace — The Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio Tour!

Filming for all eight films took place here in the UK. Some scenes were shot on location, particularly in the earlier films which were less reliant on special effects and green screens. However, much of the filming took place at the absolutely enormous Warner Brothers Studio in Leavesden, just outside of London. They even recreated some of the real locations that had been filmed on location during the first film, such as Privet Drive and platform 9¾ at Kings Cross Station.

Because the Harry Potter films take place in a mythical world, full of unusual creatures and magical objects, the film makers had to create an incredible number of unique props, devices, sets, and costumes for the film. Every single item (that wasn’t destroyed during filming) was kept for posterity and is now on display at the studio in Leavesden!

Getting there, however, is not exactly easy. Leavesden is only about an hour outside of London and is technically accessible by public transit, but requires a bit of planning. Actually, getting tickets to the studio itself requires a bit of planning too. Don’t show up at the gate and think you’re going to get in. You won’t. They don’t even sell tickets at the gate. You can only buy tickets online and they sell out about a month in advance. When you buy a ticket you are given a specific entry time, an effort to spread out the crowd throughout the day. Once you are inside, however, you can stay as long as you like, so an earlier time slot is best. They claim that the tour takes around three hours. We spent nearly six hours. Just something to keep in mind.

We started our journey by walking about a mile to the Knightsbridge underground station to catch the Piccadilly line to Kings Cross Station (about 20 minutes).

I was super excited that our route required a stop at Kings Cross because this was the very same station that Harry and his friends use to board the Hogwarts Express each year! Like everything else Potter related, the place has become a bit of a tourist trap. I waited in line for about 45 minutes to take a picture with the disappearing luggage cart at Platform 9¾. Totally worth it. They have house scarves on hand and a helpful attendant that flips your scarf at just the right moment to make it look like you are flying through the wall. Best of all, they let you take photos with your own camera so you don’t have to buy the expensive prints they sell in the gift shop next door.

From Kings Cross we had to catch yet another train to get us to our next stop, Watford. This train was leaving from nearby Euston Station. This should have been a short 10 minute walk but we had no idea where we were and kept getting lost. We eventually found the station (after asking for directions twice), bought tickets (£11 each), and made it onto the train with less than 5 minutes to spare. We are still learning the public transit system here and every day is an adventure. Today we got very lucky. I had not bothered to check departure times for the train to Watford before we left. I had assumed it ran continuously like the underground. If we had missed that train we would have also missed our entry time at the studio.

The train to Watford takes about 20 minutes. From the Watford Station we caught a ride on the double-decker studio tour shuttle bus that runs every 20 minutes (£2.50 each, cash only).

I changed into my wizard’s robe in the studio parking lot. At this point I’m pretty used to being the only adult in costume!

Like just about everywhere these days, entrance required a trip through security. Unbeknownst to us, Brandon’s pocket knife is illegal in the UK. They don’t allow folding knives with a locking blade (very common in the US). They very politely confiscated it so that it could be handed over to the proper authorities. Ooops.

A few props and costumes from the new film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them are  on display right inside the door. There is also a cafe with pretty decent food. I had a cheese and onion tart with salad and Brandon had a sandwich with chips (AKA a bloomer with crisps!).

We joined the queue for our 2:30pm entrance time. At the designated time the group is funneled into the first of two rooms where no photography is allowed. The tour guide provides some information about the studio in the first room and then we were shown a short film about the making of Harry Potter in the second room. At the end of the film, the screen retracts into the ceiling to reveal the doors to the Great Hall!

We hung back behind the crowd to take a photo in front of the door.

This is the actual set used to film scenes in the Great Hall for over a decade. They built it using real Yorkshire flagstone so that it would hold up to hundreds of stomping feet.

We again hung back behind the crowd to get the photo above. Minutes before it had been full of muggles with iPhones. Notice the room has no ceiling. The enchanted ceiling in the movies was added in post-production using special effects.

Some of the costumes on display showed how the actors had grown throughout the years. On the left are three versions of Harry’s school uniform and on the right are two versions of Neville Longbottom’s costume, including his iconic ugly sweater from the last film.

