When we first arrived in the UK (after our little ordeal at Heathrow about not having valid visas), we took a train from London to Newcastle. We departed from King's Cross Station, the same one Harry uses to get to Hogwart's School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. This station is the main hub for trains bound to the northeast of England, so we are obviously well-placed to find more Harry Potter places where we live than anywhere else in the country.
It didn't take us long to find Diagon Alley. Though in the movie, we're led to believe that Diagon Alley is someplace in London, we found that at least the imagery in the movies is based a place in York. The Shambles, as it is called, is a series of narrow streets in York that have been home to shops almost from medieval times. The top floors overhang the bottom ones so that when people emptied their chamber pots back in the day, they didn't dump them on their downstairs neighbors.
While Dan was enjoying a conference on global health issues in Oxford, Brent and I went exploring the town. We discovered that Christ Church College served as the setting for filming several scenes for the Harry Potter movies. Christ Church is the grandest quad and boasts the most distinguished students, including 13 Prime Ministers. Seemed like a fitting setting for a movie about an incredibly prestigious school for wizards. The Tom Quad, pictured to the right, takes its name from the seven-ton bell in the tower. It has called the undergraduate curfew (9:05 pm, since it is 5 minutes West of the Greenwich Mean) since 1682.
The dining hall at Christ Church should be a recognizable twin for the great hall at Hogwart's. 
Even the staircase leading to the dining hall had a somewhat familiar feel. Sadly, the dining hall was closed when we visited, so we only really got to see the entry stairs.
Yesterday on an excursion with my grandparents and Aunt Helen, we explored another filming location just to our north, Alnwick Castle. The outer bailey (courtyard) and Abbot's Tower were the location for the filming of the broom flying lesson in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (known here as the Philosopher's Stone). 
Dan said he could almost pick out Professor McGonagall's window in the castle keep as well. With such a direct tie-in, the castle holds special wizardry tours and has people dress up like characters from the movies. So...museums here employ similar techniques to museums at home (think American Girl tours at various historic homes).Alnwick Castle has been the home of the Duke of Northumberland (the county where we live) since at least 1309. The first Duke of Northumberland happened to have an illegitimate son named James Smithson, whom he refused to acknowledge. Mr. Smithson dedicated his life to investigating the natural world, traveled the world, published some pretty important findings, and shrewdly invested his earnings to amass a respectable fortune. Upon his death, he willed his fortune to his nephew, or if his nephew died with no heirs, the money should go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." So even the Smithsonian Institution seems to have its roots here in the northeast of England. Who knew we were going to such a cool place!!
Here is perhaps the least-expected Harry Potter reference. While Dan and Mike were enjoying the view from Notre Dame, I was exploring the achaeological site beneath it. Apparently, there was a Nicolas Flamel (an alchemist, no less) who paid for a portal to be installed late in the 15th century in the church of Sainte-Genevieve des Ardents, located across the square in front of Notre Dame. Weird...how many other characters might be based on real life people lurking about somewhere out there?
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