A Matter of Perception

Richard Parker had always been observant. He was the type of person who could walk into a room full of people and after only a second's glance he could describe every one of them. People told him he had a photographic memory, but he knew it wasn't that. He could no more memorise a page in a book than anyone else. He just noticed things; little details that everyone else was too busy or to pre-occupied to see.

Other than this rather unusual trait, Richard was quite unremarkable. He liked to say that his life had been reasonable, nothing more, nothing less and he was happy with it. He had grown up in Shropshire, where he'd lived a reasonably happy childhood in a reasonably nice town. It was the kind of town where everyone knew you enough to say hello if they passed you on the street, but not so much that they would poke their nose into your business, and he liked it like that.

He went to the local comprehensive, which was reasonably nice and he got through it easily with a small group of friends. He left school at sixteen with a respectable four Bs at O' level, and was immediately offered a position as an apprentice mechanic, a job that he enjoyed reasonably well.

When he was eighteen and a newly trained mechanic, he met Carol, who everyone said was a lovely girl. He liked her reasonably enough, so he asked her to marry him. They tried for a baby almost straight away, but Carol didn't get pregnant. After two years, they went to see a doctor who told them casually and pitilessly that Richard's sperm count was very low so they probably wouldn't be able to have children. But there were things they could try, and try they did, for fifteen years.

At thirty-nine, Carol had lost hope and was on the verge of depression, so they left for London to start a new life, make a fresh start. That's when things started to change.

Richard had a position at a city centre bus department as a resident mechanic that brought home a reasonable wage, and it saved their marriage. Every day he would walk to work on the same route with a spring in his step, grateful that his marriage was back on track and his wife was finally happy again.

The first day he walked down that street to work, he noticed it. It was a funny sort of building; it looked like it didn't belong. It was stuck between a large bookshop and a brand new record shop, but it seemed to have been there for centuries. He had never seen a building quite like it and it fascinated him. He noticed that strange people came in and out frequently, and once, he got to see the inside when a funny little man was on his way out. It was a pub. Just an old pub in the middle of a high street. A couple of times, he tried to stop and look at it but something always compelled him to move on, something he couldn't explain. Something like an instinct in the back of his mind.

One day, he tried to get a friend to meet him there. They had decided to go for a drink after work, and the little pub was almost exactly half way between their houses. There wasn't another pub for miles because of the shops, so it seemed like a good choice.

"I don't know what it's called, but its that little shabby looking place on Duke Street," Richard told him.

"Which place?" asked his friend.

"You know, that pub next to the book shop. Sticks out like a sore thumb."

"There's no pubs in Duke Street. Are you sure you don't mean Ellis Road? There's one there."

"No, it's definitely Duke Street. You can't miss it," Richard insisted.

"Don't know which one you mean, mate," said his friend. "Must have never noticed it. Let's just meet at Ellis Road."

The trouble with people, Richard said to himself, is that they just don't look.

A few weeks later, Richard had taken the afternoon off to make up for the overtime he had done, but as he walked home he realised that Carol would be at her slimming class and he didn't have a key. He had an hour to kill.

It suddenly occurred to him that this would be the perfect opportunity to have a look inside that old pub. He could have a quiet drink and then call Carol after her class for a lift home. He set off towards Duke Street, looking forward to a nice cold pint.

As he approached the pub, he thought for a moment that he was supposed to be at the dentist, but after a second he realised he didn't. A couple of steps later, he suddenly remembered he was supposed to pick Carol up from her class, and he started back towards the bus depot.

How can I pick her up? He thought when he reached the end of the road. I don't even have the car. He set off towards the pub again, determined to make it to the door.

It's almost as though that little pub doesn't want me to go in there, he thought, chuckling softly to himself.

After a mild panic that he had left his tools back at the bus depot, he finally made it to the door and pushed it slowly open. It certainly was a strange looking place.

None of the eight inhabitants of the bar seemed to notice him come in, so he walked tentatively towards the bar. There were three women and a young boy sitting in the corner with string bags full of strange looking vegetables. At the end of the bar, a man sat on a stool with his head slumped forwards, apparently asleep. There were two more men to the left of him, playing some sort of strange game with what looked like mechanical chess pieces, and at the other end of the bar was an extremely large, unfeasibly ugly old woman.

They were all dressed in unusual clothes; long flowing cloaks of different colours and a few of them wore pointed hats, almost like the ones children would draw on a picture of a witch.