The robe on the left belongs to Moaning Myrtle, a ghost of a student who haunts the first floor girl’s toilet.

And of course, the staff table. Notice the elaborate contraption in the background for keeping track of house points. Rarely seen on-screen but nonetheless beautifully built and completely functional. The level of detail is truly incredible.

This is Dumbledore’s costume from the early films, when he had a very medieval style of dress. His more casual bluish-grey robes appear in The Prisoner of Azkaban onward.

The golden owl podium is actually plated with real gold and is covered in candle wax from the many years of filming.

Once they open the doors to exit the Great Hall the tour is entirely self-guided and at your own pace. They have audio guides for rent but we found them distracting and returned them after about an hour. They essentially just read you the same information written on the placards.

Harry’s cupboard under the stairs may look unassuming to the uninitiated but holds lots of meaning to Potterheads.

The first major exhibit on the tour is the costuming department.

The colorful outfits on the left belong to the quirky, lovable Luna Lovegood.

Below you can see an example of how the costuming department used multiple versions of the same costume to show the how a character’s clothing might become dirty and torn over time.

The actors spent hours each day in hair & makeup, particularly those playing magical creatures like goblins. A large number of the characters wore wigs and hair pieces for filming.

The cornflower blue Beauxbaton uniforms are some of my favorites. Those pointy hats! Those tasselled shoes!

The Yule Ball in Goblet of Fire created a fun challenge for both the costume department and the set design department. Up until this point the students are always seen in either theirs street clothes or Hogwarts uniforms. The ball provided an opportunity for the students to dress up and show their different personalities and cultures. To dress up the Great Hall and make it look more festive, set designers draped the entire room with silver lurex fabric. Ice sculptures were made out of clear resin. The whole transformation took 90 set designers a little over a month to complete.

Ron’s hand-me-down robes were more “traditional” but they were also hideous and smelled of his Great Aunt Tessie.

The chocolate phoenix cake on the right is actually real! But after years of storage I bet it tastes a bit stale. I always wondered if they filmed dining scenes in the Great Hall around lunch or dinner so the cast could have a bite to eat while filming.

We rounded the corner and suddenly we were inside the Hogwarts Castle! This area includes some of the most used sets on the lot — the Gryffindor common room, boy’s dormitory, potions classroom, and Dumbledore’s office (to name a few). I spent more time here than any other part of the tour.

The Hogwarts Castle has hundreds of staircases, some of which are magical and may unexpectedly change directions. Most of this magic was created with special effects in post-productions, but they did build at least one complete staircase for filming. Too bad they wouldn’t let people stand on it for photos.

Pictured below is a portrait of the fat lady used in the first two films. She guards the entrance to Gryffindor tower and only lets in students who remember the password. Caput Draconis! 

The Mirror of Erised. The mirror’s inscription reads “erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi“. Read backwards, “I show not your face but your hearts desire.” When Harry finds the mirror he sees himself with his parents, who were both killed when he was a baby. Dumbledore (lying, of course) tells Harry that he sees himself holding a new pair of woolen socks. And low and behold! I saw myself as a Hogwarts student!

Some of the displays were meant to show just how much can be accomplished through the use of perspective and creative camera work. The hallway below was used as the upstairs corridor in the Leaky Cauldron, a popular wizards pub in London. In reality, this set was tiny, more appropriately sized for a squirrel than a fully grown wizard. It was also only about six feet long.

Actually, even the full-sized sets were much smaller than they appear in the movies. The Gryffindor Common Room was only about half the size of how it appears on film.

The boy’s dormitory was similarly tiny. In fact, it was almost too tiny. The beds were built when the cast was around 11 years old. As they got older and taller they no longer fit in the beds, but bigger beds would not have fit in the room! The film crew worked around this by having the cast members lay on their sides in a ball when being filmed as asleep or only filming them from the waist up because their feet were hanging over the edge!

The entrance to the common room and a look at what Harry’s invisibility cloak looked like in real life. This version of the cloak has a reversible “green screen” side that allowed the film makers to make Harry partially “disappear” using special effects in post-production.

