Somebody bangs on my door and a loud voice says, ‘Get up, boy!’

They say that every morning, and I have to listen to them or they'll shout at me again until I do.

‘I’m awake, Aunt Petunia.’

‘Get up, so you can fix breakfast!’

‘Yes, Aunt Petunia.’ I hear her walk away. I'm thinking to myself that it's good she didn't stay this morning, because I've still got Dudley's new book and I don't want her to see it. I'll get into trouble for stealing, and I'm too hungry to do that. I'm always getting in trouble here. Aunt Marge says I'm a bad boy like my mum and dad were bad people. I think she must be a little right, because I've never heard of good boys living in the cupboard under the stairs.

‘Hurry up, boy!’ Uncle Vernon cals from the kitchen. He doesn’t like to wait for things.

‘Yes, Uncle Vernon.’ I open the door of the cupboard that’s been my room for eight years and climbed out. Uncle Vernon says the cupboard is good for me. Bad boys go into the cupboard, he tells me, and they come out model citisens. I want to know how long it will take for me to be a model citisen; I hate the cupboard. It's always dark and smelly in there, and I'm always hungry and have to use the toilet. Dudley laughs at me when I run to the loo in the morning, but I can't stop to notice him. I'll wet myself if I do. Uncle Vernon would be furious then.

‘About time.’ He grumbles at me. His big moustache moves up and down when he talks to me. If I were any other boy, I could laugh at that moustache. I could laugh really loudly and not have to worry about cupboards and angry uncles. But, I'm Harry Potter. When you're Harry Potter, you can never laugh at things like Uncle Vernon's big moustache moving when he talks. You're lucky if you ever get to laugh at all.

‘Sorry, Uncle Vernon.’ I walk over to the cooker and start it up. The eggs are already on the table and the bacon in the pan is crackling and making lovely smells. My stomach grumbles as I stand there watching the bacon cook in the frying pan, smelling it. I know that when it's on the table, Dudley will take everything before I'm allowed my own food, and i will never get to taste the bacon. Maybe they won't notice if I take a little bit.

It's good that I nicked the bacon when I did, because the next minute it's done and I'm serving it to my family and they're eating like they've been starving for years like I have. I know I'll never get any now.

‘I’m making a big sale today, Petunia. Indian man, Mr. Sadi-something or other is buying for his company. Some building company. Been one of the most difficult sales, couldn’t understand a damn thing the man said! Big sale today...’ Aunt Petunia just purses her lips. She’s always doing that, like she’s sucking on a lemon or something.

‘I need money for a trip.’ Dudley says loudly. This is always how it is in the morning. I make breakfast, Uncle Vernon talks, I stand against the wall, Aunt Petunia makes her lemon-sucking face, and Dudley asks for money.

‘Where to?’ Uncle Vernon askes between bits of bacon.

‘The London Zoo.’

As soon as I say it, I wish I haven't. I'm not supposed to talk to them unless they tell me to, and no one's told me to say anything about the zoo trip. They had passed the permission slips for the trip out at school a few days ago and today was the last day to turn them in. I know I'll be the only boy without my paper and money. They'll all laugh at me like they always do, and I'll have to stay in the classroom all day making drawings. I don't really want to go to the zoo, anyway. I don't need to pay to see animals when I can just watch Dudley and Uncle Vernon eat their breakfast.

‘Did I ask you to speak, boy?’ Uncle Vernon's moustache is moving again. I can't laugh. Don't laugh, Harry. Don't even smile. He's angry. You can't laugh when he's angry.

‘N-no, sir.’

‘Then why are you speaking?’

‘Dunno, sir.'

‘How much do you need?’ Aunt Petunia asks quickly. She never likes to see Uncle Vernon angry.

‘I dunno. Ten–twenty quid ought to cover it.’

Ten or twenty pounds? The trip is only five and lunch only costs about two. I wonder what I could buy with twenty pounds. I could get all the fish and chips I wanted, enough crisps to stuff a pillowcase, and pounds of sweets. Enough to make all my teeth rot out and put as much fat on me as Dudley's got on him. I could buy myself anything I wanted---anything at all---With enough left over to go to the zoo twice and take a bus back home.

They finish breakfast and Dudley goes off to get his school stuff while I clean up their mess. If I had twenty pounds I could make someone else do it, and then I wouldn't have to work. All I ever do here is work, work, work. When I was little, about six, I used to think maybe someone would come and take me away forever. I'd like that. I shouldn't be with the Dursleys and their cupboards and trips to London that cost twenty pounds. If I had a nice uncle, he could take me to London any time I wanted to go, and we would go to better places than the zoo.

‘G’bye, mum.’ Aunt Petunia kisses Dudley all over his face. I'm glad I don't have those lemon lips pushing against my face. Dudley doesn't like it either. He pulls away and runs for the door. Well, he can't actually run. He sort of walks like a duck.

‘Goodbye, Duddykins!’

Bye Diddykins!

It's cold out today. My t-shirt has enough room for me to pull my arms into it, which is what I do. Happy Birthday, Harry. I'm so cold I don't even notice that I'm talking to myself. How are you today? It is your birthday. Nine? That's an awfully big number. I'll nick you some of Dudley's Turkish Delight tonight for your birthday. You are nine, after all.

Maybe I'll get lucky and the zoo trip will be cancelled. No one can laugh at me for not having the paper and money then.

‘Good morning, children.’ Mrs. Henley smiles at us all and pulls out a sheet of paper to take roll.

‘Pssssst!’ Someone is kicking my chair, hard.

‘Sarah Adams?’

‘Potter!’

‘Liam Muggrer?’

‘Pssssst! Potter!’ Dudley’s friend–Piers Polkiss--pokes me in the back.

‘Harry Potter?’

‘Here!’ I say, a little too loudly. Uncle Vernon would have shouted at me.

‘Harry!’ Piers gives my hair a good tug and a few other kids laugh. I want to ignore them like the teachers always say we should. The boys in my class are always taking the mickey out of me, and the girls say things about my clothes when they know I'm listening. They don't understand that I don't have twenty pounds for new clothes and lunch and trips to the zoo. They don't understand that I'm here for the summer because Dudley got bad marks and Aunt Petunia said she didn't think it was fair if he went alone. If I could, I would just take my A-Levels now and be done with school for the rest of my life.

‘What?’ He smiles.

‘I'm not going to the zoo either, and I'll—’

‘Is there a problem?’ Mrs. Henley is standing by my desk with her arms crossed over chest. I shake my head because I can't think of anything else to do, my eyes as wide as footballs.

‘No.’ Mrs. Henley is nice, but she still makes me nervous.

‘Turn around, Harry.’

I turn around as quickly as I can. I like Mrs. Henley. I don't want to be in trouble with her. She could send me back to the third class like they tried to do to Dudley. I'd be laughed at even more in the third class, even if Dudley wouldn't always be there.

‘Harry got in trouble!’

Soon, everyone is laughing about how I've gotten in trouble when Piers didn't. Something inside of me feels funny. I'm afraid I'll do something odd again and Uncle Vernon will lock me in the cupboard for another week. I hope I'm just hungry.

‘That’s enough.’ says Mrs. Henley and finishes making sure everyone is here. They'll be leaving after lunch, and I'll have the class al to myself. Just me and Piers and little Mr. Benson from down the hall. He never lets people laugh at me.

My lunch is a peanut butter sandwich and a crushed pack of crisps. It looks like Dudley's been in my crisps, but that doesn't matter. I'm hungry. Just looking at everyone else makes me feel like my stomach is as big as the whole car park at the shopping centre Aunt Petunia goes to. They have their sandwiches in little bags with cartoon charactres on them and chocolate milk with colourful straws. If I get thirsty, I can go to the water fountain by the boys’ lavatory.

Piers shoves chocolate biscuits into his mouth and grins at me. Alison is easting the sweets her mum packed her, and Liam Muggrer has chips that he eats very slowly, because that’s all he has. Aunt Petunia talks about the Muggrers sometimes. She says Liam’s dad is a slob and a horrible man and his mum isn’t any better. He’s the only other boy that drinks from the water fountain by the lavatory, and he tries not to laugh at me like the rest. The only reason he doesn’t get made fun of is because of me.

‘Harry?’ I feel a hand on my shoulder and jump at least a metre. I don’t like it when people touch me, especially if I don’t know they’re going to touch me. A lady hugged me once in the sweet shop. I never knew why, but I didn’t like her doing it. She didn’t tell me she was going to hug me.

‘Harry?’ It’s Mrs. Henley.

‘Yes?’

‘Harry, are you all right?’ Mrs. Henley bends down so she is my height. ‘Is there something wrong?’

I shake my head. I’m fine. Just watching the food.

‘Are you certain? There’s nothing you’d like to tell me?’ I shake my head again. Mrs. Henley is the nicest person ever, but I could never tell her anything. She won’t understand.

‘No, thank you. I’m alright.’ She doesn’t look like she believes me. She should. ‘Really.’

‘Alright. If there’s nothing...’

‘There isn’t,’ I say in the same kind of voice Uncle Vernon does when his business people want to pay less money to him.

‘You know you can always talk to me.’

And she leaves me sitting there, staring after her and wondering if she knows. I’d be in the cupboard for ages if Uncle Vernon thinks I’ve been telling people that I’m hungry and cold.

x x x

‘Boy! Is that you?’ The hoovering stops and the door to the cupboard under the stairs flies open. I’m packing my clothes to go and visit Aunt Marge. I don’t want to go. She isn’t my real aunt, but they make me call her that. She doesn’t like me anyway.

‘Yes?’

‘Hurry up. We’re leaving in ten minutes.’ She closes the door again, leaving me to my dark room. I’m done packing, so I don’t need the light anyway, but it was nice to have.

‘Yes, Aunt Petunia.’ My bag from school has two shirts, some pants, trousers, and an extra pair of socks that used to be Dudley’s. All of my stuff was Dudley’s once, except the underpants. Those are mine.

My cupboard opens again and Dudley is there, smiling like a fat pig with blond hair stuck to his head.

‘You didn’t wait for me after school.’

I don’t care if I was supposed to wait for him. If I had, he would have chased me all the way home or beaten me up with his mates. I’m pleased with myself for making it all the way to my cupboard without Dudley catching me.

‘I didn’t know you needed help finding the way home, Dudley. Sorry about that.’

His face is screwed up as he tries to work out what I’ve said. It will take ages for him to grow a brain, and I’m not waiting. The door slams right in his face. I can see his eyes wide. I’ve never done that before.

‘I’ll get you back really badly for that. Just you wait.’ He’s gone and I’m alone again. Alone is the only way to live properly with the Dursleys. I’d be going spare if I had to spend every minute with them.

‘Where’s the boy?’ I hear Uncle Vernon ask. A minute later and I’m standing with them in the hall. Dudley’s already gotten himself an iced lolly for the trip.

‘Just like him to keep us waiting.’ Aunt Petunia grumbles. She has her lemon face on again.

‘Really Petunia! They’re always promising this and that and then doing something completely different...’ Uncle Vernon thinks politicians are the most horrible, dirty, disgusting liars in the world. Yesterday he thought I was the most horrible, dirty, disgusting liar in the whole world. I don’t know who politicians are, but I don’t feel sorry for them. They’re lucky they don’t have to live with Uncle Vernon, whoever they are.

‘Mummy, Harry’s talking up all the seat space!’ Dudley whinges, slamming his fist into his window. I would have been tossed into a ditch---cold and dead---if I did anything like that. Dudley always gets to do more than me. I don’t mind so much, as long as he lets me alone.

‘Move, boy.’ Uncle Vernon doesn’t even look at me, but Aunt Petunia does. Her nose is wrinkled up and she bites her lips like she wants to say something.

‘I still don’t have enough room!’

I’m not moving any more than I have. Dudley’s bigger, but I’m worth ten of him. That’s what Mrs. Henley is always saying. When you’re worth ten of someone, you never have to move over for them in the car.

‘Move over, boy!’

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to move a bit. Uncle Vernon can’t reach me if I’m flat against the window.

‘Daddy, I want to listen to music!’ I want to listen as well, but I won’t say that. Aunt Petunia puts on Dudley’s new CD and we listen to the songs about Noah’s Ark and sharing and little trains that climb mountains. Dudley whinges that he hates this music, but Aunt Petunia won’t let him turn on the radio.

‘Horrible, nasty thing,’ she says. I don’t mind the music, even if it is for stupid babies. Dudley doesn’t like it, which means it’s perfect.

‘Vernon! Petunia! You’re here!’

And there she is, Aunt Marge–all five hundred pounds of her. Maybe not five hundred, but she is big. Bigger than Uncle Vernon, even.

‘Dudley, you’ve grown!’

People are always saying that to Dudley. It’s true he’s taller than I am, but he hasn’t grown in ages, except sideways. He’ll be as big as Aunt Marge one day if he’s not careful.

‘Marge, how have you been keeping?’ Uncle Vernon steps forward. He always acts funny around Aunt Marge. He complains more and he talks like the sales clerks in the shops I go to with Aunt Petunia.

‘Wonderfully. Wonderfully, Vernon. Come, come inside.’

I’m following them slowly. If I’m not careful, Ripper might come out. He can smell me from Aunt Marge’s house, and he comes running as soon as I’m near enough. I’m afraid he’ll bite my leg again like last time. Uncle Vernon keeps calling me to come back and get his trunk, but he knows I can’t. I have to run or Ripper will tear my leg into tiny pieces and eat it for his teatime snack.

It’s a race between us, me and Ripper. I’m winning right now, but not for long. He’s at my heels, biting and snapping and spitting all over Dudley’s old trousers. I’m thankful for one that my clothes are a thousand times to big for me. Ripper’s teeth don’t hurt nearly as much when he bites my arm. Not until he lets go, and then the fire starts to burn in my skin and I can’t get rid of it. I scratch and slap and spit on it, but the fire is burning and it won’t stop.

‘COME HERE, BOY!’ Uncle Vernon will know what to do, even if he won’t do it. Aunt Petunia won’t let me stay like this. She’ll wrap it in plasters and give me some soap to wash away the dog drool. ‘Get my suitcase.’

‘Yes, Uncle Vernon.’

I bite my lip because they aren’t going to help me. Even Aunt Petunia just looks at my arm and tells me I’ll live.

‘Go on to the toilet, then,’ she snaps at me. As soon as I get everyone’s stuff inside, I do. There’s no time to think about it or have a good look. I just splash on a bit of water and soap and squeeze my eyes again the burn. Behind me, Aunt Marge has a tiny statue of a dog with angel’s wings. I swear to every superhero on Earth that it’s smiling at me.

