"I think I met someone," John says at his next therapist's appointment. "A friend." "Really?" Ella asks. She sounds pleased, and also surprised. "What's his name?" John nods. "Really. His name's Sherlock. He -- he plays the same game as me, the online one. We party together."

When Harry was eleven years old, his Hogwarts letter came by owl. He'd been accidentally blowing windows open and lighting cauliflower on fire for years. James took Harry to go get his wand at Ollivanders, and Lily took Dudley to the Owl Emporium where he tried to convince her they should build an aviary in the backyard. They came home with a fat black cat who hissed at everyone. Dudley named him Spooks, and Lily called him Monster. "Did you have to?" said James. "That is the meanest beast I've ever met, and I've known Remus unmedicated on full moons and a pubescent Sirius thwarted in love." Lily, who had ink on her cheek and a ballpoint pen stuck behind her ear, waved vaguely at the living room without looking up from her arrest report. Dudley was asleep in an armchair. The cat sprawled across his lap. Both its front paws were wrapped around Dudley's arm as it cleaned his wrist with aggressive fondness. "Alright," said James. "Yeah, you had to."

No one in their right minds would ever expect it of him, and that’s why he’s the one best-suited to the job.

Rank 1 Investigator Nagachika Hideyoshi has a secret. When he eats dinner at home with his two roommates, he's the only one not eating human flesh.

“You want me to what,” Lan Qiren said. “Be the father of my child,” Cangse Sanren said. Simply and straightforwardly, as if that were just a thing people said.