All Aboard the Hogwarts Express!

Your mother and father look up and down the street nervously before exchanging worrisome glances.

They briefly imagine what life was like before an old man wearing half-moon spectacles and a deep plum suit, beard down to his waist, and a twinkle in his eye showed up merrily in their living room. They still couldn’t wrap their heads around magic being real and their child being chosen to study overseas at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

You, on the other hand, couldn’t be more excited! You always had a feeling you were a little bit off compared to the other kids…and now it finally makes sense!

You finish packing your books into your trunk, after consuming them front to back since the minute you got them, of course. After agonizingly counting down the minutes ever since that moment you got the news you were off to Hogwarts, you couldn’t wait to get your new life started.

You rush to the door of the hotel you are staying in and excitedly prod your parents. “It’s time to go! We need to get to King’s Cross station by 11AM!”

You could tell your parents were dreading the very moment that made you so excited, but you don’t really care, truth be told. They’ll be okay.

The ride to King’s Cross is silent. You pull up and rush towards platforms 9 and 10. You were told by the man in the plum suit that you just have to run as fast as possible towards the wall in between platforms 9 and 10 to get to platforms 9 ¾.

Your parents are skeptical, but after finding out you had magic coursing through your veins, you started to believe anything was possible if you had enough nerve. You rush through the platform and take the first step towards your new life in this fantastical hidden world of magic.

I think I can safely say that millions of millennials had their own version of this fantasy of going to catch the Hogwarts Express on September 1st when they were first enraptured by the Wizarding World as a kid. We desperately wished Hogwarts were real so we could escape the relative mundanity of muggle life. There is a certain subsection of millennials, roughly born between 1988 and 1993, give or take a year, who “grew up” with Harry.

I was eight years old when the first book came out in the United States and 11 days shy of my 17th birthday when Deathly Hallows released.