Harrie Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated summer holidays more than any time of year because it kept him out of school. Harrie loved school and he loved to do homework. You see, Harrie was a wizard.

The reason Harrie never enjoyed his summer holidays was because he lived with the Dunderhead family on Privet Drive. Uncle Venereal, Aunt Polyp, and their son, Crudley, were Harrie’s only living relatives. They were Muggins, and they had a very medieval attitude toward magic.

Harrie had been living with his relatives ever since his parents died, and because they too had been wizards, he was not allowed to mention them under the Dunderhead’s roof. The Dunderheads lived in terror of anyone finding out that Harrie had spent most of the last two years at Hogballwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The most they could do, however, was to lock away Harrie’s spellbooks, wand, cauldron and broomstick at the start of summer break, and forbid him to leave the house. Uncle Venereal even padlocked Harrie’s pet owl, Crotchwig, in her cage to stop her from carrying messages to anyone in the wizarding world.
The Dunderhead family told Harrie that a car crash killed his parents, but he knew better. They had been murdered by the evil Dark wizard, Lord Vomit. Harrie had escaped only because Vomit’s projectile curse had miraculously bounced off Harrie and spattered right back upon the evil one. Vomit had fled, vowing revenge on Harrie.

Remembering their last meeting, Harrie felt lucky to have made it to his thirteenth birthday. And even though today was in fact Harrie’s birthday, the Dunderheads had not so much as mentioned it, and neither had his friends such as Buttbeak, the half bird/half horse flying creature, Ron Greasy, Hermaphrodite Stranger, or Knobby, the elf who worked as an indentured servant to Harrie.

But Harrie was still an underage wizard, and he was forbidden by wizard law to do magic outside school. His record wasn’t exactly clean either. Only last summer he’d gotten an official warning that said another offense would mean expulsion from Hogballwarts.

Just at that moment, as Harrie was looking wistfully out his window, there was a deafening BANG! in the downstairs of his uncle’s house. Harrie heard many voices in the room below. He had an immediate fright – perhaps it was Lord Vomit and a host of his goblins, poised to pounce upon his quivering hide! Not one to take any chances, Harrie put on his Invisibility Cloak before descending the stairs.

He crept toward the kitchen. Through the crack in the door Harrie thought he heard many hushed voices. He clearly heard Aunt Polyp say, “Be quiet, I think I hear him coming.” Instantly, Harrie knew those ignorant Muggins must be rifling through his spellbooks.

“I’ll fix them with a spell,” he thought. “Lumos bilbos boggins,” he muttered as he slipped through the kitchen door.
Harrie was flabbergasted. This was not at all what he’d expected. The room was full of friends and teachers from school: Ron Greasy, Dangling Snape, Peaves the Poltergeist, Hermaphrodite Stranger, Professor Rumpledink, and Heinous, the hard-drinking near-giant and gamekeeper at Hogballwarts who was devoted to Harrie. Even Lord Vomit was there!

The only explanation was that they were all together in one place to surprise him for his birthday. Perhaps Lord Vomit had repented and come to pledge his eternal sorrow. But why hadn’t they yelled, “Surprise,” wondered Harrie, and then he remembered he was still wearing the Invisibility Cloak.
Just then, Ron Greasy, stepped forward and said (speaking directly at Harrie), “Harrie, we’ve all gathered here for your benefit. We want to confront you about what you’re doing to yourself, Harrie. We’ve organized this intervention only because we care about you.”

“What are you talking about, Ron Greasy?” Harrie asked, “and how can you see me through my invisibility? You must have rubbed your retinas with Scabber dingleberries from the Forbidden Forest, which is the only known foil to invisibility …”

“We can’t let you continue to live in this fantasy world,” said Knobby, Harrie’s servant-elf as he stood on a chair. “Nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about anymore. Wizards and witches, goblins and elves, forbidden forests and flying horses … It just doesn’t make sense, Harrie!”

“I will not tolerate insolence from my very own elf,” screamed Harrie. “Now get upstairs, Knobby, and polish my wand, knit my Sorcery Hat, oil the spindles and drain the blushings of my Nimbus 2000 Firebolt broomstick for my upcoming Quidditch tournament before I cut your Gringotts in half!”

“That’s nonsense, Harrie,” yelled Knobby. “My name is Bobby, and I’m not an elf, I happen to be a midget, or a little person, if you like. And I’m not your bloody servant! I’m actually a janitor at the grade school. I’ve just been playing along with you because I thought this whole thing was your schtick. I had no idea you believed in all this.”

“But Lord Vomit, surely this is part of one of your wicked schemes, some of your nefarious conniving to undo me,” screamed Harrie. “What black-hearted swindle hast thou perpetrated upon my friends?!”

Lord Vomit meekly replied, “Harrie, you have every reason in the world to resent me. After all, I did slip you that Microdot acid laced with Angel Dust at the last D&D tournament, I even puked on you, but I am still one of your oldest friends. I simply grew jealous of you. You were the best and brightest Dungeon Master of our generation, Harrie, but you grew so damn despotic. You took over the games and created this entire other world and made us play along. It just wasn’t fun anymore …”

“Fiend, I have still yet to avenge the death of my parents!” Harrie screamed. “Once I reclaim my spellbook, wand and cauldron that my dreadfully obtuse Muggins family has locked away, I will finally lay waste to you!”

“But Harrie, we are your parents,” said Uncle Venereal. “At first, when you got into this role playing we thought it was just a recreational escape from reality, but as you plunged deeper into it, we had to do something. So we confiscated your six-foot Graffix bong, hydroponic growing operation and meth lab because we feared for your safety after that first bust. The authorities warned us that if you were caught pushing meth and marijuana again at the grade school you would be jailed for good. You responded by creating this elaborate scenario in your head and killing us off. Harrie, can’t you see that it’s breaking your poor mother’s heart?!”

“None of you have ever cared a wit about me, not even on my birthday, my first day as a teenager!” Harrie screamed. “Where is my owl, Crotchwig? I must send out a distress message to the Hogsmeade wizard village! Surely my fellow wizards can rescue me!”

“But Harrie,” Aunt Polyp screamed tearfully, “you’re 28 years old! And that’s no owl, it’s a pheasant your father had stuffed after a hunting trip!” Aunt Polyp swooned and fell into Uncle Venereal’s arms. Harrie tried to understand why they had become allied with Lord Vomit. Perhaps they had been involved in the plot to murder his parents and prevent his rise to Grand Wizard from the beginning.
Just as Harrie began to recite a distress spell and again shroud himself in the Invisibility Cloak, a man he had never seen stepped forward.

“Harrie, my name is Doctor Rinshaw, and I’m a neuropsychologist. I’m also,” he winked slyly at Harrie, “something of a whiz at Quidditch play myself.”

“But you speak and dress as one of the Muggins,” Harrie said.

“Only to move freely among them,” he replied. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll apprentice you at a place you’ve probably heard of …” The wizard was struggling for the right words. Harrie thought he knew what he meant to say.
”The Azkaban Office of Artifacts at the Ministry of Magic?” Harrie asked.

“That’s the place,” the wizard said.

In his hand the wizard held a clear tube with a sharp barb of silver at the end. The crystalline drop of moisture hanging off at the end entranced Harrie. A pocket grindylow, he thought.

“Is that … shrivelfig potion?” Harrie asked. The doctor nodded. Harrie knew the slight prick he felt at the end of his outstretched arm was a necessary part of the indoctrination as the potion took effect. Just before Harrie shrunk to a size small enough for the wizard to safely smuggle him out of the room, he leaned over and whispered, “I’ve always been attracted to the kindness of wizards.”