Sherbert Lemon! Cockroach Clusters! Dang it, Dumbledore changed the password again! There were two versions of Dumbledore’s Griffin stairwell, one that was static and one that actually rotated, bringing the stone spiral steps up from below. Something I really love about the Harry Potter movies is that they were filmed during a time of intense innovation in the film industry. From Sorcerer’s Stone to The Deathly Hallows you can see the incredible advancements that were made with regard to CGI and special effects. In the beginning they did a lot of on location filming, using places like the real-life Alnwick Castle as a set, and created much of the “magic” through complicated mechanics and animatronics. As the films progressed they became more reliant on green screens and CGI. However, the crew never lost their love of building real life things that operate like magic (such as the overly complicated mechanical doors peppered throughout the films). I think this adds realism of the magical world they created.

As an example of how over-the-top detailed the set designers could get, that large spherical object on the balcony in Dumbledore’s office is actually a giant telescope. It is one of the most expensive props ever created for the film series, yet is only ever seen in the background and was never once used.

Another example of extreme detail: Dumbledore’s memory cabinet. Inside are 800 tiny hand-made, hand-labeled vials. Maybe three or four of these vials were ever filmed in enough detail to read the label.

The sword of Gryffindor, which was actually a real sword that the props department purchased and jazzed up a bit with special engravings.

Dumbledore’s office also included hundreds and hundreds of books. Unfortunately, these were just leather-bound British phone books.

Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Sirius Black, their costumes shown together because they are all characters we didn’t want to die.

The potions classroom shown with both of its inhabitants throughout the series: Professor Severus Snape and Professor Horace Slughorn.

Like Dumbledore’s memory cabinet, this room is full of hand-labeled jars of mysterious ingredients. While plenty of the potions ingredients in J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world are completely made up, others came from ancient alchemy texts. These jars are full of everything from dried herbs to crushed animal bones.

“By the time production ended in 2011, the Harry Potter prop department had filled five giant warehouses with thousands of items (made specifically for the films or purchased from a variety of specialty shops), including 5,000 pieces of furniture, 12,000 handmade books and 40,000 Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes products and packages.” The Making of Harry Potter Official Guide. I remember reading once that when it came time to film the scenes inside the room of requirement (an enormous magical room that has been used by generations of Hogwarts students to hide forbidden objects and broken furniture) they simply raided the props warehouse until they had satisfactorily filled the set with mountains of wizardy stuff.

The shell shaped goblet shown below (which you know is very important if you’ve seen the sixth film) went through 50 different prototypes before this model was chosen. The level of detail (and sometimes obsession) demonstrated by the props department makes them the ultimate fans in my book. Imagine working for weeks to create a small object that will only be on-screen once, for a brief moment, or maybe even immediately destroyed, yet still wanting it to be perfect? That’s a super fan right there.

Remember how I mentioned that the props department was a bit obsessed with creating complicated mechanical objects that worked like magic? These doors are the perfect example. Either door could have been created using CGI (and probably at lower cost in both time and money) but instead they built both out of metal and both are completely functional.

The door below was the inside portion of vault 713 at Gringotts Wizarding Bank in the very first movie. The sorcerer’s stone was hidden inside. The door was shown on-screen for about five seconds.

Rubeus Hagrid, half-giant, lover of dangerous magical creatures, and many people’s  favorite character.

Personally, I think it would be awesome to build a replica of Hagrid’s hut.

Hagrid is played by Robbie Coltrane, a tall but still normal sized person. They used lots of film tricks to make him look enormous, though still not as big as described in the books (over 11 feet tall!). In the films he was probably closer to eight and a half feet tall. There were actually two versions of Hagrid’s hut, one sized for normal people and one sized for Hagrid. By mixing shots from the two versions they were able to make Hagrid look significantly larger than the other cast members. A similar technique was used to film the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.

They also used trick furniture and props (demonstrated below).

For action scenes and wide-angle shots they built an oversized Hagrid suit with animatronic head and used stunt doubles who were of larger than average size.

The Quidditch exhibit was very interactive and lots of fun. Of course, this was really just a collection of props because all of the quidditch scenes were created through green screen. For my muggle readers, quidditch is the most popular sport in the magical world, in a very generalized way it’s like soccer or football but played on flying broomsticks.

UP! UP! 