At school they tell you be good. That’s all it ever is. Be a good boy and follow the rules and never ever say you hate someone. Only bad people hate.

At home they tell you how bad you are. Your mum was bad and so was your dad, and you’re as bad as it gets. Bad people hate.

I hate Aunt Marge.

I hate the way her fat jiggles when she hugs Dudley, and how she looks at me. I hate her dogs for being nasty and biting. I want to drown her dogs, but only after I’ve made them bite her. Hard.

‘Come out, boy,’ says Uncle Vernon. I push the dog – the one on the toilet – and watch it fall. It cracks, breaks into a million tiny pieces, Uncle Vernon telling me to hurry up outside. He hasn’t got all day, you know. The dog with the angel’s wings isn’t smiling no more. A pile of broken glass on the floor can’t smile.

‘What’s taking the boy so long? I haven’t got all day, you know.’

‘Damned if I know – Boy, hurry up!’

They pound at the door, but I’ve got to bin the broken angel-dog before I can come out. There is no rubbish bin, so I toss everything into the toilet and flush. It makes an awful noise – nails on a chalkboard – but the lot of it is down the drain.

Next minute, Uncle Vernon’s got my arm, and we’re going to the car again. This time there is no dog, but even a dog is better than being squished into the car door by Aunt Petunia and Dudley. Aunt Petunia says, ‘wipe that nasty smirk off your face, boy. I’ll not have you making faces all night, or you can stay back here.’

Aunt Marge don’t want me staying in her house alone. ‘God knows what a rotten boy like that would do if left to his own devices. No – no, I wouldn’t trust him with my dogs.’ She spits when she talks, and it flies all over Uncle Vernon’s windshield. I’m a rotten boy, I think, and it makes me smile. Rotten boys can hate rotten aunts all they want to.

o o o

Sometimes I think maybe I’m a film star. Like Tom Cruise or something. Aunt Petunia thinks he’s dashing. She reads about him in magazines and tells Uncle Vernon all about weddings and relationship scandals and all sorts of words I don’t understand. I think I am a film star because film stars are always having problems. Like, the one man’s girlfriend is sleeping with the man in this film she’s in, and then they have a divorce and all the magazines write things about it. I don’t see what’s so bad about going to sleep with someone, but maybe you’re only allowed to sleep with your husband when you’re married.

The people in films have always got a big adventure, and the really good characters – the ones the film is usually about – are always complaining because they’re got no friends, or their stepfather is drunk, or they’re orphans. If I was a film star, all my problems would be a story, and at the end I would be happy and always have the pretty girlfriend.

Film stars always get special attention when they go places. It’s in all Aunt Petunia’s magazines. We go to a hamburger bar, and I’m pretending to be a film star. All the people turn around to look at me.

See that boy?

The one with the black hair, and the glasses?

Yeah – that’s him.

Looks familiar, don’t he?

Course he do. He’s a film star, ain’t he?

Must be nice to be a film star.

Oh, yeah. I’m sure it is.

I pretend cameras are all following me – snapping photographs and film for the news and the magazines. All the kids at school will see me tonight on the BBC. Famous film star eats at hamburger bar. Full story at eight.

When you’re a film star, everyone likes you. You’ve always got the best clothes and cars and toys and everything. Nobody ever wants to beat you up, or take the mick out of you because you’ve got too-big clothes and sellotaped classes. Everyone thinks you are ace. People read about you in magazines and want to be you, and you get to be happy forever. Like a king.

Only, it don’t work that way. Uncle Vernon tells the lady to bring me a hamburger and water. She never even looks at my chair. I’m just Harry Potter, and Harry Potter is the biggest nobody what ever lived, full stop.

My hamburger is good, but now Dudley wants my chips as he’s eaten all his. Aunt Marge smiles, growing boys need food, you know. Uncle Vernon gives Dudley my chips, tells me drink my water if I’m so hungry, and goes off to the toilet. I don’t want water, but I’ll drink it. I didn’t need chips anyway. Who needs chips when they’ve got half a bit of tomato and a full glass of water? Not me.

‘Never seen a finer lad, Petunia,’ booms Aunt Marge as Dudley stuffs his face with cake. She slaps the table, and everything shakes like an earthquake. I promise that one day, when I’m rich and famous, I’ll come back here to the hamburger bar and buy six hamburgers. I’ll give four to the kids in London that Aunt Petunia complains about. Then I’ll eat the other two, drink a fountain of Coca Cola, and watch a football match on the TV. Leeds will be playing, and for once, they’re going to win.

We go back to Aunt Marge’s house, Dudley and Aunt Petunia squeezing me in the centre of the back seat. Uncle Vernon burps and Aunt Marge tells him about a wonderful bottle of sherry she’s just been given by Colonel Fubster, and would he like some? He says he does. I think I will go right upstairs when we get back.

My room at Aunt Marge’s house is the attic. It’s bigger than my cupboard back home, and Uncle Vernon tells me don’t be getting any big ideas, boy. I’m still only the boy, even if the attic is massive with windows and light bulbs and boxes of clothes. There’s a birdcage in there that used to have budgies in it, but they died when Dudley opened the door and put Ripper in with them. He locked me in there once and now the cage grins at me.

Coming in, Harry?

‘No,’ I tell it. ‘I’m too big for cages, anyway. Nine now, didn’t you know?’

Nine is big. Dudley got twenty-six presents for his ninth birthday. I didn’t get nothing, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t need new socks or a toothpick, anyway.

All my stuff is in a box on the floor, and I am sat on the edge of the bed. I haven’t got any idea what I’m supposed to do now. Should I sleep, or maybe someone will call? I haven’t got to listen to them, as they’re all too fat to climb up the staircase to the attic.

Ssssleep … Sssserpent child.

‘Who’s there?’

I must be going barmy. Uncle Vernon would have locked me in my cupboard for being stupid. Voices don’t come from nowhere, and nobody else is the attic. Besides, I don’t even know a serpent child. I think my head is clogged up from dinner, or something. Maybe hamburgers have got nasty side effects on people when you eat them sitting next to Dudley.

‘PETUNIA, FETCH THE BOY! PETUNIA!’

‘VERNON, WHAT’S – OH, MY, DUDDERS!’

‘NO TIME, PETUNIA. FETCH THE DO – BOY!

‘BOY! BOY! I KNOW YOU HEAR ME; COME DOWN THIS INSTANT!’

I’m the only boy in this house. Aunt Petunia is still shouting herself hoarse downstairs, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got my bag on my back and I’m downstairs before she gets the chance to shout again.

‘About time,’ says Aunt Petunia; she pulls me by my shirt until we reach the car. Dudley is in the back, holding his stomach and moaning. He’s bright green, and his ears have gone biggish and floppy. Maybe hamburgers have got nasty side effects when you are Dudley, I think, and have to bite my lips to stop myself smiling.

‘Ow-ow, mummyyyyyy.’

This time, Dudley really is not faking it. He squeezes his eyes together and fat tears fall onto his cheeks. I’m tired, and I don’t care if Dudley turns blue and dies. I want to sleep.

-

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Well, wake him up.’

‘Boy! Boy, get up! Up!’

‘I’ll get up when I bloody well want.’

I heard a fifth year say that once, “when I bloody well want”. I think it sounds well hard, with the whole bloody bit and everything. Aunt Petunia doesn’t think so.

‘What did you say to me?’

Aunt Petunia does not like my attitude. She tells me that a lot, actually. I really am a rotten boy with a nasty attitude. My mouth is filthy as well.

I reckon if my mouth is so awful, it really don’t make much of a difference when I say, ‘Bugger off, you old hag.’

She hits hard, my Aunt Petunia does. Smacks me on my mouth for the things I say, and on my cheek for being such a rotten boy, and my arms and my legs and everything else until I am sitting up straight and promising to be a good boy.

We’re at the hospital. It says on a big sign “Hospital” with a red cross and loads of people running around. I don’t get to stay and watch the people and the ambulances flashing their lights. Dudley’s inside having himself checked in, as his ears have grown to about a foot by now and his face it brilliantly pink. It’s not temper tantrum pink, or crying pink, or any sort of pink I’ve ever seen on a face before. Dudley’s face is bright, girly pink. It’s changing colours, too. Red like a traffic light, green, blue, yellow. The lady checking in says she’s never seen anything like it, and Dudley gets taken back right away.

I’m to sit in the waiting room, and don’t move if I value my life. Everyone else is back with Dudley and his two metre ears. They all think it’s very funny, even if Uncle Vernon says it’s serious and freaky and needs to be taken care of right away. Who ever heard of a boy with a rainbow face that changed colour like a traffic light and made his ears grow so long they could touch the floor? The nurse laughed all the way to the back, and Aunt Petunia had that look on her face.

‘Hullo.’

The only empty seat is next to a woman who looks like Aunt Marge. She looks sort of nice, though. Bit sad and droopy, like an old dog Aunt Marge drowned once, but nice enough.

‘Hullo,’ she says back. I giver her my best film star smile, the one that makes Aunt Petunia slap me round the head with her magazines.

‘I’ll have that seat, if you don’t mind.’

She smiles back at me, so I sit.

We don’t talk, me and the Aunt Marge-ish lady. She watches the television and I watch the two boys playing cars on the train table. After a while, when my bum has gone a bit numb, she gets up and leaves. I don’t think she’ll be coming back, by the way she’s crying, so I giver her seat to a blonde lady with nice eyes.

‘Hullo,’ I say. She smiles at me.

‘Hullo. I’m Jo.’

Matthew Evans from a few blocks away says when a girl gives you her name it means she thinks you’re well fit. Matthew Evans knows a lot of things about girls, as he’s got a girfriend in the sixth year, and they’re going to be married after they’ve done A-Levels.

‘I’m Harry,’ I tell her, not half shy. She keeps smiling, so I reckon I might as well ask her and get it over with. ‘Do you think I’m well fit?’

I don’t think girls are supposed to laugh when you ask them that, but that’s what Jo does, so maybe they do sometimes.

Fixing her hair, she says, ‘You’re a very handsome boy.’

I dunno what’s better – handsome or fit. Older kids say “he’s well fit, isn’t he Mary?” and “Ben’s bird is fit, don’t you think?” Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia say Dudley is a very handsome boy all the time, but never me, so I tell Jo, ‘I’m not handsome, you know.’

And she says, ‘Well, why not?’

Girls ask a lot of questions.

‘Well,’ I start, ‘Matthew Evans has got a girlfriend and he’s the only one what talks to me, as he’s in fifth year and can do whatever he bloody well likes, so he talks to me, and his girlfriend talks to me, as she’s in sixth year and thinks little kids are cute anyway, and Matthew Evan’s girlfriend – her name’s Anna, by the way – she thinks I’m fit and I’ll have girls all over me by the time I reach secondary. Anyway, my cousin Dudley is a handsome boy, according to my aunt, and he’s about as fat as anything, so I can’t be handsome cos I’m skinny as bones, or something like that.’

Jo is laughing at me now, but in a nice way, I think.

‘So, you see, I’ve got to be fit, and not handsome, or I’d be fat and stupid like Dudley.’

I wonder if I’ll ever have a girlfriend, the way Jo is laughing. She thinks I’m handsome, and that’s awful, because Dudley is handsome. Maybe Matthew Evans’s girlfriend Anna is wrong about me, because it’s been nine years, and I still haven’t had a girlfriend.

‘How old are you, Harry?’

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she is interested.

‘I’m nine; how old are you?’

She says twenty-nine, and I think that’s really, really old. Older than sixth year, and even uni. She must be out of uni by now. Wait until I tell Matthew Evans. He’ll be green.

‘We should go to the cinema.’ And one day, when I’m a famous film star, I’ll be able to say, “We should go see me in the cinema.”

Her face is laughing pink by now, and I’m afraid she’ll be a rainbow like Dudley is. I watch her ears to make sure she’s not growing them any bigger. They’re very normal, with little silver earrings hanging out of them.

‘Maybe lunch, then,’ I decide. Lunch is probably better anyway, so we could get to know each other.

‘Maybe lunch,’ Jo agrees, giggling. What is it with girls and giggling?

‘It was my ninth birthday a few days ago,’ I inform; I’m running out of things to talk about. When you’re Harry Potter you don’t do much talking. Nobody really likes me, and the ones who might are too afraid of Dudley to even say hullo.

‘That’s almost ten,’ Jo tells me. I think, I know.

‘And I can do maths and reading, and speak French a bit, and we play football in PE when Mr Tittup is in a good mood.’

Now Jo is very interested. Anna says girls love a man who can speak French, and I’ve been doing it for years in school – all the way back to nursery, when we learnt how to say hello.

‘Give us some French, then,’ she asks. She says it nicely, so I think I’ll tell her something good. If I can remember something good….

‘Well,’ I say, raising my eyebrows, ‘Pêche is pear.’

She thinks I may just be the best French-speaker in all of Surrey, maybe even all of England and well into Wales and Scotland. I’m probably not, but it’s nice for someone to say it. I always fail my French exams, especially practical, where Mrs Carson says things in French and we’ve got to answer in French. It’s very difficult.

‘Boy!’

Aunt Petunia’s come back without Uncle Vernon or Dudley. She looks between me and Jo for a minute, and I think she might be a bit jealous, as Jo is pretty with her blonde hair and lovely blue eyes, but Jo smiles, so Aunt smiles back, even though her smile is more like a painful-looking version of a frown.

‘I hope he hasn’t been a bother.’

I want to tell her to go away and let me talk to Jo alone, without her and her nosy face poking in and ruining everything, but she looks angry, so I let it be.

‘He’s wonderful,’ Jo answers. She smiles at me and I think I might be in love.

‘Yes, well…come along, then, Harry.’ Aunt Petunia doesn’t know what to say. She’d never guess anyone would say I was wonderful. Me with my messy hair and ugly scar. I don’t even get very good marks in school, and Mrs Carson says I’ll do badly on my GCSE if I don’t start using commas.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Home,’ she snaps at me.

I wave goodbye to Jo and tell her we’ll have to do lunch another time, as it’s past my bedtime and my cousin Dudley is changing colours. I don’t know if she understands, but she blows me a kiss, so I blow her own back, very shyly, and follow my aunt out past the people and a big ambulance and out to the car. We’re going back to Privet Drive, just me and her.

Uncle Vernon is always angry. Always. You've got to watch out for his temper, and that's not too difficult, because he always turns red when he's angry. His neck swells. His eyes get big. He spits a lot when he talks. Uncle Vernon likes to tell me how awful I am. I am abnormal, and nasty, and skinny. My father might as well have been a bloody gypsy, he was so awful. My mother must have been adopted from France, because everyone knows the French are just about as horrible as they come. I'm a french-gypsy, and probably Irish or Welsh as well; I'm as useless as the lot of them.

