Old friends and bittersweet goodbyes at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

It’s Sunday. I’m visiting some family in Tokyo. The air is sweltering but I’m taking refuge at a small, beat-up dining table in my aunt’s and uncle’s house. Five of us are huddled around the table, eating French toast under a wall-mounted air conditioner unit. It softly hums away while the kids watch YouTube on an iPad and the adults deliberate what to do with our day.

We float through a few ideas, but nothing really sticks. How about that Godzilla exhibit, I say. Someone says they don’t like Godzilla. We could do teamLab,¹ my uncle offers. Ah, never mind, tickets are sold-out. My aunt suggests Takeshita-dori.² No one seems interested. What about a movie, my uncle proposes. No one even dignifies that with a response.

My uncle’s family is in Tokyo only temporarily. I’ve been visiting them each month, trying to make good use of the time that we have together. It’s been nice seeing my cousins. We’ve always been so far apart from each other—always on different hemispheres—that we’ve barely had any opportunities to interact.

Most of the contact I’ve had with them was when they were born. When I was in high school, I held the oldest in my arms right after he was born, and I saw the youngest for the first time over a video call when I was a freshman in university. She was so tiny then. Now, they’re both right in front of me watching a Minecraft “Let’s Play,” faces sticky from maple syrup. Babies no more. I feel old.

I have lots of these kinds of moments nowadays: Something reminds me of something else that in my mind is just a year-or-two old and then I realize it’s actually more like a full decade old except I can clearly remember when it was new and then I feel ancient and then I start to panic about my mortality and how I’ll be hitting 30 in just a couple of years and how I absolutely cannot be 30 and still a boy which shouldn’t actually be a problem because I’m transitioning but like, what if my transition is a failure?

I’m spiraling. I tell myself to calm down; that it’s a ridiculous thing to be having an existential crisis over some French toast at a comically small dining table at 10:30 in the morning. Deep breaths. Okay. I’m okay. I return to the present. We’ve still not settled on a plan for the day. I should probably think of some more ideas, else we might actually be here all day at this damn table. I love my uncle’s family, but settling on plans doesn’t seem to be their strong suit.

I know lots of places in Tokyo but I don’t normally have to consider children. Hmm. What do kids like? (God, I’m so old.) Well, my students love Harry Potter, and there’s that studio tour somewhere in Tokyo that we could go—the one with all the recreated sets from the movies that you can walk around on.

I ask if the kids like Harry Potter. They love Harry Potter, my uncle says. I tell him about the studio tour. He asks the kids if they want to go. The oldest says it sounds cool. The youngest asks what is Harry Potter?

They’ll love it, my uncle says, let’s do that.

We purchase tickets online, but our entry time is still a few hours away—a commonly used crowd-control tactic in Japan. We decide to bide our time by heading into Shinjuku for lunch and seeing the Godzilla statue there, because the kids haven’t seen it before.

Wait, didn’t someone say they don’t like Godzilla? I guess they changed their mind? I can’t keep up.

We take the train into Shinjuku. It is dirty and smells like shit, which is unusual for Tokyo but not for Shinjuku which is lined with bars as far as the eye can see. It’s not uncommon to stumble upon a puddle of vomit in the street here. It’s a lovely place.

While I guide everyone to the monster’s lair, the kids complain about the heat. It is hot. My clothes are starting to stick to my skin. I’m holding my pastel-pink umbrella aloft to provide some shade, but I can feel the band of my sports bra getting wetter by the second as beads of sweat run down my back. We haven’t even been outside for ten minutes. I love this country, but damn, is the summer intolerable.

Soon, we reach the famed Toho movie theatre with the great kaiju peaking over its top. A massive claw rests atop the theatre’s roof and a familiar round noggin floats above it. Its jaws are fixed open, frozen in a menacing grin. With its red eyes, it glares at the people meandering in the street below, going about their lives as if there isn’t a giant 20-story tall monster about to annihilate them all.

I happen to visit this theatre semi-regularly, so I’ve seen this sight a few dozen times before but I must admit, it is pretty cool. The kids think so, too, but only for about twenty seconds, after which we’re all standing on the street corner like, yep. That’s Godzilla.

It’s noon, so we head underground in pursuit of someplace to eat lunch. We settle on a restaurant that serves various standard Japanese-fare—okonomiyaki, yakisoba, and so on—and wait in line. Japan loves to queue. When people think of the Japanese Experience, they think of geisha and kimono and temples and sakura. But in reality, it often looks like staring at the back of a stranger’s head for hours on end—not exactly the exotic paradise everyone hopes for.

