ACCOUNT OF EUFEMIA SLUGH

39, WRITER FOR THE DAILY PROPHET

The worldwide search for young Harry Potter, nine, continues after he disappeared from an unknown location in England, where he is reported to have been living. The Boy-Who-Lived’s whereabouts remain unknown. Says Nigerian Minister for Magic Uguludunga Dababi, "Nobody knows where he is right now, so he could be anywhere. We will continue the search in Nigeria so long as his location remains unknown or until he is located, in which case, he will most likely not be in Nigeria, and therefore will cease to be our problem.”

Ewing Oder, Head of the Department for the Location of Suspiciously Missing Persons at the English Ministry, revealed to the Prophet Saturday, “The Ministry are doing all they can to ensure the safe return of Mr Potter, including alerting the Muggle authorities. The Muggle Prime Minister has done everything within his power to aid us in this endeavour. There is currently a £12,000 (48,000 galleons) reward for any veritable information regarding the disappearance and current location of young Harry. Fellytision programmes now broadcast images of him, urging viewers to call a hotline, which we expect will be a great help.”

It seems the search party will be needing a great deal more aid if they hope to find the boy, who was reported missing on Monday of last week and has not been seen since.

Please owl Captoria Diggworthy of the Department for the Location of Suspiciously Missing Persons, Office Twelve B, the Ministry of Magic, London, England with any news regarding the whereabouts of Harry James Potter.

ACCOUNT OF HARRY JAMES POTTER

9, MAIN CHARACTER

Aunt Petunia says there are three sorts of people in the world, people who believe stupid things, people who do stupid things, and sensible people who never do anything out of the ordinary and live happy, normal lives forever and ever. Hermione does not believe stupid things.

I start from the very beginning for her, from the odd case of Aunt Petunia and the Shopping Day to the snake in my cupboard and sneaking onto the trains, to sleeping in the Tesco and meeting her, and finally to the man that tried to steal me away when I did my superpowers and appeared in her car. She listens to everything and is very quiet, which must be weird for her, cos I have the feeling she likes to do most of the talking usually. Now it comes to the tricky part. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon don’t like abnormal things like superheroes or magic. I don’t know anything about others sorts of people, besides Mrs Figg, who has cats and chocolate cake and never thinks about anything but flea baths and wet or dry cat food. So, I don’t know how Hermione will take this. I don’t know if she’ll want to be my best friend anymore when she finds out how dangerous and abnormal being a superhero is.

“Well?” says Hermione, because she knows I’m not finished yet, but I’m taking a very long time thinking and not so long talking.

“Well,” I start, feeling sort of stupid and hot in my face, “I’ve been thinking about it all since I left.”

“How sensible of you,” says Hermione.

“And, I’ve decided that everything adds up to one thing – “ I take a deep, deep breath. Here goes. “I’ve decided that I must be a superhero, like Superman. Superheroes are the only ones who could do cool stuff like turning hair blue and appearing in places, aren’t they?”

“No,” says Hermione, and for a minute I think maybe she is going to call me a freak, but she doesn’t. Instead she says very slowly, like she’s thinking hard about it, “there are loads of people who can do funny things, and they aren’t superheroes. Wizards and witches, for one. They can do magic.”

“But I haven’t got a wand or a big walking stick or anything.”

Hermione has the lemon lips like Aunt Petunia, but they don’t look so nasty on her, because her lemon lips are from thinking about difficult things like maths problems and French vocabulary instead of the nasty things she would like to call me or exactly what Uncle Vernon is going to do to me when he comes home.

“That’s true,” she says. “But you can’t be a superhero, because they don’t exist.”

“Neither does magic,” I tell her, and she looks a bit sad and a bit angry at the same time. Hermione doesn’t like it when people say she’s wrong.

“How would you know? Anyways, if you’re a superhero I must be, too, because I do funny things all the time just like you do.”

Girls don’t know anything about superheroes.

“Like what?”

“Like…” she thinks, then some more, and more, until finally she smiles a big smile full of horse teeth and says happily, “Like sometimes if my pencil is losing its point in the middle of an exam and I don’t want to leave my seat to sharpen it, it sharpens itself. And once we had to play rounders in PE, and I’m not very good at rounders, and Kitty Kettelson threw the ball the wrong way, but somehow I hit it anyways (I never hit the ball), and everyone was really, really surprised. And one time at Christmas I dropped my mum’s gift down the stairs and it didn’t break or chip or anything. It was a porcelain vase. Porcelain always breaks when you drop it down the stairs.”

Now I don’t know what to think. Whenever something funny happens like this in Dudley’s cartoons they call it dest-i-knee. Maybe meeting Hermione is that, dest-i-knee. Maybe I’m s’posed to go to France with her and her parents, and she’s s’posed to know about me being a superhero, because she’s my sidekick.

“What about your parents?” asks Hermione, all of a sudden. “Do they know about it all?”