Uncle Vernon likes to shout. He likes to be big. He likes to raise his hand and pretend he is going to hit me. Uncle Vernon almost never really hits. Sometimes, if I'm horrible enough, he gives me a slap round the head - hard - that leaves my brain spinning and my eyes swimming like the roundabout at school. But, Uncle Vernon is not hard. He doesn't like to hit me. Uncle Vernon doesn't like imagination, but he loves to pretend.

Aunt Petunia does not pretend.

'Slice the cheese.'

I'm not nearly fast enough.

WAP!

She's got pots and pans. She's got a fly swatter. She's got a wicked-fast fist.

'Milk.'

This time it's the spatula that sits on top of the cooker. Right across my cheek. It's not nearly as hard as Uncle Vernon hits when he does hit me, but Aunt Petunia knows how to make it sting for ages afterwards.

'Go and watch the telly or something. Go on, out!'

Now, I know something is very, very wrong. Aunt Petunia never tells me to watch the telly. The telly is for Dursleys only. No Potters allowed. Sometimes, I sneak it. Sometimes, I watch through the cracks in my cupboard door - football matches, cartoons, the news, Dr Who. Uncle Vernon likes weather and sport. Aunt Petunia likes mushy shows about men with no shirts and women that talk like twats - Don't leave me, Butte! But, I love him! I'm carrying his child, Alec. Dudley likes the best stuff. He likes Dr Who and cartoons about funny-looking birds hitting each other with frying pans and anvils.

'Haven't I told you to get out?'

She's at it with the spatula again.

'Going, I'm going!' I hurry out, because I don't fancy another purple mark on my cheek like the one she gave me yesterday for asking if chocolate milk comes from chocolate cows. Aunt Petunia is weird when it's just me and her. There's no Dudley to eat all the bacon, or Uncle Vernon to shout or make her angry with me. It's just me and her, and when she hasn't got a spatula or a frying pan, my Aunt Petunia isn't so horribly nasty.

Yesterday we had ice cream. Chocolate chip and mint. She let me have my own bowl, and we watched Dr Who and talked about the Prime Minister until she remembered I'm only the boy and sent me to my cupboard.

The telly makes a loud noise when you turn it on - a sort of pop, and then the picture comes, and theme music plays loudly until I turn it down. It's Newsround, which is a stupid show even without the animal cartoons, but I watch it anyway. It's not all the time that Aunt Petunia, or even anyone lets me watch the telly.

I watch it through Newsround, and reruns of ChuckleVision. Has Dudley got a television in the hospital? Do they let rainbow people watch the telly at all? Maybe he's missing ChuckleVision, which is one of his favourite programmes, and maybe Uncle Vernon is having to promise him all the Mars Bars and Chomps he can swallow to make him quiet again.

I don't care about Dudley and his stupid programmes. I hope he's a rainbow forever and never comes back to Privet Drive. What happens when Uncle Vernon brings him home again? I shan't watch Newsround or ChuckleVision, or anything. Aunt Petunia shan't let me have ice cream, and I'll almost never get to stay out of my cupboard for so long without doing chores.

'What's this, hm?'

Aunt Petunia's voice scares me, because you never know when she could be creeping up on you with the fly swatter.

'Oh, not this rubbish,' she moans, handing me a pack of crisps. 'Come on, change it. I'm not having this on all day.'

'It's nearly over,' I tell her, which is true, because Newsround comes on at five, and then there's really only time for another show or two before CBBC is over.

'Change it.'

So, I do, and we end up watching a boring news report about bears attacking in the West Midlands. We are very quiet, my Aunt Petunia and me. I eat the crisps she's given me, and she eats a sandwich and neither of us talks once.

And then she looks at me. Long and hard. It's the sort of look she's got for me when I've done something wrong, and she knows it, but isn't going to say anything so that Uncle Vernon doesn't get angry. Her eyebrows shoot up like bullets, and her lips get thin. She shakes her head at me. 'You're too skinny,' says Aunt Petunia.

'I know.'

Her eyebrows go higher, and now I'm frightened they might disappear into her hair.

'The state of your clothes - it's disgusting,' she tells me.

'OK.'

She takes my emptied packet and crushes it into a ball with her fist. 'Your shoes are filthy - all holes and dirty laces.'

'They're old.'

'And I can bet they don't fit you.'

'They don't.'

She looks at me with narrow eyes, nostrils very wide. I wonder if this is a test. Am I doing OK? Is she going to lock me in the cupboard until I am twenty-five and can't even fit anymore?

'The neighbours talk,' announces Aunt Petunia. She hates neighbours talking. When neighbours talk, they talk about awful things. They say I'm a rotten boy, and that Dudley Dursley has got a temper as large as his belly, and isn't Vernon Dursley a bit loud sometimes? I've heard him shouting at that boy from outside Magnolia Crescent. They say it's such a shame, isn't it, that skinny little Potter boy having no parents and turning into quite the nasty little sprog if his aunt is anything to go by. 'They say you are a disgrace.'

'Oh.'

'I'll not have a disgrace living under my roof.'

So, she takes me shopping.

---

Shopping with Aunt Petunia is the very worst kind of shopping there is. Aunt Petunia does not like crowds, lines, rude clerks, shoes with lights, striped socks, or patched jeans. She sniffs at the lady with loads of crying babies and whinges that the clerks are too slow. She's got a strict schedule, you know.

'Try these on, boy.'

This can't be me. I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming. No one ever buys me things. No one tells me to try on the red trainers - no, the blue, no, green. No one fits me for jeans, or matches t-shirts to my eyes, or buys socks just because I need them. No one ever takes me for a new jacket, two jumpers, new jeans, three t-shirts, socks, trainers, haircuts, ice cream, schoolbags, lunch-boxes, pants that have got Batman on them. The shops are closing by the time we finish, and she drives us home again, me sitting in the back between shopping bags full of stuff she's bought for me.

Aunt Petunia asks me about school. Do I like maths? How am I getting on with reading? Have I got any friends? I tell her lies to make her happy, and she smiles with tight lips and wide nostrils. When we finally get back, she makes me put everything into a box under my camp bed. I help with dinner, chopping carrots and dropping them into the steamy pot on the cooker while Aunt Petunia goes on about Dudley's condition. She hopes he comes back soon, her little Dudders. Such a lovely boy. Such a sweet little thing. Mummy's lovey-dovey boy. She calls him names that would have made him whinge, staring hard into the boiling carrots and potatoes in the pot.

'Go on and put a video in, will you? Dudley's got a new one, I think, just under the photos in the cabinet,' she says absently, stirring the vegetables. I've never put a video in, but I've watched Dudley do it a million times, and it's not very difficult. All you've got to do is put the tape in the machine, and then push the button for "play", and don't forget to turn it on first.

I used to hate Aunt Petunia because she was always nasty and whinged and laughed at me when I cut my finger or fell down the stairs. She was never nice, but she is now. I think she misses Dudley and Uncle Vernon so much she'll even be decent to me, for the company. I think she feels a bit sorry for me, with my tatty clothes and my scar and my dead parents. Even if she hated them for landing her with me. Even if they never did anything for her.h

We get to eat in the parlour, watching Dudley's film and never talking. She lets me have anything I want tonight - carrots and potatoes, aubergine, pork, bread and milk. Dudley's video is about cats and mice having war, and by the end, nearly all of the cats have died or spilt paint on themselves. Aunt Petunia snorts, and I know she thinks it's as stupid as I think it is. I help her clean up, and even though she is my horrible, nasty, old aunt, I turn to her as she gets ready for the nightly wipe-down.

'G'night, Aunt Petunia,' I tell her softly. She looks up, startled. 'I - thanks. Thanks for all of the clothes and everything. They're really cool.' Before she can get me with the fly swatter, I dart over and give her a kiss on the cheek. It doesn't feel cold or slimy like I thought it might, but it's not how I imagine kissing my mum would be like either. Aunt Petunia is stiff, her eyes wider than saucers as she watches me leave. I know she is wondering why I've kissed. I'm sort of wondering that myself. I don't like Aunt Petunia. I don't hate her, either. It's difficult to hate someone who buys you new clothes and schoolbags and shoes.

I'm wondering when I brush my teeth and put on my new pyjamas. I'm wondering under the sheets of the camp bed, picturing my new clothes in my head and thinking of how lucky it is that Dudley decided to become a rainbow two days ago. I wonder if my mum and dad can see me smiling into my pillow, and I decide it doesn't matter if they can or not, because it's not like a smile will ever bring them back to life or anything. But, it's got to count for something if they do see it, so I smile anyway. It's like kissing Aunt Petunia. It shan't make her any nicer to me when Dudley comes back. It shan't make her like me any more, but it feels nice to know I've done it at least once. Who knows if I'll ever have another day like this, just me and Aunt Petunia, shopping and watching the telly and not hating each other. Just normal things. Like buying new shoes, or getting a haircut, or kissing your mum goodnight. Normal things, like smiling because you're happy. Even if there's no one else to see it, or to know. It makes a difference just because you're smiling. Because you can.

---

Dudley and Uncle Vernon come back next day in a taxi. I've got school, but Dudley hasn't because he is still very pale and says he feels ill after changing colours so much. I know he's faking it. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon know he's faking it.

Dudley gets to stay home, and I leave for school in my new trainers and jumper over my uniform. My trainers are white and clean. They don't pinch toes or flap when I walk, and they say Adidas on the back. The jumper hasn't got bobbles or weird brown things on it. It's black and says Adidas, too. The clerk in the shop says everyone wears stuff like this, and I know it's true because I've seen people in school with the same jumper and trainers. Dudley turns green when he watches me leave, and for a minute I think he's a rainbow again, but then he's back to normal eating ice cream and watching the cat war video.

'New clothes, Potter?'

Liam Muggrer is the only boy who will talk to me in the fourth form. Sometimes he can be the worst boy to talk to, because he's got almost no friends. People with no friends always take the piss, because if you're taking the piss, who's left to take it out on you? When nobody else is round, Muggrer can be sort of cool. He hasn't got to show off for anyone.

'Yeah', I tell him, and point to my trainers, strutting about so he can them in action. 'Cool, huh? They're ah-dee-dahs. And look - ' I point out my jumper. 'That, too. And Pyooma socks.'

'Ace,' Liam smiles. I offer him the chair next to mine, which he takes. Maybe we can be friends, Muggrer and me. Until the bell rings, and the rest of the world comes back. Until I'm Harry Potter again, and he's just Liam Muggrer, who is only better than me because he hasn't got a cousin to make everyone hate him.

It's different when Dudley is not here to ruin things. Piers is an arse, but he's an arse either way, and nobody pays any attention to him without Dudley to back him up. Muggrer talks to me, and Sarah Adams, and Jack Ford, and Ronnie Deighton, and Brennan Docherty, and Luke and Adam and Blad, who is from Russia and speaks with a funny accent. They share sweets like creme eggs and Chomp and Mars Bars and Buttons. We all play motorbikes after maths, and laugh at Piers Polkiss when he falls off of the swings. Mrs Henley smiles, because she says she likes to see us having fun, and I smile back because I know she likes to see me and Muggrer having fun.

PE is OK today, as I've got new trainers and everyone is jealous of me.

'Look how fast they make me run!' I'm shouting and zooming across the field, until Mr Tittup tells me we're playing football today, Potter, not track. I'm picked third to play in Jamie Woolcroft's team. He's always got the best team, because his brother plays football professionally in the Championship. Everyone thinks my new shoes look good with the green of the grass and the red and white football. They all laugh and clap me on the back when I score for us. They tell me how fast I am, and they're all jealous because Woolcroft lets me play midfield instead of them.

We're all hot and sweaty and knackered out by the time Mrs Henley takes us back to the classroom for French and reading. I get all of my verbs right in the oral exam, and extra points for saying "Je joue au foot", which means I play football, because I do now. Me and my ace new shoes. I can read the big words like "miserable" and "foolish", and by the end of the day Mrs Henley says I'll pass my GCSE no problem.

Usually, I hate the walk home because it is long and hot, and sometimes weird people say hullo or ask to shake my hand. They smile and pretend to be excited about meeting me; it's scary. It makes me think of the news reports about little kids being kidnapped and having horrible things happen to them. Today, I've got my new shoes and jumper. I can outrun any kidnappers. I'm cooler than the kids that come from the comprehensive, the ones that sit on the roundabout at the park in Magnolia Crescent and shout to me when I walk by.

'Oi, squirt, how's it, then?'

'If yer startin', then!'

'Yeh lookin' ahme, yeh li'l twat?'

I don't look at them, and I don't say anything back. That's the best thing to do with people like this. You don't ever talk back to them, because that makes them angry. It makes them think you want to fight, and you don't. Especially not when you're nine and small and live in a cupboard. So, I walk. I ignore. After one hundred and twenty-five steps their voices fade away. I'm by myself again, with the occasional car flying past and mums pushing prams or little pushchairs with babies inside. I know some of the mums. Some of them walk here every day. We nod to each other, each thinking about the other until we're past and on to the next person. Then we forget each other, until tomorrow.

I'm busy showing off my trainers to a mum and a little kid, strutting past and stomping a bit to make sure they hear me, so I don't see the tall, blonde thing until I've smacked into it. I'm sat on my arse on the pavement, staring up at the most beautiful woman in the world. I've always known I'd see her around here sometime, but I hadn't expected her nearly so soon.

'Jo!'

'Harry!'

Helping me up, she ruffles my hair, grinning. 'Fancy seeing you here, Monsieur,' Jo teases me.

'I'm walking back from school,' I tell her, pointing away, towards wherever Sandcastle Primary is behind me. 'And I've got new shoes, and a new jumper and luncbox and bag, and look at my shoes! They're ace, aren't they?'

I've missed her lovely little laugh, the way she smiles at me with her eyes and her mouth. 'Very cool,' she says seriously. 'You'll have a girlfriend in no time, I just know it.' Well, obviously.

'And I've got friends, and my cousin's not a rainbow anymore, but he's home pretending to be ill.'

'That's brilliant, Harry,' Jo assures me. She checks her watch and ruffles my hair again. 'You're not far, are you, from where you live?'

No, I think sadly. Not far at all now. Not nearly long enough for a romantic walk with her. 'Nah, Privet Drive's just round the corner.'

