Top 5 Harry Potter Gadgets We Want (and Where You Can Find Them)

This weekend, millions of Harry Potter fans worldwide learned the fate of their favorite boy wizard as the final installment of J.K. Rowling’s epic novels, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, debuted Saturday morning. We’ll miss Harry—not only for his spellbinding adventures, but for all the cool gadgets holstered by he and his Hogwarts pals. Here’s the technology that us Muggles (Potter-speak for the nonmagical) want to get our hands on, plus when (or if) we’ll be able to. —Erin McCarthy

1. Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

Why We Want It Besides the fact that it would be supercool—and supereasy—to scare people? There are endless spy applications.

Can We Get It? Cloaking technology does exist—but it’s more like a shed than a cloak. A team of scientists from Duke University and Imperial Co]llege London created a “cloak” that deflects microwaves around an object and restores them on the other side. It can’t make an object vanish before a person’s eyes, but it’s a start. Researchers in Japan and DIYers have made inroads as well.


2. Flying Ford Anglia (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

Why We Want It Who wouldn’t want to rise above rush-hour traffic?


Can We Get It? You can own a flying car in just four short years—if you have $500,000 to spare and room in your backyard for a 35-ft. runway. The Moller M400 SkyCar is half-car, half-jet: At 8.5 ft wide, it’s road-worthy for short distances, and its 770-hp engine allows it to climb 6400 ft. per minute and go as fast as 365 mph—all while getting 20 mpg. Once the government certifies it as airworthy, the vehicle will head for commercial production, dropping the price tag 60 to 80 thousand and putting a headache-free commute within reach.

3. Apparition (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

Why We Want It It’s the magical way to teleport, and teleportation makes life easier.

Can We Get It? Scientists have been working on teleportation for decades, but disassembling matter and then reassembling it correctly in a different place is more complicated than it sounds; the most they’ve managed to teleport is a few photons over short distances. But a team at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics has recently proposed a new technique that could teleport as many as 50,000 atoms. Their method disregards quantum entanglement—wherein two particles are linked, and any change to the state of one changes its twin—and instead uses what they call “classical teleportation,” where particles disappear entirely from one place and then appear somewhere else. The method is promising but, sadly, isn’t for Muggle or wizard use—it will only be used for transporting ultracold atoms. “We would like to market it—for teleporting Harry Potter’s magic, ultracold poison into the body of the enemy!” team leader Dr. Ashton Bradley says cheekily. “More seriously, commercialization is possible, probably in 10 to 20 years.”


4. Wand (All Potter Books)


Why We Want It To create something from nothing; to command things to come to us; to levitate our foes; the list goes on and on...

Can We Get It? Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if we’ll be getting anything with the flick of a wand anytime soon. The slender, magical pieces of wood seem to be strictly science fiction. About the closest we’ll get is the WiiMote, which can be hacked to control things other than games, such as robots and DJ equipment. The only catch? Objects you’re trying to control need to be ready to receive the signal, which often means writing computer scripts and integrating Bluetooth. Plus, you can’t really shout out spells, which is half the fun of having a wand, anyway.

5. Time-Turner (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

Why We Want It Often there’s just not enough time in the day, and a time-turner would change that!

Can We Get It? Everyone from Einstein to Carl Sagan has weighed in on the possibility of time travel. Some scientists theorize that traveling faster than the speed of light could transport us to the past or the future, because time slows as it reaches the speed of light. Others see black holes, cosmic strings and wormholes (if they exist) as potential means of time travel. One thing’s for sure: A fashionable hourglass necklace isn’t going to do the trick. Regardless of how you slice it, we’re far from taking trips through time—if we can ever do it at all.