2003

"You know the number, right?"

"Yes, yes."

"Say it to me."

"7-2-4-4-2." Marvin repeated monotonously. "Got it."

"All right. It's just you have a tendency to daydream a lot."

"I don't."

"You do. And anyway, don't forget last time you used a telephone."

"I didn't know it would be a direct line to Australia."

"Neither did they. Some poor soul in Sydney was woken up by you at four in the morning."

"Yes, well. Never mind. Have-a-nice-day, dear, see-you-for-dinner and all that jazz!"

Grumpily, Marvin shut the car door and headed off across the street. When agitated, Marvin would dwell on the matter thoroughly- so thoroughly, in fact, that he walked straight into the nearest red telephone box without noticing the yellowing "Out of Order" sign on the front. Carefully, he slotted his coins, but not hearing that the coins just clattered through: in this box, normal money just wouldn't cut it.

With hands shaking, Marvin dialled the number. But his hand slipped, at the first number.

Just as he reached for the phone, a cool female voice echoed throughout the box.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business."

"What the-"stammered Marvin. Ministry of what?

"Marvin McClaggen" he pronounced in an exact fashion. "Wish-to-use- telephone."

"Thank you. Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of you robes."

Robes? Is this some kind of law trial? thought Marvin. Unsure of what to do, he took the badge from the only possible place it could have come from, and pinned it to his check shirt. On it bore the legend:

MARVIN MCCLAGGEN

Confused Visitor, Please Assist.

"Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the far end of the Atrium."

Still baffled, Marvin poked the door but before he could open it, the floor shuddered, and, like the Muggle lifts that Marvin knew (and detested) he descended underneath the ground.

He found himself in a long hall that had once perhaps been a fine one, but busy days and little time for appearances left its glory a little faded.

"The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant day."

And then the door swung open.

Confused, Marvin stepped out of the telephone box. He instantly regretted it. The moment he had let go of the door, it swung shut again and rose back up. Realising he was stuck, Marvin called back to it,

"No! Stop it! Come back!"

This attracted a lot of stares, but, Marvin thought rather indignantly, they should be the ones stared at. They looked like a bunch of raggle taggle people for whom Halloween just wasn't quite over. Even though it was July.

He looked around him; The peacock blue ceiling was inlaid with gleaming golden symbols that kept moving and changing like some enormous heavenly notice board. The walls on each side were panelled in shiny dark wood and had many gilded fireplaces set into them. To Marvin's surprise and confusion, every few seconds a person would emerge from a fireplace with a soft whoosh.

Marvin realised that he was staring: as he had always felt that this was rude, he thought it best to get going.

"Excuse me? Where do we go?" He asked a passing person, praying that they would speak English.

"Wand registration and searching- that way," he said, jerking his thumb over at a desk.

Without bothering to thank the stranger, Marvin made his way over to a desk with a sign that read "Security".

"Hello?"

"Step right here," said a rather bored voice. His name badge called him Eric.

"Stand still" he said passing what looked like a golden car aerial over Marvin's back and front.

"Now look here, I find that rather intimidating," said Marvin pointing to the car aerial.

"What?" grunted Eric. "The stiller you stand, the quicker it'll be over with. Now I need your wand."

Now it was Marvin's turn to be confused.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Wand!" said Eric more insistently.

"I don't own a –wand." Replied Marvin, puzzled.

"Why didn't you say so?" said Eric exasperatedly. "You're not the only one buddy- we still have hundreds of Wandless- mainly muggleborns- left over from the last War. SIX YEARS AGO, BUDDY! PLENTY OF TIME TO GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!"

Wandless? Muggle born? WAR? What was this Eric talking about?

Marvin was flabbergasted. So flabbergasted, in fact, never had his flabber been more gasted. Eric took his silence as confirmatory.

"Security; we've got another one." Turning to Marvin- "Now, Mr McClaggen, if you could kindly step this way we will get you along to Wand And Magical Rehabilitation. And, because you seem a bit gormless, you might pop down to St Mungo's while you're at it."

"St Mungo's?" Marvin was incredulous. He had never heard of saint called Mungo before.

"Yes, Saint Mungo's. THE HOSPITAL." Eric was clearly getting quite annoyed, and a queue was forming behind Marvin, grumbling about the delay.

Suspiciously, Eric asked:

"Look, are you sure you're a wizard?"

"I'm not a wizard!" said Marvin stunned. "I'm a real person!"

Rolling his eyes, Eric buzzed Security.

"Wandering Muggle. Get his mind Obliviated."

Obliviated! Now Marvin didn't like the sound of that at all! It sounded like Room 101. He knew what he had to do. Run!

"Now look here mister-" But before Eric could finish his sentence, Marvin was up and running, as fast as his Muggle legs would carry him. Slipping slightly on the polished floor, he skidded past the fountain- a bizarre fountain featuring some kind of half-man half-horse, and ran for a set of lifts.

Panting for breath, he impulsively shut himself into a golden lift.

"Oh no" he regretted it. "Not another lift."

Jabbing buttons furiously, the lift closed and Marvin was juddered down several floors; and to his horror more of those people were coming towards him, holding polished carved wooden pieces. Jets of light were flying and crashing into the lift, and Marvin had to dodge bits of falling plaster.

Rushing past gasping workers staring over their desks, Marvin kept running and running, panting and squawking for air.

Running past what look courtrooms, Marvin saw a disgruntled-looking woman in dishevelled pink, who Marvin would have mistaken for a toad had she not been standing.

"Right this way, Madam Umbridge," said a security guard in purple as the two left out of the courtroom.

Marvin stormed past them but the woman turned and to his shame, Marvin accidentally punched her in the face. She screamed at him and apologising profusely, Marvin ran on past her.

Running through more courtrooms, Marvin slipped and knocked the door open.

A young woman with bushy brown hair and dressed in purple looked up from a court bench. She appeared to have been questioning somebody standing in the dock; but at the sight of Marvin she stood up.

"Give me a couple of minutes," she said to her scribe.

"Yes Miss Granger,"

Standing up, the woman called Granger stepped over to Marvin.

"Lost?" she asked kindly.

"Tell me about it." She smiled at him.

"I understand," she said. "Step right this way..."

Sometime later, Marvin found himself on the street opposite the old telephone box, without a clue of how he got there.

He looked, this time more objectively, at the telephone box. "Out of Order." Shrugging his shoulders, Marvin crossed the road over to a different street and entered the phone box there. Dialling the number, he called his intended recipient. Only the last few lines of conversation remained in his memory.

"...oh and Daisy asks if you could pick up a book for her on your way home. It should be in all the bookshops by now- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

Marvin rolled his eyes. He didn't know why Daisy ever bothered reading those books. All fantasy was a waste of time, he thought.

"Magic doesn't even exist," he thought to himself.