Spellbound by Harry Potter and the museum of magic

A crumpled piece of paper hanging on the far wall had me mesmerized. It was a sketch of a dark-haired boy with round glasses surrounded by his sour-faced relatives. The page is covered in wrinkles and stained with what looks like coffee. But there he is, the Boy Who Lived, drawn lovingly by J.K. Rowling herself, a full six years before the first Harry Potter book was published.

Behind an imposing castle wall, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic,” an engrossing new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, traces the origins of Harry’s story, not just through the lens of the writing process, but through the many historical, cultural and scientific influences that helped shape and inspire the magic of the books.

But it was these early sketches that first caught my eye: a merry-looking Professor Sprout surrounded by her plants; Argus Filch, the caretaker of Hogwarts, with his ring of keys; Harry prowling the halls of Hogwarts with Hermione, Ron, Neville and “Gary,” whom readers now know as Dean Thomas.

I’d always been aware, as most fans are, that Ms. Rowling carried this story with her for years, scribbling notes on napkins and odd bits of paper. But to imagine her painstakingly adding the stripes on Harry’s shirt or the freckles on Ron’s face long before she could’ve guessed that anyone would care — there’s something profoundly moving about that.

Over the years, Potterdom has expanded in all directions. There’s the Broadway play with its dazzling stagecraft. The amusement parks with their towering replicas of Hogwarts. The spinoff movies that will be released for years to come. To some, this exhibition might seem like just another promotional tool for an ever-growing empire. But there’s something about going back to the beginning of the writing process that reignites the original magic and burns through any cynicism.

This is what the exhibition — which originated last autumn at the British Library — does so well. Commemorating 20 years since the original publication in the United States of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” it has something for adults and children, history buffs and science enthusiasts, Potterheads and casual fans. The rooms are arranged by Hogwarts’ school subjects, which means visitors wind their way from Potions to Herbology to Charms and on until they reach Care of Magical Creatures, where the shadows of unicorns and centaurs lope past on the wall.

While there are plenty of whimsical touches, this is not a studio tour or a theme park. The wide range of artifacts on display form a bridge between the real world and the fictional one. In the books, for example, Nicolas Flamel was the legendary maker of the “Sorcerer’s Stone,” an object capable of turning metal into gold and granting immortality with its Elixir of Life. But it wasn’t until I saw his actual tombstone (on loan from the Musée de Cluny — Musée national du Moyen Âge, in Paris) that I realized he was no fiction. As it turns out, he was a medieval landlord and bookseller who may or may not have stumbled across a rare manuscript with clues to the Philosopher’s Stone.

Other objects will seem familiar to readers: a bezoar, a stone taken from an animal’s stomach, like the one Harry used after Ron was poisoned; an 18th-century orrery, a model of the solar system, with tiny, movable planets, that seems straight from Sybill Trelawney’sclassroom; and a pamphlet from 1680 about the true nature of the mythical basilisk, a fanged serpent Harry faces during his second year at Hogwarts.

But the exhibition also paints a broader picture of the history of magic, drawing from a range of cultures and mythologies. A 13th-century edition of the “Liber Medicinalis” has a cure for malaria that includes writing out the word “Abracadabra.” The 16th-century Ripley scroll, nearly six meters long and beautifully illustrated, contains secrets to the Elixir of Life. An Ethiopian recipe book from 1750 is filled with protective charms, talismans and incantations.

Kids will delight in the exhibition’s more interactive parts, including a potion-making station, where I managed to use the right ingredients to digitally brew a tonic that would protect me from night goblins. A series of electronic tarot cards told me I’m about to succeed in my goals. There’s an invisibility cloak hanging — cleverly — in a glass case, and a cheerful study of the winged keys by Jim Kay, one of several illustrators who has brought Potterdom to life over the years.

For some, the ancient scrolls and manuscripts will be the draw here. Others will love seeing the many historical depictions of creatures like hippogriffs and mermaids or a broomstick from a 20th-century witch named Olga Hunt, who could be spotted leaping around the moors of Devonshire whenever there was a full moon.

But as a writer of young-adult fiction, not to mention a longtime member of an adult book club about children’s literature that started because of a shared interest in Harry Potter, the books were the heart of the exhibition. I was enchanted by every scrap that allowed me a closer look into the writing process: letters between Ms. Rowling and her American editor, Arthur Levine; a map of Hogwarts where a giant squid can be spotted in the lake.

The most charming thing of all? A note from Alice Newton, daughter of the only publishing executive to take a chance on the series. In a child’s handwriting, it reads: “The excitement in this book makes me feel warm inside. I think it is possibly one of the best books an 8/9 year old could read.”

Toward the end of my visit, I realized there’s one area of study missing: transfiguration. In the books, this is the rather difficult art of changing one thing into another — a mouse into a snuffbox or a hedgehog into a pincushion. The New-York Historical Society’s associate curator for exhibitions, Cristian Petru Panaite, told me it was a bit challenging to illustrate this using tangible objects.

But perhaps the whole experience is a kind of transfiguration. You walk off the busy street, leaving the messy, chaotic world behind, and for a little while, you get to disappear into the magic of Harry Potter. Readers have been performing this trick for the last two decades. Now others will have a chance to try their hand at the very same spell.

© 2018 The New York Times