Now, mount your broomstick and kick off! 

There are a number of stops throughout the tour where you can purchase silly green screen photos of yourself doing something magical, like flying above Hogwarts on a broom. This was my favorite. They also made a short video of me flying through London, which I didn’t purchase because it was so darn expensive. Probably should have bought it anyway. It would be hysterical to watch now.

If Hagrid is my most loved character, the Burrow is probably my most loved place (next to Hogwarts, of course). The Burrow is the home to the Weasley family, a group of courageous but unfortunately poor wizards who produce a disproportionate number of redheaded offspring. The Burrow was designed to look as if Mr. Weasley had built it all himself. After erecting the structure, set designers used chains to pull at various timbers until nothing in the building was at a right angle.

The magical world of Harry Potter is amazing but the story wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling without the classic fight against good and evil. Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters are that element of evil.

Below is the tapestry that hung in the Black residence at 12 Grimmauld Place. A former house of dark magic and temporary home to the Order of the Phoenix during film five. Zoom in closer on the photo and you’ll see that a woman near the bottom has the last name ‘Potter’. Was Harry Potter actually a distant blood relative of Sirius Black? Both families are very old wizarding families so it is entirely possible, in my opinion.

The Ministry of Magic portion of the studio tour was actually a bit disappointing. As a fan, I know that they actually built an enormous version of this set. It was essentially the entire entry floor of the Ministry building. It would have been an incredible addition to the tour to be able to walk through that scene. However, that probably would have used up an entire airplane hangar. What they did include were portions of the set and some of the costumes. The custom-made floor to ceiling green faded tile is still impressive.

The view inside the ministry offices. I don’t know what it is about those green lampshades. Both of my grandfathers had one. My dad had one. The Ministry of Magic officials all had them. They seem to hold timeless value in making an office look “studious”.

The office of Dolores Umbridge — lover of all things sickly sweet and enemy of children. The costume department made her outfits progressively pinker as she became progressively more evil. Rowling has said that the character is loosely based on one of her own teachers, a woman she vehemently despised who wore girlish hairbows and collected plates decorated with kittens.

Dark days at the ministry.

The Forbidden Forest exhibit is a new addition to the studio tour. They filmed some scenes on location but due to unpredictable weather and lighting conditions eventually built giant trees within the studio as stand-ins for the real deal. This particular exhibit was never actually used for filming but the animatronic Buckbeak and Aragog are the same ones that were used in the movies.

Hippogriffs are finicky creatures. The proper way to approach one is by bowing in respect. Only then might one let you pet it.

The Hogwarts Express! The train used for filming was actually a real vintage train and some of the wide-angle shots of the train rolling through the countryside were shot on a real train route. We didn’t ever make it quite that far north, but in Scotland you can ride the route that was used for filming.

Practicing my wand skills . . .

This was the second goofy green screen photo I purchased. We took many throughout the tour, but like all amusement park photos, they aren’t cheap. But this one I couldn’t pass up. For what it’s worth, they don’t tell you what will be on the green screen when you take the photos. They just give you directions, like “Something is about to attack you! Look scared!”.

The walk through tour of the train was really interesting. Each of the compartments includes various props from the film, scattered as if the characters had just walked off set. I tried to do a video walk-thru tour for you but I mostly just got footage of the back of this guy’s head.

This compartment is from The Goblet of Fire. Look closely at the magazine (Seeker Weekly) and you can see the headline article about the World Cup match of Bulgaria v. Ireland. Also, the Daily Prophet headline reads “Terror at the World Cup”, just like it does in the books.

This compartment is from The Half-Blood Prince. Notice multiple copies of the Quibbler (the trio is now good friends with Luna Lovegood, whose father publishes the magazine and is a big supporter of Harry Potter). This was also the first school year after Fred and George Weasley dropped out to open their joke shop, Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. The tiny pink fluff ball on the right is a Pigmy puff smuggled on board by Ginny Weasley. Finally, check out the invisibility cloak on the left, with green-screen lining visible. Harry knew Draco Malfoy was up to something and tried to invisibly eavesdrop on Malfoy and his friends to find out more.

Lavender Brown and her Won Won. This one was clearly a stage-five clinger. Run, Ron! Run!

