You may have noticed that the final Harry Potter book - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - reaches bookshops around the world this weekend on a wave of hype.
You may also have noticed the enormous secrecy surrounding the plot of the book and the increasingly frantic attempts by JK Rowling and her publishers to keep the storyline off the internet.
So, with a gleeful shout of "OMFG LOLZ!", I have secured - at no little expense from an A+++++++ Ebay seller - a 100% completely and utterly genuine copy of the last page of the new novel as written on the back of a fifty pound note by JK Rowling herself.
Rowling's legals may actually nail my genitals to the pavement for this, but:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Epilogue
Hermione scurried across the Great Hall at Hogwarts, through the secret door and up the stairs to her luxurious chambers, where she slumped into her favourite chair by the roaring fire. She shivered, and Maximus slipped out to do whatever it is cats get up to on cold, winter evenings.
And thoughts of poor, dead Ron, Ginny, Hagrid, Snape and the final battle filled her scarred mind once again. Every night for how long? Twenty years. That long. All those friends, all of them gone.
The passage of time had not blurred her memories of those extraordinary days. She could hear Harry's dying screams and see the leer on Ron's agonised, twisted face as he forced the stake into his former friend's black, black heart every time she closed her eyes.
Poor Ron. His limbs, torso, and finally his sweet, sweet face turned to stone even as he forced the stake home and Hermione cast that final spell that tore the very life and soul from Harry Potter's evil, corrupt body.
Those seven years she had known Potter, fought and played alongside him. Those jolly wheezes escaping from the masters and Filch the caretaker. Those rum adventures as Griffindor won the House Cup. The months of screaming, spine-tearing terror as their young lives led up to that final good-against-evil battle. And it was all for lies.
How Harry had tricked her, used his dark magic to pull the wool over all their eyes. All that time they were running afraid of Voldemort, when the real evil was right in front of her, plotting, scheming, running his hands through her hair and over her pert, young breasts. Taking her. Taking her for everything she had.
She swallowed hard at the memory, but the acid taste of her last meal still filled her mouth as she fought the nausea.
And still she remembered how she enjoyed him at the time, for the young Potter certainly knew how to use that wand of his. But how the joy turned to despair as fast as he introduced her naked, yielding flesh to the sickening lusts of the Death Eaters. Even that had been fun, in its own way.
Compare that to the sweet, kind Voldemort she now knew. The caring, thoughtful man who had finally shown the dreadful Potter for what he was - the parent-slaying, rank, disgusting, perverted youth, filled with the ancient, evil magic that comes with a life of depravity.
Potter was The Boy Who Lived, to be sure. The boy who lived to destroy.
"Mum?" said the figure at the door, "Are you alright?"
"I… I'm fine. I'm just remembering again."
He was a handsome man, now almost twenty years old. Round-rimmed glasses like his father, but caring and thoughtful where Harry had been violent and cold.
"I'm just going out. It's curry night at The Three Broomsticks."
Aye, and no doubt there'll be a stripper, too, and a punch-up on the way home in the early hours. Just like his old dad, then, before those cleansing fires consumed his still twitching body.
But she could never have had that abortion, and, as Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, she knew it would be for the best to keep what remains of that ancient evil nearby, where she could see it. Where she could strike it down should it return.
As Harold left, the door to her bed chamber opened. Tom. Tom Voldemort, her beloved. The one man who kept her sane. Tom Voldemort, headmaster of Hogwarts. He was good, she smiled, remembering wistfully, but he would never be as good as the Weasley twins.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, a knowing look on her face, "Harold's out for the evening."
Copyright Alistair Coleman and Bowfell Publishing Limited 2002-2009
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