Chapter 11
Sherbet Lemon!

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The giant Hogwarts clock occupied an entire wall of the soundstage area.

I feel like it’s difficult to appreciate it until you see it from far away.

There were a few interactive touchscreens that went along with some of the set design and costume design areas.

Here are some more costumes — these from members of the Order of the Phoenix.

And here’s that old clock again, which, I should mention, was in constant motion.

The next major set piece was the entrance gargoyle to Dumbledore’s Office. This is another practical piece that actually morphed into a set of moving stairs during the films (though it was stationary here).

Back in the middle of the room, this cage contained literally thousands of props from all the films. Its general detritus made up the bulk of the clutter in the Room of Requirement’s hiding place in the sixth and eighth movies.

Some shelves also had very recognizable props. Like the Skele-grow from the second movie.

A glass case held some of the most intricate, valuable props. Here is the golden egg from the fourth film.

There’s the Triwizard Cup (don’t touch it if you don’t want to be transported to the graveyard!).

I love that the Philosopher’s Stone is clearly just a hunk of plastic. I actually read on Facebook recently that the way they made it glow was by putting a candle on top of the camera so the light would flicker during filming.

Here are Harry’s Omnioculars from the Quidditch World Cup, the first snitch (containing the resurrection stone), and the crystal goblet used to drink torture potion.

The Goblet of Fire itself was actually carved from wood (which I thought was really funny since it is, itself, supposed to be fireproof).

Here are a couple peeks into the giant props cage. You can see several schoolbooks, a quidditch trophy, and Lucius’ wand/cane.

There’s a huge suit of armor, the sign pointing to Hogwarts and the Shrieking Shack, and various lanterns.

Toward the back were a bunch of extra wands and a few other bits and bobs.

I particularly liked this house-elf sized suit of armor.

Back in the glass case was an Azkaban Prison Number (I thought it was Sirius’, but now I see that it was from the sixth movie).

Here’s the deluminator.

This is a closer shot of the wands. It’s crazy seeing all the detail, and these weren’t even for main characters. Each wizarding extra had to have a wand, and they were signed in and out every day so that they could be kept track of.

Tracy leaned against the cage for a bit to watch one of the vignettes in our digital guide.

And the next major set was Dumbledore’s Office.

This one was particularly surreal because we’ve essentially been in here before when queueing for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Universal.

The pensieve.

And the Sword of Gryffindor.

And here’s Dumbledore’s main costume from the later films.

Look at all the congealed memories.

And the Sorting Hat.

It’s hard to see in many of the pictures, but the second level of the office contains this telescope that was one of the biggest, most complex pieces of set dressing made for any of the films. And it was never even used at the center of any scenes. I think the point of it was to give the office more grandeur, even if it would only ever be in the background.

I like the phoenix ornamentation around Dumbledore’s fireplace.

A little office selfie!

Since Tracy had taken a nap in Dumbledore’s office at Universal when the ride was broken down one time, she had to reproduce that experience here.

Back out in the main display area, there was a whole wall of portraits from the walls of Hogwarts. What’s fun about them is that they were mostly paintings of Harry Potter crew members. That’s executive producer David Heyman in the portrait on the right.

And here’s production designer Stuart Craig with a cat.

It’s actually quite impressive seeing all these portraits next to one another and imagining just how much work went into each of them. And these were just stationary pieces for quick background shots. Of course, any portraits that moved were done with green screen.