"Keep up! They're not far behind!"

"They're almost onto us! I'm afraid we're done for..."

"Well run faster, then! It's your fault we're in this mess in the first place!"

Hi there. My name's Audrey Jones. You might be able to spot me in this little scene. I'm the one running for my life from some angry Londoners, in search of a pub which I've just been told "should" exist around the next corner, and is our only refuge from the people who want to arrest us. And it's only just past lunchtime. Oh, and by "us", I mean me and Arthur Weasley. He's a great man, and wouldn't hurt a fly; but for the records I do have to say that this situation is entirely his fault.

"What the hell do you mean, it 'should' exist?!"

"You can't see it! I can get you through though, if you take my hand."

"So you're sure I can get in? Your weird magicky stuff will let me in, right?"

"I've never actually seen it done or tried it. But it should work if we get it exactly right! Just take my hand, and we have to run into that wall over there."

"Yeah! I'm up for that! How could that go wrong in any conceivable way?!"

"Just stay behind me! And shut your eyes!"

You may not know it, but this had not turned out to be an entirely normal afternoon. Then again, I had agreed to go on a day out with my future father-in-law, as a sort of induction day into my boyfriend's family. A family which, by the way, is so magical and generally extraordinary that a drab old Muggle like me should have had an awesomeness-induced heart attack the second I stepped over the welcome mat. But there you go. And just when I thought I'd finally nailed being an adult.

So, this is the story of how my life went to shit. Enjoy. If you're into that sort of thing, I suppose. In which case... you're a bit weird.

"I am a wizard," my boyfriend told me calmly, as we ate cereal together on my sofa at nine in the morning on a Sunday. As a sort of punctuation to his statement, he brought out a wooden stick from his pocket and did a tiny puddle of water onto my sofa. With magic, that is. He didn't decide it was a good moment to piss on my belongings.

It was a very nice sofa, by the way. Only thing I really bothered to customize when I moved to that tiny ground-floor flat in Willesden Green. The landlord did all the painting and stuff, but I was truly proud of my sofa. Blankets, throw pillows, discarded towels... it was a bloody work of art. It didn't change the fact that it was as comfortable to sit on as a rock, but I did my best. It was a very pretty rock.

But Percy's hobby, it seems, is telling me very personal things about himself when I'm halfway through a mouthful of something extremely staining, causing me to spit it out and ruin my things.

To his credit, he looked suitably alarmed as I simultaneously tried to squeeze milk out of one of the towels, and also choked on a stray Frostie that had gotten stuck in my throat.

"Great - great -" I croaked, between ladylike retches. "I'm here - for you - if you need - support-!" Percy gave me a hearty thump on the back, and I breathed. "Yeah, so, um. That's good. Great, even. I'm behind you all the way - supportive partner and all that."

"Thank you. Erm..." He shifted uncomfortably, having not planned any further. So far I was not providing the general hysteria and torch-brandishing that he'd been expecting. He eventually decided to ask, "Do you have any queries? About... us?"

I thought up about a million at once. They filled my mind, vying for attention. Did he have a staff like Nanny McPhee? Are there magical STDs? If he bit me, would I become magic too? Was there a specific place he'd have to bite me for it to work? (If it was the bum, I wasn't sure it'd be worth it.) Despairing of my own brain, I picked the most sensible thought I could find at short notice, and decided it'd have to do.

"Why now?"

"What do you mean, why now?"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled you told me, but we've only been dating for three months, and you moved in just two days ago. Most people would wait longer before telling someone something this massive." I'd also expect something a bit... posier. I took a moment to imagine Percy standing on a windy clifftop at midnight, full moon ablaze in silver, turning his face towards it dramatically as he explained why I couldn't be with him. "I have a terrible curse, Audrey my love... A terrible curse... I can breathe fire out of my arse at will and ride dragons."

...No, maybe not. Romantic as that seemed, it was never really Percy's style.

"It's because of my dad coming over today. You know he said he was... interested in your work?"

"He seemed very keen." Understatement of the century. The man wouldn't take no for an answer on the phone when asking for an address, not even from Percy, and was obsessed with my kettle for some reason.

"Yes. That's because... well... he hasn't spend much time around Muggles - erm, people without magic, that is. And it occurred to me that he might seem a little... odd, if you didn't know about our background."

"You have your own world, then? Wizards?" Percy gave a peculiar smile - one I was going to become very familiar with over the next few months. I like to call it the "aren't you ordinary people so adorably oblivious to everything" smile.

"And witches, too. It's similar in many respects, but there's no electricity. Or cars. Or... anything that Dad's mad about, really. And I accidentally let slip to him that I'm dating a mechanic, and... you see the problem."

"Ah. What time did we agree again?" I wondered if we had time to construct a moat.

"Ten o'clock, but put it this way. Mum will have had to work hard to restrain him since four in the morning. We're lucky he hasn't tried to break and enter yet." We both fell silent, suddenly stupidly nervous. To what extremes would this man go to in order to get in? I was half expecting him to break through the wall on a rope swing like Tarzan when the doorbell rang.

And rang, and rang.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake..." Percy stood up, and jogged to the door. "Dad, take your finger off the button!"

"Is it working?" A male voice said from the other side.

"Too right it is!" I yelled over the noise. It sounded like a dentist's drill. "Just let him in, Perce." He did so.