And, of course, the last compartment is from the first film, when Ron and Harry first meet over a pile of sweets from the trolley.

And nineteen years later, the costumes the characters wore to drop their own kids off at platform 9¾ for the very first time.

These shelves full of various books, clippings, and artifacts were one of my favorite exhibits, even though they were essentially just shoved into a hallway on the way to the cafe. Yes, people spend such a long time navigating the studio tour that they have installed a cafe along the way.

The props department produced an incredible amount of paper throughout the filming of all eight Harry Potter films. Most of these items were never seen on camera long enough to be readable but I love that they put so much detail into them anyway. They could have printed each newspaper with gibberish and only a few would have noticed. But they took the time to write relevant, readable articles. absolutely amazing attention to detail. I could have spent hours here but we were concerned that we were running out of time to finish the tour before closing time.

If I could convince J.K. Rowling to write one more Harry Potter book it would be this one, History of Magic. Ok, Hogwarts: A History, would also be fantastic. They are both referenced so frequently in the stories that I suspect most of the text is already written in her mind. It would be a Potter-nerd’s dream come true.

They originally filmed the scenes for 4 Privet Drive (the home of Harry’s adoptive muggle parents) at a real village in England. I suspect the continual disruptions from rabid fans caused them to build a replica for filming here at the studio. Like so many of the sets, the house seemed immensely smaller than it appeared on film. In the background you can see the damaged home of Bathilda Bagshot, author of History of Magic.

The Knight Bus would have been much cooler if they had let us walk through it.

I have a suspicious look in my eyes in this photo. That cider must have gone to my head!

We probably should have spent more time in this area of the tour, but again, we were actually running out of time before the studio closed for the day. Unfortunately, they don’t provide you with a map, meaning we had no idea how much was left of the tour. We only knew how much longer we had until closing time. In retrospect, we could have slowed down during the second half of the tour.

Throughout the film, the crews relied extensively on animatronics to bring various magical creatures to life. These robotic models (combined with CGI) brought the magic to the screen.

This is one of the merpeople from The Goblet of Fire.

And Hagrid’s giant half-brother Grawp.

Probably the creepiest exhibit of the tour. When you pressed a button the little dying Voldemort robot would squirm and struggle. Eeeewww.

Dragon Alley as it was shown in the final films, mostly shut down except for Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Even in times of war, maybe especially during times of war, we still need a good laugh.

I knew there was a model of Hogwarts somewhere along the tour. I saw this and thought, “Oh, that’s neat”, decidedly unimpressed. I had no idea what was in the next room.

This enormous model of Hogwarts was built for the very first film and used in every subsequent film. It is absolutely perfect.

Built at 1:24 scale, it is the crowning achievement of the film’s art department. It took a team of 86 artists to design and build it.

Small rocks were used as boulders and the greenery is made from real plants.

It is the perfect finale to an incredible tour. You round the corner and there it is in all its glory (with the movie soundtrack playing for ambiance in the background, of course).

In conclusion, if you are a Harry Potter fan (or just a fan of film in general) this tour is a must-do. I don’t know of any movie production where the props and sets have been preserved like they were in Harry Potter. Maybe you’ve been looking for an excuse to visit London? Totally worth it.

Wait, don’t leave now! We’re just getting to the good part! Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — the whole reason we’re here in the first place! The big day was the day after the studio tour. I was so excited that I actually got up early! The first part wasn’t until 2pm (the show is performed in two parts, each the length of full length show with an intermission). I wrote in my journal and enjoyed a long bath while we waited for our room service breakfast (heavenly). We both chose more sensible shoes than we had the day before. Our feet were killing us after walking miles and miles snaking through the studio tour.

Fans will understand the significance of Shaftesbury Avenue. It is where Harry, Ron, and Hermione apparate to after the Ministry falls and death eaters attack Bill and Fleur’s wedding. It is the first of many places where the trio hide during their search to destroy Voldemort’s horcruxes. If all of that is gobbledygook to you, I suggest you take the time to read the Harry Potter series (according to Google it only takes 59 hours and 1 minute). It will undoubtably enhance your experience as a human being. Plus, if you’re not a fan and have still made it through all 5,085 words thus far, you are obviously curious (or my mother). Hi, Mom! (She’s my biggest fan.)

