purchase, his magic wand, for a wizard is nothing without his magic wand.
Harry had his Uncle Vermin drive him to Berlin, which was no problem. Uncle Vermin had long since come to understand the New House Order. Harry got out of the car, and went into a seemingly abandoned amusement park. It had formerly been the ill-fated experiment, Disneyland Germany. It was in a permanent state of rust. Harry jumped into a construction debris chute. The chute deposited him inside a building that looked like an abandoned warehouse from the outside. He landed in the trash dumpster, in Abis Mall, behind The Magic Ice Shop, where wizards go to get frozen in their favorite Magic Ice flavor. He was happy that he didn’t get hurt, but upset at how filthy he was, covered in sticky melted ice goo, used napkins, and bugs. Ugggh, the stink was appalling. He waved his wand and spoke the magic phrase, “AAA Dry Cleaners are the best!” (Sorry about that, folks, but product placement pays the bills these days, you know!) He was instantly clean, fresh, and lemon-scented.
He was a bit early, so he bought a Magic Ice cone and though it was comfortable indoors, he put on the winter parka needed to eat one. He took a seat outside the shop at a table with an umbrella and waited for his friends to arrive. He glanced at the ceiling, it depicted what it was like outside, a sunny day. The illusion was perfect, he almost felt like he was outside.
As he waited for Ron and Hermione to arrive, he thought about how he would be seeing them off at the Hogwashes Express in just two days, which reminded him of the time he first met Ron and Hermione.
He met Ron at Victoria Station while looking for the right platform, Platform p (Pi), on his first day of school. That was nearly seven years ago, if you counted preschool. Harry wondered, if you don’t count preschool, do you count the people you met in preschool? He gave up trying to figure that one out, as he wasn’t much on philosophy, and since he did count preschool anyway.
Harry had arrived at Victoria Station alone except for his new baby goat, Hedbutt, and was very nervous about how to find Platform p . He was between platforms three and four, just like Hasbeen had told him, but there was no sign of Platform p .
The wizarding community was clever in the ways it kept itself hidden from the eyes of muddles. The engineers couldn’t just protect the entrance to Platform p with an illusionary wall, or some muddle might come along, and accidentally lean against the wall, only to find out there really wasn’t one. They crafted the entrance to Platform p so that you had to concentrate on something rather specific and unlikely, in order to pass through the illusion, thus preventing the entrance from being discovered accidentally.
As it was, only one muddle had ever found Platform p , Lewis Carroll. That was back in 1862 when Victoria Station was known as the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway or LBSCR. (Back then, the wizards only used the first two decimal places to protect the entrance of Platform p . They immediately changed it to ten decimal places, and no muddle has found it since.) Lewis Carroll consequently gave up his career in mathematics, and wrote about his adventures in the strange world he uncovered. The muddles never believed him when he told them about it. That’s why he created Alice to tell his stories, and called them “fiction.”
Harry was nervous and decided to ask for directions on how to get to Platform p . The conductor he asked, gave him one of those looks that said, don’t bother me with your stupid jokes, kid, and what’s with the kid, kid?
That was when Harry very fortunately came across the entire