20 “Magical” Things From the “Harry Potter” Universe That Actually Exist in Real Life

It is very likely that, as a child, you believed the magic of the Harry Potter universe could appear in real life. You may have even been one of the many who waited for that Hogwarts entrance letter on your eleventh birthday. Likewise, it is also very possible that you believed many of the things that happened in the books and movies were magical when, in fact, they were quite common. You just hadn’t heard of them until that point.

Bright Side compiled some fun facts that most fans of this saga have been believing and disbelieving throughout their lives.

• “People selling you stuff off a trolley on trains — thought that was so cool and then went to the UK for real.” © Cindy_babe / Reddit
• “The entire notion of parents shipping their kids off to school for 7 years or whatever” © PlannerSean / Reddit
• “Related but more opposite story — I’m Australian and we’re still quite British. I went to Universal Studios and kept seeing people in school uniforms. I thought nothing of it, thinking it was school children on an excursion until I realized they were dressed in Hogwarts uniforms.” © vermiciousknid81 / Reddit
• “Perspective from a British person: The fact that he grew up in Surrey. That’s where I did too and I genuinely thought that was a magical thing. My mum told me too that Privet Drive was just around the corner but we were too busy to visit because it was out of the way. Turns out Surrey is huge and many Brits live here, not just me and my friends, and Wizards didn’t just run around dumping their magical prophecy babies up my road.” © TheScorchbeastQueen / Reddit

• “Houses at school!!!! I first read Harry Potter when I was 11, read it several times since then but only when I reached 29 years old did I find out, almost by accident, that houses were an actual thing. It blew my mind.” © whatcenturyisit / Reddit
• “The name Hermione — apparently a kid sent Rowling a letter thanking her because when Harry Potter got popular, suddenly people could pronounce her name.” © ShiraCheshire / Reddit
• “I thought the money system was just made to be overcomplicated because it was a fantasy world. It just draws directly from pre-decimalization British currency. Any Brit who used money before the early ’70s would see it, but I’m younger and American so I never noticed.” © 8dogsinatrenchcoat / Reddit
• “I went to boarding school for a couple of years as a weekly boarder. I went to school Sunday evening and came home Friday evening. Thought people might be interested to know that there are different types of boarding, it’s not all ’see you in a few months’ time!’” © kyridwen / Reddit

• “Wearing robes as part of a school uniform. I thought it was fiction until I went to Oxford...” © Grey_Gryphon / Reddit
• “I thought being expelled was a Hogwarts thing (ex-spell like a magic spell) and I only realized it was a normal thing later when some kids were expelled from my school.. © Miltage / Reddit
• “I don’t think I ever thought they were magic, but Hufflepuff’s mascot was the first time I’d ever heard of badgers.” © frolicking_elephants / Reddit
• “I thought it wasn’t true that all the houses on the street looked the same.” © Sylvaintheg / Reddit

• “The night bus — I thought it was something she made up until I visited London.” © susanc93 / Reddit
• “When I first read it as a kid, I didn’t understand that the Underground was a subway. I thought they were taking some fancy magic tunnels under London by foot.” © brouhaha13 / Reddit
• “Not British but real French: Nicholas Flamel and the whole idea of a philosopher’s stone is all for real. Dude has a street named for him in Paris.” © AUniquePerspective / Reddit
• “Casually offering your guest an entire pie. Turns out little pies are common there, and I am jealous. I want little meat pies for snacks.” © TheWanderingSlacker / Reddit

• “When I was little, I assumed that in Britain every kid took a train to go to school in a castle that had no electricity and used candles instead. I also assumed students wore robes and higher-ups always dressed like Dumbledore. Like, everything in Harry Potter that wasn’t explicitly magic, I assumed was just British.” © horatio630 / Reddit
• “Double-decker busses! I grew up in a rural Aussie town, so no double-decker busses, until a year after the first film came out when I went to Perth and then to London.” © little_asian_man_89 / Reddit
• “The most magical thing about the Hogwarts Express is that, as far as I can tell, there was absolutely nothing magical about it at all in the story. It was just a regular British steam train operated by witches and wizards.” © Resinseer / Reddit
• “Lots of the food, specifically, things like spotted dick and treacle tart. Figured out later that treacle is really similar to the filling in pecan pie — that was a mild surprise, lol.” © Lazeeboy2003 / Reddit

What fact about the magical world of Harry Potter did you long believe to be real?