Harry entered this world that a lot of us would fantasise would be wonderful: “I’ve got a magic wand and everything will be fabulous” ... and he immediately encounters all the problems you think he would have left behind...

J. K. Rowling on The Richard and Judy Show, 26 June 2006, Channel Four Corporation (UK).

Sit down, Mr Rivers. I am Psyche Howard. You write here that you are forty years old and a Muggle. How did you find out about my clinic?

That wasn’t hard. I walk right past it every time I’m in Diagon Alley. I never took much notice because I always thought you psycho-healers were only for really crazy people, for loonies and weaklings and so forth.

Not true at all: I leave those serious maladies to the Healers at St Mungo’s. I only deal with ordinary problems – careers guidance, disputes with neighbours, marital conflict, a touch of the nerves or the blues and the like.

Well, I have conflict all right. I’m married to Linda. She’s giving me nerves and blues and disputes with every neighbour on the Floo network. I am just about on the point of going crazy. But career’s all right. I’m in customer services for Jewel Motors – that’s a vehicle company like your Cleansweep – and I’m good at my job. Linda wishes I earned more, but the truth is, we’re up to date with the mortgage and we dine out at the local pubs every fortnight. I’m hoping to buy a handy little video camera soon, and we’ll take the grand tour of Europe before the kids leave home.

Tell me about your family.

Do you mean my Muggle family? There’s nothing much to tell there. Mum and Dad are newly retired and live in Canterbury. I have an older brother who installs gas heaters; he’s married and has two sons. They’re ordinary. I don’t see much of them because they don’t mix well with Linda.

Linda and I have three children. Yvonne is in fifth year, studying for her O levels – you call them owls, don’t you? She’s going through a Goth stage, always dressing up emo, and she supports the Holyhead Harpies. Then Robert plays the trumpet. He’s in Harry Potter’s year at Hogwarts. I’m actually not sure who this Harry Potter person is, but wizards are always impressed when Linda tells them that he’s our son’s friend. Robert gets embarrassed about the name-dropping: he says he scarcely knows this Harry because Ravenclaws don’t share any classes with Gryffindors. All my kids are in Ravenclaw. Belinda – Bella – is our baby; she just started out at Hogwarts last month. She collects insects – moths, beetles, wasps, all kinds. So now there’s only Linda and me at home for most of the year.

How did you meet Linda?

It was about eighteen years ago. She was working in here in Diagon Alley, just up the road in Plumptons’ Pots, which her grandparents then owned. Anyway, on this day she was bored at work, so she slipped out to explore Muggle London. She was fascinated by Muggles at that stage – that’s why she was wearing Muggle clothes and trying to strike up conversation with a real Muggle man. We met in a café. She was stirring a latte and commenting, apparently to me, “It tastes like mud and looks like mould on milk. Is it worth the risk?”

The waiter had given her bad service, and she complained with style. “He was as polite as a starving bulldog and as informative as an empty bucket. He’s so stupid he could lose his shadow. Look, there he is – the one whose red shirt matches his eyes. He’s probably ripping off that old lady with so much hair on her lip she should plait it and so many teeth missing her mouth looks like a piano.”

I laughed at her cheek, and I laughed again when she admitted that she’d read the insults in a book and had been looking for an excuse to try them out. I was ready to settle down, I suppose; Linda soon seemed the ideal person. I’m just concerned...

Yes?

No, it’s better left unsaid. We spent our courtship going out to bands and touring London. We had fun, but I realise now I didn’t know her very well when I proposed. I remember being surprised when I saw that her full name was Ethelinda Matilda Vance. I ask you, who calls their child “Ethelinda Matilda”? But it wasn’t Linda’s fault, and her parents were dead anyway. She said they had been killed “in the war,” and I never asked which war. Linda went to live with her grandparents after that. I didn’t realise that this was in Sheffield because I knew they had a shop in London. She wouldn’t take me to visit the shop: she said it wasn’t interesting.