Waiting in line means we’re idle, and anyone who’s ever been around children knows that being idle is a very bad thing, indeed. Idle kids get bored, and bored kids aren’t something that anyone really wants, so my aunt takes the youngest to go look at some other restaurants in an attempt to bide our time, but this is an obvious rookie mistake. Article 237-C of the Hammurabi Code clearly states that one should never deviate from a plan once it is agreed upon by all children present. (Probably.)

Anyway, it’s too late. The restaurant we’re queueing at is deemed no longer acceptable.

The new plan is a curry and onigiri joint around the corner. We surrender our place in line and march over to this new place, and a problem immediately presents itself: it’s tiny. There’s no way the five of us could fit in there. So what now? Do we go back to the restaurant we just left? No, that’s stupid. And we’ve wasted so much time in our failed pursuit of food, that there isn’t much time left before we need to head to the studio tour.

Let’s just grab some onigiri and head over, my uncle says. We just ate breakfast, anyway.

Well, this girlie is going through puberty again, and she could eat a whole-ass bear or two despite the French toast from a couple of hours ago. But she’s also a lady, so she’ll keep quiet about this to preserve the integrity of our expedition.

I sigh, but not loud enough for anyone to hear. I must express my dissatisfaction, but not in a confrontational way because I know I’m being a little unreasonable—just enough to make myself feel a little better about my lack of agency.

My uncle guides us through Shinjuku’s underbelly for like, 20 minutes to find an onigiri stand, which is odd considering onigiri is a dime-a-dozen in this country and we passed approximately 83 onigiri stands on the way to this one. This particular stand has a specialty for spicy tuna onigiri, which the kids seem excited about, at least. I reluctantly choose an onigiri made of fried rice, making sure to take a half-second longer to order so as to express my displeasure at this whole turn of events. We wolf down our snacks, then head over to the tour’s venue.

The site of “Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo”—a name so obviously terrible it comes paired with a more descriptive subtitle, “The Making of Harry Potter,” which makes for an absurdly long title in full—is rather unassuming. A well-manicured lawn dotted with minimalist sculptures resembling various iconography from the Harry Potter films stretches out in front of a rather boring, boxy building. The only dead giveaway that we’re in the right place is the large Harry Potter logo above the entrance.

Yes, I kind of fucked up. We’re in Tokyo, one of the largest cities in the world, a place that really does have it all—and I bring everyone to the Harry Potter studio tour, of all places. We’re here because of me. I did this. Why is a trans girl suggesting we go somewhere built in honor of an IP that’s the product of the reigning TERF bitch? Look, estrogen makes you pretty, not smart. I wanted to see the kids happy and I panicked, okay? We couldn’t decide on anything, it’s our last weekend together before everyone leaves, and I just wanted to have a good time. I know I fucked up. I know.

And I’m regretting it already. Seeing that massive logo looming above me makes me feel strange, a bit uncomfortable. As we wait in line—because this is Japan, remember, we love to queue here—I look around me and everyone seems pretty damn straight and very cisgender. Meanwhile, here I am in a full face of makeup, a pink T-shirt with a cute cartoon bear on it, and breezy bottoms that no cisgender man would ever wear.

The Harry Potter logo looks upon me with disgust. Tranny, it jeers.

Shut up, Harry Potter logo. You’re just a sign.

While our tickets are scanned one-by-one, I anxiously consider what the insides of this building might contain. I hope it’ll be like the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary reunion, where everyone talked around J. K. Rowling, and anytime she did pop onscreen it was paired with a disclaimer that the segment was filmed years ago, as if the filmmakers were profusely apologizing for having to include her at all.

Yeah, I hope it’s like that.

It’s not like that. As soon as we enter the building, we’re greeted with a quote from one of the books, prominently displayed on a large banner and proudly attributed to the queen bitch herself. Oh god, what I have done.

We enter the main lobby: a cavernous carpeted space littered with benches and large LED displays running the length of its walls. To our left is a gift shop styled in the Ministry of Magic’s iconic green-and-black tile, to our right is a food court themed like Hogwarts’ Great Hall, and immediately ahead is a shadowy hole in the wall. Next to it sits a sign that reads, STUDIO TOUR ENTRANCE. We head straight there. I look longingly in the food court’s direction the whole way.

Beyond the ominous entrance lie massive on-set photos from each Harry Potter film, presented with a 3D-layered effect. My youngest cousin asks why there are cameras visible in some of the pictures, as if the tour creators made a glaring oversight. It’s a studio tour, I explain, we get to see how the movies were made! Oh, she says.

