The incompetent and corrupt Government, I was too naive then to understand that they were clearly based on how real Governments are like.

 

Treacle tarts

 

School houses

Prefects

Head boy/girl

School uniform

 

I was waaaaaay too old before I realized that "Keeper" was not just a Quidditch position.

I can just barely muster enough interest in the teams that play in the (American) cities I live in, so I'm not exactly watching a ton of soccer.

"Keeper" sounded exactly like the other positions that JKR had made up — Seeker, Beater, Chaser — so imagine my surprise the first time I heard a goalie referred to as a "Keeper." I was probably, like, 20 years old when I realized this, lol.

 

Prefects, I didn't realise they were a real life thing until I went to high school where mine had them. They only organised school events though.

 

Mostly food stuff. From the names I couldn't tell if those dishes were real or made up.

 

There were a couple different accents in the movies(one was West Country) that I had no idea existed in real life. The books were worse about it, though. When I was a child, my father read the books to my brother and me, and we couldn't understand Hagrid's voice. He insisted that it was written exactly as he was pronouncing it, and I had to look at the page myself. Eventually we just decided it was giant talk, though after a few years of watching people from the British Isles with accents that made Antonio Banderas sound like an audiobook, I realized people actually talked like that.

 

Shepard's Pie. I had no idea that savory pies were actually a thing back when I first read the books. I thought it was as made up as pumpkin juice.

 

Sadly, pumpkin juice is a thing.

 

Like, as a regular drink? Get out.

 

Yeah it's real. Also for me its school kids going to pubs on weekends. Always just associated pub and bar as the same thing. Turns out they are different.

 

Well... though meat pies are very much a thing, shepherd's pie isn't actually one of them. It's a layer of mince with a layer of mashed potato on top - kinda like lasagne, only with potato instead of pasta. There's no pastry involved.

Or hockey, apparently

 

To be fair, the fellow in hockey is a goaltender or goalie. I've never read, heard or seen anyone call them a keeper. And I consume a lot of hockey.

 

I didn't know what snogging was

 

In practice in your own life, or in theory?

-

I’m loving some of the things that I did not realise were not well-understood things, like Hagrids Yerkshur accent. And the corollaries - Americans don’t have Christmas crackers?

In an equivalent American based series, I’m curious how many things I still have totally misunderstood or misimagined.

 

The money. I thought sickles, Knuts and Galleons were wacky until I realized that that was how British money used to work until fairly recently.

 

Americans do not have Christmas crackers, no. I had totally believed those were a magical thing, like chocolate frogs or whatever, up until I actually visited the UK for Christmas a few years later.

 

...well. I just learned Christmas crackers are real.