After a brief nap, Christopher woke early.
Just after six, he put the stack of manuscript pages back into a kraft paper bag, put on his coat, tucked the bag under his arm, and headed straight out.
He lived in Chelsea, and Bloomsbury Publishing was near Russell Square, about forty minutes away on foot.
The morning air was cold and damp. Mist curled around the streetlights, and a few red double-decker buses passed, their headlights trailing blurred halos through the fog.
He walked at an unhurried pace, his leather shoes occasionally splashing through puddles on the wet pavement.
There were few people on the streets, only an early-rising paperboy arranging a stack of The Times on a corner.
As Christopher walked past him, those sentences were still turning over in his mind-
Harry's, Hagrid's, the Dursley family's. Those scenes seemed especially vivid in the London morning, as though they might leap out from around a corner at any moment and become real.
When he pushed open the heavy oak door of Bloomsbury Publishing, the receptionist had only just arrived and was pouring hot water into a cup.
"I'm here to see Barry Cunningham."
The young woman at reception looked up at him, confusion appearing on her face.
"...Do you have an appointment?"
"No, but he'll want to see me."
The young woman hesitated for two seconds. Perhaps because there were so few people in the building at this hour, she picked up the phone, pressed a few buttons, said a few words, then put down the receiver.
"Mr. Cunningham is on the third floor, second room on the left."
Barry Cunningham's office was smaller than Christopher had imagined.
The bookshelves were crammed with sample copies, some already yellowing. Several stacks of manuscripts stood waist-high on the desk, with a pair of reading glasses and a precariously perched mug beside them.
Barry himself was a few years younger than Christopher, with tousled gray-brown hair sticking up and his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. He seemed to be correcting a set of proofs.
When he saw Christopher come in, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His tone held the familiar yet reserved politeness of someone he had not seen in years:
"Christopher? Now this is a rare sight. The last time you came looking for me, wasn't it eighty-six or eighty-seven?"
"Eighty-eight." Christopher put the kraft paper bag on the desk. "That was the year you signed that chef's cookbook. It sold four hundred thousand copies."
Barry chuckled. "You have a good memory. But I don't take cookbooks anymore. What have you brought?"
Christopher did not answer immediately.
He pulled out the chair opposite Barry and sat down, opened the paper bag, took out the stack of pages, and gently pushed it toward him.
"Take a look at this. These are the first eight chapters."
Barry raised his eyebrows and glanced down at the words on the cover-"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (first eight chapters).
He picked up the manuscript, hefted it in his hand, then looked back at Christopher.
"Fantasy? Didn't you mostly steer clear of this genre before?"
"That was before." Christopher leaned back in his chair, his hands folded on his knees. "Read it first. We'll talk afterward."
Barry gave him a suspicious glance, but opened the manuscript and found the first page all the same.
Christopher sat opposite him, waiting quietly, like a cat patiently keeping watch.
The second page, the third, the fourth... Barry turned the pages more and more slowly, sometimes pausing over a passage and going back to read it again.
Christopher noticed an almost imperceptible upward curve at the corners of Barry's mouth when he reached the part where Harry finally saw his first letter from Hogwarts.
It was as though he were there himself, celebrating along with the characters in the book.
The office remained quiet for quite some time.
Christopher took a pocket watch out of his pocket and checked it. More than two hours had passed.
Only then did Barry finally look up from the manuscript. He took off his reading glasses, rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and let out a deep breath.
He had read the later portions less closely to avoid keeping Christopher waiting too long, yet even so, he had found himself helplessly immersed.
"Where's the rest?"
"That's everything, for now."
"For now?"
"The author only gave me the first eight chapters. He should be sending more later."
Barry closed the manuscript, his fingers still resting on the edge of the cover, and tapped it lightly twice.
"What's the author's name?"
"Allen Vane."
"Do you know him?"
"Until the early hours of this morning, I'd never heard that name."
Barry paused. "Then how you got the manuscript..."
"It turned up on my desk with the other manuscripts." Christopher shrugged.
"I'm telling the truth. I found it last night while going through the manuscripts. I have absolutely no idea who put it there."
"There was an address on the back of the manuscript, 13 Baker Street, but that address-"
"13 Baker Street?" Barry frowned. "I don't recall there being a number thirteen on Baker Street."
"Holmes's address is 221B, but that's fictional. In reality, the odd numbers on that street end at eleven."
"Exactly. So I can't get in touch with him."
Barry fell silent for a while.
He opened the manuscript again, turned to the last page, read the ending about Hagrid and the little package, then unconsciously repeated that rhetorical question under his breath: "That's it?"
His voice carried exactly the same irritation Christopher had felt the night before.
The two exchanged a look and both laughed.
"Christopher." Barry put the manuscript on the desk and interlaced his fingers. "You didn't come here just to let me take a look. You want me to sign it."
"I want you to start typesetting it right now," Christopher said. "The sooner, the better."
Barry looked troubled.
"You know what publishing schedules are like these days. From signing, editing, proofreading, and cover design to printing and distribution, even at our fastest, it would take three months."
"This book can't wait three months."
"Why?"
Christopher leaned forward a little and lowered his voice.
"How did you feel while you were reading it just now?"
Barry opened his mouth as though about to offer a book-review-style response, but in the end, he abandoned the idea and answered honestly:
"I lost track of time. I even forgot someone was sitting opposite me."
"So did I," Christopher said. "I spent almost the whole night reading it."
"I've been a literary agent for twenty years. I've handled eight hundred books, if not a thousand."
"The last book that kept me reading all night was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But that book made me laugh. This one made me feel-"
He paused, seemingly searching for the right word. "Made me feel that if I didn't get it into print right away, I'd be letting someone down."
Barry stared at him for a few seconds, then tapped the edge of the desk twice.
"Are you always this dramatic?"
"I've always stuck to the facts."
Barry snorted, but did not argue.
He flipped through a few more pages, his gaze passing over the descriptions of Diagon Alley, Ollivanders, and the Sorting Hat, and murmured:
"These details are remarkably solid. Gringotts, the conversion system for magical currency, the concept of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters..."
"If this is a new author, he's either done extraordinarily thorough research, or he has a fairly complete world in his head."
"Have you considered a third possibility?" Christopher asked.
"What?"
"That these things are real."