Young Biggles Potter was a rubbish wizard and
could do no real spells of any worth. In particular he was entirely unable to
get his broomstick to fly and it gathered dust in the corner of his room. This
was highly amusing to almost all the other young wizards, particularly because
he was called Biggles as well as being a member of the now famous Potter
family. However Biggles or to give him his full title Master Biggles Isambard
Kingdom Potter was a top class mechanical engineer and so he decided that he would
use his own skills to achieve flight.
Well young Biggles worked away busily for ages
making his mechanical flying beast. He produced a large willow nest shaped
basket for himself and added rather wondrous flapping wings and used the very
latest cleverly designed lightweight engine to drive a propeller. The design
was a stroke (no pun intended) of genius and it finally meant that young
Biggles could take to the air, something he felt he was destined for. And we
can safely say he was a very happy young wizard (OK something of a rubbish
wizard).
News of young Biggles and his flying device soon
spread across the land and finally a large file arrived on the desk of a Mr
Harry Potter in his palatial office deep within a large austere government
building. Well Mr Potter was not entirely happy and nor were the powers that be
that ran the great bureaucratic machine of government. So Mr Harry Potter was
dispatched to talk to young Biggles Potter and persuade him of the error of his
ways in building such a foolish and entirely un-magical flying machine.
When Mr Harry Potter finally caught up with young
Biggles He was giving his fellow students trips around the Countryside in his
mechanical flying beast. Biggles was
surprised, shocked and excited to see his distant and very famous relative Mr
Harry Potter, but Harry himself did not look happy. You see he explained to young Biggles that
once everyone started using mechanics and science to do things like fly then it
was the thin edge of the wedge; it would destroy the entire credibility of
magic, and wizards would be left doing futile things such as sawing ladies in
half, making rabbits appear out of hats or lions vanish from cages. Biggles
told Harry that he was not the only person to have made a mechanical flying
beast and that the Wright brothers had made one too. Of course Harry did
explain that the Wright brothers had in fact breed a huge half Cat half Eagle
(called Kitty Hawk) which was acceptable in the world of wizards and magic.
But Harry knew that the young wizard’s mechanical
flying beast was in fact the start of the end, the great curse that had been
expected for some time now, and so it proved to be. Before you could shout . .
. Look out JK Rowling is behind you . . . . everyone wanted one of the
new-fangled mechanical flying machines
No one wanted to fly about on uncomfortable
broomsticks getting cold and wet in the wind and rain any more when they could
enjoy the comfort of a mechanical flying beast with its inflight entertainment.
And so as time passed magic slowly vanished as the rational world of mechanics
and science took over and today no one except the occasion mad old witch with a
black cat is seen flying on a broomstick and as for flying carpets they have
not taken to the air in centuries. And if you buy a small child a magic set
today it will burst into tears and demand an iPhone; you see what chance has
magic got in this modern age of science and rational thought.
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