But was I supposed to understand that my girlfriend came from a completely different culture just because her parents had given her an outlandish name, because I didn’t understand exactly how they had died and because her grandparents owned a boring shop? Nothing struck me as at all out of the ordinary until the day she actually told me about magic.

How did that happen?

She said, “Before we get engaged, Derek, there’s something you need to know.”

She looked so serious that I stopped the ruby ring an inch away from her finger. “Is this some true confession about a previous boyfriend?” I asked. “Darling, whatever you’ve done, it won’t make any difference to me!”

“Oh, no,” she replied, still very serious. “I’ve already told you everything about my previous boyfriends, and you know it isn’t much. This is much more significant.”

Every possibility went through my mind except the right one. I imagined she would say she had a record with the Juvenile Courts, or she was broke and I was marrying debt, or she was a Catholic and her family disapproved, or she was carrying a hereditary disease, or that she couldn’t have children at all...

“It isn’t whatever you’re thinking,” she interrupted. “You’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you. I’m a witch.”

“What,” I said, “you’re one of those neo-Pagan types?”

She shook her head firmly. “It’s nothing to do with any religion. I’m not at all religious. It means I can do magic.”

“Oh. You mean... you’re an entertainer? You do conjuring tricks at children’s parties?” That hardly seemed worth the drama Linda was making, so I wasn’t surprised when she shook her head again.

“Derek, I know you’ve been told that magic isn’t real, but... it is. Look...” A long twig slid into her hand, and muttered some incantation. Suddenly her red dress was blue, and the blue table-cloth was yellow! “You didn’t order dessert, did you?”

We were eating at my flat; I had ordered in curry but I had to admit that I hadn’t thought about dessert.

“Let’s have Eve’s pudding.” She waved her wand again, and my flatmate’s apples jumped off the sideboard. Flour and sugar soared out of the larder into a glass dish; the fridge door swung open to make way for flying butter and eggs; a wooden spoon raced around the dish of its own accord while a peeler attacked the apples; and within two minutes, the dish was sailing into the oven, which Linda lit with a separate spell. “There! Should be ready in about half an hour. Let’s do a washing-up spell while we wait.”

An hour later, after I had swallowed my astonishment and the Eve’s pudding, and Linda was wearing the ruby ring, I said, “So you can do magic, but it’s supposed to be a secret. What happens if I’m the one who tells an outsider about magic?”

“Derek, do you really think you will tell anyone? Whom did you have in mind?”

I thought about my parents, my workmates and the old crowd from school, and I realised at once that I would never, ever tell anyone that I was marrying a witch. They would think I was off my rocker.

That’s why I’m here, Madam Howard. I thought about going to the Muggle marriage counsellors, but I’d have to leave the magic parts out of the story. If I did that, there wouldn’t be anything left to tell.

So do you think magic is the cause of your conflicts with your wife?

She thought she had explained to me about magic, but all she had really told me was that she had some kind of secret supernatural powers. I never thought to ask how the wizards would have enforced secrecy if I had broken off the engagement after I knew about magic. If I’d known about the Obliviators, I’d... Anyway. I’m not the first Muggle to marry a witch, and yet no-one ever warned either of us what we could expect.

We put a deposit on a three-bedroom semi in Canterbury and got married. I asked Linda if she minded being so far from Sheffield, but she said it wouldn’t matter once we were on the Floo network. That was a drama! Our new house had central heating only, so the Floocom office sent some wizards over to build us a fireplace. They took three seconds to explode the lounge wall – and the next-door lounge wall too! To be fair, once they’d laid the hearth, it only took them another three seconds to clean up the mess. By that time, the neighbours had seen too much, so they had to call in the Obliviators. Ugh, that was a shock... the appalling way those wizards waved their wands over the poor neighbours, and suddenly the day’s memories were gone.

