I remember the day my mom bought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was in fourth grade and Harry Potter-mania had yet to hit. “I found this in the clearance section of Marshall’s,” my mom said. “It sounds pretty interesting.”

We devoured the first book and scaled the bookshelves at a now-defunct bookstore to get Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets the day it was released.

Fast forward ten years.

Harry Potter is now, of course, incredibly popular and profitable, with movies, books (and controversy surrounding the books), and a new exhibition of artifacts from the movie, which I saw at the Museum of Science Boston.

It was awesome.

I’m a movie junkie (as well as a Harry Potter fan), so I considered it my duty to go to the exhibit. I’ve enjoyed previous movie exhibits at the MoS (there was an awesome Lord of the Rings one, and an okay Star Wars one). Though I still think that the LotR one was the best, I thoroughly enjoyed the HP one. There were costumes and props from the movies with fun activities throughout (like harvesting Mandrakes and throwing Quaffles into hoops).

As a GD junkie, one of my favorite parts of the exhibit was looking at the textbooks. It was really quite cool, seeing the different covers up close. I wanted to flip through the books, but that would never happen, given that they were encased in glass and arrest is not on my to-do-list.

I also really liked looking at the wands. We never really get a good look at them on screen, just flashes of them here and there. Being able to study Voldemort’s, Dumbledore’s and McGonagall’s wands was quite cool. Each has character hidden until you get a really close look at them.

The various portions of the exhibit were set up like different parts of Hogwarts. There was the Gryffindor Common Room (and dormitories), Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts classrooms, the Great Hall, the Quidditch pitch, Hagrid’s Hut and the Forbidden Forest. The details were extraordinary.

All said, I had a great time, and decided to reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, only to realize halfway through that the parts I really wanted to read were in The Half-Blood Prince. Oops.

The exhibit is one that I recommend when it comes to a city near you (I imagine that a stop in NYC will occur).

I also was sorted into, of all houses, Ravenclaw. Or Slytherin. The Sorting Hat was a little confused. 😀