Contact:
Jump to: conclusion
Images from Wikipedia/Wikimedia and from Geograph are used and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.
This page uses images which re-size to maintain a constant appearance across all browsers and resolutions. Please allow scripts or ActiveX controls to run if asked.
The locations of these three places are intimately connected, because we are given information about routes from Grimmauld Place to the other two. Any suggested location for any one of them, therefore, bears on the positions of the other two.
We know Grimmauld Place is in a shabby residential area twenty minutes' walk from King's Cross stationO5C (they walk to the station on foot in OotP, and that's how long it takes). Normal human walking speed is somewhere between 2.7 and 3.5 mph, so that places it around a mile from Kings Cross: maybe a bit less if they're up a complex side-street and have to weave about. Harry touched down right behind her and dismounted on a patch of unkempt grass in the middle of a small square. Tonks was already unbuckling Harry's trunk. Shivering, Harry looked around. The grimy fronts of the surrounding houses were not welcoming; some of them had broken windows, glimmering dully in the light from the streetlamps, paint was peeling from many of the doors and heaps of rubbish lay outside several sets of front steps. [cut] The muffled pounding of a stereo was coming from an upper window in the nearest house. A pungent smell of rotting rubbish came from the pile of bulging bin-bags just inside the broken gate. [OotP ch. #03; p. 57] [cut] they were now standing in the middle of a familiar small and shabby square. Tall, dilapidated houses looked down on them from every side. [DH ch. #09; p. 141] As August wore on, the square of unkempt grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place shrivelled in the sun until it was brittle and brown. [DH ch. #12; p. 184] We know that Grimmauld Place doesn't exist in some sort of pocket in wizard-space, because the other houses are apparently inhabited by Muggles: it must be in a mundane, physical bit of actual London, and we know it's in a scruffy residential square around a mile from King's Cross. If you draw a circle a mile out from Kings Cross, the only areas it crosses which are residential and not astonishingly upmarket and expensive are either Camden or some of the poorer areas which make up the London Borough of Islington, especially Islington proper, Barnsbury, Clerkenwell/Finsbury or the southern fringes of Holloway. To place it anywhere else would require some very special pleading: other areas which are at a feasible distance, such as Bloomsbury, Canonbury and The Barbican, are probably just too fancy. [There are also some really scruffy residential areas a lot nearer to King's Cross - which is a famous haunt of junkies and prostitutes - but they wouldn't take twenty minutes to walk from.] For present purposes I'm going to use the term Islington/Barnsbury to refer to Islington proper, Barnsbury and the edge of Holloway, and treat the Clerkenwell and Finsbury area as a separate entity: it may be in the Borough of Islington but it's on the far side of Pentonville Road relative to Islington proper, and has a very distinct village character. Islington/Barnsbury, Clerkenwell/Finsbury and Camden are all feasible locations for an old pure-blood family to settle. Compton Terrace, near Highbury & Islington station © ceridwen at Geograph Islington as an identifiable, named area dates back to the Anglo-Saxon period, although it didn't grow into a proper village until after the dissolution of the monasteries. It was an area famous for dairy-farming until London overtook it: according to the Borough's own website "As London grew, brick terraces began to take over the agricultural land. Local farmers turned to manufacturing bricks and developing property. With the advent of the railways came industrial development and corresponding social decline. Eventually many big houses and once elegant squares fell into disrepair. For much of the last century, Islington was a poor, down-at-heel area.//Post-war rebuilding and later gentrification improved both housing standards and the appearance of local streets. In recent years, although some significant social problems remain, Islington has become a desirable residential area." - so it's entirely possible that there could still be a once-grand but now scruffy, run-down square in Islington in the mid 1990s. Barnsbury is a rather more upmarket Victorian suburb added onto Islington, but not as grand as Canonbury or Highbury. View from Clerkenwell Green © John Barrett at Geograph Clerkenwell is a little traditional village, with a village green, which was absorbed by London but still has its own character. It was a very fashionable area in the seventeenth century, when the Blacks might well have moved there, but declined sharply in the mid twentieth century, The World\'s End pub, Camden, formerly the Mother Red Cap, from Wikipedia becoming fashionable again in the 1990s. There could well have still been a few run-down pockets there in 1995. Camden has only existed as an identifiable village since the 1790s. Before that there was nothing there but a few farms and two coaching inns: but one of the inns, the "Mother Red Cap", was named after a supposed seventeenth century witch and serial husband-murderer. You could easily make a case for Mother Red Cap being a Black. We know that somewhere near Grimmauld Place there is a "miserable little underground station" with automatic ticket machines, although it's large enough to have a resident attendant, and that five or more stops (Arthur says "Four more stops, Harry ...") on the underground take you to a station which disgorges a flood of briefcase-carrying commuters onto a broad street full of "imposing-looking" buildings near where the Ministry of Magic is; and that an indefinite number of stops take you to a station which opens onto another broad street lined with shops, near St Mungo's Hospital, which doesn't seem to be the same station as the one for the Ministry. Both destination locations are described as being in the "very heart" of London, both destination stations have escalators which the travellers use, and in neither case do the travellers appear to change trains en route. The run-down streets were almost deserted, but when they arrived at the miserable little underground station they found it already full of early-morning commuters. As ever when he found himself in close proximity to Muggles going about their daily business, Mr Weasley was hard put to contain his enthusiasm. 'Simply fabulous,' he whispered, indicating the automatic ticket machines. 'Wonderfully ingenious.' 'They're out of order,' said Harry, pointing at the sign. 'Yes, but even so ...' said Mr Weasley, beaming at them fondly. They bought their tickets instead from a sleepy-looking guard (Harry handled the transaction, as Mr Weasley was not very good with Muggle money) and five minutes later they were boarding an underground train that rattled them off towards the centre of London. Mr Weasley kept anxiously checking and re-checking the Underground Map above the windows. 'Four more stops, Harry ... Three stops left now ... Two stops to go, Harry ...' They got off at a station in the very heart of London, and were swept from the train in a tide of besuited men and women carrying briefcases. Up the escalator they went, through the ticket barrier (Mr Weasley delighted with the way the stile swallowed his ticket), and emerged on to a broad street lined with imposing-looking buildings and already full of traffic. [OotP ch. #07; p. 114/115] When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them gleefully, laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an angle to conceal his magical eye and assuring him, truthfully, that Tonks, whose hair was short and bright pink again, would attract far less attention on the Underground. [cut] [cut] they sat side by side on a train rattling towards the heart of the city. [cut] [cut] they got out at the next stop, a station in the very heart of London, [cut]. They all followed [Tonks] up the escalator, [cut] he asked Mad-Eye where St Mungo's was hidden. 'Not far from here,' grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just behind; Harry knew the eye was rolling in all directions under the tilted hat. 'Wasn't easy to find a good location for a hospital. Nowhere in Diagon Alley was big enough and we couldn't have it underground like the Ministry -- wouldn't be healthy. In the end they managed to get hold of a building up here. Theory was, sick wizards could come and go and just blend in with the crowd.' He seized Harry's shoulder to prevent them being separated by a gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets. 