The man in the doorway bore a large resemblance to Percy, anyone could see that. He had the glasses, the slightly wonky nose, and hair in a shade of red which I'd never seen before meeting Percy, except in an advert for Wotsits. I'd have assumed it was dye, but why the hell would you want that? His clothes were a lot more... chaotic than Percy's, barely hanging on to the concept of "normal", and reminded me a bit of Colin Baker's Doctor Who.

"Hello!" He waved. "You must be Audrey! I'm Arthur Weasley. Lovely doorbell circuit you have here."

"Um... thank you? It's very loud, isn't it?" Or that's what my eardrums were telling me, at any rate.

"Mm. Much better than a bell pull. Electric, I presume? Fantastic! I hope we'll be able to invent something like that someday-" Mr Weasley clapped a hand to his mouth, looking extremely guilty. Like a balding twelve-year-old who accidentally said a bad word in front of his grandma.

"Cup of tea, Dad?" Percy suggested loudly, steering Arthur over to the sofa.

"Oh yes please, son. Milk, no sugar." I locked the door, then looked behind me to see them having a silent but furious conversation in the adjoining kitchen area. Percy was repeatedly mouthing "she knows already", with a great deal of arm-waving to go with it. Because apparently wizards haven't invented subtlety yet either. I rolled my eyes, and went to tidy up the sofa a bit.

"So, Audrey..." Mr Weasley began, sipping his tea as he sat down, "What do you do? As a job?" Clare had trained me enough in first-time conversations when I was twelve that I could answer more or less instantly.

"A mix of things, really. I am training to be a mechanic, but I've been doing other part-time stuff for rent purposes. I do jobs with the local man in a van sometimes. Lifting, mostly." I kicked myself. Well done, Jones. That'll convince him you're a suitable partner for his son for sure. Why not just come out with it and say "I'm poor and failed most of my GCSEs"?

"A man in a van?" He looked intrigued at the very idea. "Why is he in there? Can he get out?"

I shrugged. "Not always on his own. His back's not what it used to be. Hence the lifting." Percy's dad still looked confused, so I continued. "He does get out from time to time; the van's just to move people's things around. So if people are moving, they'll get a man in a van to drive their stuff there in their van. Or if they want to give someone a really big present. Like, um, a fridge. A birthday fridge." Percy made a very funny cough, which sounded suspiciously like stifled laughter. Traitor, I thought. At least I was bloody trying.

"Fascinating." Mr Weasley took out a small notebook, and scribbled furiously. "Man in a van... investigate." Back to Clare's Guide to Awkward Silences, then.

"Anyway, Mr Weasley-"

"Please, call me Arthur."

"Arthur, then - are you working? Or are you retired?"

"I work in the Ministry, with Percy," he said proudly, tucking the notebook into a pocket. "Over forty years I've been there now, you know! The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office - best department in the whole place."

"What sort of thing do you do there?" My general fear of being too eager and generally Arthur Weasley-ish was overruled by my curiosity about the Wizarding World.

"Mostly charms and spells set on Muggle objects to confuse people. Of course, it can be a little more serious. Just last night I had to dissemble a supermarket speaker which Marlump Dedger - you remember him, Percy? - had enchanted to play nothing but "Destiny Makes Two Brooms Collide", by Celestina Warbeck. A nice enough tune, and very catchy, but in the Muggle world that song doesn't exist, so it had to go."

"Of course, some Muggle musician might steal the idea," suggested Percy. "Like what happened with 'Ten Happy Hippogriffs' a few hundred years ago."

"Oh yes. You used to love that song, didn't you? When you were a baby-"

"DAD," he said, ears turning bright red. "Not in front of Audrey, please?" Yeah. Serve you right for laughing at my conversational skills, you bespectacled prick.

"But it's true," Arthur protested. "You used to sing all the time, in your cot. And if you weren't sure how many happy hippogriffs were still content, and weren't trying to rip something to shreds, that was all part of the charm, I think."

Obviously, by this point my mind was beyond blown. Hippogriffs? Percy singing? And there was someone in the world called Marlump Dedger? And I thought my name was bad. I needed to get out. I had to get back to "normal".

"I think I'll go to the cashpoint," I suggested, edging towards the doorway and grabbing my coat. "It's a bank holiday tomorrow, so it's the last chance before Tuesday." Well manoevred, Jones.

"I'll go with you!" Arthur jumped up so quickly that his tea hopped out of the mug and onto the sofa. "Percy, can I? I'm sure it won't take long." He gave his son a pleading look, as if a stranger had just offered him a sweet from a paper bag.

Percy pulled an apologetic face at me, before replying, "Sure. I will prepare some refreshment for when you get back." In Percy's way of speaking, this basically means: "I'll eat the packet of Quavers you bought yesterday while you're gone, and then offer the cheesy crumbs to our guest while looking adorably ashamed of myself so you can't bring yourself to complain". His dad seemed to have come to the same realisation, being equally fluent in Percy-ese.

"Not to worry, son. I have a few... quid... in my pocket" he pronounced uncertainly. "That's enough to buy a box of Coco Pops to share. Anyway, cheerio!" Good grief. I'd thought that Percy only spoke like a character from a PG Wodehouse book because he'd hung around with some odd people at university. But it turns out, I've found, that all witches and wizards seem to talk like that. Maybe it's the schooling.

I reluctantly let myself and my guest out of the house, unaware that my life was going to change... forever!

Too drastic? Okay, so it's not an instant thing, but please bear with me, all of you. Except maybe those of you who are reading this to perve on my partner. Ew. Okay, even you. Although I reserve the right to fight all of you off him with this electric cattle prod. Just be glad I don't let Arthur use it; he'd be thrilled.

Onwards!