Amid the scrape and shuffle and bustle and hum of one of this city’s busiest train stations, at which more than 20 million people each year arrive and depart in a motley swirl of human confetti, bearing suitcases and backpacks and briefcases and serious purposeful expressions, there is a small pocket of calm:
Platform 9 3/4.
As fans of the Harry Potter series well know, King’s Cross Station is the place at which Harry’s adventures begin. From here, Harry and his classmates — Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, as well as other students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — board the special train that winds through the tree-clotted British countryside to the brooding cliffside edifice, circled by owls and haunted by nefarious plots.
King’s Cross Station is real. Platform 9 3/4 is not. Owing to the popularity of the books by J.K. Rowling, however, British rail officials have designated a special spot at which — if you squint hard and murmur words that sound vaguely magical — you can practically see Harry and his friends melting through the solid bricks, emerging intact on the other side. There is even a luggage cart, just like the one the Hogwarts students use, that offers onlookers the illusion of its being trapped halfway between the real world and what lies beyond it.
That tension — the distance between the world as we know it and the world as we might hope it to be — is part of what gives the Potter books their distinctive charm and profound staying power, some scholars say. It is the reason Rowling’s work resonates for both adults and children in this, an apprehensive era of everyday terrorism and jolting change.
Platform 9 3/4 is a special place. And this week, just days before the Saturday publication of the seventh and final volume of Rowling’s uniquely successful series, is a special time to be here. For many visitors, the joy of seeing a Potter-inspired landmark is mixed with the melancholy of knowing that their last journey with Harry is at hand.
“Every kid in my school wants to go to Hogwarts,” said Beth Wright, a radiant-faced 14-year-old from Longborough, a town north of London. She and her parents — Alli, a nurse, and Jeff, a physicist — had brought her here for one purpose.
“This,” said Alli Wright, snapping her daughter’s picture at the luggage cart at Platform 9 3/4.
Beth, who will join her friends at a bookstore at midnight Friday to buy “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” acknowledged her reluctance to say goodbye to the books. “My friends and I are really sad. We don’t want it to end.”
As soon as the Wrights had finished, another group stepped up. That was the course of things: A steady stream of kids, teens and adults came to Platform 9 3/4 and repeated the ritual. They exclaimed over having found the place; posed for pictures; then paused, the smiles dipping just a bit at the corners, as they seemed to realize that, here more than anywhere else, the clock is running down on all things freshly Potteresque.
“I’ll keep the books forever,” said Meredith Walker, a nurse from Perth, Australia, who had made a special trip to London to see Platform 9 3/4. She and her companion, fellow nurse Lynne Whitworth, took turns photographing each other at the luggage cart. There was not a trace of self-consciousness in their behavior, no sense at all that women in their 40s ought to be sheepish about reveling in what some might erroneously classify as children’s books.
“We do have friends who say, ‘Oh, come on,'” Whitworth acknowledged, “but then they read the books. Once they read the books, they get it.”
Both have re-read volumes one through six multiple times, they said, and have noted that Rowling’s language and plots have grown increasingly sophisticated, almost as if the author understands that her audience has grown up with her, from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (1998) to Saturday’s final book; from childhood to adulthood, in some cases, or from skepticism to enthusiasm in the case of adults.
“It’s just so different from anything else you read these days,” Whitworth said. “And it asks the question many of us are asking: Can we trust our politicians or not?”
Those larger issues, the ones Rowling seems to be engaging through her evocation of bureaucratic battles within the Ministry of Magic, have intrigued scholars and cultural observers who otherwise might have relegated the Potter series to the sandbox. Edmund M. Kern, associate professor of history at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., and author of “The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us About Moral Choice” (Prometheus, 2003), believes that the series has striking contemporary relevance.
“In this postmodern age, when people are skeptical of lots of things — they’re skeptical of government, they’re skeptical of the economic system — Rowling’s decision to depict Harry as both victim and hero appeals to people at a subconscious level,” he said in a telephone interview. “I think the books came along at just the right time. Harry is a hero is the midst of circumstances he did not choose. We’re able to relate to him. And the stories are so well told. [Rowling] makes use of ancient archetypes and symbols.”
Among those archetypes is the quest, the journey, the setting forth on an impossible mission against long odds — but with a stout and cheerful heart. And here in London, the raucous starting-point for Harry’s epic trek is now and forever will be King’s Cross, the 155-year-old train station in the northeast central part of the city, a vast, cavernous place of rattling, clattering trains and of the perpetual echoing blast of announcements on the fuzzy public-address system, of scurrying passengers whose every footstep rings with “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late,” of the delicately woven aromas of coffee and pastries and simmering meats from food stalls that line the tracks, of the afternoon sunlight that tints the arching translucent panels overhead to a gentle lime green, of the whiplash blur of people, people and still more people.
And then, suddenly, just past the bundle of actual tracks: an otherwise unremarkable brick wall. A chopped-up luggage cart. A small sign reading, “Platform 9 3/4.” And while there are people here too, and lots of them, the mood is utterly different. Here, people stop, laugh, dig for their digital cameras, urge each other to adopt fetching poses. Grab the cart. Pretend to be pushing it through the wall. Now, smile. Yes, that’s it!
“They’re not really fantasy books,” insisted Heidi Henriksson, 19, from Helsinki, Finland. She and her best friend, Kirsti Koivusalo, also 19, had come to London to see the embarkation point for Hogwarts. “You can really relate to the characters. I am older now, and I still like Harry Potter.”
Like everybody else who stops by King’s Cross, they know Harry and Hermione aren’t real, that Hogwarts doesn’t exist, that after Saturday, there will be no more new stories. But loitering for a few magical moments in front of a dingy brick wall in a busy London train station, you can still dream it might be otherwise.
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jikeller@tribune.com