I never talk about my mum and dad to anyone. It’s difficult to say things about people you can’t remember, especially when the only things you know about them are what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia tell you. Mum met my dad in school, they were married, they were drunk, they had me, they were drunk, they had no jobs, they were drunk, they kept a dirty house and never bathed me or changed my nappies, they were drunk, they went driving with me one night, they were drunk, they were drunk, they were drunk – they died.

It’s easier if I make stories about them in my head. “I imagine they’d be proud of me,” I tell her. “They’re probably from another planet. All superheroes come from outer space. I ‘spect they sent me here on a moon rock or something, or in a comet like Superman.”

“But, then, who do you live with?”

It’s getting trickier and trickier not to tell Hermione too much. She’s very nose like that.

“Aunt, uncle, cousin. They found me on the doorstep and took me inside and gave me my cupboard to sleep in. But they’re not my real aunt and uncle. They don’t look anything like me, and they never tell me anything about my parents. They haven’t even got a photo.”

“It’s very suspicious,” Hermione agrees, “and we ought to do some investigation. We’ll test your powers, but later. My mum’s got sandwiches for lunch. Do you want me to bring you one? She brought an extra.”

I don’t bloody want someone else’s mum’s sodding sandwiches, and I tell that to Hermione, who gets the lemon lips again.

“Fine,” she says, and walks away.

Now that I’m alone I can think about things to myself, like why anyone ever left me on the step at number four, and who the guy was that tried to take me in London.

Put me on the deck, says a voice in my pocket. I would like to bask in the sunlight.

I’d nearly forgot about my snake! I put him on the deck next to my feet and he sighs a happy little sigh with his tongue flicking out and his snake eyes closed.

You are not a very friendly boy, he tells me.

“How come?”

You do not have very many friends.

My snake is quiet after that, so I don’t say anything else, even if I am confused. The ferry is rocking a bit, which makes my stomach queasy, and now I’m pleased I didn’t have any of Hermione’s mum’s sandwiches.

Sometimes I have angry thoughts and dream about a funny man coming to take me away forever to be my dad and locking the Dursleys in the cupboard, and I wish my parents had never left me on the front step at number four. I wish maybe they had kept me with them on the moon, or the alien planet, or wherever it is we came from. I wonder why they left me with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, who are nice only to Dudley and never to me, except the one time when Aunt Petunia took me shopping. Did they know I was going to sleep in a cupboard and never eat as much as I’d like to? Uncle Vernon calls it “character building”, but the only characters I know are the ones in cartoons, and I haven’t built any of those yet.

Why did my parents leave me alone on Earth to be a superhero, when nobody ever needs superheroes anyways? Nothing ever happens like in Superman, where bridges are always breaking over massive waterfalls and bad guys use radioactive marmalade and massive rubber band balls to take over the world.

Sometimes I say nasty things to people who are only trying to be nice to me, like Hermione and her mum’s sandwiches. Aunt Marge always says “breeding will out” when they tell her about this, and Uncle Vernon says it’s a sure sign that no matter how much they try to make me a normal little boy like my cousin Dudley, it’s just in my blood to be bad.

If I was any other boy maybe I could say sorry to Hermione for being a git about the sandwiches. We could laugh after that and be best friends again. I never apologise when I say nasty things, even if I want to. I can’t. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place, anyways; yesterday’s lunch is gone, my stomach hurts, and roast beef is my favourite. Aunt Petunia hardly never lets me have any.

I can’t say sorry no matter how hard I try, so I go instead to the toilets and drink from the sink taps. The water here tastes like grass and Dudley’s PE socks (after he’s used them), and outside I walk by at least fifty people having lunch, mostly sandwiches, which makes me angry. I can see Hermione’s curly hair and the big horse teeth biting into a massive sandwich and it puts a feeling in my stomach like too hot soup and milk that’s gone sour.

I’ve decided I’m not talking to Hermione anymore, sidekick or not. I can’t because I will never say sorry for being nasty to her about the sandwiches, and she won’t want to be best mates with a horrible little boy like me, anyways. The more I think about it the more angry and horrible I am. I make heavy, clompy steps into the deck and pull faces at people like I’ve seen Dudley do hundreds of times until finally nobody wants to come near me anymore and I’m left with my snake in a private corner at the front of the ferry where no one else wants to be.

The other kids are playing footy on the deck.

I don’t care; they wouldn’t want me to play with them anyways. No one ever does.

Someone else brings out a video game, and his little brothers cheer him.

I count the scales on my snake, until they become too small and blend together in the sunlight.

Hermione’s head bounces up, down, up down through the benches and on the deck.

I think I’m going to have to pee soon.

Cheerful, hums the snake.

“Piss off,” I tell him, and it makes me shiver. It’s fun to say the bad words when there’s no Aunt Petunia round to wallop you with her spatula.

