Hallows ground

It’s a gray, misty morning, and the train to Hogwarts is about to leave. Not from the invisible Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, like it does in the “Harry Potter” books, but the altogether less wizardly Euston, Platform 8. Oh, and sorry, it’s not a steam engine filled with owls and exploding sweets, but a commuter train with the disarmingly dreary destination of Watford Junction.

It’s all a bit Muggle, for sure. But despite the humdrum surroundings, the train really is going to the most famous school in the world, and there’s a sense of excitement in the air. Today is one of the last days of shooting at Harry Potter HQ, otherwise known as Leavesden Studios: a mighty collection of old, drafty aircraft-assembly hangars surrounded by fields of Winnebagos and tents full of makeup artists creating goblins on an industrial scale. Local taxi drivers call it “the gulag.”

All over the world, millions of fans eagerly await the two films being made here out of the final book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” The first opens Friday, featuring Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) with his two faithful sidekicks, Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), on the road, dodging corrupt Ministry of Magic operatives while tracking down Horcruxes (objects that contain pieces of the dark Lord Voldemort’s soul and render him immortal).

POTTER–AT ‘LAST’

EMMA WATSON IS FAMED FOR HER PRACTICAL MAGIC

BEHIND EMMA WATSON’S FORBIDDEN NYC CUT

The second part, which includes the mighty final Battle of Hogwarts, in which the good guys led by Harry engage Voldemort and his dark forces, comes out July 15. The two films have been made simultaneously over more than 260 days. But when David Yates, the director, says “cut” tonight, it will all be over, filming complete, team dismissed. All that will remain is the editing and the post-production computer magic that makes Champagne bottles and wizards fly.

When the trio began filming the first book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” back in 2000, they were not even teenagers. Radcliffe was 11, a child actor whose only claim to fame was having played David Copperfield on television. Watson was 10 and just an ordinary pupil in the middle of reading the third “Harry Potter” book when auditions were announced at her school in Oxford. Grint was 12 and already a mega “Harry Potter” fan when he heard about the film; he felt his own family were just like the Weasleys and used to chant to himself, “I am Ron, I am Ron.”

Little could they have known, when they first arrived at Leavesden Studios as tweens, that the next decade of their lives would be spent here, nor that when they emerged they would be the most famous young people on the planet, worth $67 million, $35 million and $32 million, respectively.

Wandering about the dusty sheds, the reality of what it must have been like to spend their entire adolescence filming here is apparent. This afternoon, the three young stars are filming a key scene. Wearing stunt harnesses, they jump onto a moving plastic platform with a sculpted white edge — when the special-effects geniuses have finished, it will look like a dragon.

During numerous takes, over several hours, Radcliffe sings to himself, tapping out a complex rhythm on the neck of the “dragon,” psyching himself up for the next foray. In this scene, the protagonists are meant to be soaked (the dragon has just flown under a waterfall), so in between each take, a small army of wardrobe people, bearing plastic plant sprayers filled with cold water, dampen down the hair and costumes to ensure perfect continuity.

“I love being wet. I love it, love it, love it,” chants Radcliffe, who has been filming wet scenes for two weeks, as a wardrobe minion soaks him once again.

At one point, Watson asks hopefully: “Is that it on the dragon?” The director shakes his head. “You can come back again tomorrow,” he jokes.

The crew groan; they all know time is running out. They have to get all the shots now — there is no more time. Outside it is a rare sunny day, but in here it is dark. To my surprise, I find myself wondering whether these world-famous, super-rich kids made the right call in selling their precious teenage years — when you learn who you are and who you want to be — for a twilight existence in this old hangar.

I put the question to the principals between takes — this time they are filming a scene set inside the vault deep below Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which is where the wizard world keeps its treasure — surrounded by goblin guards.

Grint, who plays Ron, is larger than I had expected, sweet and down-to-earth. “It’s a weird feeling that this is all finishing,” he admits. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet. Ten years! Now I’m 21. It’s hard to remember life pre-‘Potter.’”

Does he have any regrets? “Don’t know, really,” he says with a grin. “School, I suppose. It was strange not having a peer group, not being in a classroom every day, missing the in-jokes and school trips. I suppose I’ve missed out socially on parties and that . . . but this Watford hangar is home. We’ve got a great dressing room with pingpong and darts, video games, Xbox, TV. I play a lot of ‘Guitar Hero.’”

Watson tells me later that she’s spent a very large amount of her life in there. I’d guess too much.

Soon it will all be over. The team — set designers, costume makers, special-effects creators, two camera crews, teachers for the child stars and an army of retainers — will be broken up, off to cinematic pastures new. Over 10 years, the art department, a team of 58 people, has created 588 sets and had 35 babies between them.

