(Edit: Replaced the text with a line-wrapped version, incorporating a few wording tweaks I missed last night.)

This bit me on the way home from work tonight, and I've spent much of the last hour writing it up; I really should be asleep by now, but I want to run it past you all and ask for opinions and suggestions.

I do have ideas for where to take this from here, but nothing of nearly this level of detail; I'll probably expand on that in the morning.

This began life as a general outline and explanation, but I think it could serve equally well as an intro sequence, if I wanted to use it that way. (The trouble there is that this is about as far as I can go with actual writing; I can do copyediting in as much detail as I need to, but writing descriptions and dialogue and so forth from scratch seems to be beyond me.) I apologize for the style in which it's written; it just seemed to demand to be written this way.

================

On that famous Halloween night in 1981, something went wrong. No one had ever

learned what it was; even I cannot yet say with any certainty.

It is known that the Potters were betrayed by their Secret-Keeper, and that the

Dark wizard known as Lord Voldemort came to their house to kill them; it is

known that he succeeded in killing both James and Lily; it is known that he

tried also to kill Harry Potter, and that when that was done with Voldemort was

no longer there; and that Harry was found, alive and well, the only survivor in

that place of death.

But after the confrontation between Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew, when the

confusion settled down and the wizards who had come too late to the Potters'

aid began to pick up the pieces and take stock amid the impending dawn, Harry

Potter was nowhere to be found.

They searched, of course, by means both mundane and magical; but there were no

traces of Apparition or of portkey travel, or indeed any identifiable magic at

all after the thrice-cast Killing Curse, and when they sought to track him by

the simple yet reliable Point Me spell the pointing wand simply spun aimlessly

in place. There did seem at first to be physical traces, a trail leading from

the place where he had last been brought away into a nearby stand of trees; but

that trail ended abruptly after a short distance, and no more sign of his fate

could be found.

After a due time, the search was called off, and their attention turned to the

aftermath of the war, in much the usual manner. The return of peace was

celebrated, and the Death Eaters were sentenced or acquitted largely according

to the contents of their pocketbooks, and the disappearance of Harry Potter was

considered even more mysterious than is common; and life went on.

But those who knew of the prophecy about the Potters and the Dark Lord were not

quite satisfied that things were truly over, and the question of where Harry

Potter had gone never entirely left their minds. And some ten years later, the

night after the letters for the coming year's class of new Hogwarts students

had been sent out, one of these people thought to check the records of those

letters; and in those records, there was indeed a copy of a standard first-

year's letter, addressed to Harry Potter. But even by wizarding standards, the

address was an unusual one indeed; for it read,

        Harry Potter

        The Lowest Bed

        Third Bunk from the Left

        Second Bedchamber

        Hangman's Tree

        Neverland

The wizard who first discovered this record (though it may, indeed, have been a

witch) could not make head or tail of this address, having never heard of a

place called Neverland; but it happened that this particular wizard had not

been present for the original search, and so thought to make the attempt of a

Point Me spell. And this time, the wand immediately found its compass, and

pointed fixedly in a single direction; but that was hardly less peculiar than

the address, because it pointed off into the starry sky.

The wizard, having made both of these discoveries in quick succession, hurried

off with the record in hand to wake up Albus Dumbledore, and demonstrate the

success of the pointing spell. The elderly wizard found both the record and the

demonstration to be quite interesting indeed, and sent out word to gather other

interested parties, both to investigate this mystery and to prepare an

expedition; but it was several long hours before they were all ready together,

and when the Point Me spell was cast for Harry Potter for the third time that

night (or morning, as by then it had become), it merely spun aimlessly once

more.

Those of the gathered wizards who had so recently seen that same spell succeed

found this mystifying; the others, of course, were more inclined to be

skeptical, and to cast doubt upon the claim that it had succeeded at all. Yet

the word of the two who had seen it was persuasive, and so they stayed, to

examine the puzzle; and late that afternoon, the owl which had gone out with

that letter returned looking tired but not visibly worse for the wear, with no

letter attached to its leg.

A wizarding post owl, as is well known, will not voluntarily release its

message except to the named recipient; and so the unruffled owl bearing no

message was taken as confirmation that indeed Harry Potter had been found at

that address and had received the letter addressed to him, and research into

the possible location of Neverland resumed in earnest. And as the day wore on

into evening, and the stars began to emerge from behind the bright veil of the

day, someone tried the Point Me spell once more; and once more it found its

compass, and pointed off into the sky.

The word of the renewed success of the spell was quickly spread, and the

assembled company turned just as quickly from their researches and prepared to

follow the pointing wand; and in relatively short order, a small flock of

wizards on a small flock of broomsticks rose into the air, and departed across

the countryside.