'Here we go,' said Moody a moment later. They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red-brick department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The place had a shabby, miserable air; the window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies with their wigs askew, standing at random and modelling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read: 'Closed for Refurbishment'. Harry distinctly heard a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags say to her friend as they passed, 'It's never open, that place ...' [OotP ch. #22; p. 425-427] Although the station they get off at for the Ministry is among grand buildings, the Ministry itself (its entrance, anyway) is down a side-street and into a very scruffy area. The visitors' entrance is via an old-fashioned red telephone box in an area of shabby offices. The workers' entrance is via a pair of tatty underground public lavatories: we do not know how the telephone box and the lavatories are placed in relation to each other. Near the lavatories - and therefore presumably near the Ministry - is a longish alleyway which the workers use as an Apparition point, and in which there is a fire-door leading into an "empty" (presumably closed-down) theatre. 'Where are we?' said Mr Weasley blankly, and for one heart-stopping moment Harry thought they had got off at the wrong station despite Mr Weasley's continual references to the map; but a second later he said, 'Ah yes ... this way, Harry,' and led him down a side road. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but I never come by train and it all looks rather different from a Muggle perspective. As a matter of fact, I've never even used the visitors' entrance before.' The further they walked, the smaller and less imposing the buildings became, until finally they reached a street that contained several rather shabby-looking offices, a pub and an overflowing skip. Harry had expected a rather more impressive location for the Ministry of Magic. 'Here we are,' said Mr Weasley brightly, pointing at an old red telephone box, which was missing several panes of glass and stood before a heavily graffitied wall. [OotP ch. #07; p. 115] They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr Weasley, had known since childhood.' [DH ch. #12; p. 190] [cut] Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway [cut] It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o'clock.' [cut] She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theatre. [cut] 'Nicely done, Hermione,' said Ron, emerging from behind a bin beside the theatre door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway that led backstage. [DH ch. #12; p. 194/195] As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road Harry and Ron crept along behind them. [DH ch. #12; p. 196] They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along the crowded pavement, there were spiked black railings flanking two flights of steps, one labelled Gentlemen, the other, Ladies. [cut] Harry and Ron joined a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and white. [DH ch. #12; p. 197/198] 'I'm going to take you straight back [cut] I'll drop you off on the way to that toilet in Bethnal Green.' [OotP ch. #09; p. 140] We also know that when Arthur and Harry headed back from the Ministry after the hearing in OotP, Arthur was on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, and said that he would drop Harry off at Grimmauld Place en route. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Islington or Barnsbury or the edge of Holloway, the nearest underground stop must be either the AngelO6C on the Northern Line (a.k.a. "The Angel Islington" - it's the name of a pub); Highbury & IslingtonO6B on the Victoria Line; or Caledonian RoadO6B, or at a pinch Holloway RoadO6B which is a bit further out, both on the Piccadilly Line. We can rule out the Angel immediately, unless Arthur and Harry change trains en route - and there's no suggestion that they do. Unless you change trains there are only two ways you can go from the Angel - north-west, away from central London, or south-east across the City proper. Five stops from the Angel, heading south-east towards the City, takes you right through the City and out of it again, over the Thames into south London to a station called BoroughO6E. Highbury & Islington underground station, from Wikipedia Area around Green Park underground station, from Geomatic Surveys Ltd Highbury & Islington station is suitably smallish, and is an especially shabby-looking little place. However, five stops from Highbury & Islington on the Victoria Line heading towards central London takes you to Green ParkO4D, towards the west end of Piccadilly. Entrance to Victoria underground station, from Wikipedia Although this is in the heart of London and has some fairly grand buildings it's an area of shops, hotels and flats with not many offices - not the sort of place large numbers of people would commute to with briefcases - plus the station is right by the eponymous park, which you'd think Harry would notice. The next stop on is VictoriaO4D, which is just about feasible. It's pushing it a bit to call Victoria the heart of London, as it's on the edge of the central area, but it's a very busy station with lots of grand buildings around it, including a lot of office blocks. Neither Green Park nor Victoria is at all a likely place to find a theatre: albeit that all areas of London are prone to hidden surprises. So, if Grimmauld Place is in Islington/Barnsbury it could be near Highbury & Islington station, if we accept Victoria as "the very heart of London" and as possibly having an old theatre up one of its side-streets, or failing that it must be close to either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. We know this because it has to be around a mile from King's Cross - so it isn't out the far side of Holloway Road, which is already well over a mile from King's Cross - and it has to be so placed that walking to Caledonian Road or Holloway Road is easier than walking to King's Cross, otherwise they would have picked up the train there. Either way, if Grimmauld Place is in the Islington/Barnsbury area it's not in Islington proper, because the nearest stops to walk to from Islington proper would be either the Angel or King's Cross itself, and we know the "miserable little underground station" wasn't either of those. It must be in Barnsbury, or Lower Holloway or (if it's near Caledonian or Holloway Roads) Holloway proper. Caledonian Road underground station © Danny Robinson at Geograph Holloway Road underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Caledonian Road and Holloway Road are both what I would call medium-sized and not very impressive stations, and they are in a line. The platform at Caledonian Road is accessed by means of a lift which you might expect Harry - or Arthur - to comment on; Holloway Road is considerably more than twenty minutes' walk from Kings Cross, but they might well have been heading away from Kings Cross when they walked from Grimmauld Place to the station. Holloway Road is slightly the bigger of the two, but has the advantage of being in Lower Holloway, which is shabbier than Islington; whereas Caledonian Road is moving into Barnsbury which is more up-market, and perhaps too much so for Grimmauld Place. On the other hand Barnsbury is the sort of area the Blacks might have found desirable when they still had money. Main entrance to Leicester Sq underground station, from tiny angel at Picasa Web Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
[cut] they were now standing in the middle of a familiar small and shabby square. Tall, dilapidated houses looked down on them from every side. [DH ch. #09; p. 141]
As August wore on, the square of unkempt grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place shrivelled in the sun until it was brittle and brown. [DH ch. #12; p. 184]
We know that Grimmauld Place doesn't exist in some sort of pocket in wizard-space, because the other houses are apparently inhabited by Muggles: it must be in a mundane, physical bit of actual London, and we know it's in a scruffy residential square around a mile from King's Cross. If you draw a circle a mile out from Kings Cross, the only areas it crosses which are residential and not astonishingly upmarket and expensive are either Camden or some of the poorer areas which make up the London Borough of Islington, especially Islington proper, Barnsbury, Clerkenwell/Finsbury or the southern fringes of Holloway. To place it anywhere else would require some very special pleading: other areas which are at a feasible distance, such as Bloomsbury, Canonbury and The Barbican, are probably just too fancy.
[There are also some really scruffy residential areas a lot nearer to King's Cross - which is a famous haunt of junkies and prostitutes - but they wouldn't take twenty minutes to walk from.]
For present purposes I'm going to use the term Islington/Barnsbury to refer to Islington proper, Barnsbury and the edge of Holloway, and treat the Clerkenwell and Finsbury area as a separate entity: it may be in the Borough of Islington but it's on the far side of Pentonville Road relative to Islington proper, and has a very distinct village character. Islington/Barnsbury, Clerkenwell/Finsbury and Camden are all feasible locations for an old pure-blood family to settle.