'Oh, good.' Her face clears, she smiles brighter and bigger than before. 'I'm really sorry, Harry, but I've got to hurry if I'm to make it to the cinema. Be safe, will you? No talking to strangers on the way back.'

'Yeah, OK.'

We say bye. We smile.

It really is sort of useless, isn't it? Smiling won't make it any longer of a walk back to Privet Drive. It won't give Jo more time to get to the cinema, or stop me getting kidnapped or beat up on the way home. It doesn't stop Uncle Vernon shouting that I'm late, or Aunt Petunia making me hoover the parlour. It won't do my homework for me, or make sure I get to see Jo again. Mum and Dad are still dead. I'm still just Harry Potter, the Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England, Europe, the World, the Universe.

I smile at that, too, because it's funny living in the cupboard under the stairs, in such a very small place, when the universe is so really big. I finish my maths homework early and read the story in my book for Mrs Henley, and then I lie down. I'm not tired, or even really sad, or anything. I just want to lie down and think a bit. Me in my cupboard, with my new trainers and the thin little bars of light that pour in from the cracks. Normal things.

ACCOUNT OF AGATHA BURKINS

62, SHOP CLERK

I'm probably one of the last to have seen the boy in Magnolia Crescent, I s'pose. I always thought he was a strange boy, so tiny and quiet as he was. He did have a beautiful smile. The very first time I saw him come in by himself, he couldn't have been more than five at the time and here he comes in tramp's clothes and a pair of child's shoes that were far too wide for his little feet. I had half a mind to shoo him back out. You just can't take chances with those beggar types, you know, even the little ones. They're all thieves.

I was going to suggest that he kindly leave when he came straight up to me, the bold little thing, and asked me as politely as I've ever seen a boy of that age do, "Where is the milk, please?" I've got grandchildren of my own; I'm no heart of stone. Suspicious as I am, though, I hardly wanted to point him in the way of things that possibly might find themselves in his baggy little pockets. But he smiled at me, the most beautiful smile that made his green eyes (he had the greenest eyes, that boy) small and crinkled, and I melted. I showed him the milk, even if he was going to nick it, because he was so tiny and had such a beautiful smile for a little thief. And his green eyes were so lovely, the kind of thing that makes you certain someone loved him somewhere. But that was a long time ago.

9, MAIN CHARACTER

Sometimes I wake up and can't think about anything at all.

Uncle Vernon says I'm stupid, stupider than Dudley, who's about as clever as a drunk ape and as good-looking as one. Aunt Petunia agrees with Uncle Vernon on most days, because she's his wife, and when you're a normal wife you do things like agreeing with your husband and calling freaky nephews stupid little monkeys. I don't think I'm that stupid, because if I was maybe Dud'd like me a bit more, and I'd have more friends. The only thing worse than being a freak that no one likes is being a clever freak that no one likes.

My head is always filled up with stuff. School stuff, Dursley stuff, running away from Dudley stuff - all sorts. Sometimes I have thinking about my parents stuff, and sneaking into the kitchen for dinner stuff, and not burning the bacon stuff, and wondering what's so funny on the television stuff, and I get so much stuff in my head it feels like a balloon by the time I finally get to sleep. Those are the mornings when I wake up with an empty head and all the stuff is gone. I like those sorts of mornings, because I can stare at the ceiling without really looking at it, or cover my face with the blanket to see how long I'll last holding my breath, or open all of the cleaning bottles until the cupboard air is all filled with smells that hurt and burn my throat, without really feeling it, and there isn't any stuff in that at all. Sometimes I like to think that if I hold my breath a little bit more, drink something from one of the cleaning bottles, toss my head into the ceiling hard enough, I'd never have to deal with stuff again. I could see my parents again, maybe, and laugh with them about how thick Dudley is and how awful Aunt Petunia's hair looks on rainy days, and then I'm really serious again, and the stuff comes back like water into the bathtub, and I realise I'm just being stupid like Uncle Vernon says I am. Dead people don't get to laugh about anything, do they?

Today is very different. I wake up the same as any other day. (I always wake up the same, with my arms sore from sleeping on them and my hair sort of damp because the cupboard gets sort of hot on summer nights.) This time is weird, though. There isn't any stuff, no thoughts, no nothing. It's like a dream, only I can tell that I'm awake because of my achy arms and the stinging in my scar. There's a little voice in my head that tells me what to do.

Wake up, child.

It's a nice voice, not like Aunt Petunia's loud one that usually wakes me up, or Dudley's thick one when he comes tumbling down the stairs every morning. It's soft and sounds maybe like a parent, like a mum.

Put on your shirt. There you are, trousers next. Put your shoes and socks on now. Good lad. Anything else? Hurry, take the rest of your clothes and wrap them in the blanket. Those absurd metal things as well, if you really must.

I pack up all of my things and use an old bag Aunt Petunia used to carry groceries in to carry them. Somewhere in the back of my head I think it must be very strange to listen to a voice when I don't know where it's coming from, but it doesn't bother me much. I'm used to being told what to do by other people.

I'll just be a minute - you're rather tall, you know.

No one's ever said I was tall before. Scrawny, midget, sprog, maybe little one, if it's the school Nurse talking to me. But never tall.

Ready? All right. I'm coming up!

It starts by my right foot, a sort of sneaky little feeling, like the shivers I get when the cupboard gets cold in the winter, and it doesn't go away.

I'll need some help coming up, I think. This is quite a challenge.

My head is cloudy still from the nothingness, but I can still manage to look down and pick up the tiny snake. Hm, I think, if I was in a stuff-y sort of mind I might think it was a bit strange to be listening to a snake.

Set me in the bag now, there's a good lad. Out we go!

But we can't go out. I remember that. Uncle Vernon locked the door last night. He almost never does, but he did last night, for some reason. I tell my little voice that, but he doesn't hear me.

Out we go, he says again, and I think maybe he'sthe stupid one Uncle Vernon is always on about. Open the door, child. It's very hot in here. Open the door, quickly, before they wake.

My head is foggy. My ears are slow and my mouth doesn't want to move. How do I tell the voice that we are locked in without making him angry? He wants to get out of here so much, he wants so much to be free...

And the door opens. Just like that, without even touching it.

On we go now.

We tip-toe to the front door and open it up very quietly. I know how to do things like that, very quietly. It's only after we get outside that my mouth will work. "I don't know what I'm doing," I tell my voice.

That is perfectly clear to me, he says. I think he sounds a bit rude, a bit like Piers Polkiss, who likes to make me feel stupid by saying things like that. He reads the dictionary sometimes, Piers does, so that he can use big words to make me feel thicker than he is. It's all right, my voice tells me, I know where we are going. Left, straight ahead, left again, right three times by the first "Stop" sign and straight on some more. Walk, child. That's right. We will be all right if we walk. Only if we walk. Keep walking. Keep walking.

Each step is like a waking-up slap from Aunt Petunia. Three streets away, six, ten from Privet Drive. It's school today, but we're going the wrong way. We won't go to school today. We're walking up instead, through Magnolia Crescent and away from everything. I've never been this far before, except to go to the eye doctor once, and once to see something called a spycologist's office, because Dud was having nightmares. We walk up, down, sideways, and all over - where the little voice says. We walk for ages and ages, and soon enough my stomach is making hungry noises, and my head is sore and my legs are achy from all of the walking we are doing. Once I get my mouth working properly I stop to ask the snake-voice where we are going, but he says to trust him. This will be fun. We are going on an adventure.

I like adventures. I don’t go on many of them anymore, but I used to, when I was too little to do chores and Aunt Petunia stuck me in the garden or my cupboard to stop me getting underfoot. I was an astronut a lot, and my cupboard was a spaceship, and I went to the moon and met cleaning bottle aliens and we had a lovely time eating make-believe moon biscuits until someone called me out for my bath. I went on safaris in the garden and found a tiger, which was really Mrs Figg’s striped tabby cat, which bit me like I’d expect a tiger would, for trying to pet it. I’ve never been on an adventure that wasn’t at school or the garden or the cupboard under the stairs, and don’t tell anyone, but it’s a bit scary.

Our adventure takes us to a train station. It’s big and noisy, noisier than the hospital where Dudley had to go to have his colour-changing problem fixed. I’ve never seen anything this big before, nothing so busy or loud or exciting. This is a real adventure, not like being in the cupboard and pretending about moon people and fake biscuits that only make me hungrier. I’m on a real adventure, like in a comic book or a film. I’m all by myself; I’m just a kid. I haven’t any money, and neither has the snake-voice, but this time I really do know what to do. I saw this in one of Dudley’s favourite films once when I was peeking through the crack in the cupboard door.

“Snake,” I whisper, very softly, because I can’t let anyone hear me or I’ll be caught. “Be very quiet.” In this film there is a boy who is secretly a spy. He always knows what to do in times like this, like when he’s trying to sneak onto a train. There’s a man on a bench a little bit ahead, and woman across from him, reading a gossip magazine like Aunt Petunia does. I’ll stay away from both of them, especially the magazine lady. Three benches down another lady is holding a baby and talking to it. She makes those stupid faces like people usually do when they talk to babies, and I know right away that she’s perfect.

Nearly everyone says I look younger than I really am. Maybe it’s because I’m so short, or because my eyes are too big, or my hair is too messy. I dunno. I do know that I am very small and very young looking for my age. I also know that this lady is holding a baby, which means that she likes kids, which means that looking young will help. A lot.

It’s not as easy as it is in the film to make myself cry. I have to think about a lot of sad things, like cats dying and Dudley in a bathing suit and my mum and dad never being able to eat strawberry ice cream. Even then I only get one or two tears, so this time I make myself think about Privet Drive. I imagine I’m running away because my Uncle Vernon is going to kill me if I don’t, because he’s always angry and telling me how worthless I am. Because no one would ever miss me even if he did, except maybe my snake and Jo. And then I get to thinking about Jo, and how I’m leaving without even saying goodbye, and how unfair that is to her. She definitely deserves a better boyfriend than I could ever be.

Finally, the tears come.

They come in big waves down my cheeks that start a sniffle. I imagine my eyes are probably pink and my nose is all soppy from snot and tears. I give a quiet little groan, to hear how it sounds. It’s all good, just like the kid in the film. Just like the top-secret spy.

Now all I have to do is sit down by the lady with the baby, and she looks at me really curious for a minute, like she’s not really sure if she ought to say anything. And then she asks me, “Are you OK, dear?”

“Mummy!” I sniffle at her, and she puts the baby into a little plastic seat to get me a tissue for my wet face.

“Where is your mummy? Are you lost?”

“Mummy’s gone!” My scream even sounds real, which it sort of is. It’s not so hard to lie about being lost from your parents when they’re really dead and everything.

“Where did she go? What does she look like?”

I’ve even got her looking round the platform for my mum, who doesn’t exist anymore, as if she’s going to find her.

“The train!” I’m wailing and wailing the same thing. “The train! The train!”

Now she’s really going for it.

“Which train? That one? Which one, dear? Which train is your mummy on?”

I point. Any train. I don’t care, as long as it isn’t moving yet.

“The train! They won’t – won’t let me g-go – no t-ticket!”

“Has your mummy got your ticket?”

“Yes, and she’s lost. She’s left me. Gone, all gone away.”

And that’s all it takes for her to grab my hand and lead me away.

ACCOUNT OF JONAS KISSINGTON

32, NEW YORK STOCK BROKER

Listen, I'm from New York, OK? I come to London once a year with Karen and her sister, once a year to Paris, and once in Berlin. I never get time to myself, so I figure I'll go to London once with just me - no wife, no sister, no nothing. Just me. I booked the hotel outside London, cause it's just cheaper that way, and figured I'd take a train to the city. Not so bad, right? That's where you're wrong.

I don't like kids. They're all over the playgrounds in New York. They're all poor, dirty, whiny, annoying - I'm not having kids no matter how much Karen whines about it. She can whine herself into a divorce if she wants, but I'm never having kids. Bum kids are all over London, but I've never seen one on a train before. How much you wanna bet he didn't pay for that ticket? So I'm sitting in my seat, minding my own business, looking through work papers, eying the blonde woman in front of me when she's not paying attention, and here comes this kid. I think he's kind of small, you know, kind of puny to be all by himself. He takes a look around the car with big eyes; you'd have thought he's never been on a train before or something. There are a few empty seats on the other side of the car, thank God, and he takes one right across from me. Of course he had to take the seat right across from me, the guy who hates kids. He looks right at me with his green eyes (too green, I think) and wipes the snot from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, which looks like it was used as a circus tent. I'm thinking this kid's got problems, cause all he does is stare at me like an idiot. The train stops in London, and I go to leave, thinking this little kid will stay behind. He looks like he's staying behind.

It's when I get to the station that I feel it. This kid is holding my hand. My hand. My wife doesn't even hold my hand. What do I do? I pull off and start to walk away. Maybe if I ignore him he'll take a hike. No such luck. The kid's stuck on me like with superglue or something, his nasty, snotty little hand in mine as we walk out. I want to know where this kid's parents are, but he's not looking at me and I'm not about to say anything to him. When we get into the city it's like he's disappeared. One minute I can feel this tiny hand and the next minute I look down, he's smiling like he's won the lottery, and then I blink and he's gone. I'll tell you one thing. This kid ought to be in the Russian circus or something. Houdini's got nothing on him.

I'll tell you one more thing. Karen's having twins, and all of a sudden it doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

9, MAIN CHARACTER

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge and Mrs Henley and all of the grown-ups I know say that grown-ups are never wrong, because they know loads more than little kids do, which means that little kids can never win against a grown-up in a row or trick a grown-up when they’re doing something naughty like sneaking onto a train or running away from home.

Now I know that Uncle Vernon is definitely wrong, because I’ve tricked the baby lady, and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t very difficult.

“Stop, don’t close the door! Stop!” She runs like Dudley, all big feet and waddles like a duck. Now that she’s stood up I can see that her stomach is big and round, as if there was a football inside of it. It makes me cry a little bit more, because she’s already got one baby to deal with, and she looks a bit poor and lonely to have to take care of two of them. What if she gives the old one away to her sister whose already got a little fat baby that she likes better than this new one? He’ll have to live in the cupboard under the stairs, because that’s what aunt and uncles do when they don’t want the new babies what get dumped on their doorsteps. I hope this lady doesn’t give her old baby away. He’s got blond hair and he smiles funny, and I think it’d be a bit of a waste if he had to spend the rest of his life in a cupboard. You’ve got to be brave for stuff like that.

“What seems to be the problem, miss?”

“The boy, he’s lost his mother and she’s on this train!”

“Where is she? Do you know what she looks like?”

