Five Frames of the Wizarding World

I was in Orlando recently for a meeting. How could I resist visiting Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade? Well, I couldn’t, so today’s Five Frames are from the Wizarding World.

The Knight Bus

The Knight Bus, “…emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard.” Oh to be a wizard and be able to take the Knight Bus to the Leaky Cauldron (That’s in London.) Unfortunately, I’m not a wizard and I had to take a Lyft and walk. I did arrive in time to snap Stan Shunpike talking to the shrunken head.

Ollivanders, Since 382 B.C.

My wand came from this establishment. There is a story of course. While I was recently employed by a local university as a potions, er, chemistry professor, I gave Snape’s speech from the movie version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to my freshman chemistry class at the beginning of the Fall semesters. “There will be no silly wand waving…” You know the speech. Only where Snape says “As such, I don’t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making“, I said “that is chemistry“. About half the students recognized the speech each semester and the rest just thought I was nuts. Of course, I was a chemistry professor, so I was, by definition, completely nuts.

A good friend of mine (not a chemistry professor) bought me a Snape model wand from Ollivanders. While I suspect that he truly is a wizard, I’m sure he bought me the muggle model. He did say that it “spoke to him” when he concentrated on me, so there’s that. I kept it on my desk so I could threaten to turn people into newts. I also tried to use it to magically do my grading. It didn’t work. Sigh.

Gringotts Bank (Oh, and a Dragon!)

This fellow was imposingly perched atop Gringotts. Occasionally he would roar and spout fire. Here he is spouting fire. The dragon is a Ukrainian Ironbelly, who is nameless. I called him “Sparky”. He didn’t seem to mind.

The Winged Hogs of Hogwarts

With these two guarding the gate, I would be extremely cautious of bringing bad intentions to Hogwarts. By the way, that’s Hogwarts in the background. Cool, eh?

The Hogwarts Express

Here is the Hogwarts Express coming into Hogsmeade station. My wife and I were on our way from Hogsmeade back to London. We started our visit in Diagon Alley, where we had butterbeer at the Hopping Pot. We had one each of the regular and the frozen. I preferred the regular and my wife preferred the frozen. We had lunch at The Leaky Cauldron then shuffled over to King’s Cross to catch the Hogwarts Express to Hogsmeade station. We spent a little time in Hogsmeade, viewed Hogwarts, bought a chocolate frog, then caught the train back to King’s Cross. Excellent Day.

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These photographs were taken with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II wearing a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens. The photos were processed from RAW files using Darktable, which is free and open source software (FOSS) available for Windoze, Mac, and various flavors of Linux. All materials copyright © John Osterhout, all rights reserved.