There was no flying blue Anglia car crashing into the great willow tree over looking the river. This time no driver had been despatched to my woodland hut with a copy of the book for me.
Instead, stiff and old as I am, I had to haul my splintered broomstick out of retirement and clamber shakily aboard.
My mission was to fly to a Muggle bookstore, acquire the latest instalment of young Harry Potter's trials and tribulations, and offer an immediate opinion. Headstrong lad, a bit impatient, but with all his problems with that blackguard Voldemort and the loss of poor Sirius (alas I knew him well), Harry may be the future of wizarding - if he finds the right girl.
As I sped slowly, wary of the new speed limits, towards my destination, a barn owl barged across my path. No navigational sense. The evening was warm, very still. And there they were, outside a bookstore decorated as Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, a gathering of Muggles dressed in those flimsy, pale clothes they wear in the summer, not a robe among them.
It was only to be expected on a day in which I had been called by a Muggle radio station to give my views on peculiar comments made by the Pope on the writings of Rowling when he was a cardinal. He objected to the presentation of good and evil and described the books "as dangerous for young minds." Dear, dear. I suggest the good man consider Milton and most of the great writers of Muggle world literature. Are we to begin burning books? Have they not already done that? Aside from love and death, what else is there? Muggles do tend towards eccentricity and are also greatly preoccupied by traffic. More of them should try flying.
In Easons in Ashbourne, Co Meath, the red-haired Muggle man proprietor, Gerry Daly, looked uncommonly like Arthur Weasley. They were celebrating Harry's book. There was a tall boy with messy black hair, wearing eye glasses. "I'm not really Harry Potter," he said truthfully. "My name is Dermot Curtin and I don't have a scar." His eyes were quite brown, not bright green.
A girl carrying dainty food on a tray, said her name was Hermione and no, not one house elf had been exploited in the preparation of her offerings. "I made them myself, with my wand," she admitted. Hmm, underage magic but in a good cause. Ron was absent - "on holiday", ventured Hagrid from behind a bushy black beard. He appeared to be several metres shorter than I remembered but he explained his size had to be adjusted to suit the shop. An unusually cheerful Professor McGonagall was also there, looking some 100 years younger than when we last met.
Outside, frenzied teenage boy Muggles jeered and shouted "Harry Potter's been killed off." They are quite wrong.
I took two young Hogwarts First Year girls to a Muggle hotel for hot chocolate. The bodyguards were defending a riot but referred to it as "a disco". They said I could come in but, "no children". We hurried away.
At the Ashbourne Court Hotel, the young girl made us hot chocolate and asked about Harry's new book, hoping it had a happy ending.
No, my dear, I fear it does not.
