21 Seemingly Magical Parts of the Harry Potter Universe That Were Actually Just British

Part of the stranglehold the wizarding world of Harry Potter maintained over everyone between the ages of 10 and 30 until, you know, recently was the appeal of stepping into a world completely unlike our own. For two hours and way too many minutes at a time, you could leave behind your own boring school or job for a magic castle where every day held the promise of a great feast, a cutthroat competition and weird uniforms.

What many American readers and viewers didn’t realize, however, was that there was nothing necessarily magical about any of that — just British. In fact, there are a lot of features of the wizarding world that Americans really thought were magic that British Potterheads knew were just facts of daily life across the pond. That’s why user lbstr99 asked r/AskReddit, “What in Harry Potter did you think it was magic but later realized it was just British?”