Platform 9¾
It's 11:00 AM on a summer Sunday. A 19 year old Canadian and her boyfriend have just arrived at King's Cross Station for their 11:16 train to Cambridge. They squint at the display screen.
"Awaiting Platform"
He looks at his watch.
"We still have time. Let's go find something to eat."
She agrees. They turn and start to wander deeper into the station, she leaning against him, both looking around at the options. They walk pass the train status screens and Leon on their right, in the general direction of a queue of people that they vaguely registered in the back of their minds when they first arrived and checked on their train. As they approach the queue, something else begins to stir in the back of her mind. Something about this is familiar, but she doesn't remember what. She should be thinking about the food, but something about this crowd is drawing her, drawing them both. So they turn slightly towards it, still looking around to food.
As they get closer they look at the wall that the queue is leading towards and they see the words Platform 9¾ on the wall.
Suddenly, her face lights up. She does a little jump and lets out a squeal.
"Look!" she almost shouts at him, suddenly overjoyed at the pleasant surprise.
It's small. It's a part of the kind of consumerism that I love to hate. But this is one of the little things I enjoy about passing through King's Cross Station: seeing the joyful surprise in the odd tourist and Harry Potter fan who has somehow ended up at this station – a station that she, like me, first heard about from the books – and forgotten the role it plays in the series until she comes across the prop.
It's small and it's stupid, but it's stupid in a fun, magical way.
