J.K. Rowling is a pretty gracious woman. Beyond giving us the Wizarding World, regularly answering Harry Potter fan questions on Twitter, and annually apologizing for character deaths, she also gives back a little. In 2008, the author wrote an idea for a Potter prequel and auctioned it off to raise funds for a literacy charity. Now someone has stolen that rare prequel, because the world is full of ungrateful muggles.

The West Midlands Police in Birmingham, England tweeted about the incident on Friday, revealing that the prequel, which the author wrote by hand on a postcard, was stolen last month in a burglary. (The police made no mention of why it took them weeks to publicly address the matter.) The 800-word manuscript focuses on the friendship between Harry’s father James and Sirius Black before the iconic wizard was born. Here’s the description via the New York Times:

The men have a dustup with a pair of police officers, from whom they escape on broomsticks, according to reports in the British news media.

It sold for a whopping 20,000 pounds, or roughly $31,000, back in 2008 to raise money for English Pen, an organization that supports writers whose freedom of expression is at risk. Rowling also took to Twitter today to urge her fans to not purchase the stolen prequel if they came across it online.

I mean, what true Potter fan would do such a thing? Unless you’re a Slytherin. Calling all my fellow Gryffindors out there – go find Harry Potter and the Stolen Prequel and return it to safety!

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