Anyway, once we had a Floo connection, Linda took me into Diagon Alley. Some of your shops here, Madam Howard, are designed to scare us Muggles. The mediaeval cobbler and greengrocer are quaint, but I shivered at the beasts in the pet shop window. I try to be broad-minded, but do you know what your fwoopers and fire crabs look like to a first-time Muggle visitor? A crup tried to attack me because it could smell that I was a Muggle. Then the clock-shop is full of machines designed to spy, jump out, forecast the weather, recite a diary – to do anything but tell the time; and the fangs and claws surrounding the apothecary’s pills and potions seemed to be lying in wait to poison someone.

So I was already on edge before I entered Plumptons’ Pots. I knew a kitchen supplies shop would sell kettles and knives, but I wasn’t prepared for kettles that sang the Ode to Joy when they boiled or for auto-slicing knives that hopped up over the onions at a word. If they attack onions, why not stray fingers? Then there were the tea-towels that changed to a different pattern for every day of the week, the self-updating shopping lists, the never-stain aprons... I realise now that those objects weren’t alive and wouldn’t have hurt me, but for my first few visits, I was really spooked.

Diagon Alley can be terrifying for Muggles. It sounds as if you made a real effort to come to terms with our culture.

Well, I thought I did. I told myself that the people mattered more than the objects, and old Mr and Madam Plumpton were very decent sorts. I never knew what to say to Linda’s young sister because she behaved all superior and bookish. In the end I realised that Emmeline wasn’t really unfriendly; it was just that she didn’t know what to say to me either. But it upset Linda that I didn’t take to Emmeline sooner. Then there was Bertha Jorkins. She kept Flooing in and out of our house at all hours. That woman never shuts up, and she talks such rubbish!

“It was raining this morning – not what you’d call really big raindrops, but certainly heavier than drizzle.”

“Minister Fudge went to St Mungo’s on Wednesday – no, it was Tuesday – to be tested, and he has green gallstones the size of pigeon-eggs and red ones the size of peas.”

“Have you seen Andromeda’s new hairstyle? She’s cut it shoulder-length, with loose curls, but curlier than waves, and a fluffed-up fringe.”

I said, “It would be nice if she didn’t drop in quite so often. How could we gently discourage her?”

I wasn’t prepared for the way Linda flared up. “How dare you talk about my friend like that?” She was screaming. “You ought to feel sorry for people like Bertha. She has no marriage prospects and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. Her friends are all she has. Don’t you have any sense of hospitality? You ought to be glad to open up our home to someone like Bertha! If you’re so selfish you can’t appreciate good conversation, you could always go off and play golluf when Bertha’s here.”

I don’t play golf, Madam Howard; Linda never understood the difference between golf and cricket. For the next ten years, Bertha Flooed into our house four or five times a week and stayed for hours. Then she quarrelled with Linda; I don’t know what about. So we didn’t see her for a long time, and it was a relief. Lately she’s started coming back – only once or twice a week, thank goodness – but she hasn’t become any quieter.

Andromeda Tonks was another friend of Linda’s. She used to invite herself to our house every week or so, and she was mad about tidying up. She poked her wand around everywhere, scrubbing the bath, scouring a week’s worth of dirty pots, washing down the walls, shampooing the carpets, even dry-cleaning the curtains... I could tell if she’d visited because the house was attacking me with smells of disinfectant! After all, this was our home, and I didn’t like to see an outsider sniffing out our dirt and disorganisation. Linda didn’t want me to stop it because, she said, it saved her the trouble. And, frankly, Linda never does take much trouble over the housework, even though magic should make it easy.

But Linda broke friends with Andromeda about the time Robert was born. Andromeda took about ten seconds to deal with the nappy bucket and she always had effective magical teething gels and croup steamers to hand. Linda felt inept in comparison; she accused Andromeda of interfering and told her not to come back.

The friend who irked me most was Gilderoy Lockhart... Oh, have you heard of him?

He’s quite a famous writer. Go on.