Humph.

We don’t say much of anything after that. My snake, I think, is cross with me for being so mean, and I’m too hungry to think about anything but the sandwiches I could have had, if only I hadn’t opened my fat mouth and ruined everything. Maybe if I just go back and look very sorry, without saying anything, Hermione will think I’ve apologised and let me have what they’ve not eaten. It’s worth trying, anyways, and is not really anything like begging at all, if we’re still best mates. You’re allowed to share food with your best mates, without it being charity.

So, I take my snake, him humphing and squirming in my hand, because he moves too much to fit into my pocket, and I don’t trust him not to try and bite me in there. Hermione is sitting by herself on the bench behind her parents, curly great hair falling all over her face while she’s bent up over a thick book. When I move closer, I notice the pages aren’t turning, her eyes aren’t moving, and the typing is splotchy and wet and difficult to read. She’s been crying. I wonder what for.

“Hermione.” My very best sorry face is crumply and pink, my eyes squinched up a bit and my eyebrows pulled down like caterpillars. When she looks up at me, Hermione has got a crumply pink face as well; only her eyes are full of water and look like they have been for a very long time.

She frowns and looks away, wiping them like she’s trying to hide that she’s been crying from me. It’s a silly thing to do, as I’ve already seen them and know what she’s been doing this whole time I was away. “I thought you’d left me,” she says, very quietly. “Thought you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

I’ve never seen anyone cry just because of me before. Sometimes Dudley pretends to so that Uncle Vernon will feel sorry for him and give me a proper thrashing for upsetting him, but even that’s just pretend and has nothing to do with being friends at all. Hermione cries like she’s just lost her pet cat or her mum, which is weird and scary and gives me a sicky sort of feeling in my stomach, becauseI’ve done it.

“I went back to find you after lunch, but you were gone,” she sobs and looks at her book, then closes it, opens it again, and pushes it off of her lap like a bad kitten. “I looked, and looked, but you weren’t anywhere. I even saved you a sandwich, in case you changed your mind, but mum made me bin it when I couldn’t find you. Oh – you’re such an awful, horrible – ” standing, she pushes me hard in my chest “ – nasty, cruel – ” and then again “ –horrible git. I can’t stand you!”

“Hermione – ”

“I only offer you sandwiches, and snap at me, and then I even come back, because I know you’re a boy, and boy’s don’t like being best friends with girls, and I thought maybe you just felt a bit stupid at first and you needed a second chance, and you’re alone and probably haven’t got any idea about anything in France, and maybe you’d felt a bit stupid about that as well, but – oh! You just make me so angry, I could just – ”

“But, Hermione – ”

“And then you were hiding from me, because you’re such a – ”

“I’m sorry!”

It comes out before I can stop it, loud and screechy and in someone’s voice that is not mine. Too small to be me, too sorry. I’m never sorry. Not usually.

Hermione stops, her eyes narrowed while my cheeks turn pink and hot. “What did you say?”

“I’m, er, sorry?” I say again, only this time much quieter. One time was enough for the whole world to hear it. “I’m sorry I left you and said I didn’t want your mum’s sandwiches, and I’m sorry you cried about it. I’m sorry we spent all that time not being mates, instead of investigating my superpowers. I’m – just – sorry, OK?”

“OK,” she answers, all too quickly. “But if you ever do anything like that again I’m going to just leave you where you are and never come back. You’re only even here because I put you in my suitcase, anyways.”

“I know, I know, Hermione, you’re a genius.” She smiles a bit at this. “But your suitcase smells like old plastic.”

Whatever happens after this is not really worth taking the time to write down. We don’t make any discoveries about my superpowers, but I do introduce Hermione to the snake, and she thinks he ought to have a name. We call him Walrus, because of Hermione’s book, and Walrus the Snake agrees that his new name sounds very intimating, or whatever the word is. We decide that we are all very tired and ought to probably wait to test the superpowers until we’re not on a ferry anymore, which is fine with me.

“Marcus,” whispers Hermione. We are sat together between the benches, Hermione playing with her big hair and me with Walrus. For a minute I forget that my name is supposed to be Marcus.

“Oh – what?”

“Well – “ She makes those stally noises Uncle Vernon makes when he doesn’t want to tell Aunt Petunia that he hasn’t had the car washed yet. “If you wanted, I mean, if you’ve nowhere else, you can always come back to my house after France. Mum and dad wanted me to have a brother, anyways.”

I don’t know if I could ever be someone’s brother. Superman never had any sisters, just a Lois Lane and plenty of bad guys to fill up the cartoons with. Would I even make a very good brother? Somehow I don’t really think so, but Hermione looks hopeful, so I just say back quietly, “Yeah….”

Hermione’s grin is like a sun, or a horse’s mouth, as she takes my hand and holds it tightly. “Marcus?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to have to go back into my suitcase before we reach shore.”