She’s adorable.

We’re corralled by staff into a dark rectangular room plastered with movie posters all along the front wall. My aunt points out one of the posters with Johnny Depp, and I say I don’t remember him in any of the films. He was in one of the Fantastic Beasts movies, she says. Oh, I say, I never saw those. She puffs out her bottom lip. That’s a shame, she says. They’re fun!

On the back wall is a row of portraits of all the films’ directors. At the end of the lineup is a familiar face: J. K. Rowling, with that stupid smirk that she always makes in photos. Can’t she just smile like a normal person? It isn’t that hard, girl.

I consider taking a picture of myself flipping off her portrait, but quickly abandon the idea as a large mass of people pushes into the space. The doors ahead are closed and we’re all standing around looking at these movie posters we’ve all seen a million times before. A staff member monologues about each of the posters. It’s very boring and very long. I’m not paying much attention because it’s all being conducted in Japanese and I don’t feel like applying my brain right now, and also I can’t shake the feeling of the hole being bored into my head from J. K. Rowling’s smug mug behind me.

Finally, the doors ahead are opened. Can we actually start the tour now? Nope. Instead, we’re being corralled into another dark and rectangular space. This room has a long LED screen spanning the width of the far wall, that shows Harry’s Japanese voice actor explaining the tour’s rules and teasing all the things we’re about to see.

Like, yeah dude, just let us see for ourselves. You don’t have to sell us on this. We’ve bought tickets already. Let us in!

The presentation ends with clips of fans dressed in wizard robes talking about what Harry Potter means to them. It feels like some weird corporate diversity video meant to show that Harry Potter is for everyone! I look around me. The room is very crowded—there’s probably a couple hundred people in here—but there’s not a single queer-presenting person in the room, save for me. I want to melt into a puddle and seep into the floor.

The doors ahead are opened and at last we can start- oh for fuck’s sake, Warner Brothers! Another dark rectangular room? I’m beginning to think this tour is just one big practical joke.

This room is much larger. It’s a cinema, complete with a large projection screen and several rows of theatre seats. We seat ourselves in the front row and Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson (queen) appear onscreen to give an introduction to the tour. If my math is correct, this is now the third introduction to the tour (that everyone has already paid real money to attend) that we’re being subjected to. We “started” the tour 30 minutes ago. The kids are growing a little impatient. I am too.

Thankfully, this introduction is shorter than the others. The theatre screen is raised into the ceiling, and behold! The entrance doors to Hogwarts. It’s pretty cool, I must admit. We all crowd around the doors, and a staff member asks the crowd if anyone is celebrating a birthday or an anniversary. No one responds. He asks again. No one responds. He asks again. No one responds. He nervously chuckles to himself.

Refusing to be deterred, he asks for like, the fifth time. A child raises his hand and pushes through the crowd. The kid is maybe 12 years old. The staff member asks, completely sincerely, if today is his birthday or anniversary. I burst out laughing. No one else in the crowd offers even a hint of a laugh.

Kill me, kill me, kill me.

The kid is instructed to push open the doors at the count of three, but he doesn’t seem to understand much Japanese, and this staff member doesn’t know how to handle this. (I mean, who could possibly have foreseen that the big Harry Potter attraction would bring in overseas guests?) Eventually, they figure it out and the tour is allowed to begin at last. We shuffle through the double doors and into a recreation of Hogwarts’ Great Hall.

True to its name, it is pretty great. The floor is made of (fake) large stone slabs and the ceiling is simply bare lighting, just like the actual film set because the hall’s ceiling was added in post. The walls are lined with the hall’s iconic dining tables, and at each house’s section are mannequins donning their respective robes. At the far end of the hall, where the school’s staff would sit, is the Goblet of Fire. Two mannequins resembling Fred and George Weasley with long white beards are sprawled out on the floor in front of the artifact, recreating the scene from the fourth film.

A staff member approaches the goblet, introduces it, and then a burst of blue fire erupts from the goblet’s mouth. A little slip of paper shoots out from inside it and the staff member catches it in midair, gasps, and shows the paper to the crowd. It reads HARRY POTTER. Everyone claps. It’s very sugoi.

The kids are loving it. They’re excitedly bouncing around the hall, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at every little thing. There’s nothing quite like being a kid.