Islington as an identifiable, named area dates back to the Anglo-Saxon period, although it didn't grow into a proper village until after the dissolution of the monasteries. It was an area famous for dairy-farming until London overtook it: according to the Borough's own website "As London grew, brick terraces began to take over the agricultural land. Local farmers turned to manufacturing bricks and developing property. With the advent of the railways came industrial development and corresponding social decline. Eventually many big houses and once elegant squares fell into disrepair. For much of the last century, Islington was a poor, down-at-heel area.//Post-war rebuilding and later gentrification improved both housing standards and the appearance of local streets. In recent years, although some significant social problems remain, Islington has become a desirable residential area." - so it's entirely possible that there could still be a once-grand but now scruffy, run-down square in Islington in the mid 1990s. Barnsbury is a rather more upmarket Victorian suburb added onto Islington, but not as grand as Canonbury or Highbury. View from Clerkenwell Green © John Barrett at Geograph Clerkenwell is a little traditional village, with a village green, which was absorbed by London but still has its own character. It was a very fashionable area in the seventeenth century, when the Blacks might well have moved there, but declined sharply in the mid twentieth century, The World\'s End pub, Camden, formerly the Mother Red Cap, from Wikipedia becoming fashionable again in the 1990s. There could well have still been a few run-down pockets there in 1995. Camden has only existed as an identifiable village since the 1790s. Before that there was nothing there but a few farms and two coaching inns: but one of the inns, the "Mother Red Cap", was named after a supposed seventeenth century witch and serial husband-murderer. You could easily make a case for Mother Red Cap being a Black. We know that somewhere near Grimmauld Place there is a "miserable little underground station" with automatic ticket machines, although it's large enough to have a resident attendant, and that five or more stops (Arthur says "Four more stops, Harry ...") on the underground take you to a station which disgorges a flood of briefcase-carrying commuters onto a broad street full of "imposing-looking" buildings near where the Ministry of Magic is; and that an indefinite number of stops take you to a station which opens onto another broad street lined with shops, near St Mungo's Hospital, which doesn't seem to be the same station as the one for the Ministry. Both destination locations are described as being in the "very heart" of London, both destination stations have escalators which the travellers use, and in neither case do the travellers appear to change trains en route. The run-down streets were almost deserted, but when they arrived at the miserable little underground station they found it already full of early-morning commuters. As ever when he found himself in close proximity to Muggles going about their daily business, Mr Weasley was hard put to contain his enthusiasm. 'Simply fabulous,' he whispered, indicating the automatic ticket machines. 'Wonderfully ingenious.' 'They're out of order,' said Harry, pointing at the sign. 'Yes, but even so ...' said Mr Weasley, beaming at them fondly. They bought their tickets instead from a sleepy-looking guard (Harry handled the transaction, as Mr Weasley was not very good with Muggle money) and five minutes later they were boarding an underground train that rattled them off towards the centre of London. Mr Weasley kept anxiously checking and re-checking the Underground Map above the windows. 'Four more stops, Harry ... Three stops left now ... Two stops to go, Harry ...' They got off at a station in the very heart of London, and were swept from the train in a tide of besuited men and women carrying briefcases. Up the escalator they went, through the ticket barrier (Mr Weasley delighted with the way the stile swallowed his ticket), and emerged on to a broad street lined with imposing-looking buildings and already full of traffic. [OotP ch. #07; p. 114/115] When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them gleefully, laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an angle to conceal his magical eye and assuring him, truthfully, that Tonks, whose hair was short and bright pink again, would attract far less attention on the Underground. [cut] [cut] they sat side by side on a train rattling towards the heart of the city. [cut] [cut] they got out at the next stop, a station in the very heart of London, [cut]. They all followed [Tonks] up the escalator, [cut] he asked Mad-Eye where St Mungo's was hidden. 'Not far from here,' grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just behind; Harry knew the eye was rolling in all directions under the tilted hat. 'Wasn't easy to find a good location for a hospital. Nowhere in Diagon Alley was big enough and we couldn't have it underground like the Ministry -- wouldn't be healthy. In the end they managed to get hold of a building up here. Theory was, sick wizards could come and go and just blend in with the crowd.' He seized Harry's shoulder to prevent them being separated by a gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets. 'Here we go,' said Moody a moment later. They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red-brick department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The place had a shabby, miserable air; the window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies with their wigs askew, standing at random and modelling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read: 'Closed for Refurbishment'. Harry distinctly heard a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags say to her friend as they passed, 'It's never open, that place ...' [OotP ch. #22; p. 425-427] Although the station they get off at for the Ministry is among grand buildings, the Ministry itself (its entrance, anyway) is down a side-street and into a very scruffy area. The visitors' entrance is via an old-fashioned red telephone box in an area of shabby offices. The workers' entrance is via a pair of tatty underground public lavatories: we do not know how the telephone box and the lavatories are placed in relation to each other. Near the lavatories - and therefore presumably near the Ministry - is a longish alleyway which the workers use as an Apparition point, and in which there is a fire-door leading into an "empty" (presumably closed-down) theatre. 'Where are we?' said Mr Weasley blankly, and for one heart-stopping moment Harry thought they had got off at the wrong station despite Mr Weasley's continual references to the map; but a second later he said, 'Ah yes ... this way, Harry,' and led him down a side road. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but I never come by train and it all looks rather different from a Muggle perspective. As a matter of fact, I've never even used the visitors' entrance before.' The further they walked, the smaller and less imposing the buildings became, until finally they reached a street that contained several rather shabby-looking offices, a pub and an overflowing skip. Harry had expected a rather more impressive location for the Ministry of Magic. 'Here we are,' said Mr Weasley brightly, pointing at an old red telephone box, which was missing several panes of glass and stood before a heavily graffitied wall. [OotP ch. #07; p. 115] They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr Weasley, had known since childhood.' [DH ch. #12; p. 190] [cut] Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway [cut] It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o'clock.' [cut] She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theatre. [cut] 'Nicely done, Hermione,' said Ron, emerging from behind a bin beside the theatre door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway that led backstage. [DH ch. #12; p. 194/195] As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road Harry and Ron crept along behind them. [DH ch. #12; p. 196] They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along the crowded pavement, there were spiked black railings flanking two flights of steps, one labelled Gentlemen, the other, Ladies. [cut] Harry and Ron joined a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and white. [DH ch. #12; p. 197/198] 'I'm going to take you straight back [cut] I'll drop you off on the way to that toilet in Bethnal Green.' [OotP ch. #09; p. 140] We also know that when Arthur and Harry headed back from the Ministry after the hearing in OotP, Arthur was on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, and said that he would drop Harry off at Grimmauld Place en route. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Islington or Barnsbury or the edge of Holloway, the nearest underground stop must be either the AngelO6C on the Northern Line (a.k.a. "The Angel Islington" - it's the name of a pub); Highbury & IslingtonO6B on the Victoria Line; or Caledonian RoadO6B, or at a pinch Holloway RoadO6B which is a bit further out, both on the Piccadilly Line. We can rule out the Angel immediately, unless Arthur and Harry change trains en route - and there's no suggestion that they do. Unless you change trains there are only two ways you can go from the Angel - north-west, away from central London, or south-east across the City proper. Five stops from the Angel, heading south-east towards the City, takes you right through the City and out of it again, over the Thames into south London to a station called BoroughO6E. Highbury & Islington underground station, from Wikipedia Area around Green Park underground station, from Geomatic Surveys Ltd Highbury & Islington station is suitably smallish, and is an especially shabby-looking little place. However, five stops from Highbury & Islington on the Victoria Line heading towards central London takes you to Green ParkO4D, towards the west end of Piccadilly. Entrance to Victoria underground station, from Wikipedia Although this is in the heart of London and has some fairly grand buildings it's an area of shops, hotels and flats with not many offices - not the sort of place large numbers of people would commute to with briefcases - plus the station is right by the eponymous park, which you'd think Harry would notice. The next stop on is VictoriaO4D, which is just about feasible. It's pushing it a bit to call Victoria the heart of London, as it's on the edge of the central area, but it's a very busy station with lots of grand buildings around it, including a lot of office blocks. Neither Green Park nor Victoria is at all a likely place to find a theatre: albeit that all areas of London are prone to hidden surprises. So, if Grimmauld Place is in Islington/Barnsbury it could be near Highbury & Islington station, if we accept Victoria as "the very heart of London" and as possibly having an old theatre up one of its side-streets, or failing that it must be close to either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. We know this because it has to be around a mile from King's Cross - so it isn't out the far side of Holloway Road, which is already well over a mile from King's Cross - and it has to be so placed that walking to Caledonian Road or Holloway Road is easier than walking to King's Cross, otherwise they would have picked up the train there. Either way, if Grimmauld Place is in the Islington/Barnsbury area it's not in Islington proper, because the nearest stops to walk to from Islington proper would be either the Angel or King's Cross itself, and we know the "miserable little underground station" wasn't either of those. It must be in Barnsbury, or Lower Holloway or (if it's near Caledonian or Holloway Roads) Holloway proper. Caledonian Road underground station © Danny Robinson at Geograph Holloway Road underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Caledonian Road and Holloway Road are both what I would call medium-sized and not very impressive stations, and they are in a line. The platform at Caledonian Road is accessed by means of a lift which you might expect Harry - or Arthur - to comment on; Holloway Road is considerably more than twenty minutes' walk from Kings Cross, but they might well have been heading away from Kings Cross when they walked from Grimmauld Place to the station. Holloway Road is slightly the bigger of the two, but has the advantage of being in Lower Holloway, which is shabbier than Islington; whereas Caledonian Road is moving into Barnsbury which is more up-market, and perhaps too much so for Grimmauld Place. On the other hand Barnsbury is the sort of area the Blacks might have found desirable when they still had money. Main entrance to Leicester Sq underground station, from tiny angel at Picasa Web Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Clerkenwell is a little traditional village, with a village green, which was absorbed by London but still has its own character. It was a very fashionable area in the seventeenth century, when the Blacks might well have moved there, but declined sharply in the mid twentieth century, The World\'s End pub, Camden, formerly the Mother Red Cap, from Wikipedia becoming fashionable again in the 1990s. There could well have still been a few run-down pockets there in 1995. Camden has only existed as an identifiable village since the 1790s. Before that there was nothing there but a few farms and two coaching inns: but one of the inns, the "Mother Red Cap", was named after a supposed seventeenth century witch and serial husband-murderer. You could easily make a case for Mother Red Cap being a Black. We know that somewhere near Grimmauld Place there is a "miserable little underground station" with automatic ticket machines, although it's large enough to have a resident attendant, and that five or more stops (Arthur says "Four more stops, Harry ...") on the underground take you to a station which disgorges a flood of briefcase-carrying commuters onto a broad street full of "imposing-looking" buildings near where the Ministry of Magic is; and that an indefinite number of stops take you to a station which opens onto another broad street lined with shops, near St Mungo's Hospital, which doesn't seem to be the same station as the one for the Ministry. Both destination locations are described as being in the "very heart" of London, both destination stations have escalators which the travellers use, and in neither case do the travellers appear to change trains en route. The run-down streets were almost deserted, but when they arrived at the miserable little underground station they found it already full of early-morning commuters. As ever when he found himself in close proximity to Muggles going about their daily business, Mr Weasley was hard put to contain his enthusiasm. 'Simply fabulous,' he whispered, indicating the automatic ticket machines. 'Wonderfully ingenious.' 'They're out of order,' said Harry, pointing at the sign. 'Yes, but even so ...' said Mr Weasley, beaming at them fondly. They bought their tickets instead from a sleepy-looking guard (Harry handled the transaction, as Mr Weasley was not very good with Muggle money) and five minutes later they were boarding an underground train that rattled them off towards the centre of London. Mr Weasley kept anxiously checking and re-checking the Underground Map above the windows. 'Four more stops, Harry ... Three stops left now ... Two stops to go, Harry ...' They got off at a station in the very heart of London, and were swept from the train in a tide of besuited men and women carrying briefcases. Up the escalator they went, through the ticket barrier (Mr Weasley delighted with the way the stile swallowed his ticket), and emerged on to a broad street lined with imposing-looking buildings and already full of traffic. [OotP ch. #07; p. 114/115] When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them gleefully, laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an angle to conceal his magical eye and assuring him, truthfully, that Tonks, whose hair was short and bright pink again, would attract far less attention on the Underground. [cut] [cut] they sat side by side on a train rattling towards the heart of the city. [cut] [cut] they got out at the next stop, a station in the very heart of London, [cut]. They all followed [Tonks] up the escalator, [cut] he asked Mad-Eye where St Mungo's was hidden. 'Not far from here,' grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just behind; Harry knew the eye was rolling in all directions under the tilted hat. 'Wasn't easy to find a good location for a hospital. Nowhere in Diagon Alley was big enough and we couldn't have it underground like the Ministry -- wouldn't be healthy. In the end they managed to get hold of a building up here. Theory was, sick wizards could come and go and just blend in with the crowd.' He seized Harry's shoulder to prevent them being separated by a gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets. 'Here we go,' said Moody a moment later. They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red-brick department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The place had a shabby, miserable air; the window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies with their wigs askew, standing at random and modelling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read: 'Closed for Refurbishment'. Harry distinctly heard a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags say to her friend as they passed, 'It's never open, that place ...' [OotP ch. #22; p. 425-427] Although the station they get off at for the Ministry is among grand buildings, the Ministry itself (its entrance, anyway) is down a side-street and into a very scruffy area. The visitors' entrance is via an old-fashioned red telephone box in an area of shabby offices. The workers' entrance is via a pair of tatty underground public lavatories: we do not know how the telephone box and the lavatories are placed in relation to each other. Near the lavatories - and therefore presumably near the Ministry - is a longish alleyway which the workers use as an Apparition point, and in which there is a fire-door leading into an "empty" (presumably closed-down) theatre. 'Where are we?' said Mr Weasley blankly, and for one heart-stopping moment Harry thought they had got off at the wrong station despite Mr Weasley's continual references to the map; but a second later he said, 'Ah yes ... this way, Harry,' and led him down a side road. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but I never come by train and it all looks rather different from a Muggle perspective. As a matter of fact, I've never even used the visitors' entrance before.' The further they walked, the smaller and less imposing the buildings became, until finally they reached a street that contained several rather shabby-looking offices, a pub and an overflowing skip. Harry had expected a rather more impressive location for the Ministry of Magic. 'Here we are,' said Mr Weasley brightly, pointing at an old red telephone box, which was missing several panes of glass and stood before a heavily graffitied wall. [OotP ch. #07; p. 115] They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr Weasley, had known since childhood.' [DH ch. #12; p. 190] [cut] Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway [cut] It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o'clock.' [cut] She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theatre. [cut] 'Nicely done, Hermione,' said Ron, emerging from behind a bin beside the theatre door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway that led backstage. [DH ch. #12; p. 194/195] As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road Harry and Ron crept along behind them. [DH ch. #12; p. 196] They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along the crowded pavement, there were spiked black railings flanking two flights of steps, one labelled Gentlemen, the other, Ladies. [cut] Harry and Ron joined a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and white. [DH ch. #12; p. 197/198] 'I'm going to take you straight back [cut] I'll drop you off on the way to that toilet in Bethnal Green.' [OotP ch. #09; p. 140] We also know that when Arthur and Harry headed back from the Ministry after the hearing in OotP, Arthur was on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, and said that he would drop Harry off at Grimmauld Place en route.
