A circus was in nearby town, and Dudley wanted to see it. Fortunately, it was Halloween. Halloween meant that Mrs. Figg couldn’t take Harry, so he got to see the circus, too.

“As if she couldn’t visit graves anytime else”, Aunt Petunia complained every year.

Harry thought that was rather unfair. It was, he figured, a traditional time to visit graves, so why shouldn’t Mrs. Figg want to do it?

It wasn’t her fault that many fun things Dudley wanted to do happened to also be on or around that day.

And Harry himself did not mind at all that the Dursleys were forced to take him along.


He enjoyed looking out of the car window, even though he was squeezed into a corner next to Dudley’s best friend Piers.

The car was very big, but Dudley still took up almost two seats, leaving only one for Piers and Harry to share. It was a good thing Piers was thin.

Usually, Harry didn’t get to go anywhere more interesting than school or Mrs. Figg’s house, so he enjoyed just looking at the otherwise pretty boring fields that seemed to fly past the window.

At last, Uncle Vernon slowed the car down and parked it on a field that had been converted into a temporary parking site.

“Stay in the car”, he barked at Harry. “And don’t break anything!”

Harry waited until the Dursleys and Piers had walked away. Thanks to Dudley having talked about it so much, he knew exactly when the show would start, and when it would end.

And he did not intend to spend that time in the car.

He scavenged for coins between the backseats, and found enough to afford a chocolate bar. After making sure the Dursleys weren’t anywhere near, he also looked under the front seats and found some more.

Being left alone in the car was a treat all by itself.

Harry checked the clock. Still some time until the show would start and he could be sure to not get caught.

He took out the sandwich Aunt Petunia had made for him and started eating. The lettuce and tomato on it hadn’t been very fresh to start out with, and were now rapidly wilting. Sandwiches for Harry usually included things that would go to waste otherwise. Which meant that, at least according to the expert who had visited the school last term, Harry ate healthier than Dudley. No wonder Dudley was so fat. Unlike Harry, Dudley almost never got sandwiches, but instead got money to buy what he wanted.

Some of which he tended to lose in the car.


Harry checked the clock once more, swallowed the last bite of the sandwich, and carefully stored the paper bag it had been in inside his pocket. He couldn’t lose it, or Aunt Petunia would know he had left the car if she bothered to check – and sometimes, she did.


He took off the extremely ugly sweater – it was bright orange and had made Dudley look like a pumpkin and didn’t look much better on Harry – and the T-shirt, put the sweater on again, rolled the sleeves up and put on the T-shirt again. This wouldn’t work with normal clothes, but since Dudley’s clothes always were much too large for Harry, it now looked as if Harry was wearing only a baggy T-shirt. No one would notice a boy in an orange sweater, no one would mention one, and the Dursleys would never suspect a thing.

So disguised, Harry walked towards the circus tent. As he had hoped, there were other shows going on at the same time. You could look at the animals, fish for apples in a tub or buy sugary snacks.


And then, some way away from everything else, was a black tent, decorated with carved pumpkins. A sign at the entrance read “Spooky Tent”

It probably wasn’t very scary – Harry’s experiences from school trips had lowered his expectations for things that promised to scare you witless – but it still was entertainment.

As luck would have it, the spare change he had collected was just enough to buy a ticket for the spooky tent.

Harry debated with himself for a moment, but in the end decided that getting to see something – anything – interesting at all beat having some more food. Experience had taught him that sugary treats didn’t keep you full for long, anyway.

At the entrance, a lanky young man with lots of pimples collected Harry’s money, and immediately went back to his pastime of smoking.

Inside, Harry noticed he was the only visitor.

The tent was dimly lit by candles, and in the flickering light, Harry saw a skull with mysterious symbols drawn on it – Dudley would have dismissed it as probably being plastic, but Harry found it rather convincing.

There was a mummified hand that allegedly had belonged to a mermaid. Harry shuddered with a mixture of fear and delight at the sight of the webbed fingers.

While the cursed necklace, next to which a collection of newspaper articles detailed the gruesome ends of its owners, didn’t look very exciting itself, there was something else that did look intriguing.

It was an old black and white photograph of a man on a windswept beach.