They both turn to me. Now, I feel a little bit lost and a little bit stupid. Not half stupid, either, because I haven’t really got a mother with a ticket to come and take me with her on the train, and once she knows this, the baby lady won’t want to help me anymore.

“Er….”

At least I’m still crying. That’s got to count for something.

“Come on, lad; the train’s waiting. Where is she, then?”

“There!” Just behind the first window, with massive specs and red hair like a fire engine. I like it when people have got red hair. I like fire engines, too. They’re exciting and everything, with the noise and the big hoses and the flashing lights.

“I’ll be back in just a moment,” says the trainman as he jumps up onto the car. Me and the baby lady watch him for a minute, and then she smiles at me and pats my head, only she doesn’t leave.

“You see?” she says, holding her fat stomach. “We’ve found your mummy for you. No need to be so upset.”

When the red-hair lady comes out with the trainman she looks confused, and I know why.

“I haven’t done anything wrong! Why am I being taken from the train? I’ve somewhere to be by three o’clock, sir. Three o’clock.”

And the trainman says, “Nothing wrong, indeed, madam! It’s a wonder they let people like you have children at all!”

The red-hair lady looks furious at this. She is round and jiggly like Aunt Marge. She gets the lemon lips like Aunt Petunia and the pink face that looks terrible with her hair and she shouts at him, “I beg your pardon! I’m not pregnant I’m fat! Now,” she pats down her hair, like Piers Polkiss’s mum, who uses spraying glue to keep hers sticking up like a balloon, and carries on, “I’ve got somewhere to be by three o’clock!”

“Oho!” says the trainman, very pale. The baby lady puts an arm round my neck and holds it there, but she doesn’t look at me, just hangs her arm and plays with the collar of my shirt. “You’d leave this boy wailing for you on the platform to get to wherever it is you’re going on time! Some mother you are,” his face is bright green as he looks at her stomach, “extra podge and all.”

By the time they’re really at it I’ve already ducked under the baby lady’s arms and onto the car behind the trainman. They shout so loud they don’t even feel me slipping by, or hear the train whistle and start to leave, or see the baby lady waving goodbye to me and smiling like she’s just solved the mystery of the universe. All I can think about is I hope nobody asks me for a ticket and that the lady keeps her old baby even when she has a new one and that she never gets into a car crash and has to send either baby to live with an aunt and uncle who don’t want them.

Trains are a lot bigger than I’d ever thought they were. But I’ve only seen them in books, so what do I know? There’re rows of seats like on a bus, only prettier seats, not plastic ones. There are loads of people, as well. Too many people, I think, to be in one place all at one time. There are loads of cars too. Cars with food and tables and people laughing, cars with people smoking, cars with people reading or shouting into mobiles. It takes me a long time to find the car I want to sit in. All of this time I’m so excited at being like a secret agent and sneaking onto a train that I’ve nearly forgot my new friend, the snake, until he peaks out of my pocket and says, That was good work, what you did in the station.

I don’t want to walk round looking for seats anymore. My legs are tired. I want to talk to my snake. So, I pick a car with no mummies and little kids, no old people, and no fat ladies with red hair who have got to be somewhere by three o’clock. This car has hardly no people at all, just some big men in black suits and a blond lady that isn’t half as pretty as Jo is.

We must not talk, hisses the snake. We’re stuck staring out of the window, which is a bit boring, and staring at the other people in the car, which is more boring, until the snake falls asleep in my pocket and I lean down to do the same thing. My nose is still runny from crying and my eyes are itchy and heavy, as I haven’t slept very well since I met Jo. It’s difficult to sleep when all you can think about is how much you’d like someone to be your mum. Or your wife.

Don’t let me fall asleep here, where the seats feel better than my camp bed in the cupboard ever did and nobody bothers with me or makes me clean up their mess. Don’t let me close my eyes with the rest of England flying past my window and the little snake in my pocket. If I fall asleep I might wake up. I might realise this is only a dream, and I haven’t run away at all. There might be no snake and no train and no exciting adventure. I might be just Harry, and that’s no way to be at all.

I don’t go to sleep after all, on account of the bump bump bump of the train and the thinking that fills up my head. I wonder if Uncle Vernon will be angry with me or pleased that I’ve run away, if Jo will miss me now that I’m gone, if I’m ever going back to Privet Drive again, if I am going anywhere at all.

The train begins to slow at the same time that my stomach begins to grumble. I want a hot dog, or some cereal, or even one of Aunt Petunia’s cheese sandwiches. No money. I’ve no money to buy any sort of food with, no grown-ups to get anything for me – and no one to come with me off of the train, so that I don’t look odd being by myself. That’s very important when you’ve run away, not looking like you’ve done it. When the train finally stops everyone moves so quickly I can’t hardly keep up. Too tall, too busy, they rush right past me without even bothering to say sorry for slamming bags and newspapers and all sorts into my face.

Hurry up! warns the snake. Move, move.

Move, move. Moving in the wrong direction, past all of the giant people in suits, I make my way to the man that has been sitting in front of me this whole time, the one that has not looked at me once except for when I first came to sit by him. I don’t think he even notices when I take his hand, everything is so busy. We’re pulled by the millions and thousands of people leaving the train and out onto a platform, but I still don’t let go. It’s like being squeezed through a massive tunnel, with giants everywhere, everyone bigger than me or else being squeezed just like I am until we’re off and onto the platform, and the man has let go of my hand. But I still need him.

Away from the platform, through a station bigger than the one in Surrey, with me clutching the man’s hand and the snake in my pocket, we go. I wouldn’t ever tell anyone else about this, because they’d take the piss for it for sure, but it’s a bit scary going places you’ve never been, with loads of people you don’t know. It feels sort of nice, as well, holding someone’s hand when everything else is big and rushes past. I’m holding on tighter than before now, as we’re leaving the station, and above me are people talking and signs with words on them that I can’t read because we’re walking too fast.

LONDON.

That’s where we are. I catch it on a sign as we walk past, and now I can’t hardly breathe for the excitement. I’m going to London, like Dudley with the zoo! There’s no use holding hands with anyone once we’re out of the station, so I let go and smile at the man, because it’s too noisy to say thanks and I dunno if he even knows that he helped me. Either way he’s lost once we get out into the street, where it’s just me and my snake and a million other people. Nobody even looks at me. It’s like being invisible, only not “can’t be seen invisible”. It’s like Dursley invisible and Privet Drive invisible and school invisible. They could all see me if they wanted to, but they look the other way, because it’s easier not to look at skinny boys with big specs and green eyes and messy hair, especially when they haven’t got parents and are always doing thingsabnormally. I don’t care. It’s easier to run away when no one sees you.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Dark alleyway, cardboard boxes, bins bigger than the ones behind the cafeteria at school. Now I know why Uncle Vernon used to tell me he would leave me in London one day when he was angry and had been in the sherry with Aunt Marge. But I need to talk to the snake, and I need to be in private, even if private is a grotty dark alley in a city I don’t really know.

You brought yourself here.

This is too confusing, London and trains and snakes that talk. Snakes don’t talk. Uncle Vernon says so. Uncle Vernon says loads of things, like my mum was the rotten apple in Aunt Petunia’s family and my dad was a drunk and I never really deserved to be with the Dursleys anyway, having parents like that. But that’s not important anyways. I’m never going back to the Dursleys ever again. Not even for breakfast, no matter how much my stomach grumbles.

“How come I can talk to you?” I want to know. The snake is sat on my wrist, with his little tongue poking out and his black eyes all dark and glittery. “How come I know what you’re saying?”

I don’t know, he says slowly. You are the first I have come across with this power.

I’m beginning to think that maybe I could be a superhero like Superman, who didn’t have any real parents either. And Spiderman. And Batman. Now that I’m thinking about it no superheroes have got proper parents. None of them live in cupboards either, but that’s only a small problem, because I don’t live in a cupboard anymore. I don’t live anywhere.

“D’you think maybe I’m like you? Maybe I’m a snake?”

Perhaps, he says. I think he sounds clever when he says that. At any rate it is early, you are young and need to sleep, and then we must find something to eat. He slithers back into my pocket, me with my head spinning as though I’ve been on the roundabout too many times. I don’t want to sleep in an alley with boxes and bins and the feeks all over them. But I’m very tired. Tired enough to lie down on an old box with no blankets or anything and to put my hands under my head for a pillow. Tired enough not to care if the police take me away to prison for running away and sleeping in the streets, or if giant rats eat me up for breakfast, or if homeless people steal my shoes. That’s OK if they want to have them. I’m a superhero now; superheroes give their shoes to homeless people all the time.

x x x

The problem with London is that it’s too noisy. Too many cars beep and too many people talk and too many doors are opening and closing at one time. That’s also a good thing, because no one even notices me and my snake talking or that I’m alone or anything. Now that I’m not sleepy anymore I feel hungrier than ever. Everything in London costs money, too, even for little boys. There are funny people here, too. Some of them are tiny and shake my hand. Some of them are excited. One of them comes out of a fish shop and slaps my back so hard I almost fall over, only I don’t because he pulls me up again and walks away smiling. There are three of them by the time I find a McDonald’s.

It’s like being with the Dursleys again, but not. I’ve got to be sneaky. No one can see me standing round the bins or digging through rubbish to pull out a half-empty carton of chips or a hamburger with only three bites taken out of it. Someone bins an entire cup of Coca Cola, which is lucky for me. A feast is what I’ve got. A feast for a king, or a superhero. I go to the toilet to wash my hand and eat everything inside the stall for people with wheelchairs. My chips are cold and soggy. My Coca Cola doesn’t last too long, so I fill up the cup with water from the sink. The hamburger has got pickles and they taste funny. I tell myself that this is all part of my adventure. At least I’ve got food; at least no one caught me by the bins. My stomach is filled up well good. That’s the most important thing.

Snakes don’t like McDonald’s, because my snake won’t have any. He says he’s not hungry, anyways. He had a lizard on the train. Snakes like lizards a lot.

After we’ve eaten we can do anything we want, the snake says so. We’re by London Bridge and the big river we learnt about in school, but I don’t care much about bridges or rivers. Today is not for fun. We’ve got to find somewhere to stay for the night, and then tomorrow we can have a look round the city and go somewhere else. It’s not good to stay in one place when you’re a runaway. So, we go outside. We go to a shop full of books and one full of toys. We go to the behind of a restaurant where I put scraps in my pockets for tonight’s dinner. We bring the cup with us and fill it up at all of the water fountains and sinks in toilets that we can find. We look round people’s porches and inside alleys like the one from earlier. Finally, we find a place that says it stays open for twenty-four hours a day, even Sundays, and we know this will be a good place to sleep.

I’ve been to one of these before, back in Surrey with Aunt Petunia. She was always going to the Tesco for dinner things. This one’s got a petrol station, just like the one at home. It’s too early to go to sleep here and too risky to stick around enough for someone to spot me. We’re in Monck. That’s a street, I think.

“Snake,” I whisper, so that only he can hear me, “remember Monck Street, so we’re not lost.” He promises me that he will. Away from out Tesco, just round the corner and through the opening in a brick wall, is a lovely place with trees and bushes and flowers that must be someone’s garden. For once in my life I’m well chuffed to be small. It’s loads easier to hide in bushes when you’re the shortest kid in your class at school and especially small for your age group, which is what the nurse says about me every time she does the looking over.

My snake crawls from my pocket and onto the grass just in front of the bush I’m hiding in. He says he needs sun, which is OK by me, because I need more sleep in a place that’s not a cardboard box in an alley. We sit in the hidden place by the Tesco for a long time after that. I’ve got my food left over from nicking things out of bins behind restaurants, and not all of it is half bad. There’s a bit of a steak and some potatoes in a polystyrene box. I wonder if Superman ever had potatoes in a polystyrene box. He probably did, but they never would have put that in a comic book. It’s not cool when superheroes eat out of bins, only if they do it in private and don’t tell anyone, because maybe it’s against the law to take things from restaurant bins. Even superheroes break the law sometimes.

It makes sense that I’m a superhero. The more I think about it the more sense it makes, until I believe in it like I’ve been doing it for my whole life. Everything fits. My mum and dad never really died in a car crash, because car crashes don’t kill superheroes. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia only tell me they were drunks because they’re afraid I’ll try to be a superhero too, and then I’d be dead like my mum and dad. That means they’re not really as horrible as I thought they were. They’re only trying to keep me alive. Because I’m a superhero I can talk to snakes and appear on the top of school buildings and make my hair grow back after Aunt Petunia cuts it short. They’re all my superpowers. I’m supposed to do funny things.

Taking a bite of steak, I flip over onto my stomach and start to think about what I’ll do next. Because I know I’m a superhero I can never go back to my normal life at Privet Drive. I’m not that thick. I’ll never be able to fit in there anymore what with my powers and everything. No, I’ve got to keep moving. I’ll stay in London a few days for training, and because I sort of thing it’s cool, with all of the massive buildings and the people everywhere. Next week or tomorrow or Saturday I can go somewhere else. Somewhere far away, like Ireland or Wales or Africa. They always need help in places like that.

By the time it’s getting dark my food and my water are gone. I’m done thinking about superheroes tonight – me and the snake have got to get back to the Tesco to sleep. He tells me Monck Street, which I already know because we’re only round the corner. Inside the Tesco is cool, nobody looks at me. I’m small enough that if I curl up my feet and don’t move at all I can fit on the baby table that pops down from the wall in the toilet. It’s a good thing, I think as my eyes close with sleep, that the Dursleys don’t feed me. I’d never have fit on here if was as big as someone like Dudley.

ACCOUNT OF PHINEAS NIGELLUS

DEAD, PORTRAIT ON THE WALL

There was a knock on the door, and the portraits woke up.

“Come in, Severus.”

He entered very slowly, as though he knew already what was to be asked of him. He’s a clever boy that way, is Severus Snape.

“Headmaster,” he said, taking his usual seat.

“I would not ask this of you under any other circumstances, my boy, I want you to know,” began the Headmaster, and Snape instantly darkened.

“Headmaster,” he repeated, almost as a reminder. The room was deathly silent.

“You will have to be stealthy, clever, Severus. And – “ the Headmaster hesitated, “ – You will have to adopt the mindset of a nine year-old boy.”

“Where?” asked Snape wearily. He knew it was pointless to argue. It is always pointless to argue with Albus Dumbledore.

“London.” The Headmaster smiled thinly; placing a stack of Muggle clothes and a tatty school photo atop his desk as Snape turned to leave. “He is in London.”

“And when I’ve got him?”

Dumbledore frowned. “Be patient with him, Severus. Do try and be patient.”