He would prance into our living room, his hair all curled and his teeth flossed, and talk for hours about how he’d staked vampires, slain dragons or exorcised ghouls. I thought at first he was making it all up, but Linda said no, those monsters really exist, and it’s people like Gilderoy who keep us safe from them. She and Bertha thought he was wonderful. But after a while, we’d heard all the stories, and Gilderoy would tell us the same ones, over and over again, always with himself as hero. Even little Yvonne was fascinated.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said one evening. “What do you think of the Prime Minister?”

Emmeline started to make a polite remark about newspaper reports; Gilderoy and Bertha both stared at me as if I’d gone mad; and I foolishly remembered that wizards don’t know anything about the Muggle Prime Minister. But Linda was furious.

“Derek, how rude!” she exclaimed, “Gilderoy was telling us about his adventures in Wagga Wagga. Are you too boring to want to hear about travel? Apologise at once!”

“Alas,” said Gilderoy, “it was too much for your husband’s manhood to hear that another man could be braver! Derek, I would not blame a Muggle like you for running away from a werewolf. Many a wizard would be so inexpert in combating the Dark Forces that he would flee with the Muggles!”

Linda was still waiting for the apology, so I said, “I’m sorry I became bored with Gilderoy’s showing off.”

Linda whipped out her wand and blasted my armchair to smithereens. She hurled mini-hexes at the windows, smashing every pane of glass, and she exploded my television set and gramophone. Yvonne wailed when Linda shattered our china ornaments, and even Gilderoy looked upset when she blew up the wireless and cracked open a table. She screamed at me the whole time – how I’d improve if I went to the goblins to learn manners and to the trolls to buy brains, but I’d never be as brave or principled as real men like Gilderoy, and was I going to petrify and fossilise in suburbia for the rest of my life? After Gilderoy and Bertha had excused themselves, she went on and on about how I didn’t appreciate how important it was to maintain friendly connections with prominent wizards who could help our children to the top echelons of wizarding society.

Meanwhile, Emmeline was quietly reversing Linda’s spells, re-constructing the windows, furniture and china, and reassembling the wireless and gramophone to the point where a handywizard could repair them. Yes, I do still find Linda’s little rampages of destruction unnerving. But I’ve learned that it isn’t as serious as it looks, not among wizards. Most damage-spells can be reversed.

No, Linda hasn’t ever tried to blast people – only objects. And Gilderoy Lockhart never came back.

May I say that you seem to have adapted very well to living with magic. It sounds as if the real clash between you and Linda is not so much culture as values.

We thought we had the same values when we talked about how we’d bring up the children. “We need to teach them to be honest and considerate,” I said, “but we should let them make up their own minds about things like politics and religion.”

“We can’t let them run off with cults or terrorists,” corrected Linda, “but I don’t mind whether they vote Conservative or Labour, or whether or not they go to church. And we’re definitely not choosing their careers for them.”

I shuddered. “Of course not, so long as they finish their homework. I do want them to eat their vegetables and go to bed on time, and we must try to keep smokers out of our house.”

“I’d encourage them to take up sport,” said Linda. “And music, too. We’ll need to save to pay for those extras.”

“But let’s not make it too serious,” we both said. “Children need their playtime.”

Yet by the time Bella was born, we had disagreed on issues I’d never even considered. Take punishments, for example. We’d agreed on no smacking, so I thought we’d use punishments like sending them to their rooms or taking away their pocket money. It never crossed my mind that Linda would use magic.

When the tots had tantrums, she would cast some Petrification jinx on them, and they were frozen to the spot – just couldn’t move. Or when the older ones wouldn’t do their chores, she drew some kind of magic circle around them. That meant they could move enough to peel potatoes or lay a table, but they forced to stay inside the magic barrier until the chore was finished. She had silencing spells, too. Once Robert cheeked her, and she took away his voice for three days... What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?

Were you frightened to see this happening to your children?