Camden has only existed as an identifiable village since the 1790s. Before that there was nothing there but a few farms and two coaching inns: but one of the inns, the "Mother Red Cap", was named after a supposed seventeenth century witch and serial husband-murderer. You could easily make a case for Mother Red Cap being a Black.
We know that somewhere near Grimmauld Place there is a "miserable little underground station" with automatic ticket machines, although it's large enough to have a resident attendant, and that five or more stops (Arthur says "Four more stops, Harry ...") on the underground take you to a station which disgorges a flood of briefcase-carrying commuters onto a broad street full of "imposing-looking" buildings near where the Ministry of Magic is; and that an indefinite number of stops take you to a station which opens onto another broad street lined with shops, near St Mungo's Hospital, which doesn't seem to be the same station as the one for the Ministry. Both destination locations are described as being in the "very heart" of London, both destination stations have escalators which the travellers use, and in neither case do the travellers appear to change trains en route.
When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them gleefully, laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an angle to conceal his magical eye and assuring him, truthfully, that Tonks, whose hair was short and bright pink again, would attract far less attention on the Underground. [cut] [cut] they sat side by side on a train rattling towards the heart of the city. [cut] [cut] they got out at the next stop, a station in the very heart of London, [cut]. They all followed [Tonks] up the escalator, [cut] he asked Mad-Eye where St Mungo's was hidden. 'Not far from here,' grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just behind; Harry knew the eye was rolling in all directions under the tilted hat. 'Wasn't easy to find a good location for a hospital. Nowhere in Diagon Alley was big enough and we couldn't have it underground like the Ministry -- wouldn't be healthy. In the end they managed to get hold of a building up here. Theory was, sick wizards could come and go and just blend in with the crowd.' He seized Harry's shoulder to prevent them being separated by a gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets. 'Here we go,' said Moody a moment later. They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red-brick department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The place had a shabby, miserable air; the window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies with their wigs askew, standing at random and modelling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read: 'Closed for Refurbishment'. Harry distinctly heard a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags say to her friend as they passed, 'It's never open, that place ...' [OotP ch. #22; p. 425-427]
Although the station they get off at for the Ministry is among grand buildings, the Ministry itself (its entrance, anyway) is down a side-street and into a very scruffy area. The visitors' entrance is via an old-fashioned red telephone box in an area of shabby offices. The workers' entrance is via a pair of tatty underground public lavatories: we do not know how the telephone box and the lavatories are placed in relation to each other. Near the lavatories - and therefore presumably near the Ministry - is a longish alleyway which the workers use as an Apparition point, and in which there is a fire-door leading into an "empty" (presumably closed-down) theatre.
They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr Weasley, had known since childhood.' [DH ch. #12; p. 190]
[cut] Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway [cut] It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o'clock.' [cut] She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theatre. [cut] 'Nicely done, Hermione,' said Ron, emerging from behind a bin beside the theatre door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway that led backstage. [DH ch. #12; p. 194/195]
As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road Harry and Ron crept along behind them. [DH ch. #12; p. 196]
They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along the crowded pavement, there were spiked black railings flanking two flights of steps, one labelled Gentlemen, the other, Ladies. [cut] Harry and Ron joined a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and white. [DH ch. #12; p. 197/198]
We also know that when Arthur and Harry headed back from the Ministry after the hearing in OotP, Arthur was on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, and said that he would drop Harry off at Grimmauld Place en route.
If Grimmauld Place is in Islington or Barnsbury or the edge of Holloway, the nearest underground stop must be either the AngelO6C on the Northern Line (a.k.a. "The Angel Islington" - it's the name of a pub); Highbury & IslingtonO6B on the Victoria Line; or Caledonian RoadO6B, or at a pinch Holloway RoadO6B which is a bit further out, both on the Piccadilly Line.