9, MAIN CHARACTER

I sleep for a very, very long time. The lights are always on in this toilet, so I hide my head under my t-shirt and my new jumper and sleep with the breath on my chest and nothing but hair sticking it out. After a long while my eyes are open and my head is awake. I can hear noises like toilets flushing and people talking and a baby crying outside. It’s very small, very cramped, and the baby table is droppy underneath me.

I still don’t want to wake up. It’s nice to decide when you have to get out of bed, even if bed is plastic and tiny and puts a crick in your neck from sleeping curled in a roly-poly ball all night. Doors creak, locks click; my face is to the wall so I can’t see hardly anything but dirty white paint and the bogie someone stuck very high up above my head. Clicks and squeaks and trainers on the wet floor. A hand on my back, a voice that says, “What’s this? You’re rather big for the baby table, don’t you think?”

Someone very big takes my arms and lifts me from the table. I think maybe it’s the police. Maybe the Dursleys noticed when I wasn’t there to make the breakfast and called the police, who have found me here and are going to take me to jail for running away and not cooking or going to school. Maybe they even know about sneaking on the train.

“Well, look at me, son. Go on, what’s your name?”

The man is very tall, with yellow hair and bluer eyes than even Mrs Patterson down the street. He won’t let go of my arm even when I pull away, but he doesn’t look like a policeman either. Not even close. He wears a shirt with a collar and jeans and his hair is messy.

“Go on, then, where’s your mum?”

I dunno what to tell him. I’m all out of ideas now. If I say Harry Potter he might call the police, and they’ll know who I am and what I’ve done and send me to prison, and if I say my mum is dead he’ll call the orphanage and then I’ll be in even worse trouble.

It’s my snake that saves me. Your mother is outside, he says. Your mother is shopping outside. You were angry and ran away. She is probably looking for you.

I say the same thing to the man, so he takes me out of the toilet and over to the counter with the register, where another man is sat taking money from a lady holding a little girl’s hand.

“Hello,” says the girl. She’s got big hair and big teeth and nice eyes.

“Hullo,” I tell her back. Her mother doesn’t pay any attention to us at all.

“Does your father work here?” She’s awfully nosy for a girl.

“No, my father’s drunk,” I say. That’s what Uncle Vernon says all the time. He doesn’t think I know what drunk means either, but I do. I know how Uncle Vernon is when he’s drunk, even if doesn’t drink a terrible lot because of Dudley and Aunt Petunia. I still know, because I’ve seen him and Aunt Marge with her sherry and whisky, and he’s worse than usual at those times.

“Oh. Are you lost, then?” She’s not holding her mum’s hand anymore. Now she stands by me, and the man that took me out of the toilet is waiting, but he doesn’t say anything. Just looks at us and frowns a bit, which is nice of him, really. Any of the Dursleys would have never let me stick round talking to someone for this long.

“No, I’m not lost. I’m going on holiday.”

Now the girl smiles. “Oh, me too! We’re going to France!”

“Me too.” It’s the first thing I can think of is France. Besides, I can go anywhere I like now that I’m a superhero and everything, even to France with this big-hair girl and her mum in the blue skirt.

The mum takes her change and closes her handbag. “Hermione, dear, we’ll be late.” The Tesco man from the toilet takes me behind the counter as they walk away, Hermione the Big Hair Girl waving goodbye and me waving back.

“Look, kid, is your dad or your mum round here, really?” He’s got a telephone in his hand, which means he’s going to call the orphanage or the police. It will all be over, then. They don’t let you be a superhero in jail or at the orphanage. Ever.

“I dunno.”

The man looks hexasprated. Aunt Petunia says that word when she’s in a bad mood. He’s got the lemon lips and he breathes really big, like he’s going to shout any minute if he opens his mouth.

“Right,” he says. “Do you know your phone number? I can give your parents a ring, or anyone you know that can come and collect you, or I can call the police and they can look after you until your parents come.”

My parents will never come. I know it, Aunt Petunia knows it, maybe even my snake knows it. But this man doesn’t. He doesn’t know that I’ve really run away, or that I’ve got superpowers, or that if the police come they’ll take me away forever and ever. He’s holding my arm again, not tightly, but I can’t pull away even if I try. Outside the big windows Hermione is walking away with her mum. I wish I could go away with them to France. I wish I had her mum and her dad, the man the round specs and the funny red shirt.

He sighs. “Look, you’re scared. If it’s your dad, there’s – “

“I – it’s not – he’s – “ I’m trying to squirm away but it’s not working. Hermione, wait for me! I want to go to France. I want to get away from the man with the telephone. I never want to be in this Tesco again. Never, ever, ever.

It happens just like that. I fly back and he flies back, only he hits the wall. I don’t even get to land on the floor before someone else has got my arm and is pulling me up again. It was my superhero powers. It must’ve been.

“It’s time you went home…Harry,” says a voice above my head, the hands tight on my shoulders like Uncle Vernon’s. No, no! They can’t have found me already. They just can’t.

The Tesco man is finding his feet, looking confused as he scratches his head. Almost everyone is staring at us, too, we’ve been so loud. “You’re his dad, are you?”

The voice above my head is slow and very serious. Not Uncle Vernon or anyone I’ve ever met before. He’s not! I want to say, but I don’t, because if he takes me out from here I can run away again and the police will never find me.

“Indeed. He hasn’t caused too much trouble?”

“No,” says the Tesco man. He looks at the voice long and hard before leaning down to me and whispering very softly, “Is he’s not your dad, you can tell me now and I’ll call the police for you.”

I don’t want him to call the police. Anything is better than that, even the voice. “He is. He is my dad.” I think I sound really convincing. I nod a bit too, to make sure the Tesco man understands. To the voice I say without looking up, “I’m sorry I ran away. Is mum really angry with me?”

The hands of the voice begin to pull me away towards the door. Soon, I think. As soon as we’re outside I can run away for real. “Indubitably.” One step away. Half a step. We’re out, the hands leaving my shoulder to grab my arm. Now I can look up at the voice. He’s tall and skinny and sort of yellowish, like a dead plant. His nose is the biggest I’ve ever seen, bigger than Mrs Figg’s, even. Aunt Petunia would never have let him in the house, with dirty hair like that and his black eyes so gleaming and evil. I know right away that he is the bad guy.

“Let go of me now,” I tell him, standing very still. He just drags me along without looking at me, like a bad guy would. “You can’t kidnap me.”

“I see no reason why not,” he says, still looking right ahead, pulling me away from the Tesco and everything even a little bit safe. “Who’s going to miss one horrid little boy who ran away from home?”

“I’ll kill you if you take me! You’ll be so sorry!” My voice is high so that everyone stares at us when we walk by. No one stops him, even though I’m trying to pull away with all of my strength.

“Will I?” he makes it sound funny, like a joke. I dunno why, but that makes me more angry than before. It’s not funny when bad guys try to steal superheroes. Everyone knows that.

“I’m going to blast you with my laser vision! I’m going to turn you into dust if you don’t let go of me!”

But he just smiles an awful, evil, bad guy smile and pulls my arm a little tighter. We’re walking very fast now. I don’t know where we’re going or why, but it’s somewhere bad. It’s got to be. So, I squeeze my eyes together, never feeling my snake slipping out from his pocket to sink his teeth into the man’s skinny hand on my arm, never noticing when he doesn’t burn into a crisp like he’s supposed to, never doing anything until the crack echoes in my ears and the wind around me changes. My eyes don’t open yet, but that doesn’t stop me feeling the cushiony seat underneath my bum, or the hands on my neck that push me down to somewhere else. By the time they are open I already know that I’m in a car, we’re moving very slowly, and curly hair is hiding my face while a girl’s hands unzip a massive suitcase on the other side of the seat. She pulls out clothes, loads of clothes. T-shirts, skirts, jeans – she stuffs them into another bag, a school one, and pulls me up by my jumper.

“Get into my suitcase, quickly, while my parents aren’t looking!” whispers Hermione. It must be my superpowers making me move so quickly, because she’s already got me zipped up inside by the time her mum turns round from the front seat and asks, “Did you say something, Hermione, dear?”

“When will we get to the ferry?” says Hermione.

“Soon,” her dad answers. The parents go back to talking, ignoring my new friend and me.

“Hello again,” she whispers into the little opening she’s left for me to breathe. “How did you get into our car?”

“It’s a secret,” I whisper back, because it is. You can’t tell anyone about your superpowers. You never know who could be listening.

“I’m Hermione,” she tells me, because it wasn’t obvious at all. She looks like she’s waiting for something for a minute, but when I don’t say anything she asks, “Who are you?”

I think I need a made-up name so people don’t know who I am. My snake, who is still wrapped round my sleeve, hisses back to me, Don’t say anything yet. So, I tell her, “I’ll have to think about that.” I close my eyes. Her suitcase is big and dark enough to hold me if I curl up into a ball –a very tiny ball – but it’s cramped and makes me sweat. She asks me more questions – where am I from? Why did I come to her car? Where are my parents? When she finally gets tired of asking without me answering she slumps back into her seat and opens a book. Finally, I think, some peace and quiet.

It’s very dark and very hot for a long, long time. Hermione doesn’t say anything. Only her parents in the front talk to each other in low voices like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon when they’re saying secret things about Christmas presents and me doing better than Dudley at school. I can’t really see anything but a small part of Hermione’s face, which isn’t ugly, but isn’t as pretty as Jo’s. She’s got speckly brown freckles on her nose and her hair curlier than anyone’s I’ve ever seen before. She smiles nicely, though, and starts to read her book in a quiet, little voice so that I can hear, too.

The book is called Walrus Boy. It’s about a boy who turns into a walrus, which is stupid, because everyone knows that walruses are fat and useless, and if I was going to turn into an animal I’d be a dog or a lion or a cat, because they’re cool. Hermione doesn’t think it’s a very good book either, but we read it because she’s read all of the others, and reading is more important than good stories, anyways. At least, that’s what she says. When the car stops she puts the book away and opens a door. Another voice outside says, “We’ll have the car for you when you come back, Dan.”

“Thanks. You’re really great to do this. Hermione’s still petrified of planes, and it would’ve been madness to have brought the car on the ferry.”

“We’ll help you get your bags, then.”

A ferry. There’re noises like car doors opening, and the suitcase begins to slide down. “You haven’t brought all those books, have you, Hermione? This suitcase feels like it’s filled with bricks.”

Hermione’s voice says, “I really needed to bring them, Dad. They’re important, for school.”

“It’s summer,” says Hermione’s dad.

“Oh, I know,” I hear Hermione tell him, and the suitcase is set down so that I’m sideways, being very quiet and not breathing at all. “I’m revising for next year.”

The grown-up voices all laugh, and no one shouts at Hermione for bringing too many heavy things or makes her pull her own suitcase. They pull it for her and talk normally, like it’s no big deal that she didn’t listen to her dad. We walk for a bit, but Hermione needs to stop for a minute because she’s dropped her favourite sock. We walk some more, me and my snake making no noises so they don’t discover us, Hermione keeping her parents busy by telling them about a story she’s reading where a boy can pop from place to place by magic. I think she’ll surely be in trouble for saying the m word. Uncle Vernon says no one is allowed to say that word, or else. But her parents just say that it sounds very interesting and Hermione is a clever girl to be reading so much. That’s it, I’ve decided, they’re all mad.

It’s lucky the Dursleys doesn’t feed me. The nurse at school says I’m very much underweight, especially for a boy my age, at only just three stone. Barely. If I weighed anymore Mr Hermione’s Dad would be more suspicious of me than he already was, and that would not be good at all.

It’s bumpy in here, but I think, at least I’m going somewhere. From the darkness inside it’s difficult to breath and very sweaty. I can only hear things, so I don’t know if we’re going in one direction or the other, and I can’t tell exactly where we are, except that we’re “close”. By the time my suitcase stops moving Hermione’s dad is huffing and puffing like the wolf in the Three Little Pigs. I feel sort of sorry for making him carry me this whole way, but not sorry enough to get out. I’ve got to get away from London, after all, especially with the evil greasy-haired man still out and about.

More walking for a bit, some stopping that seems like we’re standing a queue, and then there’s a great bump and another and another and Hermione’s dad is grunting like Dudley does when we play football in PE. After more walking and bumping were finally still.

Hermione’s dad says, “Finally, eh? And look – we’ve got wonderful seats here.”

“Dad,” says Hermione’s voice, very carefully, “Can we all go and look over the railing?”

“Let’s put the bags away first, dear,” says her mum’s voice, but Hermione won’t have that. I’m breathing heavier now. They can’t find me when I’m so close!

“We can do the bags after, mum, but the ferry’ll pull away soon. Please?”

It’s the same way Dudley says please, only much nicer. Hermione is lucky. Her parents do whatever she wants, even going to the railings without putting the bags away first. If I was with the Dursleys I’d have had to have put their bags away for them while they took Dudley to look over the railings, but never me. They don’t let you look over railings when you’re just the boy and no use to anyone at all.

As soon as they’re gone I stick my hand through the tiny opening and push.It’s very slow at first, but as soon as I can get the whole hand up to the wrist out it goes faster. Mr fingers pull the zipper quickly. I can see things now, bright things, like a white wall and rows of seats and people walking up to sit in them. I check once, twice to make sure that no one is looking before I slip out and zip of the suitcase again. I didn’t get to have a very good look at it before, but now that I’m out I can see that it’s blue with clouds and a rainbow in the corner. Dudders would have never let me live that one down, hiding in a girly suitcase like that.

I’m alone now, no Dursleys or Mrs Figg or anybody to tell me what to do. I like that. I like walking to the railings all by myself, because I haven’t got to hold anybody’s hand or anything babyish. I like looking over and not having anyone to pull me back and tell me “That’s too dangerous, Harry!”

“Hello,” comes a familiar voice up behind me. Hermione smiles with all of her big horse teeth, which isn’t as bad as some people might think, as she’s got a really friendly smile. “You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Oh.” I forgot all about that. Should I tell her Harry? I don’t think so. I’m going to have to make a new one, so I can’t be recognised. It’s bad enough I’ve got this scar on my forehead. Anyone could tell who I was by that, even Aunt Petunia would agree. I don’t need my name going round telling people who I really am either, so I say to her, “Er…” And that’s it. I don’t know any names. Dudley? That’s a fat boy’s name. If I say someone from school they might catch me. How many Liam Muggrer’s and Piers Polkiss’s are there in the world? I start to say, “Ma – “ But I don’t know anything after that. Mark? Marcus? Malcolm? I know a Malcolm and he’s a git and ugly, so I use the next one. “-arcus. Marcus, I’m Marcus.”