No! You’re going to report it, aren’t you? You’re going to arrest my wife for child abuse.

I assure you, this interview is confidential.

Look, she isn’t exactly cruel. She claims that some witches use enchanted whips or pain jinxes on their children. Linda never did anything like that. She just uses magical barriers that make misbehaviour difficult or impossible. It sounds severe, but the truth is, she doesn’t punish often because her standards are quite permissive. She tolerates a lot of mess around the house, and as soon as the kids were old enough to walk out of the gate, she allowed them come and go at all hours. Yvonne says that I’m the strict parent because I demand a bit of order and advance planning... So is it true about the enchanted whips?

That it certainly wouldn’t be legal. But let’s talk about you.

Imagine this, Madam Howard: Linda didn’t even want the kids to go to school! She thought she could teach them at home. Well, she couldn’t. She doesn’t even know the multiplication table. Once even she realised that, she wanted them to go to a small private school run by some witch up in Scotland.

“We’re not wasting our money on that!” I told her. “You give me one reason why they’ll get a better education with this witch-lady than they’d get for free at our local primary!”

“They’d learn Latin,” she said. “You need Latin for spell-work. And there would be wizarding literature and history, and a magic-compatible view of Muggle science, and they’d get a head start on broomstick-riding. Derek, our children are wizards. I don’t want them at a school where they have to hide what they are.”

I laughed out loud. “Linda, you don’t remember a word of Latin! I don’t want our kids learning mumbo-jumbo about how magic replaces science yet knowing so little about the Muggle world that they can’t talk to their own grandparents. It’s happening, you know. Yvonne tried to discuss Quidditch with my father, and I had to make up excuses about some cartoon she’d seen on the telly. I want the children to know how to live among their Muggle neighbours!”

Linda smiled sweetly – and then Flooed up to Scotland to enrol Yvonne at the dame-school behind my back. However, the teacher wanted a term’s fees in advance, and Linda had spent all her savings. She came home furious.

“Why don’t we have a joint bank account?” she demanded. “I slave away at home, bringing up your children, while you gad off advancing your career, and all our money ends up in your account! That gives you all the power to make the decisions. Don’t you trust me?”

“We’ll have a joint account when you can show me that you don’t waste money,” I said.

Linda screamed her head off all evening, but in the end she didn’t have the money to pay for the private school, so she was forced to accept a compromise. We agreed to send the children to the Muggle primary school on condition I promised they would be going to Hogwarts later – and that I bought them broomsticks for now.

So I bought three second-hand Cleansweeps, and there was our next quarrel waiting to happen! First Linda told me that Cleansweeps weren’t good brooms and I should have bought Nimbuses. When she worked out that there weren’t any second-hand Nimbuses, she said I should at least have bought a proper broomstick maintenance kit, and didn’t I care about safety? Then we had to find a place for the kids to practise, wide enough to let them fly but sheltered enough to be invisible to Muggles. That was usually an apple orchard or hop field, although I wasn’t happy about trespassing on private property.

“If they fly lower than the trees, who will know?” asked Linda. “The whole point is not to be seen, so you’d better make sure we’re not caught!”

At first the tots only flew at waist-height. But they did fall off. We took many trips to St Mungo’s for broken ankles and concussed heads. By the time they were five or six, they were soaring up to the height of the trees. Irate farmers did sometimes catch us between their bushes – they thought we’d come to steal the fruit.

“It’s your fault we were caught, Derek!” Linda would complain. “I’m busy teaching them to fly – you were supposed to be the look-out!”

Bella was the boldest of the three, and she would shoot up above the tree-tops, clearly visible for miles around. I’d shout at her to come down, but she would laugh and fly off. Then it was my fault for not stopping her.

“How was I supposed to reach her?” I asked. “By jumping? If learning to fly is causing us so much trouble, perhaps we shouldn’t bother.”

“Derek, how can you talk such rubbish? They need to fly! Now face up to your responsibilities and keep them out of the Muggle view while they’re practising.”