We can rule out the Angel immediately, unless Arthur and Harry change trains en route - and there's no suggestion that they do. Unless you change trains there are only two ways you can go from the Angel - north-west, away from central London, or south-east across the City proper. Five stops from the Angel, heading south-east towards the City, takes you right through the City and out of it again, over the Thames into south London to a station called BoroughO6E. Highbury & Islington underground station, from Wikipedia Area around Green Park underground station, from Geomatic Surveys Ltd Highbury & Islington station is suitably smallish, and is an especially shabby-looking little place. However, five stops from Highbury & Islington on the Victoria Line heading towards central London takes you to Green ParkO4D, towards the west end of Piccadilly. Entrance to Victoria underground station, from Wikipedia Although this is in the heart of London and has some fairly grand buildings it's an area of shops, hotels and flats with not many offices - not the sort of place large numbers of people would commute to with briefcases - plus the station is right by the eponymous park, which you'd think Harry would notice. The next stop on is VictoriaO4D, which is just about feasible. It's pushing it a bit to call Victoria the heart of London, as it's on the edge of the central area, but it's a very busy station with lots of grand buildings around it, including a lot of office blocks. Neither Green Park nor Victoria is at all a likely place to find a theatre: albeit that all areas of London are prone to hidden surprises. So, if Grimmauld Place is in Islington/Barnsbury it could be near Highbury & Islington station, if we accept Victoria as "the very heart of London" and as possibly having an old theatre up one of its side-streets, or failing that it must be close to either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. We know this because it has to be around a mile from King's Cross - so it isn't out the far side of Holloway Road, which is already well over a mile from King's Cross - and it has to be so placed that walking to Caledonian Road or Holloway Road is easier than walking to King's Cross, otherwise they would have picked up the train there. Either way, if Grimmauld Place is in the Islington/Barnsbury area it's not in Islington proper, because the nearest stops to walk to from Islington proper would be either the Angel or King's Cross itself, and we know the "miserable little underground station" wasn't either of those. It must be in Barnsbury, or Lower Holloway or (if it's near Caledonian or Holloway Roads) Holloway proper. Caledonian Road underground station © Danny Robinson at Geograph Holloway Road underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Caledonian Road and Holloway Road are both what I would call medium-sized and not very impressive stations, and they are in a line. The platform at Caledonian Road is accessed by means of a lift which you might expect Harry - or Arthur - to comment on; Holloway Road is considerably more than twenty minutes' walk from Kings Cross, but they might well have been heading away from Kings Cross when they walked from Grimmauld Place to the station. Holloway Road is slightly the bigger of the two, but has the advantage of being in Lower Holloway, which is shabbier than Islington; whereas Caledonian Road is moving into Barnsbury which is more up-market, and perhaps too much so for Grimmauld Place. On the other hand Barnsbury is the sort of area the Blacks might have found desirable when they still had money. Main entrance to Leicester Sq underground station, from tiny angel at Picasa Web Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Area around Green Park underground station, from Geomatic Surveys Ltd
Highbury & Islington station is suitably smallish, and is an especially shabby-looking little place. However, five stops from Highbury & Islington on the Victoria Line heading towards central London takes you to Green ParkO4D, towards the west end of Piccadilly. Entrance to Victoria underground station, from Wikipedia Although this is in the heart of London and has some fairly grand buildings it's an area of shops, hotels and flats with not many offices - not the sort of place large numbers of people would commute to with briefcases - plus the station is right by the eponymous park, which you'd think Harry would notice. The next stop on is VictoriaO4D, which is just about feasible. It's pushing it a bit to call Victoria the heart of London, as it's on the edge of the central area, but it's a very busy station with lots of grand buildings around it, including a lot of office blocks. Neither Green Park nor Victoria is at all a likely place to find a theatre: albeit that all areas of London are prone to hidden surprises. So, if Grimmauld Place is in Islington/Barnsbury it could be near Highbury & Islington station, if we accept Victoria as "the very heart of London" and as possibly having an old theatre up one of its side-streets, or failing that it must be close to either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. We know this because it has to be around a mile from King's Cross - so it isn't out the far side of Holloway Road, which is already well over a mile from King's Cross - and it has to be so placed that walking to Caledonian Road or Holloway Road is easier than walking to King's Cross, otherwise they would have picked up the train there. Either way, if Grimmauld Place is in the Islington/Barnsbury area it's not in Islington proper, because the nearest stops to walk to from Islington proper would be either the Angel or King's Cross itself, and we know the "miserable little underground station" wasn't either of those. It must be in Barnsbury, or Lower Holloway or (if it's near Caledonian or Holloway Roads) Holloway proper. Caledonian Road underground station © Danny Robinson at Geograph Holloway Road underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Caledonian Road and Holloway Road are both what I would call medium-sized and not very impressive stations, and they are in a line. The platform at Caledonian Road is accessed by means of a lift which you might expect Harry - or Arthur - to comment on; Holloway Road is considerably more than twenty minutes' walk from Kings Cross, but they might well have been heading away from Kings Cross when they walked from Grimmauld Place to the station. Holloway Road is slightly the bigger of the two, but has the advantage of being in Lower Holloway, which is shabbier than Islington; whereas Caledonian Road is moving into Barnsbury which is more up-market, and perhaps too much so for Grimmauld Place. On the other hand Barnsbury is the sort of area the Blacks might have found desirable when they still had money. Main entrance to Leicester Sq underground station, from tiny angel at Picasa Web Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Neither Green Park nor Victoria is at all a likely place to find a theatre: albeit that all areas of London are prone to hidden surprises.
So, if Grimmauld Place is in Islington/Barnsbury it could be near Highbury & Islington station, if we accept Victoria as "the very heart of London" and as possibly having an old theatre up one of its side-streets, or failing that it must be close to either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. We know this because it has to be around a mile from King's Cross - so it isn't out the far side of Holloway Road, which is already well over a mile from King's Cross - and it has to be so placed that walking to Caledonian Road or Holloway Road is easier than walking to King's Cross, otherwise they would have picked up the train there.
Either way, if Grimmauld Place is in the Islington/Barnsbury area it's not in Islington proper, because the nearest stops to walk to from Islington proper would be either the Angel or King's Cross itself, and we know the "miserable little underground station" wasn't either of those. It must be in Barnsbury, or Lower Holloway or (if it's near Caledonian or Holloway Roads) Holloway proper.
Caledonian Road and Holloway Road are both what I would call medium-sized and not very impressive stations, and they are in a line. The platform at Caledonian Road is accessed by means of a lift which you might expect Harry - or Arthur - to comment on; Holloway Road is considerably more than twenty minutes' walk from Kings Cross, but they might well have been heading away from Kings Cross when they walked from Grimmauld Place to the station.
Holloway Road is slightly the bigger of the two, but has the advantage of being in Lower Holloway, which is shabbier than Islington; whereas Caledonian Road is moving into Barnsbury which is more up-market, and perhaps too much so for Grimmauld Place. On the other hand Barnsbury is the sort of area the Blacks might have found desirable when they still had money. Main entrance to Leicester Sq underground station, from tiny angel at Picasa Web Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Five stops from Caledonian Road or six from Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line would take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Piccadilly CircusO5D. Leicester Square is quite a suitable destination - it has an especially deep escalator, it disgorges onto quite a grand street, and although it's not exactly the heart of office-commuter-land, there are quite a lot of offices around there, and a lot of suitable back streets and theatres (some of them closed) as well. The only thing against it is that the said grand street is the northern part of Charing Cross Road and you'd think Harry might recognise it - although it would be a couple of hundred yards along from the smaller, more intimate Trafalgar Square end of the street where the Leaky Cauldron probably is. Piccadilly Circus © Kenneth Allen at Geograph Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Piccadilly Circus is also very suitable in many ways, but can probably be ruled out because it is famously dominated by vast, brilliant neon advertising hoardings and a winged statue Entrance to Knightsbridge station by night, looking towards corner of Knightsbridge & Sloane St © Dave Hitchborne at Geograph (commonly referred to as "Eros" but in fact intended as Anteros, god of unselfish love). It's so exceedingly recognisable that you'd expect Harry to think "Look, Piccadilly Circus" rather than "Look, big buildings." If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
If they are travelling on the Piccadilly Line then the station where they alighted for St Mungo's and saw a broad street with shops could be HolbornO5C, Piccadilly CircusO5D, KnightsbridgeO4D or South KensingtonO4D. Piccadilly Circus can probably be ruled out, again, because it's too recognisable. Knightsbridge is a posh shopping district but possibly too posh to have a run-down, closed department store anywhere near a main road, and it tends to be full of shops selling expensive clothes, not electronics. It would also be pushing it to call it "in the very heart of London". James Smith & Sons, corner of New Oxford St and Bloomsbury St © Martin Addison at Geograph Kensington is a little less glossy but even further out. Holborn on the other hand would give them access to the teardrop-shaped area bound by the roads called High Holborn, St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street - a slightly shabbier, more raffish area just east of Oxford Street, and just the sort of place where one might well find a smallish, elderly department store which had been left unoccupied. Note that the description indicates that St Mungo's is only a short walk from the station they alight from, so it probably would not be as far away as the Tottenham Court Road end of this area as that would be nearly seven hundred yards from Holborn station. Warren Street underground station with BT tower in background, from Wikipedia Oxford Circus underground station © Nigel Cox at Geograph Area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, adapted from Google Maps If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it. If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate.