What’s that, the youngest asks. She points at some mannequins in green-and-black robes. That’s the Slytherin house, my uncle replies. They look bad, she says. Yeah, I say, they’re pretty bad. She bounces away to look at something else.

Once we’ve had our fill of the Great Hall, we move into the following rooms. We’re greeted with a behind-the-scenes look at the hall’s construction and then a room highlighting the iconic moving marble staircase. It’s been rebuilt here and it actually moves!

Next, is a large space showcasing the sets of the living areas at Hogwarts. There’s the Gryffindor and Slytherin common rooms, dorms, and Dumbledore’s office. Everything is just as I remember it from the films. Oh, there’s the fireplace where Harry spoke to Sirius in Prisoner of Azkaban! There’s where Ron and Harry argued about girls in Goblet of Fire. That’s the sword Harry uses in Chamber of Secrets.

Across from the Slytherin common room is an area where you can become spectators in a Quidditch match. The five of us are grouped up with about 15 others and are led onto a small set resembling the spectator stands from the films. We’re coached through various reactions while being filmed, then we’re guided to a display that shows a Quidditch scene from Philosopher’s Stone with our reactions cut in. It’s horribly cheesy, but the kids are going crazy for it.

I can’t stop looking at myself, though. Jesus Christ, I look like that? The camera caught me from a 45-degree angle and my side profile is dreadful. It’s so angular. It screams “man.” Gross. I feel sick.

Trying to hide my disgust, I cower in the back while everyone else laughs at the ridiculous edit on the display. After what feels like an eternity, the video ends and I shove past everyone, then hide in the Room of Requirement. Bad move. Everything here is reflective, and now I’m staring at my distorted face in various pots and pans. Ugly, ugly, ugly, they chant.

It would be brilliant if I could stop thinking about being trans for just a single minute. Every waking second of my existence is consumed with obsessive thoughts about how I look, how I sound, how I stand, how I walk, how I act. I look at everyone around me and compare myself to them, which is a very stupid thing to do, but as I previously established, this girlie isn’t the brightest.

And like, everyone in Tokyo is so hot. Both the women and the men. Everyone has these perfectly crafted outfits, glowing skin, and gorgeous hair. I want to be friends with all of them and learn their secrets. I want to date all of them and kiss them. I want to be them.

Then there’s me standing in front of an old chrome pot, staring at my warped face. I look like a blobfish.

The next part of the tour focuses on the learning environments at Hogwarts: Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions classrooms, and the library. Wedged in between the classroom sets is the Mirror of Erised, in which Harry sees his parents in Philosopher’s Stone. At the studio tour, it’s been turned into a selfie opportunity. An orderly queue (I really wasn’t lying about Japan loving to queue) rests off to the side, with a long line of visitors patiently waiting for their turn. My aunt and uncle want a photo with everyone, so we take a place at the end of the line.

I am not thrilled about this, but what am I going to do? I’ve been running into this issue for my entire life: I’ve always hated taking photos, for reasons that should be obvious, but if I object to taking a photo everyone acts as if I personally insulted their mothers. I’ve learned to shut up and just go along with it. It’s easier that way.

As we wait for our turn, I try my best to dissociate. It works. Now I’m numb and I don’t really care about having to look at my reflection again. I watch my body from some high vantage point as we stand in front of the mirror. We smile, my uncle takes a couple of pictures, and then we give up our spot to the next group in line. My uncle shows us the photos. Everyone is smiling perfectly, looking so happy.

Isn’t it strange that we always smile in photos, even if we aren’t actually happy in the moment? We willingly choose to alter our memories of events, warping them with false records because god forbid we remember things as they actually happened. Our camera rolls depict much happier images of our lives than what actually occurred. It’s never made sense to me. The false smiles of mine that permeate the majority of the photos ever taken of me only remind me of just how unhappy or uncomfortable I actually was at the time. I can look at photos and recall the bullshit behind each smile: In this one, I said I didn’t want to be in the picture, and then there was a big argument about it right before we took the picture. Oh, in this one, I look super happy but really I was thinking about going home and hanging myself. Good times!

We proceed into the Forbidden Forest. Thick, towering trees surround us. The ground is a soft, squishy rubber made to look like dirt. In here, there are no reflective surfaces and everything is cast into shadow, so I’m able to slowly regain my composure. I watch the kids run about the forest, giggling with excitement. Screens are hung on the walls in between the trees to create the illusion of dementors flying through the woods. You can stand in front of these screens and mime a patronus charm to ward off the creatures. It’s a big hit with the kids.

