2017

Muggle London of 2017 looked just about as impressive as the wizarding world did. The cars were all rounder and everyone was carrying around strange silvery devices Harry had never seen before. They looked vaguely like the "mobile phone" Uncle Vernon had once considered buying, but were smaller and sleeker. Looking around, Harry saw an electronics store selling "New Micro-Computers" and "12 iPhones for 12 Pence". A short distance away, there were two teenage boys standing outside a cinema showing "COLLEGE GIRLS, starring Dakota Fanning and Abigail Breslin".

"Oh, I'd like to get with her," one of them said, pointing at the second name. "She's so hot."

"Get real, mate," his companion replied. "You're sixteen and Abigail's, like, twenty-one. I think she's a little out of your league."

Harry had decided he would call the Dursleys, but he couldn't see any phone boxes. As he desperately looked around, he thought of the explosion there would be on the other end from Uncle Vernon, who was, no doubt, pleased Harry had finally left his perfectly-ordinary-thank-you-very-much life for good. Of course, the Dursleys might not even live on Privet Drive anymore, but maybe the new owners would be able to tell Harry where they had moved to.

"Excuse me," Harry said to a passerby, "do you know where I might find a phone box?"

"A phone box?" the man repeated incredulously. "Where you been? There haven' been any phone boxes in London since 2013 -- everyone's usin' mobiles now. I s'pose next you'll wan' directions to the nearest post office."

"Uh, no thanks, that'll do," Harry said quickly. The man walked off, angrily muttering "Phone box! 'Where's the phone box?' What is this? 1999?" to himself.

Harry didn't think he had time to get one those "mobiles" -- presumably a mobile phone -- and figured he should therefore try to find a way to get to Privet Drive. Just as he was thinking this, Harry saw a London cab drive by and quickly hailed it. The cab pulled over and he saw a teenage girl seated in the back, but in the front...

"There's no driver!" Harry said in shock. The girl laughed.

"The driver's in there!" she said pointing at the dashboard.

"He's inside the engine?" asked Harry.

"It's computer-controlled, you pillock!" the girl told him. "You type in the address of your destination on that keypad and it'll take you there! Honestly, haven't you ever been in a Smart Cab before?"

"Uh... no," said Harry as he typed "4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey" into the computer.

"Well, they are new," the girl admitted, "And right now there's only about fifty of them in London. I'm Veronica, by the way -- Veronica Robins."

"I'm -- Neville Dursley," Harry quickly invented.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Neville," Veronica said pleasantly as the cab took off on its own. Neither spoke as the cab drove down the first few blocks. Veronica idly switched on the radio.

"Welcome to your source for music of the '80s, '90s and '00s," said a voice on the radio. "Today is 'Spice Girls Week', which hopefully will go better than the girls' twentieth-anniversary special." Laughter followed that comment, but Veronica, looking displeased, switched the radio off and turned to Harry.

"So, how do you feel about anime?" she asked him conversationally.

"What's anime?" asked Harry.

"How can you not know what anime is?" Veronica asked, sounding appalled. "I've known about it since I watched Pokémon cartoons as a little girl. Actually, I think I saw my first one shortly after 9/11."

"9:11?" Harry repeated in confusion. "Why does the time of day matter?"

"9/11's not a time, it's a date!" Veronica said in exasperation.

"Oh, so it's November the ninth then?" Harry asked. Veronica rolled her eyes.

"I guess the school system in this country's worse than I thought," she said. "Anyway, did you see the final episode of Ugly Betty last May?"

"Uh, I must've missed it," Harry said quickly.

"It was great," she told him. "You know, I was just eight when the show first came to the UK back in 2007. Who would've thought back then that it would last for eleven years, huh? I have the whole series on DVD, of course."

"What's DVD?" asked Harry.

"'What's DVD?'" Veronica repeated. "How can you not know about DVD? Don't you ever watch movies or anything?"

"You mean like on videotape?" Harry asked without thinking.

"'Videotape'," Veronica repeated. "My mum told me about those. She said back in her day they had these 'videotapes' and that if you wanted to watch one scene you would have to fast-forward through the rest of the movie to get to it. You even had to rewind the whole movie when you were done. Can you imagine what it would have been like to live in those days?"

Quite fortunately, the cab reached Privet Drive before long. Strangely enough, Harry saw there was a huge crowd of cloaked people standing right outside number four. Veronica's face fell.

"Well, that's strange," she said. "It looks like the house you wanted to go to isn't there."

"What?" Harry asked. "It's right there! See, it's the one with all those people standing outside it -- the people with cloaks."

"There're no people with cloaks there," Veronica insisted. "And look; it goes directly from number three to number five. There is no number four!"

"How can you --" he began, but then he realized what must have happened. For whatever reason, it seemed that the Dursleys' home had been rendered invisible to Muggles -- just like the Leaky Cauldron.

"Well, thanks," Harry said quickly. "I'll get off her anyway --"

"Why're you --" Veronica began, but the door closed just after Harry climbed out and the cab speeded off on its own. Harry approached the crowd standing outside number four and tried to squeeze through to see what they were all looking at.

"All right, please don't push," he heard a male voice say. "You'll all get in soon enough. Everyone will get a chance to see." The voice was coming from a short, mousy-haired man standing on the Dursleys' doorstep.

"Welcome to the Harry Potter Museum," he told the crowd. "My name is Dennis Creevey and I'll be your guide today."