“But Dad can’t control us!” Yvonne objected. “We can fly away from him any time we don’t want to listen.”

“He feels left out,” said Bella, hugging my arm. “We shouldn’t spend every weekend doing something Dad can’t share.”

It wasn’t every weekend, of course, but it was nearly every fine-weather weekend. If I suggested we do something different, Linda complained that I wasn’t committed to giving our children a proper magical education. I always felt there wasn’t a fair balance of Muggle activities: they were too busy with flying to have time to play cricket or go to football matches.

The lack of Muggle-ness shows in all sorts of small ways, Madam Howard. They don’t watch telly, for example; if I’m watching a documentary, and Yvonne wants to listen to the wireless, she’ll just switch off the telly without asking leave. Robert says the flashing on the screen distracts him, so he won’t stay in the room if the telly’s on. Bella will sit down next to me and take an interest, but she asks so many questions that it becomes impossible to keep watching. They do listen to the wireless, but only to the wizarding network, so they don’t hear the Muggle news at all. It means they don’t know what to say to their grandparents.

Have your parents guessed about magic?

Nah, they’d never believe it, even if we told them. If we expect them at our house, we run around hiding the magical potions kits and animated photographs. But trying to cover up every detail of our home life is quite stressful for Linda, so usually we visit, not host. The children tell my parents all about school quite happily, but after that they clam up. Nearly everything else in their lives is something they can’t discuss with Muggles. They don’t play monopoly and they don’t watch videos. They even worry about taking a country walk in case they say the wrong thing about the local plants or the famers’ machinery.

The time came to send Yvonne to Hogwarts. Do you know, it wasn’t until I read her enrolment letter that I realised Hogwarts was a boarding school? Linda had never once mentioned that detail.

“I thought it was obvious!” she protested. “Don’t Muggles ever go to boarding school?”

“Not unless they’re millionaires,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of our kids being so far away from home for months on end. Isn’t this the end of family life?”

“Of course not!” snapped Linda.

Emmeline was more sympathetic. “In some ways it is,” she said. “Wizards expect that kind of ‘family life’ to end at age eleven. But the children will be all right. They won’t miss you nearly as much as you’ll miss them, and Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain.”

I’d always thought of boarding schools as filing cabinets for parents who couldn’t be bothered taking care of their children themselves. If I’d known all those years earlier that Hogwarts was a boarding school, I wouldn’t have agreed to send our kids there. But it’s too late now...

Perhaps you feel cheated?

I do! Yes, cheated. The wizards ought to have told me a big thing like “Hogwarts will end your family life.” But I don’t have a leg to stand on, because the kids are happy there. They really enjoy the independence. I can’t even complain about the expense, because the cost of books and uniforms is far less than what we save by not having to feed them.

But money’s always a bit of an issue between us. Linda doesn’t understand about mortgages or superannuation or life insurance: she expects to spend everything we earn. And she knows plenty of ways to spend! She’s bought garden tools for a garden she never bothered to plant; a gym subscription that she only used twice; trashy novels that she could have borrowed from the library; some luxury brand of Floo powder that gives a better connection; Madam Primpernelle’s beauty baskets for soft skin and shiny hair; “special offer” theatre and theme park tickets that we never quite use up before the expiry date; new robes with the Twilfitt and Tatting label; confectionary, flowers, alcohol... It all adds up.

Yes, we do bicker about money. Linda asks why I can’t give her more “housekeeping,” and I ask why she doesn’t magic up more money. But apparently you can’t do that.

Correct: money is the second exception to Gamp’s Law. You can conjure up Leprechaun Gold – something that looks like money – but it disappears after only a few hours. You can also transfigure a solid object into fake coins that you could use as a theatre prop, but you couldn’t spend them in a shop because the forgery would be obvious. That’s just a magical principle built into the fabric of the universe: you can’t use magic to make real money.

