J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter

Chapter Three

Out of the corner of his eye, David saw Mark look at him again, opening his mouth to speak, but David was still watching the scene in the alley. "Look who it is," he said, pointing.

The local cat lady, Mrs. Figg, was hobbling into the alley faster than David had ever seen her move. Harry Potter, facing her, quickly started to put away what David realized was evidently a magic wand. (Then he realized that there was no such thing as a magic wand, but nothing was making sense tonight anyway.) Mrs. Figg started yelling at Harry, and David was surprised once more when he took the wand out again.

So she knows what's going on here, David thought.

After a conversation that seemed to involve much shouting on Mrs. Figg's part, Harry and the elderly woman dragged Dudley to something resembling a standing position. They moved off toward Wisteria Walk, Harry barely managing to support Dudley's enormous frame, Mrs. Figg leading the way, and at last the alley was still.

"So what do you think those things were?" Mark asked nervously.

"Things? You mean that fog?" David replied.

Mark looked at him oddly. "The things inside the fog."

"What things?"

Now Mark looked as though David had suggested that one plus one was eleven. "What do you mean, what things? The things in the fog!"

"The stag?"

"Not that!" Mark said impatiently. "The things it chased away!"

"I haven't got a clue what you're talking about."

"The two giant things in cloaks! Don't tell me you didn't see them!"

"Giant things in cloaks?" David repeated slowly, utterly lost.

"You're joking, right? You can't have not seen them!" Mark's voice was rising now; he sounded panicked, almost hysterical.

"Everything okay up there, boys?" came their mother's voice from the direction of the living room.

"All good!" David called back. He didn't want to involve his parents in this; they would think their sons had lost it. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Calm down, Mark. We'll work this out. Are you saying you saw something there that I didn't see?"

Mark nodded shakily, seemingly fighting back tears. "I guess so."

"Tell me exactly what you saw, starting from when the fog came in."

Mark looked down at the bed, and, between choked breaths, began to speak. "The fog- came in- and it- it c-covered Harry and D-Dudley and I c-couldn't see what was happening and then there was a light in the fog and I saw- I saw- I saw these two giant things maybe twice as tall as Dad and they were in these big black cloaks-"

Mark was by now crying openly. David put an arm around his shoulder and said in what he hoped was a comforting tone, "Go on."

Taking a deep breath, Mark continued: "One of them was attacking Harry Potter and the other one was bending down over Dudley Dursley like it was going to eat him. Then Harry made that silver stag thing and it chased both of them away. I think they made the fog," he added with a sniffle.

David sat, mystified. If these creatures had really existed - and he had no reason to assume Mark was not telling the truth - why had he not seen them? Even if they hadn't, there had still been all the other impossible things that had happened tonight - the fog; the silver stag.

A sudden thought occurred to him.

"Mark," he said delicately, knowing he was about to broach a topic his brother absolutely hated to discuss, "do you think this might have anything to do with your- er- incidents?"

It had been nearly five years since the first time something had happened around Mark that had been unusual, even inexplicable. They had been celebrating their mother's birthday with an ice-cream cake, and they had bought a non-dairy version so Mark, who was allergic to dairy, could have some as well.

Or so they had thought. A few minutes after they had started eating, their mother noticed that the cake had tasted as good as the usual version. She went to the kitchen to check the box, and came back screaming at Mark to stop eating immediately - only to find Mark contentedly eating a slice of cake made not of ice cream at all, but of sorbet. They had all tried to figure out who had switched the cake, but even calls to the bakery left them with no answers.

The next time had been at school. Mark had been playing football with his friends when he accidentally kicked the ball out of the schoolyard and across the road, which was unfortunately a highway. As his classmates began to tease him for his bad aim, Mark had stretched his hand toward the road, and the ball had lifted itself into the air, sailed across the highway, and landed in the schoolyard to the shocked whispers of the eight-year-old boys.

There were other things, like the way the cookie jar in the kitchen was always full, though no one could ever recall putting anything in, and the way Mark sometimes turned out the lights in their room without going near the switch. It was the very public football incident, though, and the mutterings that had followed Mark for months afterward, that had left him self-conscious of his differences, anxious to fit in, and desperate for a very ordinary life.

The past few minutes, however, had been anything but ordinary.

Mark shrugged his brother's arm off angrily and drew breath to speak, and David instantly regretted his question. "Sorry," he blurted, "I shouldn't have mentioned it."

A few seconds passed. Then Mark surprised David by saying thoughtfully, "You know, you might be right."

They sat on the bed in silence. They needed answers, and David knew where they would have to get them.

But three weeks later, David had not seen Harry Potter leave his house even once.