There are some Hogwarts classrooms that you recognise immediately, and the Potions classroom is definitely one of them.
Hidden away in the dungeons, it's dark, slightly creepy and absolutely packed with things. Cauldrons cover the workbenches, shelves disappear beneath hundreds of bottles and jars, and almost every available surface seems to contain some mysterious ingredient or piece of equipment.
Basically, exactly what you would expect from a Hogwarts Potions lesson.
Seeing the actual set at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour was one of those moments where I wanted to stop and look at everything. There is so much going on that it's almost impossible to take it all in at once.
And, of course, you can't really look at the Potions classroom without immediately thinking of Professor Snape.
The black robes standing amongst all those bottles and cauldrons are instantly recognisable. Even without Alan Rickman actually standing there looking disappointed in everyone, the classroom still has that wonderfully intimidating Snape atmosphere.
The set also includes Professor Slughorn's costume, which makes such a contrast beside Snape's. It's another little reminder of just how much this particular classroom changed depending on who was standing at the front of it.
What I really loved, though, were all the tiny details.
The shelves are filled with bottle after bottle of potion ingredients. Some contain liquids, while others are packed with strange plants, roots and other things that I probably wouldn't want to identify too closely before lunch. From a distance they simply create the cluttered appearance of the classroom, but when you start looking at them individually, you realise just how many props were needed to fill the set.
Then there are the students' workbenches.
Cauldrons, scales, glass bottles, mortars and pestles, books and all the little pieces of equipment are laid out as though somebody has simply stepped away in the middle of a lesson. I especially loved being able to photograph some of these details up close. They are exactly the sort of things that disappear into the background when you're watching the films but make the set feel completely believable.
There was even an open copy of Advanced Potion-Making.
Of course, that immediately made me think of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry's suspiciously brilliant year in Potions thanks to a certain heavily annotated textbook.
Seeing things like this is probably my favourite part of the Studio Tour. The huge sets are incredible, but I'm equally fascinated by the things somebody could easily have decided didn't matter. A textbook still needed pages. Bottles still needed labels. Shelves still needed ingredients. A student's desk still needed to look as though somebody actually used it.
All those tiny details add up.
Standing in front of the Potions classroom, it doesn't look like somebody simply assembled a backdrop for a film.
It looks like generations of Hogwarts students have been sitting at those tables, chopping ingredients, stirring cauldrons and desperately hoping Professor Snape doesn't decide to inspect their potion next.
Although, having now seen the classroom in person, I think I've reached an important conclusion:
I'd absolutely want to study Potions at Hogwarts.
I just wouldn't particularly want Snape grading me.
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