Scrambling up the economic ladder, I moved across town to a leafy neighborhood. Quiet streets, nice yards, smiling people. Next door was a pretty craftsman bungalow, similar to mine.
I settled in, unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, watching my wife squinting at the walls, making sure pictures and other objects were hanging straight. A few days passed pleasantly in this manner.
Then one morning, I walked out my front door and looked to my right. That house one door to the north, which I had come to admire, being so well maintained, both building-wise and landscaping-wise, had been replaced by a colorful three-story Victorian.
I got scared. A stroke? What else could explain this dramatic misperception. I felt weak-kneed. I put my hands in front of my face. Normal. closed one eye, then the other. Seemed fine. I recalled my own name, and those of my family members. Seemed right. I stared back at my own house, then back at the prodigy. A man emerged from the side gate, wheeling a trash bin. He was 30-something with round glasses and a baseball cap.
“You’re looking a little pale there, neighbor.” the man said. It was our first conversation.
“Your house . . . ” I mumbled. I was in obvious distress.
“Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Its just that re- modeling is so much easier when you’re a Wizard. Don’t worry, its all up to code.” he said cheerfully.
I had moved in next to Harry Potter. Hiding in plain sight.
“Welcome to the neighborhood. It’s pretty chill here. People treat me just like anyone else. Appreciate that.”
Never before had I experienced such a combination of relief and amazement.
Recovering quickly, I realized this was an opportunity which I could not let pass.
“Could you do me a favor?”
“Sure” he said. “Wanna borrow my lawn-mower?”
“No, But could you please fix Facebook?”
He burst out laughing. “Now there’s a good project! You Muggles really fucked that one up, didn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.” I replied.
“Come on in, I’ll show you a card trick.”
An invitation no-one could refuse.
I followed Harry Potter into his house. The interior was brighter than I might have expected, and seemed pretty lived-in for a brand-new building. The decor displayed a comfortable mixture of genres. A round gas ceiling light emitted tiny blue flames. Owls. Several of them. Life-like. Maybe alive. An ordinary-looking broom leaned against a wall. Did it have hidden powers, or was it left there by the cleaning lady? And do wizards even need cleaning ladies? Lots of questions.
We passed through a drawing room, populated with comfortable-looking wing chairs and a fireplace.
We entered the dining room where was centered a heavy 8-foot wooden table, whose style I could only describe as “medieval”. A deck of playing cards lay near one end.
Harry Potter picked up the deck and gave it a precise 52-card fan, a common, but still impressive trick. He jokingly fanned himself “It’s so hot in here!”, he quipped.
He then threw the cards high in the air. They fluttered for a moment but then quickly morphed into tiny insects forming a faintly buzzing cloud hovering above the table. After a few seconds, the cloud descended, landing on the table surface. Thereon the insects assembled themselves into a near-perfect circle, milling around within its circumference. Ladybugs!
“Let’s try something” he said. He touched an index finger onto the table a few inches from the undulating circle. A dozen or so of the insects crawled away from the crowd and up onto his finger.
He pointed it upwards and the bugs circumnavigated the digit, staying respectfully above his second knuckle. They seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement, giving no sign that it was in the least unusual.
He lowered his fingertip back to the tabletop. The bugs crawled down and rejoined their brethren, the circle maintaining its Euclidian precision.
“Try it” suggested Harry.
My original amazement had grown by an order of magnitude as I pressed a finger down near the circle, and the bugs climbed up. I raised my finger. There they were. I looked closely. Some were solid red, some had those black dots, and an orange one here and there. No words.
I stared for a few more moments, mesmerized by the phenomenon. “Anywhere is fine.” said Harry, sensing that as much as I liked the bugs, I probably didn’t want them for permanent companions.
I walked to the far end of the table, placing my bug-inhabited fingertip carefully on the tabletop, to avoid squishing anybody.
They crawled down, and headed for the distant circle at the other end, a single file line of ladybugs, doing their unhurried but deliberate walk. A big grin formed on my face. It was the coolest thing. I watched for the minute or so it took them to march the length of the table. The travelers melted back into the circle.
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