After braving an encounter with the forest’s eight-legged inhabitants, we’re spit outside in front of Hagrid’s hut and a café behind it. A staff member informs us we’re at the halfway-point of the tour. Damn. We’ve spent nearly three hours here already.

We decide to eat lunch. For real this time. The café serves a host of themed foods, mostly consisting of British cuisine. I order the Slytherin plate: bangers and mash and an oolong tea. It’s fine. Definitely overpriced, but this is to be expected at a venue like this.

Before we commence the second half of the tour, I stop by the restroom. I hang a right to the men’s restroom because I’m not looking to start an incident, and lock myself in a stall. I hang my bag on the door’s hook and feel around inside for my mirror and lipstick, carefully reapply it, then brush my hair. This is a bit silly, really. There’s a huge mirror right outside, but instead I’m choosing to hide in a smelly stall to do my touch-ups. I’m still going to be walking around in the men’s restroom in a full face of makeup and feminine attire, but I guess it’s a step too far to openly reapply my lipstick.

Anxiety is stupid.

We resume our tour and arrive at Platform 9 ¾. The noble Hogwarts Express sits proudly at the station, steam billowing from its smokestack, impressing with its tremendous size. I stand in the middle of the platform, full of visitors going to-and-fro just like a real train platform, and it hits me:

Little Sage is loving this. She’s fan-girling so hard right now. This whole tour is basically all she ever wanted. Harry Potter was everything to me. I adored the books, and when I saw the movies it was like a religious experience. To now be walking around in the very spaces I read about is a dream come true.

Because they weren’t just books. They were a window to another world, another reality. A place where even the mundane was wondrous. A place where anything could—and did—happen. The Wizarding World was everything the real world wasn’t: Thrilling. Exciting. Happy. I wanted so badly to live there, and for most of my elementary school years I basically did.

I never had many friends. I still don’t. As it turns out, being Autistic and actually a girl (even though no one sees it, really) doesn’t make for a wealth of popularity. But at Hogwarts, I had Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I was right there with them—running all over the school grounds, getting into wacky hijinks, fighting Death Eaters, and drinking Butterbeer. They weren’t characters. They were my friends, and they accepted me even when no one else would.

But now, it’s all wrong. Here I am on Platform 9 ¾ and I should be over the moon, yet I feel so conflicted. Everywhere on this tour are various quotes from the books, all attributed to J. K. Rowling. Her dumb face pops up in various spots like a jump scare in some throwaway horror flick. She’s inescapable. This world that had played such a pivotal role in my formative years now feels nauseating. Normally, I’m a big proponent of separating the art from the artist, but Harry Potter has been steeped in its creator’s hate-fueled campaign for far too long to ignore. It’s wrong. We shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have come here.

But still the tour continues. Now we’re walking on the green-and-black tiles of the Ministry of Magic. I stand in front of Dolores Umbridge’s pink dress, and it feels strangely fitting because by this point in the story the curtain has been lifted. After a brief stint as headmaster of Hogwarts, Umbridge is now in the belly of the authoritative Ministry of Magic and is no longer hiding her true nefarious nature; just as Rowling isn’t hiding her hatred for people like me. I think of her stupid cigar photo. She may as well be the one in this dress.

I don’t know whether I want to scream, cry, or both, but I decide that the cold interior of the Ministry isn’t the place for either of those things. We meander through a section showing how the books’ magical creatures were realized on screen, and then we hop in line for the Broomstick Experience. First, a staff member takes a group photo (ugh) and then whisks us away to a green stall with a broomstick suspended horizontally. My oldest cousin mounts it and is instructed to give various reactions and poses, while he’s superimposed into a scene from Goblet of Fire where Harry flys away from a dragon, except instead of Harry it’s now my cousin. Everyone laughs. The youngest especially.

It’s my uncle’s turn. He makes crazy, exaggerated movements and the kids are bowled over with laughter. He’s a good dad. I’m laughing, too, but only because I’m trying to blend in. Really, I’m dreading being asked to get on the broomstick because I don’t think I can handle seeing myself on camera again.

The staff member motions for me to enter the stall. I politely decline. Everyone seems a little bummed.

I am, too. I feel like a disappointment. I wish I wasn’t like this.

We’re almost finished now. Just two main features to go. After the Broomstick Experience is an exhibit explaining foley-work, and then there it is: Diagon Alley.