If they are coming from Highbury & Islington station on the Victoria Line, then the station they alighted at for St Mungo's must have been either Warren StreetO5C, Oxford CircusO4C or Green ParkO4D. Of these, Warren Street has the charm of being the nearest stop for University College Hospital, and you could imagine St Mungo's as the wizarding branch of that; but Oxford Circus best fits the "broad store-line street" description. That would put Purge & Dowse Ltd actually on Oxford Street, or just off it.
If the Ministry is at either Leicester Square or Victoria and Grimmauld Place in Islington/Barnsbury, however, Arthur couldn't take Harry back to Grimmauld Place and then proceed to Bethnal GreenO7C by train in any easy fashion: at the least he would have to take at least three different trains. Perhaps he was planning to Apparate.
If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, the nearest underground station would have to be either the Angel on the Northern Line; the BarbicanO6C or FarringdonO6C on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines; or Chancery LaneO5C on the Central Line. We've already ruled out the Angel, and we can rule out Farringdon as well because it's medium-sized and quite ornate: there's no way it could qualify as a miserable little station. Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Farringdon station © Oxyman at Geograph The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Entrance of Farringdon station, from Wikipedia
The Barbican Entrance of Barbican station, from Wikipedia Platforms at Barbican station © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph could just about qualify if you stretched a point, as it's medium-sized and a bit bleak and bare-looking, even though it's the nearest station for the spectacular modern arts-and-upmarket-housing complex called the Barbican Centre. Five, six or seven stops from the Barbican clockwise on the Circle Line would take you to MonumentO6D, Cannon StreetO6D or Mansion HouseO5D, all in the commercial district of the City of London: that is, in the "Square Mile" of the original, Mediaeval London, somewhat to the east of the geographical centre of modern London. Spire of 16th C church of St Andrew Undershaft, with Lloyd\'s Building (completed 1986) on right and Willis Building (begun 2005) on left, from thearnie at Pan\'ramio The City, a weird fusion of buildings of different periods from the Mediaeval onwards, and even incorporating some Roman ruins, is nevertheless dominated by high-art Modernist sky-scrapers, and is one of the major financial districts in the world. It's an ideal location for the Ministry because it fits the idea of broad streets lined with impressive buildings very well, and is the most likely place to see hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters. It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry. Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
It is not, however, a very likely location for a theatre (except for those at the Barbican Centre itself, which is very much not disused), and if the nearest station is the Barbican, then we have a problem with the location of St Mungo's. The only major shopping-areas in central London you could get to from the Barbican without changing are in the Sloane SquareO4D - South KensingtonO4D - Gloucester RoadO3/4D - High Street KensingtonO3D sequence via the Circle Line, and apart from not really being in the heart of the city, the Circle Line platforms at all these stations are above ground: you wouldn't use an escalator to leave the station. So if the nearest station to Grimmauld Place is the Barbican, we have to assume that Harry, Tonks and co. changed trains during the journey from Grimmauld Place to St Mungo's, in which case St Mungo's could be anywhere in the central shopping area - or that Grimmauld Place is between two stations, and they used different ones for St Mungo's and for the Ministry.
Arthur would have to double back to go from the Ministry to the Barbican to Bethnal Green, and would have to change at Liverpool StreetO6C. Marble Arch, with Oxford St in background © Alan Murray-Rust at Geograph If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land. Adapted from streetmap.co.uk If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
If Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury and the nearest stop is Chancery LaneO5C, then the Ministry would be at Marble ArchO4C or Lancaster GateO4C, and we can really rule out Lancaster Gate, because not only is it an area of mainly housing, hotels and embassies with not many offices, and not only is the station next to a great park which you'd think Harry would mention, but it's not a likely area to find the sort of dingy back street the Ministry is in. So that leaves the Ministry somewhere near Marble Arch, and the stop with all the shops, near St Mungo's, would have to be either HolbornO5C, Entrance to Chancery Lane station © R Sones at Geograph Southern end of Tottenham Court Road © Danny Robinson at Geograph Tottenham Court RoadO5C, Oxford CircusO4C, Bond StreetO4C or Marble Arch itself, all of which are strung out along Oxford Street. We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods. Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land.
We can probably rule out Holborn in this case, because it's so near Chancery Lane you'd think they'd just walk. Like Holborn, Tottenham Court Road station gives access to the area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street, and the southern end of Tottenham Court Road itself, nearest the station, is famous for its shops selling electrical goods.
Chancery LaneO5C best fits Arthur's comment about dropping Harry off on his way to Bethnal GreenO7C, which is on the same line: he wouldn't have to change. You could just about make a case for calling Chancery Lane station little, since it's single-line, although it's entered off a fairly grand street and has multiple entrances. However, it requires the Ministry to be near Marble Arch, and though it's an area with both grand buildings and shabby back streets, it's not really office-land or theatre-land.
If Grimmauld Place is in Camden and about a mile from Kings Cross, then the nearest station is Camden TownO5B on the Northern Line. Five stops from Camden Town via Euston SquareO5C on the Northern Line will take you to Leicester SquareO5D, and the next stop is Charing CrossO5D. Camden Town underground station © Stacey Harris at Geograph Charing Cross station is a possible location for the stop near the Ministry, but it would put the Ministry extremely close to Diagon Alley - quite possibly less than a hundred yards away - which you'd think would have been mentioned. Entrance to Charing Cross station from Villiers Street © Oxyman at Geograph However, if they came out of one of the Northern Line exits which is in a side-street, Harry might not have noticed how close they were to Trafalgar Square. That would put the Ministry somewhere in the complex maze of back-streets on either the north or south side of the Strand. Moorgate underground station © Nigel Chadwick at Geograph Entrance to Bank underground station, from igor_gr at Pan\'ramio Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre. St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate. Camden street-scene, from Check Out London blog Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station. Kentish Town underground station © Dr Neil Clifton at Geograph So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station. This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise. So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Alternatively, five or six stops from Camden TownO5B via Kings CrossO5C on the Northern Line will place you in the City of London. The fifth stop from Camden Town is MoorgateO6C and the sixth, BankO6D: of these, Moorgate has a faintly scruffy aspect, whereas Bank is very wide and imposing. Both are highly suitable destinations as regards the very grand buildings, the fact that Harry doesn't immediately recognise an obvious landmark and the number of briefcase-carrying commuters, but not at all suitable as regards the nearby presence of a run-down theatre.
St Mungo's, again, would be near Tottenham Court Road stationO5C - five stops from Camden TownO5B via Euston SquareO5C. As with Caledonian Road, Arthur would have to double back and get three different trains to get from Camden Town to Bethnal GreenO7C, so one would have to assume he was planning to drop Harry off and then Apparate.
Apart from the theatre issue, the only thing against Grimmauld Place being at Camden is that Camden is hippy-central and very noticeable. It has a canal running though it, with locks, and a famously shabby, hippy market which covers a substantial area of the town, and streets of shops painted in gaudy colours with sculptures and figureheads stuck on them - it looks like a cross between Amsterdam and one of the more raffish bits of California. And the station, although quite small, is in the middle of all that and it's a major intersection - one of the busiest stations in London. They actually have to close it to boarding traffic at certain times at the weekend so people getting off the trains, or changing trains, can move against the crush. All of which is hard to square with Harry's description of a miserable little station.