They flew long and far, over hills and plains, and then for a long time over

ocean, with the wand which was their compass never wavering; until as the

horizon began to brighten, and the stars to fade once more, it turned to angle

downwards, and they saw an island ahead of them.

And it is possible that they saw also an old-fashioned ship, and had the need

to dodge cannonballs as they approached the land; and it is possible that they

landed on the shore of the island, and were distracted - however briefly - by

the presence of mermaids in the waters behind them; and it is possible that as

they flew over the trees of the island, or walked among them, they were

accosted by its seemingly savage native tribesmen, and had either to dodge

arrows in their flight or fight off a more direct assault on the ground.

Yet whether any of these things happened or not, they arrived in time deep in

the forest, at the foot of a gnarled tree, which bore a striking resemblance to

a gallows; and it was near that tree (or perhaps underneath it, if they

discovered the hidden entranceway, which was too small for any of them to

readily fit) that they encountered a tribe of seemingly-feral children, and it

was among those children that they discovered Harry Potter.

RIP Peter Fernandez
I'm deeply saddened about this. More so than usual for such a notification. I actually got to meet and talk with Peter briefly at Anime Weekend Atlanta a few years ago along with several other fans. A kind, sweet gentleman with a ready laugh and a ton of small stories. You could tell he was truly getting an enormous kick out of seeing what the popularity of Speed Racer had amounted to and getting the proper recognition for his work. And truly curious (though somewhat bemused) about the rest of the anime world at the convention.
The most interesting thing at the time was the intersection of him, Corrine Orr (who voiced Trixie and several other voices through the years - including Nova from Star Blazers 3rd Season) and Amy Howard (who voiced Nova on the first two seasons of Star Blazers). Peter himself had done the voice of Mark Venture, the Argo's navigator and pilot in the 3rd season. And Peter actually went to some lengths to APOLOGIZE to fans (and Amy) for not using the original voice actors from the first two seasons! But like the rest of us in fandom at the time (mid 80s), he couldn't FIND them (due to the actors working non-union and uncredited. A fairly common practice at the time for voice-over work.)
Why the weird names like "Cruncher Block" "Inspector Detector" and "Snake Oiler" in Speed Racer? Why the run-on sentences? Well the translations they got were sparse. REALLY sparse. So he had to make up a lot of dialogue. And they were dubbing on a pretty tight schedule. So the names were whatever would fit best that the actors could REMEMBER without effort and having to check back to the script so often for! If some of the dialogue sounded like they were making it up as they went along, well... they WERE.
He also wrote the lyrics for the classic Speed Racer theme - "Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer..."
If you watch the Speed Racer movie. Peter is in it as a cameo. Corrine too. He's the old newsman at the first Thunderhead race in the beginning. The "Local Newsman guy" in the fedora commenting on Speed. Kudos to the Wachowski's for that bit of class. 
RIP Peter. You were a gentleman. In the classic sense. A gentle man.

I write like
Margaret Mitchell
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

(Based on the first scene of the last chapter of DW2.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I think all of you had heard of the Russian spy ring that got broken up this month. There were 2 things that came thru my mind:
1. Better the spies you know than the ones you don't.
2. It's amazing that the FBI was able to find and track these folks for a decade. But considering some of them had facebook photos of them on the web, makes me kinda wonder whether it was good spycraft or not.
The paranoid in me keeps envisioning Islamic sleeper cells here in the States. If you recall the story of the Hashashin, it might not be so far fetched. Granted the Hashashin would had scorned today's fedayeen suicide bombers as being crude amateurs, but you have to wonder.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Dear god this man is funny. ^_^

I was looking at the backup software I currently have running, and as far as I can tell, the crash restoration portion of the program is disabled for free users.  It's there in the program file, but isn't actually linked up. >
Could anyone recommend a backup program that is not too complicated, has crash restoration, is reliable, and is free?  I'm currently running Windows XP.
Thanks.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

http://www.wtam.com/cc-common/news/sect ... le=7342270]October 8, 1939 - July 12, 2010

Mr. Pekar was one of the first successful independent comic artists, publishing the autobiographical American Splendor...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Ahh... My inner geek just chirped in joy. Wait... who am I kidding? There's no "inner" about it!
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8 ... 76b970b-pi

...because it seems I was banned.
No, I don't know why.
Yesterday, I tried to add an entry to a page.  I'd put my entry in and preview it.  It would look okay, but when I hit 'Save', it wouldn't save it.  I admit I probably tried it a few too many times, but none of them did anything.
Today, any page on tvtropes.org gives me nothing but an error 403.