Magical moving stairs!

FRIDAY FEATURE: While I have been busy expanding on my Diagon Alley, I’ve yet to have time to take some decent photographs, so rather than presenting my own builds, I’ll once again present to you a Friday Feature of some of the marvelous Harry Potter themed MOCs by the extremely talented LEGO builders around the world. This time I’ll have a look at a very iconic Hogwarts feature — the moving staircases — created by the extremely talented Jonas Kramm.

The builder

The MOC (My Own Creation) has been built by Jonas Kramm, a self declared LEGO obsessed design student from Germany. You can follow him on Instagram @jonaskramm, or his homepage: www.jonaskramm.com, and in particular you can support him by getting one of his instructions from: guides.jonaskramm.com.

While a lot of his creations are not related to Harry Potter, he has previously built many amazing models from the Harry Potter universe.

This include this Christmas at Hogwarts MOC…

…and a micro-scale model of Hagrid’s Hut:

Hogwarts magical moving stairs

But let’s get back to the stairs! While the moving stairs in the central tower is one of the things many immediately associate with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they did actually not feature in the books – at least only as a vague reference:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump.

– Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – Chapter 8

Real moving stairs were added in the movie adaptation, assumingly to create that special magical feel. In the movie, we hear the warning from Percy Weasley to the first year students:

… And keep an eye on the staircases. They like to change.

For me, the moving stairs did certainly add both mystery and magic while watching the movie the first time.

The moving staircase model

Jonas’ model is of decent size and captures well the feel of the central tower we got from the movies, with the height, the platforms connected by the randomly moving stairs, and the animated portraits that seem to cover many of the walls at Hogwarts.

View this post on Instagram

Hogwarts Magical Staircase . I guess most kids like me who grew up with Harry Potter dreamed of getting their Hogwarts letter and the invitation to visit the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. . Today I realise that some aspects of the magic world would probably really annoy me. Like the concept of moving stairs. Why do they move? Why can’t they just bring me where I want? . But in the end it just looks great and that’s also the reason why I was so motivated to finally build this scene with bricks. And of course it does move, so check out the video I posted before if you haven’t yet! . Also check out my stories! We’re doing another Q&A! What technique do you want to see in detail? . #lego #harrypotter #wizardingworld #hogwarts #afol #legomoc #legoscene #castle #legocastle #stairs #staircase #legostagram #instalego #toy #toyphotography #legobrick #brickbuilt #movies #magic #painting #art

A post shared by Jonas Kramm – Lego Inspirer (@jonaskramm) on Oct 9, 2019 at 8:18am PDT

But the photos do not give the model full credit. Check out the video below and see how neatly the stair moves from side to side. And wait – there is more! Turning the handle at the bottom cause the portraits to start moving as well! This is truly magic!

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Hogwarts Magical Staircase! . Harry, Ron and Hermione try to get to the Gryffindor common room, but they haven’t planned in the magical moving stairs that lead them somewhere else. All observed by the living paintings. . Hogwarts is such a beautiful and magical place so I love to build it and it was no wonder that it was the first thing I thought of when a “Moving Movie Scenes” contest on reddit was announced. . If you happen to have a reddit account you should check out all the entries, see all the pictures of my build and consider voting for your favourite submission. . #lego #harrypotter #legostagram #instalego #toy #hogwarts #potter #pottermore #painting #staircase #moc #afol #legobrick #brickbuilt #legomoc #moving #magical #interior #architecture #gryffindor #video #philosophersstone #castle #legoharrypotter

A post shared by Jonas Kramm – Lego Inspirer (@jonaskramm) on Oct 7, 2019 at 8:26am PDT

So how does it work? There are more photos and a few “behind the scene” peeks that let you check out the how Jonas’ made the movement happen at his Imgur album.

What’s next?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Friday Feature. The the previous was a very cool chess game by Cade Franklin and can be seen here. I’ll be back with more eventually on the new Features page – but hopefully not before I’ve been able to reveal some of the latest projects I’ve been working on myself.

Till then, Build the Magic!