At King’s Cross Station, between a waiting room and a gift shop, a long queue of tourists waits under a low-hanging walkway in front of a wall. I am, of course, talking about ‘Platform 9 ¾’, the fictional King’s Cross Station platform that transports students to Hogwarts in the world of Harry Potter.

The tourist attraction is a nondescript brick wall with half a luggage trolley embedded in it, but in my opinion the real magic takes place just around the corner at St. Pancras station. There, a slightly less nondescript entrance ferries passengers onto the Eurostar.

“Where are the trains?” an older French woman I had befriended in the queue asked me as we moved from the passport gates and to the waiting area.