The “Real” Platform 9 & 3/4

I looked at the video, which features the music from the films, and had a strange idea.

Imagine that you’re standing at King’s Cross in front of that recessed arch. And imagine thinking that there are people who could walk through that solid brick. That on the other side of the brick there is a train which you couldn’t see or hear, but those people could.

Imagine what those people must be like. Seeming human, but not. Imagine how much power they have, compared to you. The things that they can do. The things that they can see. Imagine how different they are from you, at a basic molecular, neurochemical level.

From that perspective, the really odd thing is not how clearly JKR has imagined their world, but how accessible she’s made a race which is as different from us as anything invented by Spielberg, Wells or Wyndham.

And another thought. Although many of us have started seeing Potterverse through the lens of the movies, the movies don’t really capture the strangeness of that world, except in momentary glimpses. I don’t think JKR herself gets how strange it all really is. I think Cuaron is the one director who got closest to it, especially in his opening scenes,with the Knight Bus and the staff at the Leaky Cauldron.

Great video, but it NEVER shows you the TRUE platform 9 3/4!!!

I think I can speak with some authority on this subject having toured in England and Scotland to almost all the filming sites and having worked with HPFan Trips (Beyond Boundries Travel) now for 5 years.

That wall you see in the video with the “platform 9 3/4″ is at an entrance corridor to the station and is not even close to the actual platform filmed in the movies!

I believe the authorities at Kings Cross did this deliberately to keep too many tourists from overcrowding the actual platform because it is in a working loading area for the trains and could be a safety hazard.

I have video/photos of the actual archway used in the movies between platforms 9 & 10 and have a shot of the wall clock right over the archway showing the time as 9:45 (9 3/4) right as our tour group arrived at the spot where Harry and Ron and the Hogwarts students go through the archway into the wizarding world’s Kings Cross Station.