I can think of hundreds of places I’d rather be than London’s busiest shopping street on a Wednesday morning at 9am. But here I am, scanning a QR code, securing my place in the queue to enter Oxford Street’s latest addition: the Harry Potter shop. It doesn’t even open for another hour. 

At least I’m not alone. There are at least 100 other people here waiting to get inside Europe’s largest Harry Potter shop (set over two floors, it measures 21,000 sq ft). I speak to Louis, who has travelled to London from Paris especially for the occasion. “Being here means a lot to me,” he says. “I’ve been to other shops around the world but this is the biggest and most immersive. It’s very important.” While he’s already dressed in a Hogwarts uniform, Louis has given himself a budget of £200.  

Also gathered at the entrance – and attracting a lot of attention from the other shoppers – is Giulia, who has travelled from Italy with her Harry Potter cosplay group. “We have been really huge fans of Harry Potter since we were kids,” she says. “It’s our life.” And while she has obviously spent a lot of time and effort making herself look like Hermione Granger today, she’s promised herself she’ll only buy a £55 Hogwarts school jumper for her cosplay. 

But instead of excitement, there’s tension in the air. Trans rights protesters have staked out the opening, shouting that author JK Rowling has “blood on her hands” for her opinions about trans women. “I agree with them,” says Giulia. “ is a story about the power of love and the inclusion of minorities. I’m sad JK Rowling doesn’t want them in our history.”  

The protesters’ presence – and the police they have attracted – is a reminder of just how noxious the brand has become. It’s why the actors cast in the upcoming HBO series adaptation are facing outrage, and why more and more fans – myself included – feel that they need to distance themselves from the books that defined their childhoods. 

After standing in a queue for just under an hour, my phone buzzes, letting me know that it’s finally my turn to enter the shop. But if you thought the staggered entry would make for a more pleasant shopping experience, you’re dead wrong. It is, in fact, shopping hell. 

Mutters of “sorry”, “thank you” and “excuse me” (this is Britian, after all) are everywhere as people squeeze past one another to both peruse the shelves upon shelves of branded merch and gawp at the decor. At one point, someone accidentally stabs me in the eye with a Sorting Hat, and I swear I see Rupert Grint taking pictures with fans in the corner. 

And there is much to gawp at. In one corner there’s a giant dragon – a Ukrainian Ironbelly, apparently – while in another, punters queue up to have their picture taken in front of a Knight Bus. Upstairs, there’s The Leaky Cauldron, a cafe with another big queue, where you can buy a £9.50 butterbeer (including a souvenir tankard) and the Oxford Street exclusive experience of having a £75 teddy bear sorted into a Hogwarts house in a five-minute “ceremony”. Patrons can also pay £10 for a Gringotts cheque book, which they can stamp at various points around the shop. 

It’s all very ostentatious and gaudy, a place you can imagine being dreamt up and designed in a Warner Bros boardroom with words like “experiential” and “customer journey”. It’s supposed to be immersive, but cast your eyes just a few feet north and the blinding spotlights and exposed air-con units destroy any illusion that you’re really shopping in Diagon Alley.  

Every opportunity to squeeze money out of fans is grabbed, as if every film and book has been scoured for an opportunity to create some overpriced tat. Want a Crookshanks mug? A replica “sorcerer’s stone”?  A personalised acceptance letter from Hogwarts? A set of candles in the shape of the Diagon Alley shops? It’s all here in this completely and utterly soulless warehouse of bric-a-brac. The worst thing of all, however, is that none of it is at all surprising. 

You’ve probably pieced it together by now, but a visit to the Harry Potter shop threatens to be a very expensive day out. The shelves are stacked with various Christmas decorations, clothes, wands, sweets, cuddly toys, pens, and mugs. You can buy a nail file for £3.50 emblazoned with your chosen house colours, or you can splash £160 on a replica of the opal necklace that almost killed Katie Bell in . The books that started it all are shunted to one section on the back wall upstairs, between Hogwarts house-themed stationery and prefects’ badges. 

Within the shop I spot people even dressed up as side characters – Bellatrix Lestrange, Luna Lovegood and Dolores Umbridge. Unlike many of my fellow shoppers, I am not one to display my affinity for Harry Potter and yet even I can’t help but pick up a couple of chocolate frogs, a pack of playing cards, some sweets and a bottle of butterbeer. I was shocked that my basket – empty in comparison to everyone else’s in the till queue (yes, another one) – came to £63.49. No wonder my loved ones call me a marketer’s dream – I even fell for the junk they try to flog you while waiting to pay, dropping £5 on a novelty pen in the shape of Harry’s round glasses. The buyer’s remorse was immediate. 

My enduring childhood memories of are quaint by comparison: staying up until past midnight to finish the third book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and boring my parents with a rundown of Harry’s adventures the next day. Queueing up to buy the last ever book in the series, , a tome that remains one of the longest books I’ve ever read. Watching every single one of the films in the cinema the same weekend they were released.  

But there’s nothing nostalgic or understated about this Oxford Street monstrosity. From the overpriced chocolate frogs to the protesters outside, this shop is a monument to everything that has gone wrong with the modern iteration of Harry Potter – the theme park-ification, the profiteering, the toxicity. The wizarding world I know and love from the original books and films is now unrecognisable among the tat being peddled. Well, except perhaps the queueing.