This is why JK Rowling doesn’t use predictive text to write Harry Potter

I’ve never seen or read anything Harry Potter related, but according to predictive text on my phone it’s really “good” or “nice”, so that’s persuasive enough for me. You may think that entrusting my opinions to a fairly flimsy personalised learning algorithm is a risky stance, but it’s considerably safer than using it to write a novel – as creative collective Botnik did with a new Harry Potter book which is unlikely to be made into a big budget Warner Brothers movie any time soon.

Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash is the creation’s name, and it manages to head downhill from there, featuring the boy wizard falling down stairs for three months, Ron turning to cannibalism and exhibitionist Death Eater romance. Which I assume is unusual, but again, I haven’t read the books so maybe this is entirely canon.

Here are some extracts straight from Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash to whet your appetite:

• “The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: ‘You are Hagrid now.'”
• “Ron was standing there and doing a kind of frenzied tap dance. He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione’s family.”
• “The tall Death Eater was wearing a shirt that said ‘Hermione Has Forgotten How To Dance,’ so Hermione dipped his face in mud.”
• “Harry looked around and then fell down the spiral staircase for the rest of the summer.”
• “Harry tore his eyes from his head and threw them into the forest. Voldemort raised his eyebrows at Harry, who could not see anything at the moment.”
• And of course, the touching moment I alluded to above:

Harry, Ron, and Hermione quietly stood behind a circle of Death eaters who looked bad.

‘I think it’s okay if you like me,’ said one Death Eater.

‘Thank you very much,’ replied the other. The first Death Eater confidently leaned forward to plant a kiss on his cheek.

‘Oh! Well done!’ said the second as his friend stepped back again. All the other Death Eaters clapped politely. Then they all took a few minutes to go over the plan to get rid of Harry’s magic.

Well that’s just heart-warming – though I probably shouldn’t have made the mistake of Googling what a Death Eater looks like.

You can read the rest of the novella on Botnik’s site here. You can also see their attempt to write a Seinfeld script here, and a Scrubs episode here. The latter features a brand new character called Dr. Car who may or may not be an actual car.

I’m going to close this piece by using Botnik’s own predictive keyboard application to outsource the rest of my work. The closest I can find to Alphr is from using the dataset of Wired’s product reviews, so here goes:

The retail issues with the large rocks do everything else. Skip deep down to legally trim the surface.