But the really interesting thing was that the man was wearing long, black robes, and Harry immediately thought he must be a wizard.
He wasn’t even sure where that thought had come from. The stage magicians Dudley watched on TV were dressed in garish colours, or sometimes suits, while this man ... he was wearing robes, and even though there was no colour in the photograph, Harry was sure the garment was black.

“Cursed photograph”, it said, next to the picture. “The man on the photo is a real, living person who made the mistake of touching the cursed photo of the Isle of Drear. If you listen carefully, you might hear his pleas for help, but beware, for if you do as he asks, you will take his place inside the photo.”

Harry shivered. Now that was scary!

Since he had lots of time, and the tent was rather small, Harry stared at the photograph for a long time.

You could see it was windy because there were high waves, and the man’s longish hair was tossed to one side.

Wait – hadn’t it looked differently a moment ago?

Harry stood on his toes, as the picture was hung at an adult’s eye level, and looked more closely.

He almost jumped when the man’s expression changed. Harry bit his hand to muffle his surprised cry.

The man didn’t look sad and serious anymore, he looked ... surprised? Shocked?

Was this real? You could do a lot with computers nowadays, or so Harry had heard, but ...

He could see the space between the photo and the tent wall, there couldn’t be a mini TV there.

And the man stared at him, as if he was just as surprised to see Harry as Harry was to see someone being trapped in a photo.

Then, very slowly, the man raised a hand and put a finger on his lips. Silence.

Harry nodded.

The man knelt down and wrote something in the wet sand.

“POTTER?”

Now, Harry was really scared witless. There was no way ... sure, Potter was a very common name, but still ...

When the man added “HARRY?”, Harry bit his hand so hard he tasted blood.

The man wiped out the letters. “DO NOT TOUCH PHOTO.”

Hadn’t the text said to not listen to the man? But then, it also said he had gotten trapped by touching the photo.

“TELL ALBUS DUMBLEDORE.”

Harry frowned. He wanted to help, but at the same time, following the instructions would be dangerous, right?

“I don’t know anyone of that name”, he replied, wondering, at the next moment, how he even knew it was a name.

The man’s eyes widened.

“PETUNIA DOES”, he wrote after wiping out the other name. “ASK HER.”

Asking Aunt Petunia for help with a man trapped in a photo sounded like a rather bad idea. She would want to throw the photo away. And touch it. Perhaps that was the plan?

And ... if it was, did Harry actually mind? He felt terrible for even considering it, but ... did the man deserve to be trapped in a photo more than Aunt Petunia? Or Uncle Vernon? Or Dudley?

“It says here that anyone trying to help you will take your place”, he whispered.

The man frowned, then nodded. “DANGEROUS”, he wrote. “LET ADULT WIZARD HANDLE IT.”

That sounded really reasonable. The teachers at school always said to let adults handle dangerous things.

Aunt Petunia, on the other side, wasn’t that worried about Harry handling hot frying pans and burning his hands on them.

Wait – a wizard?

But Harry didn’t have much time to think, as in that moment, he noticed it had gotten much noisier outside.

Of course! There must be a break in the show!

What if the Dursleys came here? Dudley would say everything was fake and plastic once he was here, but he would want to go inside anyway.

Harry made a decision. He rolled out one oversized sleeve, wrapped his hand in it, and carefully took the photograph.

Nothing happened, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Years at the Dursleys had taught him how to steal food so that no one noticed it. One of the rules was: Always make sure no one finds the packaging.

So he ripped the description of the photo off the wooden rack with his left hand and stuffed it in his pocket.

He just so managed to hide the small wooden frame between his shirt and the sweater before the first people poured in.


Harry decided to make a run for it. Dudleys first thought would be likely of food, so he had a few moments.

As he had hoped, the young man at the entrance didn’t look at him when he walked out, and didn’t go inside, either.

His heart rapidly beating, Harry searched for the car.

Autumn mists had gathered around the parking space, and he could only see what was right in front of him. With his right sleeve holding the stolen photo, he couldn’t even wipe his glasses properly.

The damp air sucked the warmth out of his bare arms.

Had the car been stolen? If the car had been stolen, Uncle Vernon would kill him, for sure. They didn’t lock him in the car anymore, after some passersby had scolded Aunt Petunia for it on a hot summer day, but in exchange for that bit of freedom, they did expect him to guard it with his life.