Richard felt slightly uneasy, as though he wasn't supposed to be there.

Perhaps it's a private club, he thought nervously. One of those strange sorts of places you hear about on late night documentaries. He considered leaving, but then chastised himself for being silly. The least they can do is throw me out. After all, there's nothing to say it's private. He'd have noticed if there'd been a sign.

The two men to his left stood up and went out of the back door, one of them pulling a wooden stick out of his cloak.

Richard stood at the bar. The barman appeared suddenly from behind the counter.

"What can I get you?" he asked with a welcoming smile.

"Just a beer, thanks," said Richard, rummaging in his pocket for change. The barman passed him an old fashioned tankard of beer. It tasted funny, but Richard drank it down anyway. He held out a ten-pound note to the barman.

"What's this?" asked the man.

"Sorry," said Richard. "I don't have any less."

The man eyed him curiously. "We don't take muggle money in here," he said sharply.

"You don't take what?" asked Richard.

"Muggle money." The barman looked a little wary. "Where are you from, anyway? I haven't seen you in here before."

"I live in London, but this is the first time I've been here. Only moved down here last year."

The barman shook his head and started cleaning glasses with a dirty looking rag.

"Didn't think there was anyone alive who hadn't been in here," he said thoughtfully. "Do you normally just get there by floo-powder then?"

Drugs, thought Richard with a nervous twinge. He must be talking about drugs.

"Something like that," he said, trying his best to sound nonchalant. This was definitely the strangest conversation he had ever had, and that included the one with his grandfather when he'd sat for an hour discussing the pixies in his loft who left him presents. His grandfather had gone senile and died shortly after.

"D'you live in muggle London then?" asked the barman. There was that word again. It must be some kind of street-talk.

"It's a town about two miles out of the centre. It's quite nice," said Richard, trying to smile.

"Anyway, have you got any proper money?" said the barman. "Because we don't take muggle money, like I said."

"I- I'm sorry," stuttered Richard. "I'm afraid I don't understand." People were starting to stare.

"Blimey," said the barman. "You're not a muggle are you?" The man laughed and so did a few of the people around him. Richard thought he'd better come clean and hope they didn't beat him up or something.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm afraid I don't even know what a muggle is. I can pay you for the drink but -"

A deathly silence had fallen across the pub. Every pair of eyes in the room were on Richard.

"Bloody hell," shouted the barman. "Ernie! Ernie!" he yelled over his shoulder, still staring at Richard, his face as white as a sheet. "Get the Ministry! There's a muggle in here!"

A very strange thing happened. The man who had been sleeping at the end of the bar leapt to his feet. He ran over to the fireplace, knelt down on his hands and knees and picked up a handful of dust from a pot at the side. He leaned forwards so that his head was in the fireplace and said in a loud, clear voice, "Ministry for Magic, Muggle Relations department," and dropped the dust into the grate.

There was an almighty explosion, almost as though the man had set off a firework right there on the floor. Then, his head disappeared.

Richard jumped off the stool with horror, wondering what on earth he had got himself into.

"Stay where you are," said the barman, a hint of fear in his voice. Richard turned slowly to look at him. He was pointing a blunt wooden stick at Richard's chest as though it were a gun. Richard put his hands in the air and froze, because there was something funny about that stick.

"The Ministry'll be here any second, so don't try anything silly. Nobody's going to hurt you."

Now Richard was really scared. They were sending someone for him? What on earth had he done?

"Wh... what is this place?" he asked nervously.

"Never you mind," said the man. "The less you know the better. It'll be easier for them to Obliviate you."

"Obliviate me?" Richard started to shake, desperately staring at the door, wondering if he dared make a run for it, but before he could work up the courage, people started to appear all over the pub. They just seemed to materialise out of thin air with a loud pop. There were four of them. One, who seemed to be the oldest, walked across to where they stood.

"Tom, for heavens sake, put your wand away," said the man to the barman. "It's a muggle, not a dragon."

"Please don't hurt me," spluttered Richard, giving way to pure terror. "I promise I won't come here again... please!"

The man smiled pleasantly at him. "Now, now, now, there's no need for that," he chuckled. "Nobody's going to hurt you. We just need to find out a few things and then you'll be on your way. Nothing to worry about at all."

He took Richard by the arm and led him to a seat in the corner while the other new arrivals started asking everyone questions, scribbling things down on large pieces of paper with old-fashioned quills.

