An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player has magically recreated Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at Kings Cross Station from Harry Potter, complete with the Hogwarts Express awaiting young (and in this case furry) witches and wizards to board. The islands of Animal Crossing: New Horizons are coastal canvases for players to customize with different items, flora, and landscapes (once terraforming is unlocked). The inside of the player’s house is one of the only indoor locations that can be customized, but people across the internet have gotten creative with these limitations; for instance, one fan used multicolored lights and Mario items to create the Mario Kart track Rainbow Road inside his house.
While Kings Cross Station is a real location in London, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters comes from the pages of the Harry Potter books. Inaccessible to Muggles and other nonmagical beings, wizards and witches going to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters need to run towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Instead of crashing into the barrier, magical folk go straight through the brick and onto another platform to board the Hogwarts Express, the magical train that transports students to and from the titular magical school.
Reddit user mayor-hel posted a screenshot of the recreation of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters in the Animal Crossing subreddit. In front of the Hogwarts Express, mayor-hel’s villager, clad in Slytherin garb, is seen strolling with a hamster cage (which must be for a rat because hamsters are not one of the pets permitted at Hogwarts) on top of a luggage cart and travelers’ trunk. Marshal is off to the side giving off some “Draco [Malfoy] vibes” with another villager next to him.
Mayor-hel’s screenshot has become quite popular on Reddit with over 13,500 upvotes and over 30 awards. Most of the comments are about mayor-hel’s creativity, while some users have elected to play Sorting Hat by assigning Hogwarts houses to different villagers. A couple of the comments pointed out that the scene can be recreated with standee cutouts, stalls, and box sofas. One user posted a link to the code for the cutouts.
This inventive recreation of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and the Hogwarts Express may be an optical illusion, but the room uses that trick to conjure the magic of the Harry Potter franchise. It’s even more impressive that the scene was created inside such a small space instead of out on the island. People playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons continue to make surprising concoctions even as the game has reached its one-year anniversary. Hopefully, Bunny Day doesn’t scare too many of these players away.
Source: mayor-hel/Reddit