Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Places/Platform 9 and Three Quarters
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| Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Place | |
| Platform 9-3/4 | |
|---|---|
| Location | Kings Cross Station, London, England |
| Permanent Residents | None |
| First Appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
Contents |
[edit] General Overview
Platform Nine and Three Quarters is a secret platform at King's Cross Station in London. From this location students at Hogwarts are able to catch the Hogwarts Express train.
[edit] Extended Description
Platform Nine and Three Quarters is reached by leaning against, or running through, the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 at King's Cross Station. It is apparently physically located within the confines of the station, though perhaps at a lower level, as the train does seem to pass through an appropriate area of London as it leaves the city.
The platform has been used in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth year, as the place for last-minute questions and warnings, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione depart the place they have been through the summer for another year at Hogwarts. In the first year, of course, it was the stage for the initial meeting between the Weasley children then attending Hogwarts (Ron, Fred, George, and Percy), and Harry; and it proved inaccessible in the second year due to the well-intentioned but misguided actions of Dobby the house-elf.
[edit] Analysis
While the platform might well have been intended to be the place where we change from Muggle to magical life, it has only actually acted as that transition once, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In the other four books where it is a factor, and in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where it is inaccessible, Harry has been living in the magical world for at least a short time before the trip to the station: three times at The Burrow, once at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley, and once at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
That is not to say that it is not a transition; in each case, it is a return to school, and thus to a place where Harry's own use of magic is not only permitted, but required. Harry, as an underage wizard, is of course not allowed to use magic anywhere except school. It seems that the largely unsupervised Hogwarts Express is seen as an extension of school, for the purposes of determining whether magic is allowed. Thus, the transition from the repressed world of the underage wizard, to the free world of the wizard who is able to cast spells, seems to happen on the platform.
The reverse transition, of course, happens in the other direction. Stepping off the train and onto the platform is a return to the world of the underage wizard, a return to the world where magic must be repressed or hidden for fear of frightening the Muggles. We see, in each of the first five books, Harry's reluctance to approach that transition, to return to the unexciting life he perforce must share with the Dursleys.