"Never in all my years..." Tom was muttering to another of the men. "A muggle in my pub... never!"

"Just walked in, calm as you like," said one of the women to an eagerly nodding young man.

"Now," said the man kindly. "How about a cup of tea?" Richard nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"That's better," said the man. He pulled out a stick just like the barman's and waved it around. A pot of tea and two cups appeared on the table from nowhere.

"H-h-how did you do that?" stammered Richard.

"Oh, nothing for you to worry about, just a simple spell," said the man with a warm smile, and handed a cup to Richard. "Now, first things first," the man continued. "How did you find this place?"

"I walk past it every day on my way to work," said Richard nervously. Since he had absolutely no idea what was going on, he really didn't know which answer the man wanted to hear, so he thought it best to just tell the truth.

"And you just... saw it?" asked the man, looking a little concerned. Richard nodded.

"McMillan," he called across the room. A young man came bounding over enthusiastically. "We need to re-enforce the disillusionment charms outside," he muttered. The man nodded and walked away. "Has anyone else seen it?" the man asked Richard.

"No," said Richard, starting to feel just a little bit better. "It's funny, because I kept asking people about it but no-one seemed to know what I was on about."

The man breathed a sigh of relief. "And when you came in," he went on. "You didn't feel the need to go anywhere else? You didn't remember you had something important to do or anything like that?"

"Well, I did," said Richard, thinking back to what seemed like months ago. "First I thought I had to go to the dentist, but then I remembered I went last week. Then I thought I had to pick my wife up, but that's just silly because I don't have the car. Then I thought I'd left my tools at work, but look -" he pointed to the case still sitting at the bar, " - I've got them right here."

The man nodded and scribbled something down on his paper. "So you just walked right in? Very strange," he muttered to himself.

"Well, Mr... what did you say your name was? Parker, right. Well, Mr. Parker, it seems you're quite unique. This pub has been sitting here for six hundred and fifty years and not once has a muggle such as yourself thought to come inside. It's really quite irregular. It's going to cause quite a fuss."

He thought for a moment. "Do you happen to know if you have any witches or wizards in your family? Perhaps that's it."

Richard stared at him in disbelief. "Witches?" he asked. The man nodded eagerly, as though he'd just asked him if he had a pet dog. "Erm, no. I don't think so," Richard said. "Are you from the government? Is this some sort of top secret project or something?"

The man looked up from his papers and smiled indulgently. "Yes, yes. That'll do. We're from the, er, government."

"What's going to happen to me?" asked Richard nervously. "You're not going to kill me are you?" He'd seen this kind of thing on the television all the time; people stumbling upon conspiracies or aliens and just disappearing as though they'd never existed.

The man scribbled something else on his papers and then set his quill down on the table.

"I think the best course of action would be to just wipe all of this from your memory - just a simple little procedure, nothing to worry about - and then you can get off home," said the man, smiling kindly at Richard.

"Can you do that?" asked Richard. He had thought that kind of technology was the kind of thing you only saw in films, but it was better than being killed at any rate.

"Of course," said the man. "It's really quite easy. Now if you'll just sit still and try to keep calm..." He pulled out his stick again and pointed it at Richard's head. Richard really wasn't sure whether the man was telling him the truth or whether he was simply quite mad, but he decided it would be best to play along.

The man muttered something and waved the stick about. Suddenly, a flash of white light shot from the end of it and hit Richard squarely between the eyes.

~

That afternoon, Richard was at home feeling very pleased with himself. After almost a year, he'd finally found a better route to work. It would take him a little longer, but he'd always hated pushing through the crowds of shoppers on the main street. His new route took him through the park and it was a lovely walk.

His wife cooked him a special tea that night since she'd managed to lose three pounds at her slimming class and was in the mood to celebrate. They sat down at the table and ate a large plate of steak and chips, Richard's favourite.

"How was work today, dear?" asked Carol as she sipped on a glass of wine.

"Fine, fine," said Richard. "Just the usual, you know."

"You haven't said anything about my hair," said Carol. "I had it coloured this morning. Didn't you notice?"

Richard looked at her. Her hair was different. "I didn't," he said thoughtfully. "It looks lovely."

"But you always notice my hair," said Carol, a touch of disappointment in her voice. "You always notice everything."

Richard smiled at her and leaned across the table to kiss her forehead. "I wouldn't worry, dear," he said, taking another bite of steak. "I'm probably just getting old."