So, in order for Grimmauld Place to be in Camden, you have to come up with a reason why Harry could walk through Camden Town and not notice it. It may be that there's some way of approaching Camden Town station which bypasses all the gaudy bits, although it still hardly fits the description of a miserable little station. Another possibility is that Arthur walked them all the way from Camden to Kentish TownO5B - the next station out on the branch of the Northern Line that runs through Bank - in order to avoid the crush at Camden Town. But it's over half a mile further out from King's Cross than Camden Town is, so Grimmauld Place can't actually be in Kentish Town - you couldn't walk to King's Cross from there in twenty minutes - so they would have to have had a fairly long walk from Grimmauld Place to Kentish Town station.
This detour via Kentish Town only works if the Ministry is in the City. To get from Kentish Town station to Leicester Square they would have to change at Camden Town anyway, which would defeat the object of the exercise.
So, we have six options, all of which have a few problems but all of which can be made to work at a pinch. 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics. 5) Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.] 6) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters. We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5). The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
1)
Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury, Holloway or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is either Caledonian Road or Holloway Road. The Ministry is near Leicester Square, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area. There are no massive problems with this version, although Leicester Square isn't really prime briefcase-country, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. It has the great advantage that Leicester Square is an ideal area to find a closed-down theatre and a shabby public lavatory.
2)
Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury or Lower Holloway, and the nearest station is Highbury & Islington. The Ministry is near Victoria, and St Mungo's either on or just off the middle (Oxford Circus area) of Oxford Street, or somewhere near Warren Street. There are no massive problems with this version, although it's pushing it a bit to call Victoria "the very heart of London", or to have a disused theatre there (or any theatre at all), or to have a disused department store actually on Oxford Street. Again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green.
3)
Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is the Barbican. The Ministry is in the City, in the Monument/Cannon Street/Mansion House area. Arthur would either have to take two trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. The major problem with this is that there is no direct way to get from the Barbican to any station which is in a major shopping district and where you would exit via an escalator: so they would have to change trains to get to St Mungo's, and it could be anywhere. And, of course, there's the theatre issue.
4)
Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell or Finsbury, and the nearest station is Chancery Lane. The Ministry is near Marble Arch, and St Mungo's either somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, Tottenham Court Road or off Oxford Street itself. The problems with this version are that Marble Arch is even less likely briefcase-country than Leicester Square, as well as much less likely to have a theatre in it, and it's stretching a point to call Chancery Lane station "miserable", since it's on a rather grand street. The major plus is that Arthur really could get a train from Marble Arch, drop Harry off at Chancery Lane for Grimmauld Place, and go straight on to Bethnal Green; plus Tottenham Court Road is a perfect place to find shoppers shopping for electronics.
5)
Grimmauld Place is in Camden: the nearest station would be Camden Town but they walk to Kentish Town because it's a lot less crowded. The Ministry is near Bank or Moorgate, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The only problems with this version are that they would have to walk quite a long way to Kentish Town, and Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green. And the theatre issue. [Also they would have to use Camden Town station to get to St Mungo's, or change there, since the Northern Line from Kentish Town goes through King's Cross and nowhere near a shopping district: but we're not told that they start from the "miserable little station" on that journey.]
6)
Grimmauld Place is in Camden, and they travel from Camden Town. The Ministry is near Leicester Square or the Strand/Charing Cross station, and St Mungo's somewhere in the High Holborn/New Oxford Street area, or Tottenham Court Road. The big problem with this option is that it's very difficult to see how Camden Town could fit the description of a "miserable little station" when it's so furiously busy: and again, Arthur would either have to take three trains or Apparate to get from Grimmauld Place to Bethnal Green.
Options 1) and 6) best fit the fact that the Ministry is near a disused theatre, while options 3) and 5) best fit the description of their disembarkation among hordes of briefcase-carrying commuters, since they place the Ministry in the City, at the heart of grand-buildings-filled-with-commuters-with-briefcases territory; but option 3) fits the journey to St Mungo's least well. Option 4) fits the detail about dropping Harry off on the way to Bethnal Green best. Options 1) and 2) probably have the least specific problems, although 1) is not a perfect fit for the description of the station with commuters.
We can probably knock off option 3), then, since it has a problem with the location of St Mungo's, and if we want to place the Ministry in the City we can do it another way. We can also probably leave off option 6), because we can get the Ministry to Leicester Square another way and it's difficult to see how Camden Town station could fit the bill. So that leaves a choice between options 1), 2), 4) and 5).
The remaining groupings work out as follows. Either: 1) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 2) Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street. 3) Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. 4) Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area. Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black. However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home). Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank. Conclusion Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows. Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry. The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there. The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Leicester Square and St Mungo's is in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area.
Grimmauld Place is in Barnsbury/Holloway, the Ministry is near Victoria and St Mungo's is on or near the middle of Oxford Street or near Warren Street.
Grimmauld Place is in Clerkenwell/Finsbury, the Ministry is near Marble Arch and St Mungo's could be anywhere along the whole length of Oxford Street, the southern end of Tottenham Court Road or the New Oxford Street/Holborn area.
Grimmauld Place is in Camden, the Ministry is in the City somewhere around Moorgate or Bank and St Mungo's is either on or near Tottenham Court Road or in the New Oxford Street/Holborn area.
Of these, the fourth option is probably the most attractive, since it enables both the Ministry and St Mungo's to be in very suitable areas. It also leaves us with the rather splendid idea that Jinny of Kentish Town, a.k.a. Mother Red Cap, the homicidal witch of Camden, was an ancestor of Bellatrix Black.
However, it requires there to be a closed-down theatre in or very close to the City, which is unlikely. It also requires Harry not to notice (or at least not to comment on) the perpetual carnival which is Camden town-centre, and it makes Arthur's dropping Harry off en route to Bethnal Green a bit convoluted (although he might have lied to Harry about how easy it was, because he really wanted to see him home).
Although it's less exciting, the first option is probably the most likely - on the grounds that briefcase-bearing commuters at Leciester Square are less unlikely than a theatre at Bank.
Because of the requirement that the area around the Ministry should include both offices, scruffy graffitied back streets and a disused theatre, the most likely solution to the location of these three places is as follows.
Grimmauld Place is in the Barnsbury/Holloway area just north of Islington proper, and the "miserable little station" from which Arthur and Harry travelled to the Ministry was Holloway Road. Grimmauld Place itself is on the central London side of Holloway Road and Arthur and Harry walked away from King's Cross to get to Holloway Road station. From there they caught the Piccadilly Line Underground train and travelled six stops to the Ministry.
The Ministry is near Leicester Square Underground station - and hence only a few hundred yards from Diagon Alley. I would guess it is on the north side of Leicester Square itself because I know there are plenty of dingy back streets around there.
The station where they alighted for St Mungo's would be Holborn, two stops before the Ministry. St Mungo's itself is in the slightly scruffy area bounded by High Holborn and New Oxford Street.
