After college she moved to London to work for Amnesty International as a researcher and

bilingual secretary. The best thing about working in an office, she has said, was typing up

stories on the computer when no one was watching. During this time, on a particularly long

train ride from Manchester to London in the summer of 1990, the idea came to her of a boy

who is a wizard and doesn’t know it. He attends a school for wizardry–she could see him

very plainly in her mind. By the time the train pulled into King’s Cross Station four hours

later, many of the characters and the early stages of the plot were fully formed in her

head. The story took further shape as she continued working on it in pubs and cafes over her

lunch hours.