Join us as we take a magical photographic journey through LEGO Hogwarts where you may experience a few new (minuscule) surprises from the Wizarding World. If you enjoy LEGO Harry Potter like myself, you know that Hogwarts is full of unpredictable secrets—and even more now since I've customized the “microscale” set to be more like the movies, adding new decorations and breathing life into the old castle. Get your floo powder ready as we apparate from room to room of 71043 Hogwarts Castle to see what is possible when you make a LEGO set your own—and add a few custom nano-sculptures along the way.
Hogwarts Castle
This architectural LEGO masterpiece is giant… and tiny at the same time because the nanofigures and their settings are perfectly microscopic! You need two things to successfully get through this article: the Spell of Enlargement for your studio and 'macro' mode (yes, wizards have special cameras too!).
Along our journey you’ll see how I have used a stead hand to create some tiny, yet detailed customizations to the figures, accessories and rooms, truly making the set my own.
Some LEGO builders are purists, not straying too far from the instructions. I view LEGO sets as an artistic canvas just waiting for a little extra magic. So let’s begin our tour!
The Great Hall
Entering the Great Hall, perhaps the most recognizable of locations, you will see the colorful light streaming in from the stained glass windows high above our main characters. The far wall is decorated with the House point hourglasses, recording the number of house points awarded by the students. Here, the new students will find out which of the four school Houses they belong most to.
"Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor,
Fair Ravenclaw, from glen,
Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad,
Shrewd Slytherin, from fen."
~ The Sorting Hat's song about four founders of Hogwarts
Now here is where our customization quest begins. Let's see how many places in this microscale set we can place our new custom elements! Starting the new school year, the teachers wear their new magical accessories: I prepared the hats for Albus and Minerva, Professor Dumbledore has a beard now, and have a look at the teachers' table—of course, you've already noticed Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts!
Gryffindor Common Room
After the festive banquet, Gryffindor students head to their cozy common room. It's amazing how the tiny room felt alive with detail in the set. But we can do better. Light a fire and enjoy the warmth with your housemates, because here come some accessories!
Based on the size of the smallest element and the size and scale of the overall set, a 1x1 round plate is about the smallest detail you can get with LEGO. But it can contain more than meets the eye. Let's add new magical objects on every studded surface: Ron gets his own super-micro magical chess set (he's great at this game), and his friend Harry can have a bottle of pumpkin juice or a crystal ball to practice Divination with for an upcoming lesson.
As you can see, decorative clay and glue transform into the most delicate of tiny accessories which must be created with a steady hand and lots of patience.
The Grand Staircase
It's common knowledge that Hogwarts stairs live their own life, moving wherever they want to go. The same goes for our castle. While they are moving, you get the chance to look at the famous wizards' portraits. So I prepared a custom sticker portrait gallery from the movie: you will recognize several of these paintings from different movies in the series. It's not only fun to find the similarities between the sets and the movies, but also reinforce them!
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Wizard's Chess
Here it is—the Wizard's Chessboard from one of the underground chambers acting as security for the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer’s) Stone. These nanofigures were sculpted for one of the most spectacular trials from the book and movie: if you want to get through, you have to play your way across. But beware: the statues are alive!
Transforming the chess set into animate objects with a specific appearance based on the film was an interesting experiment: it makes this underground chamber even more dramatic and lets the danger feel more present.
Zooming in, you can see all the tiny details sculpted on a singular LEGO stud to make these chess pieces come to life. (If you aren’t as crafty, you can get tiny custom chess pieces here.)
Flying Keys
"These birds... they can't be here just for decoration."
"They're not birds! They're keys! Winged keys."
~ Hermione and Harry
When trying to get through another of the chambers, our heroes had to catch a winged key. The combination of the sculpted keys plus the printed ones on the sticker in the back hopefully creates the impression that they are flying chaotically all over the place, filling the air. You can also see Hermione’s new haircut!
Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom
The white, circular sinks in the center of the room are very minimalist when built out of LEGO, though I think the transparent mirrors look very realistic. (Though in the movies, the mermaid stained glass window appeared in the Prefects’ bathroom, not this one, though I appreciate the beautiful sticker.) It seemed like a lonely, deserted bathroom until… FLUSH!
Careful of Moaning Myrtle, the only "person" you can meet in this defunct bathroom. Instead of adding her in the form of a sticker, I attached her to the wall to let the sculpted nanofigure fly. She also corresponds in size to the realistic LEGO nanofigures of Harry and his friends, buttons and all.
