On the bluffs above the Glenfinnan monument, the railroad crosses over the river Finnan in a wide arc. A young boy, his mother standing patiently beside him waves his Harry Potter figures over his head toward the viaduct. He had come pay homage to a place that evoked for him an unassailable, magical illusion. On the opposite side of the bluff you can see Loch Shiel opening out to the sea, and before it the monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie rising out of the flats. It marks the place where another magical illusion began some 250 years ago.