Hermione gives me a funny look, like I’ve just told one of Uncle Vernon’s business jokes, but she doesn’t say anything, of which I am very thankful.

“I told my parents they could go and put the bags away. We’ll be here for a bit, anyways. More than an hour, and then we’re going to rent a car and go to a hotel in Paris. I’m ten, by the way. Well, sort of. In September I’ll be ten. My parents said I could stay right here as long as I don’t go anywhere else, so I reckoned we could talk here, since I saw you come down. I’m sorry about the suitcase, by the way, but it was fast thinking, you know? I never thought it would actually work. It seemed like someone they just put into films for laughs, but there we have it!”

She talks to fast, Hermione does. I’m still muddling it all out when she pulls me down to sit on the deck, breathing heavy and everything, because talking is hard work, even for girls.

“Where are you from?” Hermione sits very straight and very proper, like a princess.

“Surrey,” I answer before I can stop myself.

That makes her excited. She’s always exciting and talking fast, I notice. “My aunt lives in Surrey, you know. It was her husband, my Uncle Pete that took the car for us. He’s going to hold onto it and then drive down to pick us up when we come back from our holiday.” Then Hermione stops to think. She likes to think as much as she likes to talk. She thinks for a long time with me sat on my bum, playing with my fingers, until, “You said you were going on a holiday.”

“Yeah,” I shrug. She’s got a good memory, too.

“But your parents aren’t here. You appeared in my car like magic. My dad didn’t even notice you were in the suitcase. That’s not very normal.”

I shrug again. Questions, questions, too many questions. I don’t like people asking me questions all the time. It’s too nosy, too much like Aunt Petunia, who is the nosiest woman ever. “I s’pose I’m not very normal.” Superheroes only pretend to be normal, after all.

“No,” says Hermione, like she’s still thinking, “but you are very nice. You’re loads nicer than anyone at school.”

She says it like she knows what it’s like not to have many friends at school, which can’t be right because she seems normal enough to me. Normal people have always got friends. I’m sure of it, but I ask her anyways, “Have you got loads of friends at school?”

Hermione laughs really loudly, with her horse teeth hanging out and her hand on her stomach, but when she talks, she’s very serious. “No one likes a know-it-all,” she says, a little bit sad. “But I bet you’ve got friends.”

“Nobody likes a freak with glasses, either.”

“Well,” says Hermione, very quickly and all business, “it only makes sense, then, if we’re best friends – erm, if you want to, I mean.”

For the first time since I’ve run away I don’t think about the snake in my pocket, or Privet Drive, or the Dursleys, or my parents being dead, or superheroes or anything. All that I know is that I’m Harry Potter, pretending to be Marcus, nine years-old and sitting on a ferry with my first ever best friend ever, Hermione. I reckon she’d make a perfect Lois Lane, the way she’s clever with things like hiding people in suitcases and making up good cover stories.

I lean in close, so that my nose is by her nose and whisper, “I can tell you how I got into your car, but you’re going to have to keep it a secret. It’s a really big, really important secret.”

She nods, serious again. “I’m great at keeping secrets, with no one else to talk to and everything.”

“Good,” I tell her, “because the fate of the world could depend on it.”

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.”

ACCOUNT OF HERMIONE GRANGER
NEARLY 10, BEST FRIEND

How many times have I got to tell you? I don't know why I ran. It's just he was my first best friend, and he came out of nowhere. I was scared he was going to disappear into nowhere, too, and then I'd never have another best friend. Not like him. He was special - magical. I'm not even talking about the funny things he says he can do. Those are nothing special to me. I can do the same things as he can.... But, he was different. He didn't think I was strange for liking to read or being clever. He wanted to be my friend. He liked me, and no one but grown-ups ever do.

All I know is I saw that man staring at my best friend - he just looked bad - so I ran. No one was going to take my friend from me. I don't really know where I thought I could go. It was just a small boat, wasn't it? But, I didn't think he would jump over. I hope he's all right. You do think he's all right, don't you? I saw him go over the edge. I'm sure he hit the water. The Black Man jumped after him, right into the water. He flapped round for a bit. I don't think he knew how to swim, you know. Some grown-ups don't. And after that, we couldn't see either of them. They were just gone, and not drowned either. Just, gone. Disappeared, like magic. Straight back to nothing.

ACCOUNT OF HARRY JAMES POTTER
9, MAIN CHARACTER

Aunt Petunia was going to put me into swimming lessons with Dudley when we were five, but Dudley didn't want to do swimming once he found out it was really exercise, and the only thing Uncle Vernon thought I should be taught to do in a pool was drown, so it didn't happen. And that was okay. I never much fancied swimming anyways, I think, because who wants to be wet and cold for no reason at all? Swimming isn't like running. Running is easy. Running I am clever at. Dudley chases me with his mates at school, when they play Harry Hunting; I am the best at running very fast and hiding where no one can find me.

Hermione sees him first, the Black Man. "Marcus!" she tells me, taking my arm. I don't like people to touch me. Not ever. And especially not girls. So, I pull away. I give her my angry look, with the crinkly eyebrows and skinny lips. Aunt Petunia's always telling me I'm going to get a smack if I keep up with that face. "Oh, Marcus, watch out!"

We both turn round at the same time, and I see him. He is very tall and very thin, with yellow skin like a banana and the shiny sort of black eyes that only the very most terrible of bad guys in cartoons ever seem to have. With his skinny, bad guy arms, he pushes Hermione's mum and dad out of the way and heads straight for me. His face is dark like Uncle Vernon's when he's pushing me up against the wall and squeezing all the breath from my throat. He says something that we cannot hear, far away as we are.

If I was back in my cupboard at Privet Drive, I could have found a hiding spot and sat down and thought for ages and ages about how strange it is that the Black Man has found me so quickly since I ran away from him in London, especially because I am on a boat. But, I am not home, and here there is no hiding spot, so I've got to make my thoughts pass quickly until I find the right one to help me get away. I think, only the most cleverest of bad guys could track down a superhero on a moving boat. That's scary. Scarier than Uncle Vernon on a rainy day when one of his deals has fallen through, or Aunt Petunia when somebody has tracked mud through the foyer, or even more than Aunt Marge's biggest dog, Vicious, who is louder and bites harder than Ripper does.

Hermione is shouting and panicky. She tugs my sleeve, tells me to hurry up - c'mon, Marcus, run! - but my legs are not working properly. All I can do is stare at the Black Man. He stares back at me with his pointy black eyes and his massive nose, his lips twisted into something that perhaps is supposed to be a smile, only he's not very good at smiling, the Black Man. So, his smile looks crooked and nasty and full of ugly, yellow teeth that the school nurse says you get when you smoke too many cigarettes. If he was any other person and not the bad guy, if I was not running away from him, if he wasn't so scary, I would have thought that maybe he shouldn't smoke so many cigarettes. Then, his teeth could be more better looking and whiter, and perhaps he wouldn't look so nasty anymore.

"Marcus!" Hermione takes my hand, runs from one bench to another. Her parents call after her, 'Hermione! Hermione!', but she doesn't stop. The ferry is suddenly very big and very empty. There is nowhere to hide, no one to run to. Hermione's hands are sweaty in mine, and the tiny heartbeats inside them are thumping so quickly that I am afraid they might explode. My head is spinning. How did he find me, the Black Man? What does he want? What happens when he catches me? A million questions swirling inside my head, filling it.

Run, Harry. I almost forgot my snake. He slithers round in my pocket. How did he get there? But, there's no time to think about anything now. Run, Harry. Just like with Dudley and Piers and all the others at school. Forget about the untied shoelaces trying to trip you, the shouts from all of the people on the deck who want to make you stop. Forget everything, even yourself. Forget your whole self - body, hair, shoes, glasses - all of it. Just run. Fast. Forget everything and get away.

When I am running, I am thinking of a million things and nothing all at the same time. I am wondering where I can run to, where I will be safe, where I will not be found. I am afraid of what will happen if my feet do not move me quickly enough. Forwards, left, another left, right, left once more. Up the deck, over the rails. Splash. Kick. Mouthful of water.

Cold.

Dark.

Swimming lessons.

I try to move, to make my body float like I know it should, but I can't. I am like the heavy stones Dudley and his gang like to toss into the kiddie pool. Sinking, choking, like a rock. A big, heavy, Harry-sized rock. I remember my snake. Slimy on my hand, moving up. Good, I think. He can swim, at least. I've only killed myself....

*  *  *

"Stupid, wretched boy!" I hear Aunt Petunia's screechy voice in my head, telling me off for drowning myself. I wonder why it matters so much to her. Aunt Petunia's always hoping that if I walk too far from the pavement, I'll be hit by someone in a speeding car. She's told me as much, loads of times. "Foolish! Idiot!" Aunt Petunia must be ill. Her voice is deep like a man's, and her hands on my arms are too cold and sweaty. Furious, she is. Her hands are so tight round my arms that I can feel all of the blood being squeezed from them. She shakes me - hard - my head flopping in every direction like the stuffed bear Dudley used to play Hangman with.

"Ow," I tell her, hoping she will stop. My neck is sore from all of the shaking, and my arms are achy, and my throat is full of water that stops me saying anything other than "Owlghhh."

"Ow, indeed," say the hands, which I am beginning to think are not Aunt Petunia. They shake me again. "Up, boy, up!"

My body is waking up now, but I wish it hadn't. Everything is freezing cold and hard. Uncomfortable. I feel a bit like laundry when Aunt Petunia takes it out of the washing machine - all wrung out and damp and dizzy. "Can't," I tell the voice. I try to sound as sore as I feel so that the voice will leave me alone. "Dead," I say. "Can't move. Too dead."   

The voice makes the huff-y sort of noise Aunt Petunia does when she's in a hurry and feeling hexasprated with me. But, I know now that this is not Aunt Petunia. She has given me enough smacks and told me off plenty of times for me to know that these are not her hands trying to pull me from the ground or her voice telling me what a horrible, awful, terrible abomination of a boy I am. "Unfortunately, Potter, you are not dead." The hands tug my t-shirt, my hair, my arms. They make me sit up, keep my head straight, let out all of the water that has been trying to turn my mouth into a swimming pool. "But you will be, if you do not wake up and stop this foolishness."

Quiet. There is nothing I can think of to say back to the voice, but I will not open my eyes. The minute I am up, boom. Everything is over. Everything is real life again. Secretly I am wishing to myself that the voice and the hands belong to my dad. I make believe that he is very tall and strong, but not fat like Uncle Vernon. He's got black hair like mine, green eyes like mine, everything the same as mine. In my head, he's smiling and happy that I am alive and didn't die when I jumped from the ferry. He pulls me in; I hear his clothes whispering as he moves. His hand raises; I can feel it against my cheek. He is going to give me a cuddle, and then we will go home where my mum is waiting with dry clothes and a nice bed in a bedroom that will be all my own. Just me and my dad and my mum. Alive. All alive.

There is a cloud in my head that makes it hard to think or move, but the cloud is going away now, slowly. "Potter!" I flop back, waiting for my dad to pick me up and take me home. He makes the huffing noise again, pulls my body back up so that I can feel his breath on my face, and slaps me. "Stop this now, Potter, and wake up. I know you can hear me!" At Privet Drive I am always being smacked for something. Aunt Petunia says it's because I've got a terrible mouth on me, which is a bit stupid, because my mouth is fine. Straight teeth and everything, even. The hand that is smacking me now is much bigger than hers, but it doesn't hurt. Just stings a bit as it slaps, again and again, taking turns with each cheek.

There are different kinds of slaps. Some are for misbehaving, and those are all right, because you knew you were going to get them you misbehaved in the first place, so you're ready for it. There are waking-up slaps that Aunt Petunia does sometimes when she is too tired in the morning to shout, slaps for doing stupid things that could get you hurt, slaps for poor marks in school, slaps for burning the bacon, slaps for nothing at all, slaps, slaps, slaps. All sorts, all different feeling.

The hands are smacking me quickly and softly, waking me up and telling me off for doing something as dangerous as jumping into the middle of the English Channel. Finally, I open my eyes.

"You!"

If I was not dead before, I will be soon. My eyes move slowly from his feet to his head, taking it all in. Tall, skinny, pale, black eyes, dirty hair. His mouth is twisted up into the angriest frown I have ever seen. It's not a human mouth, but a snarling dog's mouth with yellow teeth that barks and spits. The Black Man looks at me the same way Uncle Vernon looks at Polish construction workers and people who ride motorbikes. I know what he is thinking without him having to say it. I am disgusting and useless. He wishes he could be looking at anything else, but me.

"Me," says the Black Man in his horrible, low voice, like two rocks being scraped against each other. He does the smile that is not really a smile again.

When you live with the Dursleys, you've got to be good at knowing where you are. You've got to keep a look out, always know how to get away quickly. The Black Man and me are sitting in the sand. That's going to be hard to run on, even if I am the fastest boy in my class. On my left is water. Loads of it. A whole channel full. Can't go that way. On my right is loads of nothing. Trees, rocks, bushes and things. Nature stuff. I can run there, if I'm fast enough. I can lose myself until the Black Man gives up and goes away for good. I think, no one could want to chase after me for too long. Even if I was the best and only superhero in the whole world, and he was the only bad guy and my worst enemy, I'm not that important.

The Black Man stands up, lifting me with him. He smacks the dirt from my jeans and wipes the water from my face with his sleeve. His lips move. He's talking, but not to me. He's whinging to himself about me, the way Aunt Petunia does when she is very cross. "Leave it to you, Potter, Apparating away.... the bloody English Channel, Merlin's sake...."

I make a decision. No running away this time. My hand tears itself from his, and I turn round to face him, full of energy. "Stay away from me!" I warn, swinging my arms out, punching as powerfully as I can. "Stop following me! Leave me alone!" For a second the Black Man looks like he is going to say something to me, but he just reaches out to take my hand again, his lips shut tight, his eyes full of fire. "Get off!"

"Potter," he says, very quiet. If I wasn't so angry and shouting, I would have heard the way his voice was too soft, would have seen the way his eyes flashed like lightning, the way his lips curved like a dog's do right before it barks.

My face is hot and itchy and miserable. I want to cry. I want to sit down, put my head in my hands, and have a long, miserable cry. Why won't he leave me alone? Why can't I even run away properly, without being followed and kidnapped and probably killed? I point my finger at him, my voice loud, panicky even. "Bugger off, you! Just...just bugger off, or I'll get you! I'm serious! I can hurt you! I will hurt you!"