Her shocked look is because of staring into the bulbous eyes of a murderous monster… a basilisk! If only she knew her toilet was the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!
"Harry, if you die down there, you're welcome to share my toilet!"
~ Moaning Myrtle
The Chamber of Secrets
This chamber from the second book/movie has everything to delight the eye, complete with the statue of Salazar Slytherin with his stony mouth opening so a basilisk can appear. But Harry isn’t the only one who can talk to snakes. To customize this scene, I subtly used one of the extra Slytherin students and added some villainous eyebrows—now he's Tom Riddle!
Wandering Hogwarts
Hermione wasn’t the only one to get hair! In this scene, Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood are headed to class, but I love to see the scale in play with a macro lens. You almost forget that this is a LEGO set and feel the environment and atmosphere.
“It's like walking with a friend.”
”I am your friend, Luna.”
”That's nice!”
~ Luna and Harry
The Defense Against the Dark Arts
Welcome to a very magical classroom! Everything is ready for Professor Lupin's lesson in one of my favorite locations of this LEGO set, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. It has everything: a custom dragon's skeleton, Lupin's gramophone, and wardrobe with a boggart. I could have used those magnifying glasses on the wall to help make these props! The boggart transforms into a colorful crazy clown, intricately detailed and still a little creepy.
Albus Dumbledore's Office
You need a microscope to see everything in Professor Dumbledore's Office: this is one of the smallest places in the LEGO castle set! But it badly needed a few decorations.
Here we have a teeny Sorting Hat, the Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes, and even smaller magical artifacts on the table that are om;y 2/3rds the size of a LEGO stud. Take a look at the size of the book in the photo below.
A macro lens is certainly needed to see all the details—a very steady hand was also very much a requirement.
Dolores Umbridge's Office
It's easy to guess the owner of this room, rich in cats and lurid pink colors (which always delighted me in contradiction to Dolores' monster-like traits). I love the circular nature of the room. It was especially fun making and painting this collection of four kittens on 1x1 round tile “plates”. The diameter of each plate is about 5 mm, and each cat is unique.
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Getting even smaller, we have new custom micro-accessories like a full teacup and saucer, a little cookie and perhaps the smallest lace doily ever created. (Ruler for scale.)
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"Tea"?
~ Dolores Umbridge
Castle Grounds
LEGO Hogwarts is so interesting from every angle that you can spend so much time choosing the best views for your photos. The building has interesting details and recognizable locations al over (for example, the bridge where Harry and Professor Lupin have a conversation). Adding light that streams through the door and windows along the bridge makes the castle come alive (just like how Are said it would in his article!).
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There are two ways to arrive at the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, by boat (after a train ride) and by air! Here we see new pupils coming to Hogwarts in cute boats, but let’s talk about flooring. In this case a reflective surface like a shiny piece of plastic or a mirror can make it look like your little boats are actually afloat!
But in their second year at Hogwarts, Harry and Ron arrived in a Flying Ford Anglia that crashed into the Whomping Willow. Here you can see what a little paper grass can do to liven the scene, and there should be plenty available with Easter coming up soon.
Hagrid's Hut
Since the LEGO set didn’t come with him, Hagrid is a new microfigure in the collection. He’s a little taller than the rest which gave me space for more details like his shiny buckles! He looks so happy to inviteHarry and his friends to his hut for tea and rock cakes after a hard day at school.
The Room of Requirement
Our last stop in Hogwarts takes us to a place that had been hidden for many centuries. In the castle, the Room of Requirement transforms into whatever you need it to be—a dueling practice area, a place to stash errant books, or even a room full of chamber pots! You could enter it and nobody would know where you are.
Decorating this room was a fun challenge. I added many magical artifacts and secrets: potions, hats, a suit of knight's armor and a wizard's bust. Getting the right look on a human’s face at such a small scale was quite the challenge, as was getting legible lettering on the potion bottle. But the Room of Requirement provided everything I needed—patience!
Epilogue
Our journey through the micro-details of this customized castle is sadly coming to a close. Studying this wonderful set and such a small scale was an amazing experience: it's absolutely fun to look at the small rooms and corridors through the eyes of the tiny nanofigure wizards that come in the set. Like a satisfying ending at the end of a good book, I hope this journey was as interesting to you as it was to me.
Best of BrickNerd — Article originally published March 15, 2022.
Which nano-sculpture was your favorite? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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