. . . I went to Edinburgh Castle on Friday and at the stroke of midnight something amazing happened. J. K. Rowling herself appeared and read from her sixth book.

Just before she came, there was pretend thunder and lightning in the room. When she entered, everyone applauded her. I was dressed as Harry Potter, with my Hogwarts robes, glasses, wand and a lightning bolt-shaped scar on my forehead which my mum had drawn with some red lipstick.

First we had met everyone at Edinburgh council chambers, where we had some Muggle nibbles to eat. Then there were people cheering as we made our way to the castle in a carriage drawn by horses with ostrich feathers pointing up from their heads. Each carriage had two horses, some white, some brown; ours were white.

When we entered the castle there was a cloud of red smoke and there were entertainers dressed as dragons and tiny men with green masks crawling around. It was the entrance to Hogwarts. I was in Ravenclaw, the House of Cho Chang and Luna Lovegood in the books. When we got to the castle we all picked pebbles out of a yellow bag. The pebbles all had a number on them. Mine was 30. We then went into the Great Hall, where there was another numbered pebble on a red cushion marking my seat.

We sat there and within five minutes J. K. Rowling was in front of us. She seemed happy to see us. Then she read a 15-minute passage from the sixth chapter of the new book. I can’t tell you what happened because it would spoil the story for you. The way she read it was special, because she is the author and she was reading just for us.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth Harry Potter book J. K. Rowling has written, along with Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.Yesterday we went back to the castle for a press conference for all the cub reporters, in a room with a giant cover of the book at the front. J. K. Rowling smiled as she sat in a red armchair sipping water. There was a television camera next to me as I asked how old Dumbledore was. J. K. Rowling said that he was about 150 years old.

Another question was if you were Animagus (who can change into an animal) what would you be? J. K. Rowling’s answer was probably a stag or a tiger, though I don’t think she explained why. She was also asked what house she would want to be in at Hogwarts. She said Gryffindor because she is brave and has some courage.

The night before, there had been a banquet for the 70 children who had been invited to Edinburgh for the weekend. We ate sausages, beef, potatoes and chips, and for pudding we had doughnuts and fruit salad.

We all sat in our houses and there was a blue tablecloth on the Ravenclaw table, where I was with 17 others. They included Richard, a ten-year-old boy from London, who was 90 per cent blind and was being guided around by his brother, Christopher, 12. He was given a special copy of the new book, in ten volumes of Braille.

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