This is the final school report, the last snapshot of what the producers call “the ultimate family set,” which has basically employed the same people for a decade — an unheard-of period of stability for film types, who usually reconfigure themselves onto new projects every few months. Quite a few joke to me that “Potter” has paid off their mortgages.

All armies march on their stomachs, and the canteen at lunchtime is hooting. Suddenly there is a commotion: The costume department is selling off some clothes and trinkets. The extras flock to buy mementos. This is a rare chance: The plan is to turn this plot and the hangars containing all the different sets into a Harry Potter museum; hardly anything is being sold off, and almost all the props are carefully labeled and stored in containers inside one of the hangars. When the museum opens, the sets will all be redressed, reclaiming their former glory.

Film sets, of course, are all about illusion, and the man who visually brings JK Rowling’s books to life is the production designer, Stuart Craig. A gentle man with white hair, he has worked on all eight films, and Rowling says of his work: “I love the look of the films; they really mirror what has been in my imagination all these years.” His office is full of architectural drawings and small-scale models of his sets.

“Shall we go and see the real thing?” he says. And then, Willy Wonka-like, he leads me on a magical mystery tour through the vast, freezing hangars. We turn a corner and find ourselves in the middle of Hogwarts. It is not the school as we know it, but a battle site. Everything is trashed: The marble stairs are ruins, the walls semi-tumbled.

Standing there feels sad. But then the illusion shatters: I nudge a fallen chunk of marble with my foot and it rolls, light as a feather, down the steps. It is painted polystyrene.

It is impossible to explore the cinematic world of Hogwarts without dwelling a little on the reasons for Potter’s incredible popularity. In a rare recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling revealed how profoundly the novels are infused with death. She began them in 1990, six months before her mother, Anne, died at only 45 of multiple sclerosis.

“Her death is literally on every other page in the Harry Potter books,” Rowling says. “At least half of Harry’s journey is to deal with death, what it does to the living, what it means to die, what survives death.”

This is particularly true of the final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” In this seventh volume, Harry is a grown-up, not an orphan-child hero for whom everything will work out. This time, his adult protectors — Albus Dumbledore, the mighty wizard and headmaster of Hogwarts, and Sirius Black, his powerful godfather — are dead. Harry must manage alone. Life is tough: He is on the run, his wand breaks, he falls out with Ron, he cannot be with his girlfriend, Ginny, he is haunted by those who die for him.

The book is infused, too, by the specter of Muggles being carted off in the night, persecuted, tortured by the evil Voldemort’s forces for having been born without pure blood; the language and themes of the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges permeate the narrative. Harry, almost alone, must take on the totalitarian forces of evil.

It is a massive task that threatens to overwhelm Potter, who is beset by doubts and who, in order to triumph, must offer himself up in a Christ-like sacrifice, and it is only through being prepared to die that he is saved.

This material sounds pretty heavy for a children’s book, but perhaps it is the readiness of Rowling to grapple with big themes, life’s mega questions, that explains her appeal. She explores the vulnerability inherent in being a small, young person alone in a big, scary world who, using only wit and love, triumphs over evil.

Filming resumes. The clapperboard says Day 257: Take 4. It is Hermione’s girl-power moment.

“I’ve got something, but it’s mad,” she shouts for the umpteenth time that day, waving her wand at an imaginary dragon (of course there is nothing there; it will all be filled in by computer) and releasing its chains so it can fly them to safety. (This is a departure from the book, in which it is Harry who releases the dragon.)

Watson comes over to chat, drinking a Coke. “We all run on sugar. It’s the only thing that gets you through,” she says.She, too, can’t believe this is her last day. “I keep pinching myself, trying to get myself to feel it, to believe it, but it’s hard to process.” In person, Watson is the star of the bunch. It is clear within seconds that in real life there is no way she would be dating Grint, an altogether clunkier, slower and — dare I say it — less bright creature. Charming, intelligent, radiantly beautiful, it is clear that Watson can’t wait for “Potter” to be finished so that her real life can start.

Now based here, in America, she is studying literature at Brown University in Rhode Island, and has flown over for the final few days’ filming. “It’s kind of home here, but at the same time I’m really looking forward to finally feeling free, being my own person,” she says.

And what of Radcliffe? More than any of the others, he has lived at Leavesden Studios. In all his interviews to promote the film, he riffs on the theme of “I just want to act.” When talking about the past 10 years, he is full of how “the joy of being on set outweighs any tricky moments outside — that’s what matters to me, what I love, where I want to be for as long as possible.” When asked how he feels about the series finishing, he says: “It will be very strange. All of my teenage years are linked to every frame of ‘Harry Potter.’”

The Sunday Times Magazine/NI Syndication