LEGO Harry Potter 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class review

LEGO Harry Potter 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class continues to show how a clever idea can make for a brilliant collection of sets.

Built from the same design blueprints as 76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class, which in turn borrows heavily from the recent House Banner and Hogwarts Moment collections, 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class is the latest foldaway classroom with plenty to unpack, time and again.

Release: January 1, 2025 Price: £17.99 / $19.99 / €19.99 Pieces: 204 Minifigures: 3 LEGO: Order now

‘Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick.’

Where the Hogwarts Moments placed foldaway classrooms within books and the House Banners similarly built common rooms into banner flags, 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class is the second entry into the latest folding room concept from the theme, following on from 2024’s 76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class in being able to be closed up and tucked into 76435 Hogwarts Castle: The Great Hall.

Cynically speaking, it’s only a gimmick, but even if that’s all you see here it’s a pretty fun feature all round – first and foremost for continuing to lean into the foldout classroom concept that gives so much more life, customisation and continued play to an otherwise static setting.

With walls that are poseable any which way you want you can literally set the scene over and over again however you imagine it, between details stickered and built into the walls and side builds of classroom props.

76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class introduced this latest interpretation of folding rooms in 2024 with a reasonably-sized classroom designed to take the bottom-right slot underneath 76435 Hogwarts Castle: The Great Hall. By contrast, 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class comes in a lot smaller as it is designed to fold up and slot into the smaller central space beneath 76435.

While this latest version is smaller as it comes with one fewer minifigure and 193 fewer pieces (and the price more than fairly reflects as much), you can clearly see that the same mastery of design has gone into it. This isn’t the first time the LEGO Harry Potter designers have put together a foldable classroom and effectiveness of how it all comes together is the best sign of that.

‘It’s Levi-O-sa, not levio-SA!’

As mentioned, plenty of detail is worked into the walls of 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class that are then poseable in any setup that you choose. With less real estate to work with between the walls and side builds we still end up with a door, decorated wall panels with archways, smaller door with window, and a fireplace, as well as a chalkboard, desk for the included Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley (‘it’s levi-o-saa’) and a desk with a pile of books for Professor Flitwick to stand on. That desk also includes a little play feature as the professor demonstrates the spell he is teaching the class.

In short, it’s a whole classroom with all the elements that come to mind from what we saw on film or imagined in reading the book and it can be folded out and placed exactly how you recall it, rather than locked into position by a baseplate.

‘You do it, then, if you’re so clever… go on, go on!’

Beyond being able to fold out, 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class can also fold in, and more specifically into a tiny little box eight studs wide by 12 studs long, between the walls and even all the side builds (not the minifigures, but why would you do that anyway?).

This is the LEGO Harry Potter team fully embracing the folding room concept – demonstrating all that they can do with it and having some real fun with it and all in a way that invites you along to revisit such a set again and again, pulling it out from the big Hogwarts build and folding it back in again.

When done as well as they are in 76442 Hogwarts Castle: Charms Class and before it 76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class, folding rooms are so much more than a gimmick – they inject a little bit of LEGO magic into what would otherwise be a simple and possibly dull static recreation of a scene. LEGO Harry Potter shows other licensed themes that experimentation can unlock some of the best ideas – pay attention in class, Star Wars, Batman and Marvel.

Our honest opinion: These foldaway classrooms have advanced in design way beyond what was once a gimmick. They are the sort of sets you’ll enjoy building and coming back to again and again.

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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