Of all the books’ many locales, this is certainly the most whimsical, which is probably why this set was saved for last. Its winding path stretches out in front of us, utilizing a bit of forced perspective that makes it all seem at least twice as big as it really is. Just like in the films, shops are jammed haphazardly together, painted in all sorts of vibrant colors, and constructed in impossible geometry. I waltz over to 93 Diagon Alley, where Weasley & Weasley is located. Inside are endless shelves of multicolored boxes paired with zany signs detailing their contents. In the middle of the shop floor is a statue of a child holding a large bowl containing purple-and-green candies. The statue has a concerningly round head and is hunched over the bowl, mouth unnaturally agape, as a steady flow of the candies expel from its orifice into the bowl. Beside the statue is a sign that reads PUKING PASTILLES. I feel a strange sense of kinship with the thing.

The set is immaculately kept and exhaustively detailed, but I’m quite tired of this place. I’m ready to leave, and not just because I feel weird about being trans at Hogwarts. We’ve been here for over five hours now. As impressively comprehensive a tour as this is, it is so very long.

Luckily, there’s only one stop left in our tour. We pass through a hallway featuring a spread of the Marauder’s Map to the tour’s final chamber. It is a vast, black chamber housing a staggeringly massive model of the Hogwarts grounds in full. It’s difficult to convey the size of it. The room is essentially two or three stories tall. We enter at the top and still the model towers before us. It’s a brilliant finale, even if it does feel hollow.

At long last, our tour has come to a close. We’re spit out into the gift shop, which is inexplicably larger than the Great Hall and Diagon Alley sets combined. I peruse the merchandise while the kids sort through plushies. There are wands, robes, hats, building sets, pins, stationary, confectionaries, Butterbeer, figures—far too much to list off, even if I could remember all of the shop’s offerings. I cannot deny that this stuff is cool. It’s not junk. It’s quality stuff. I would totally buy an irresponsible amount of merch, if it weren’t for J. K. Rowling’s stench plaguing everything in sight.

It’s past six now. We decide we may as well grab dinner before we leave, so we walk to the dining hall styled like Hogwarts’ Great Hall. I order an English breakfast, which like the bangers and mash, is aggressively overpriced. The toast is branded with “9 ¾” in a meager attempt to tie the meal into the theming. It tastes like styrofoam. It’s a bit sad.

I finish my meal before everyone else because I ordered first. In Japan, meals are brought out whenever they’re ready so usually you eat when your food arrives, even if other members in your party are still waiting to receive their order. I watch the kids eat. Somehow, they appear to be getting just as much food in their mouths as on their faces.

Our kids have the worst table manners, my uncle says. I chuckle. It’s gross but also cute, in a little kid sort of way.

Eventually, watching the messy display in front of me grows old, so I look around the room. We’re sat close to where the dining hall meets the main lobby. I look toward the exit. Above it is a quote immortalized in golden letters that reads, WHETHER YOU COME BACK BY PAGE OR BY THE BIG SCREEN, HOGWARTS WILL ALWAYS BE THERE TO WELCOME YOU HOME. In small letters below, the quote’s author is revealed: J. K. Rowling.

Those words were originally spoken nearly 15 years ago, during the premiere of the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. It was a simpler time when the Wizarding World yet lacked the political undertones it carries today. Rowling’s hatred of the trans community wouldn’t come to light until many years later. But in 2025, the quote suspended above takes on a more nuanced meaning: Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you, except for me because I am trans.

I get up from the table and capture the only photo I take of the entire tour. I lazily position the quote in frame and then my right hand with its middle finger extended. Like our group photo at the Mirror of Erised, it paints a false image of the current moment. It implies anger and defiance, but I feel neither of these things. I’m just sad, and tired. Tired of being sad.

I look back to my cousins in the dining hall, still painting their faces with their dinner. They’re so innocent, so beautifully oblivious to the sinister bigotry lurking behind everything around us. They are free to run about and take everything at face-value. They don’t have to hyper-analyze everything for its subtext, or consider whether they should even be here at all. Hogwarts is just a magical school from some old movies. Dobby is just a funny little guy. J. K. Rowling is just a face on a wall. I envy them.

For many trans people—and Autistics, of which I am one—childhood is a blur. I don’t remember my childhood much. I remember only a few things: a constant state of unease, the resulting persistent desire to no longer exist, weirdness from growing up in the church. It’s difficult to recall anything especially positive, but Harry Potter has always been one of the few exceptions. Now, I don’t even have that.

We exit the tour building. The front lawn is now illuminated by moonlight. As we walk to the nearby train station, my aunt asks if I’ll finally watch the Fantastic Beasts movies.

No, I say, I don’t think I will.

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