Even though I spent nearly two years preparing for this trip, I still led us to the wrong theater. I thought we were going to the Shaftesbury  Theater on Shaftesbury Avenue, but when we got there it was all wrong. They were obviously in the middle of a production called MoTown. This was the first time we had to ask for directions. Good thing we gave ourselves plenty of time.

Shaftesbury Avenue is one of the theater districts in London so there are restaurants and people everywhere. Probably a fun place to hang out even if you don’t have plans to see a show, but then again, stop being so cheap and go see a show! Live theater is one of the underappreciated joys in life.

The second time we had to stop for directions. We found a tiny shop selling last-minute theater tickets and popped in. They gave us a map (thank you!) but the best part were the delightfully British show reviews plastered all over the walls. I literally “wept hot tears of hilarity.” British slang gets me every time.

I was so excited when we finally found the place I nearly cried. I know, I’m ridiculous, but I’m cool with it. I was also (once again) the only adult in costume. But for some reason, I was actually a little self-conscious this time. Is it not cool to wear your Hogwarts robe to the play? Why are all these people staring at me! But Brandon convinced me that I was, indeed, the coolest kid in school and I wore my Gryffindor robe with pride.

The play itself was everything I wanted it to be and so much more. A truly beautiful and satisfying work of theater. I don’t want to give away any spoilers for those that haven’t seen the play or read the script so I’ll be somewhat vague about the actual plot. #KeeptheSecrets

(At the break between parts one and two the staff handed out buttons that said #KeeptheSecrets. The day after the play I received an email from J.K. Rowling herself with a YouTube video asking the audience to avoid spoiling the magic for those that were still waiting to see the final installment of the Harry Potter series for themselves. #anythingforthequeen)

The sets were incredible. Everything was on wheels and mostly built out of vintage suitcases and traveling trunks. They used the train station at platform 9¾ as a sort of transition scene to show the passage of time, which made the use of suitcases and trunks fitting. However, the coolest part was how they distracted the audience when changing out sets. Instead of lowering the curtain or blacking out the stage, they had dancers with suitcases come out and visually block the scene transition that was going on in the background. I had not seen this technique before and it worked very well. The effect was very fluid and seemless.

The actors themselves were wonderful. Without giving away the plot, I can tell you that the Malfoy family plays a less antagonistic role in this story. Draco actually develops a sort of friendship with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And strangely enough, the Malfoy’s provide the comic relief. They were hysterical, particularly the actor playing Draco’s son Scorpius.

Before seeing the play I had read some critiques about the casting of Hermione as a black woman. Rowling insists that she never specified Hermione’s race in the books, yet she is clearly portrayed as white in the movies and all of the official illustrations and cover art. And plenty of fans have been quick to point to all of the various lines in the book that imply Hermione is white. Personally, I wondered if seeing Hermione as a black woman would distract from the story. Not because her race is important, but because that is not how I have pictured her in my mind. Honestly, I was worried about seeing the characters portrayed by anyone other than Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. In the end, it didn’t matter at all. The actress captured her personality perfectly. So props to Rowling and the directors for sticking with their casting choice and making an important statement about diversity. Well done.

Because the play is shown in two parts it is an all day affair. During the two-hour intermission between parts one and two we walked across the street to grab a bite to eat at The Cambridge. Almost everyone there had come from the play and could be heard loudly discussing their favorite moments thus far. We watched one couple, who were clearly on a date and had not been at the play, actually get up and leave because the chatter was so distracting!

I’ve recently read rumors online that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will be making its way across the pond for a stint at a theater in New York City. That is still quite a long distance for most people, but not quite as far as London. So those of you that weren’t crazy enough to buy tickets when they first went on sale, this is your chance! I don’t know when tickets will be available but you’ll need to act fast if you want them. Two years worth of London shows sold out in about two weeks! As Mad-Eye Moody would say, constant vigilance!

To my fellow fans — I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour!

To all of you that think I’m crazy — You can rest assured that I don’t have any Potter-themed posts planned for the near future. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.