REMOVED FROM CHAPTER 5:
      So today the wind is perfect. Our brooms soar above the beach and we dive and swoop. We are the greatest Quidditch players who ever lived, Ron and I, we are beautiful and young. And I do this trick where I fly up to the Golden Snitch from behind and when I’m almost there I jump at it and my broom does a kind of 180 in the air—it’s probably a 360, actually, when you think of it—and I spin and a Bludger whips past my ear but does not dislodge me, no how could it, because no one has ever played Quidditch like this. I am really fucking good. And so now I am upside down and the Snitch is beneath me and I catch it behind my back, over my shoulder, one hand. Can you see this? Goddamn, look at that fucking catch.
      “Three cheers for Harry Potter!” shouts Hermione from the beach below as I glide down. Three cheers. Brilliant. This is how we speak to each other, a ha-ha on ourselves and the important work we are doing. We are the ones who will save Hogwarts. We are wizards and witches and everyone else is a Muggle. They cannot conjure. They can not transfigure. Oh, they are over.
      Hermione is holding something.
      “Harry,” says Ron, breathless, excited. “Harry, look what Hermione found!” Hermione is holding the Sorting Hat.
      “You’ll never believe where I found it.” But she’s wrong. I will believe, because I want to believe, I want so much to—
      “The Sorting Hat smells like urine,” I say.
      “It does not,” Ron says.
      “It does.”
      “How could it smell like urine?”
      “Malfoy! He must have peed on it!

 

We are in the dormitory, strategizing. Hermione thinks we should tell everything to Dumbledore. But I have a better idea. I have a fantastic idea. My idea is this: Hermione and I should have sex.
      “What about the parchment?” Hermione says, not thinking about sex. And now I remember the parchment in my pocket. I unfold it. It is still blank.
      “It is still blank.”
      “But it might be invisible ink. There’s a spell.” A spell! Yes, we will cast a spell and then we will finally, finally be able to read the parchment, its secret message that has been there all along, if only we can remember the right incantation. And then I am fumbling for my wand and Hermione takes it in her hands and together, oh, together we cast a spell that could make your heart break. The parchment. Look at it. Words appear on the parchment. “Hello, Harry Potter.” I find a quill, ink, write quickly: “You know me?”

 

I’ve been waiting for you. To save us from the Basilisk.
Sure, but you have to understand that everyone else is at a banquet in the Great Hall. They are eating roast beef, roast chicken, jam doughnuts baked on the premises. They never have to fight monsters.

Isn’t fighting monsters your destiny?
I guess it is. I guess. I don’t know. It has something to do with the scar on my forehead.

You have a scar?
I have been marked ever since my parents were both killed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Marked for what?
Greatness. But maybe an early death too.

The parchment isn’t really saying this, is it?
No.

This is a literary device, this invisible ink, all manufactured and fake.
It is.

It’s a good device, though. A way to squeeze a few more jokes into this parody that didn’t fit elsewhere.
Yeah, but now I feel bad about it. What kind of monster teases a guy because tragic events in his life resonate with elements of the Harry Potter books?

He won’t mind. He’ll get it.
Maybe, but just the same, I’d like to stop now.