Chapter 1 - An Unsettling Owl

Whenever I set out to chronicle my latest misadventure, I am immediately faced with a rather sticky problem. Specifically, I never know how much background material to shove in. There was a time when simply stating, "My name is Harold James Potter," would have sufficed to tell any reader all he needed to know to properly enjoy the subsequent tale. We Potters were pretty famous there for a spell. (A spell of time, that is. No particular magic spell can be attributed to us, as far as I'm aware.)

I was known in my days at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry as "The Boy Who Lived." That is not to say that the other boys at school had not lived. They lived all right, and most lived a damn sight better than I did. I could have more accurately been called "The Boy Who Lived in a Closet Under the Stairs of His Rotten Aunt and Uncle's." But I was given my curious appellation, if that is the word I want, after my parents were killed by a dark wizard and I, at the tender age of fifteen months, escaped with only a decorative scar and the socially disastrous knack for speaking snake.

As I seem to have made up my mind to spend this first chapter bringing the uninitiated up to speed, I hope the faithful will hang in there and perhaps try to feel nostalgic at the condensed retelling of my salad days.

About a year after Ireland beat Bulgaria, I had a serious run-in with the aforementioned dark wizard, who was called either Riddle, Voldemort or "He Who Must Not be Named" (that last being the most popular though least suited for rolling easily off the t). After watching Cedric Diggory become the least likely to be named "The Boy Who Lived," I successfully defended my title by living yet again. Not all were convinced though, until the incident immediately following my fifth-year OWLS when after again encountering the Riddle excrescence, I lived thrice.

It was generally assumed afterward that the last of the Potters would be the chap to one day rid the world of the last of the Riddles. There was much talk of a prophecy and the title "Chosen One" was batted about pretty freely, but I neatly sidestepped the honor of trying to kill our history's greatest menace and let it pass to the not-quite-last of the Longbottoms. Yes, I was at school with the celebrated Neville Longbottom when he made the wizarding world safe for Democracy, and safe for yours truly to live a normal life for a change. Which is why Harry Potter faded into relative obscurity and became famous only among his pals at the local Gnomes Club for inventing Indoor Quidditch.

If you'll recall those stairs under which I told you I lived for the last ten of my first eleven years, you'll understand why, after passing my NEWTS, I chose to use some of my parents' fortune to move away from dreaded Aunt Petunia's (Uncle Vernon by this time occupying a generous portion of the Dursley family plot) and into a flat in Hogsmeade.

And if you'll bring to mind that recent bit about Young Neville making the world safe for not needing so many Aurors anymore, you'll understand why I decided to call it a career after only four years of study (and no actual Auring) to devote myself wholly to the pursuit of not being in when my aunt comes to call. To further that end I have taken on one of my old schoolmates as a gentlemen's gentleman.

Colin Creevey, who as a lad used to pester me with his camera, has matured into one of the brainiest coves I know, owing, I've often supposed, to a strict diet rich in Plimpy and Lobalug. Of late he has shown himself to be the first person to run to when one is the recipient of an unsettling owl. If such an owl arrives, as it did today, at the unholy hour of nine in the morning when running is impossible because one is still in bed and hasn't had one's morning tea, one must resort to calling out.

"Creeves!"

Author's note: This is, of course, a mash-up of the works of my wife's favorite writer, J.K. Rowling, and those of my favorite writer, P.G. Wodehouse. Rowling requires no introduction; Wodehouse (1881 – 1975) was an English comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success for more than seventy years. He is best-known today for the Jeeves and Wooster novels and short stories.

Thanks to Deeble, my beta reader.