He comes toward me again. "Potter - "

"I don't know how you know my name, and I don't care! I'll kill you, I will! I can do things, things that normal boys can't do! You can't kidnap me, because I'm dangerous! I'm dangerous and I'll hurt you, and I, and - don't come any closer!" Matthew Evans says that the only way to make someone bugger off properly is to scare him, and the best way to scare him without getting yourself carted off to jail is to show him how tough you are. My eyes go up and down the beach, looking for anything I can use as a weapon, but there is nothing. Not even a stick. I can't fight the Black Man with my fists, as he's much bigger than I am and doesn't look like he's hurt by my punches in the least. My breath catches, my hands shake. There is no way to fight, no way to scare him.

They take off, my feet, before I've got the time to think about which direction I should be running in. It's easier than I thought it would be to run away on the sand, even with my shoes full of water and my t-shirt flapping about like a fat, Dudley-sized flag on my back. Run, Harry, run. I make it off the beach and through the trees, the branches scratching at my arms and legs, the angry shouts of the Black Man close behind. Run faster. Run. Run. My legs pump hard, shooting me out from the trees, down an empty street, and then another. Faster and faster, I think, watching the world around me blur together until it is nothing but colours and sounds and wind on my face.

The Black Man follows me through rows of houses, gardens, parks, and more streets. This is a strange town, very old and made of stone and brick. Nothing at all like Magnolia Crescent. We run past other kids playing games in the street, past mothers with prams and men buying newspapers. The Black Man is always close, no matter how fast I go. I feel like my heart is going to burst from my chest, it's pounding so hard, but I don't stop. I can't stop.

Further and further, until the people start to disappear and the bricks look blacker with dirt. My legs want to keep running, but my head says stop. There is no where else to go. Ahead, there is only a brick wall.

"Potter!" breathes the Black Man, his cheeks pink and sweaty. "Potter, you little idiot - "

Sometimes the anger burning in my chest is too much for me. It wants to come out, and I can't make it stay in. It breaks free in shouts and punches, pushing me back, towards the brick wall, away from him. My anger takes over where my brain used to be. It makes the decisions. It tells me to back away, keep shouting, find a weapon. Anger makes my hands reach for a bottle. I've seen people do this trick in films where they hold the bottle and break it against a wall, making it sharp. Like a knife. I used to think it was cool, but now there is no time to think.

My knife is pointed at the Black Man's chest. I want him to know that I will cut him, if I have to. It's scary, I think, but I could kill him. If he's going to hurt me, I'd rather kill him. At least then I could get away on my own, left in peace. "Don't come near me," I shout, closing my eyes for a minute so they don't get teary. He won't listen to me if I cry. Uncle Vernon never does. "Don't touch me, or I'll kill you. Got it?"

We stay that way for a few minutes, the Black Man and me. Staring at each other, me with my bottle-knife, him with his empty hands. I almost think he is going to shout at me to put down my weapon, like they do in the films, but he doesn't. Tilting his head back, he shows me all of his horrible, crooked teeth - a whole mouthful - and makes a funny, choking sort of noise that, I realise, is supposed to be a laugh. It's not a nice laugh, not a sort of laugh that someone who laughs a lot would have. The Black Man does not raise his voice or put his hand on his stomach or even smile. He just stands there, his hands dropped to his sides, laughing and laughing like I'm the funniest thing he's ever seen.

This, I think, is not how bad guys are supposed to behave when you fight them.

"I mean it!" That's not right, him laughing when I'm so serious. It's not funny. I could kill him, and he'd be dead, like my mum and dad, and that's not funny at all. The anger is so strong, I don't hardly feel like myself anymore. This is Superhero Harry. He's not afraid of the Black Man. Superhero Harry takes his knife and raises it high into the air so that the Black Man can see. "Aha!" says Superhero Harry, full of victory, and brings it down onto his own arm.

"See?" Again and again, the knife flashing, cutting, making blood. Anger can make pain go away. The knife doesn't hurt as it slices. Just makes blood, more and more of it. "Do you see? I mean it, don't come near me! I can hurt you!" It doesn't hurt, I tell myself, but the tears come anyway. They drip down my cheeks and fog up my glasses and make me feel a bit stupid, a bit too small. "I can! I can...don't come near, and, I, and - don't touch m - stop it!"

I know it is wrong to hate, but I can't help it. I hate grown ups. It's not fair that they are so much bigger than me. I should be strong. I'm a superhero, after all. Superheroes can do anything, fight anyone. But, if I'm so strong, how come the Black Man has pulled my knife away so easily and tossed it away so that it smashes and breaks into millions and zillions of little pieces? He shakes me again, his big hands pulling, making me sit on a step beside him.

"Idiot! Mongrel!" he says, his voice rocky again. "Give me your arm." He doesn't wait for me to hold it out, though. Just grabs, running his fingers over the cuts and making me cry all over again. "No need for the theatrics, Potter. You are not seriously injured."

One more sniff, and then I am done. I will not cry in front of him. Superheroes never cry, anyways. They aren't that weak.

"Hold still," orders the Black Man, tearing off a bit of his sleeve. "I said hold still, boy!" He wraps my arm up very quickly and then pushes me away, like it hurts him to touch me. Fine by me, I think.

When I was on the ferry with Hermione, the sun was shining and the sky was lovely and blue. The Black Man looks up at the same time I do, only to see loads of clouds and flashes of lightning. It was warm before, but now the wind cuts straight through my new jumper, which is still damp from jumping into the Channel. I think perhaps I should find somewhere else to go before it rains, but the Black Man has still got my wrist tightly in his hand. He stares straight ahead, like he's thinking hard about something important. His nose wrinkles.

We sit like that for a bit, me and the Black Man. Quiet, thinking. I should say something, do something, make him explain to me why he's here, why he's been following me. But I don't. I'm afraid that if I speak, I will remind him that I am sat here next to him, and then he will do something awful. It's like that with the Dursleys sometimes. They're not half as nasty when I let them forget about me. Sometimes they even forget to do the lock on the cupboard door at night.

"Come, Potter." Even as he stands his fist is tight on my arm. "We're leaving."

"Where?" I ask, before I can stop myself. My legs feel heavy, and my head is stuffy, as if I've been ill. I don't feel much like fighting.

The Black Man shows me his teeth, yellow and shiny with spit. "That, boy, is none of your concern." When he talks, I notice, he looks down his nose at me. I feel sort of specky and small standing next to him, but I can't break my hand from his, and my arm is more and more sore every second. I want Hermione back, with the ferry and the suitcase that smelled like plastic.

"It's my concern if you're taking me somewhere."

But the Black Man is brushing sand from his clothes and doesn't pay me any attention. Just like the Dursleys, I think. Aunt Petunia is always saying that the only way to deal with a rotten boy like me is to ignore him.

"Stay close to me," he orders, tugging my sore arm. "Or you will be extremely sorry."

Before I've got the chance to ask why, something strange happens. It is the same feeling from before, when I disappeared in London and ended up in Hermione's car. Like being squeezed through a tube of toothpaste and then spat out again all over the floor. Only, this time the Black Man is holding my arm, and we land in the middle of the woods, not a car with a curly-haired girl and her bag full of books.

There are some trees in Magnolia Crescent that Aunt Petunia says are off limits to little boys. Dudley and his mates used to drag me there when they wanted to play punching bag without being caught. I liked the woods. They were big - big enough that if I ran for a bit, I could shake off Dudley and Piers and Dennis no problem. It's easy to forget things when you are surrounded by loads of nothing. If Aunt Petunia was being a stroppy old bint, or if Uncle Vernon had been at the sherry with Aunt Marge, I could go to the wood and no one would bother me there. Animals don't care much if your parents were useless, or if you live in a cupboard under the stairs because it's the only place your kind are suited for. They don't mind if you're not very popular at school, or if you haven't got any friends.

he animals will be your friend for little things, like bread crumbs and soft pats and cups of water. In the woods, I was never alone. There were squirrels and birds and titchy little things that liked to eat bits of nut and fruit I brought from the kitchen back at Privet Drive. I would watch them play, and they would sit very patient and quiet while I finished my homework, and then we would have a siesta or go exploring until the sun went very low in the sky and it was time to go home.

"Quickly, now, Potter!" barks the Black Man, tugging me along. His eyebrows are like furry, black caterpillars pushed down over his dark eyes, and his lips are even thinner than they were the last time I looked at them. He looks from side to side, almost like he is expecting something to pop out at us from behind one of the big trees. The sky has been getting darker and darker; I try and guess if it's on account of the trees being so massive and leafy as they are, or if maybe the night time has come sooner than I thought it would. I wonder where we are, where we're going, and why, but I won't ask. The Black Man is walking so fast I can't hardly keep up, but he drags me along anyways, his hand as tight as ever round my wrist.

Something about his voice reminds me of my snake. Where has Walrus gone? I do a quick check; he's not in my pockets. Have I left him?

"Er - hey," I say, very softly, in case he is the Aunt Petunia-y sort that get angry when you ask too many questions. The Black Man keeps walking. If he heard me, he won't show it. I sigh, feeling a bit hexasprated. "Hello?"

He stops. "I said, quickly, Potter!"

"I know, I know, it's just, my snake, he's not here - "

Before I can finish, though, his other hand has reached deep into a pocket I hadn't noticed before, and there is Walrus, wrapped all comfy and cosy round the Black Man's big finger.

Had a pleasant swim? he asks me, as the Black Man shoves him into my hands and starts walking again. I nod, but don't say anything. It's difficult enough keeping up, without trying to speak snake.

We walk for what seems like ages and ages, the Black Man pulling me after him, the trees whizzing by. Walrus doesn't ask me anything else. He's clever like that, always knowing when to keep quiet and just listen. The woods are getting blacker and blacker, but we keep walking. I imagine the Black Man is going to take me to his secret lair and do tests. He'll want to know where my superhero powers come from, of course. It's obvious now that he wasn't the bad guy at all. He's my scientist, just like Batman's friend, the old man. The Black Man is going to help me improve my powers and train to fight evil, I know it. He's probably been tracking me down my entire life, but he could never find me because the place my parents left me at Privet Drive was made secret. That way I could grow up without the bad guys finding me and killing me when I was still a baby. Babies are awful at fighting evil. They always lose, on account of they're not very good at kicking, or punching, or using gadgets.

When we finally have got out of the trees, the Black Man turns to me once more and says, "There are people here that are not to see you, Potter. Even you can't be idiot enough not to understand the meaning of the words conceal yourself."

I must be an idiot, though, because I haven't got any clue what conceal yourself means, except for the "yourself" bit. But that's not very much help, is it? "Who's not to see me?" I'm feeling brave enough to chance a question, or six. "Why can't they see me? Where are we?"

The Black Man says nothing. With his lips squeezed together and his eyes all squinty and angry, he yanks something like a scratchy blanket over my head and pulls the hood down low onto my eyes. "Speak to no one," he orders me and starts off again up a massive hill.

I don't know how I didn't see it before, the castle. It's bigger than any building in Magnolia Crescent and even London, with loads of towers and turrets and windows that sparkle like little stars in the tall, dark walls. This is a fairy tale. I'm dreaming. There are no castles like this, massive and grey and sat up on a hill like something from a storybook. This is going to be my secret hideout. I'm jumping up and down at the Black Man's side, but he pushes me away.

"Do not climb my arm, Potter, I am not a playground," he says crossly, but I don't hardly notice. So what if he's not a playground? I'm going to live in a castle! A real castle, like with knights and kings and damsels in distress! If only Hermione could see this with me, or Jo, or both of them.

Impressive, hisses Walrus from my arm, but I ignore him. My stomach is doing flip-flops and my legs can't stop skipping. A castle! I'm going to live in a castle!

"Potter!"

Up, up, up. The Black Man leads us to a pair of doors that are as big, I think, as the Dursleys' entire house. He doesn't knock, but pushes them open with his hands, pulling me after him. The hall inside is so big I could fit my entire primary in it six times over, with room for the Tesco, the playground, the public swimming pool, and the ferry Hermione and me were taking to France, before I jumped off. We start to walk again, even faster than before, our shoes clicking and clacking on the floor and round the hall.

"Professor Snape!" someone calls. The Black Man tugs my hood down lower, so that I can't see anything but black, and pushes me along. I wonder who is Snape and what a professor is doing inside this castle. Does he work for the superheroes, too? I suppose a professor would be useful if a superhero needed help looking up something in a book, or if he had to build something but didn't know how.

It's more difficult to walk when I can't see, but every time I try to lift the hood, the Black Man pushes it back down again and gives my hand a slap, so I stop playing with it and let it sit. The Black Man steers me on for ages again, up steps and down corridors, our footsteps clacking all over the place. My feet feel achy now, after all of the walking, and my legs are tired like they were before, when I woke up on the beach. I want to ask the Black Man to stop, slow down a bit so that I can give my legs a break, but I don't. He's in a hurry, and when grown-ups are in a hurry, they don't like to be bothered by whingy little boys with tired feet.

We stop very suddenly. "Mars bar," comes the Black Man's voice from somewhere over my head. I perk up. We get sweets, as well in this place? But, before I can ask, he is pushing me again. We're going up steps, one after another, until, finally, he shoves me forwards and pulls the hood from off my face.

It takes my eyes a minute to get focused from behind my glasses. This can't be real, I think to myself, glancing round. The Black Man has taken me to the most amazing, coolest room I have ever been in before in my life. There are paintings of old men that snore and talk to themselves in their sleep, tables of sparkling, shining things that Dudley would go mad for, statues of funny-looking animals and all sorts of abnormal things that would make Uncle Vernon turn purple at the sight of. This is a real superhero's lair. It's got to be. Is it going to be mine?

I look to the Black Man, hoping he will tell me something about the place he has just taken me to, but he says nothing, as usual. His hands, like pale claws, dig into my shoulder, and he looks straight ahead at something that I hadn't noticed before, when I looking at all of the cool gadgets and stuff.

Behind a massive, wooden desk that's covered in more silver things is the oldest man probably in the whole world. He smiles at me, a real smile, not like the one the Black Man gives, and scratches a spot beneath his St Nicholas beard that, I think, is maybe his chin.

"Hello, Harry," he tells me in a nice, old man sort of voice. Maybe it is the way he smiles with his mouth and his twinkly blue eyes, or the way he talks to me like I am somebody special - I dunno - but, I feel like he is somebody very important, somebody I am supposed to like. And I do like him, more than I've ever liked anyone before, except maybe Hermione and Jo, who are my best friends and have to be liked the most out of all the people I know. He lifts his wrinkly, ancient hand and shows me a dish of little, yellow balls."Would you like a sherbet lemon?"