Pyxis Parmenter was a regular of mine, I'd brought him in four times in the last year. He always put up a fight that was embarrassingly disgusting. Last time he'd enchanted eggs to follow me around while I pulled him out of his run-down old house. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get raw egg off your clothes? Just don't let it harden in your hair, that's all I can say.

You were practically invisible when Victoire Disillusioned you. She told me once that sometimes she Disillusioned herself to hide from her kids, so she could use the bathroom alone.

“Cor,” Fred said, looking around at the neighbourhood. “Do you always go to areas like this? My mum would kill me if she saw me here.”

My mum would kill me if she saw me here, too. I didn't want to tell him this wasn't even as bad as some places I'd been. I wasn't sure if it would make him want to be a bounty hunter more or less.

I felt rude and awkward, and my words came out in a rush. “I work for Angelo Agnelli Magical Bonds, and I'm trying to find Butrus Knapper. I've been looking for anyone with even the slightest connection to him, and your name turned up as a school chum of his half-brother.” Did I just say chum? Oh my God, I'm skipping my mother and becoming my grandmother.

Mrs. Kochel is mean. Mean and vindictive, and she doesn't like us. Okay, we never pay our rent on time and leave our dirty wellies in the hallway, but other than that, we're pretty good tenants. Except that time we'd had a party and my cousin James made a four-foot hole in the wall, but she could hardly count that against us.

I could do with some fish and chips, in the name of research, of course. I'd been sitting here hours, twiddling my thumbs, and my stomach was complaining loudly of my continued lack of forethought in handbag-based snacks.

Though I sometimes had a hard time connecting the Uncle Harry I knew, who gave piggy-back rides when I was a kid and had once eaten a flobberworm to impress his sons, with the Harry Potter who defeated Dark Lords, killed basilisks, and was called The Chosen One, I was aware of my uncle's accomplishments. If I were him, I'd trust my instincts too. But I wore unicorn shirts and couldn't fry eggs. I was no Harry Potter.

“Madame, this child is a menace,” Worthing informed me.

“He really is,” I agreed, staring up at Johnny in disbelief.

It is impossible to adequately explain to a child that you have to take the ice cream man to jail. At least he wasn't working in a Father Christmas grotto, I suppose. Small favours.