At the Local Pub

It all belongs to Rowling, except what you don’t recognize.



Thank you for coming so quickly. Yes, I’m the one that called, Sheila McGinley; I’m the owner here. Yes, it’s usually just me in the afternoons; my husband takes over in the evenings. It’s a quiet place, very respectable, just the locals. And that’s why I called. The most horrible thing happened today. One of our regulars came in. Seth, Seth Smith, yes with an “i” not a “y”. He’s a very nice man, well, a bit of a loner. Not very sociable, but he’s got a wicked, keen sense of humor when he wants and never a spot o’trouble we had with him.

Of course, ahem, he’s very tall, extremely thin, not above 11 stone, I’d say. Hard to put his age, but he wears his hair long, rather greasy. Oh and a big nose. So he comes in at his usual time, just after the lunchtime crowd but before the evening ones comes in. He doesn’t like crowds, it give ‘im a headache he says. He’s retired, used to be a chemistry teacher, but there was an accident and he was hospitalized. So he’s sickly with the migraine a lot.

No, he’s not one to talk much, but today, he comes in and sits at the bar instead of his usual table.

I says to him, the usual, Seth? And he says “Aye”. And then he says,

“Sheila, I know you’re going to think I’ve gone crazy. And it may very well be the case. I’ve gone off my medication. No, no don’t reach for the cricket bat, yet, you know I haven’t a violent bone in my body. It’s just that when I went to my doctor’s office last week it was closed. Well, I went back today and it’s still closed and I ran out of my pills over the weekend.”

I gives him his drink, just cheap whiskey, he’s on a fixed income, you know, and then he natters on. I’m thinking I might have to call the hospital for him, because usually he don’t nary say a thing. He tells me,

“So, I don’t know what to do. I take the pills because of my nervous condition. Dr. Malloy says it’s because I make up things. What things? Well, Tolkien, I suppose, wizards, giants, trolls, and all that sort of rubbish. Well, normally I just go along with what he says, because I can’t really remember. But, without the pills, now Sheila, I do remember things. What I used to teach, it wasn’t chemistry, it was something like that but more explosive. And it wasn’t a polytechnic I taught at but a really big, fancy place, very old and esteemed.

"Sheila, I’m remembering just the most amazing things. Hmm. Right, I was a double agent, yes, like in the spy novels and I was in love with this very pretty gel, with a very strange name! No, I don’t remember quite what it was, something Shakespearean. In fact I had a very odd name too, umm, Snake, or something like that. Anyhow, here’s the really crazy part. I think I’m being followed. I suppose they call that paranoid delusion, right?

What do you think Sheila, should I go down to St. Margo’s and check myself in? Tell me what I should do? I wouldn’t want to go all stark raving mad and be back in the hospital.”

Well, my heart nearly breaks for that poor dear man. And then, this gangly, red-haired thug comes in. He takes a good hard look at dear Mr. Smith, and the runs over to the door and yells, “He’s in here, Harry.” In runs these other two. One’s this girl with big tatas and the worst case of frizzy hair I’ve every seen. And the other is a rather creepy, but average looking bloke with black hair oh, and he has a scar on his forehead, that’s the creepy part.

Land sakes, the girl threw herself on our Seth and starts to kiss him! And this is a respectable establishment, mind you. She calls him Sevrus, and our Seth is just about beside himself with tears in his eyes and mumbling, “It’s you, it’s you.” And “Will I have to go back to the mental asylum now?”

And that bloke, Harry, puts his hand on Seth and says, something like, you’ll be fine, Professor. Malfoy died before we could find where he’d hidden you, but we had staked out his office.

Then all four of ‘em, just disappear. Like that. One minute they’re there as plain as the nose on your face and the next, poof. You’ve got to find him and get him back. He’s part of our family here. Quiet man, but he’s happy here with us.

Oh, right you must be on top of it, then, they were carrying little batons, just like the one you have there…

“Obliviate.”