Linda doesn’t really understand magical principles. She has A levels... newts... in charms, astronomy and evil-defence, but she’s forgotten all the theory and she didn’t do any further studies after Hogwarts. But she does know that even wizards can’t make money unless they earn it, and she found it very frustrating to stay at home with the children, depending on me to hand out the cash. Three years ago she went back to Plumptons’ Pots, which now belongs to her cousin. I don’t know what they pay her, because she never brings the money home: she spends it all in Diagon Alley as fast as she earns it.

Does that worry you?

Not much. It keeps her happy, and she often buys things for all of us. Last week it was a magic tent that hides a whole hotel suite inside. We’ll take that with us when we tour Europe. I just wish she wouldn’t ask to spend all my money as well as all hers! And of course she has even less time to tidy up the house... Madam Howard, have you noticed how magic isn’t very good at solving problems but it’s very good at creating extra ones? It’s very obvious to us Muggles.

Anyway, that’s me and Linda. I wish we had a happier home-life, and I think magic is the reason we don’t.

So you have a fiery-tempered, disorganised wife who spends too much money.

It doesn’t sound such a big deal when you put it like that, does it? I’ve put most of our money where she can’t reach it; I close my eyes to the mess and I close my ears to the nagging. It isn’t a huge problem, is it?

Except that it matters to you.

That’s it! It matters to me! I want to know the big secret in your culture that I just don’t understand. I’ve lived among wizards for eighteen years, and I still don’t understand them. What’s the magic key to getting along with you people?

What about your children? Is it so hard to get along with them?

My – ? Oh, the kids are quite ordinary. I get along fine with my kids. They shout at their mother, but they’re always normal with me. I hardly notice that they’re wizards. I’m just a normal Dad with them.

It doesn’t seem to me that you have much trouble getting on with wizards.

But I’ve been telling you –

– that you get along perfectly well with most wizards. The only person with whom you keep on quarrelling is Linda.

What?

Oh.

Linda.

Yes. Linda.

Take away the magical parts, and it’s about you and Linda and about the two of you having to live together.

Do you think so? No, it’s more than that. It’s definitely the magic. If Linda weren’t a witch... If she weren’t so ready to break rules and use magic... She... I don’t know how to say this.

Are you afraid she’ll use magic on you?

YES!

Well, she hasn’t so far... At least, I haven’t caught her at it... But can I be certain she hasn’t? Madam Howard, how easily could Linda Obliviate me?

Oh, is that why you’re here, Mr Rivers? Are you afraid of being the victim of a magical crime? If Linda had deliberately interfered with your mind, I’d have noticed by now. Obliviation is very difficult magic. A low-qualified witch like Linda couldn’t possibly modify your memory properly. More likely she’d blow out half your brain in the attempt. No, we can safely say that no-one has tried anything like that on you.

Then what about... Could she have fed me... a love-potion?

Well, not recently! You are definitely not suffering from infatuation today.

True! So you admit that love-potions exist, Madam Howard. What about during our courtship? Could Linda have used a potion to trick me into marrying her?

Hmmm... Do you think you ever woke up from a love-potion? Did you suddenly find that the passion had sharply vanished and left you feeling disgusted or indifferent?

No, it’s more that it faded away. Sometimes it fades back, too... It comes and goes.

Love potions don’t work that way, Mr Rivers. They are abrupt and brutal and they don’t produce real love. I don’t see any abrupt changes in you, Mr Rivers; I see the symptoms of ordinary love. Linda has her little habits – and perhaps she’d say that you have yours – and so your love has taken a battering.

Do you know, that’s it! It’s taken a battering because there’s still something left to batter! So you’re certain that Linda couldn’t possibly have interfered magically?

Certain. No love potions, no memory charms, no persuasion spells.

Then I’ve been battered with ordinary things and not with magic! Thank you so much for your time, Madam Howard. You’re very, very good at your job. That settles it. I’m not under a spell; I still actually love Ethelinda.